Liz Strauss.com

Pairing Sentences

When we learn to speak, it starts by listening. Google has started a global listening machine.

Google has announced it’s building a Translation Center to connect people who need text and documents translated with people who can do that. Such a central location for language conversation has fabulous implications for the Internet and the translation industry.

Amir Helzer, of I Can Localize a translation service that combines human and technological solutions, and I spoke about the Google Translation Center on Friday. Amir suggested that, looking at Google’s core business, it’s likely that this new center will function similar to Google AdWords — connecting buyers to seller without intervention. He and I discussed the nuances of accurate cultural translations. Amir pointed out that, “Now that Google has made this move, people are talking about the translation industry. It opens the door to a discussion of quality and standards and the value of providing a local feel to a global web business.”

Google will be collecting words in context to build what Brian McConnell has called a free global translation memory.

Google has been investing significant resources in a multi-year effort to develop its statistical machine translation technology. Statistical MT works by comparing large numbers of parallel texts that have been translated between languages and from these learns which words and phrases usually map to others — similar to the way humans acquire language. The problem with statistical MT is that it requires a large number of directly translated sentences.

Before we speak, we listen. Are you ready to start speaking and listening?

Global is the new local. Communication is relationship.

Liz Strauss
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The Larger Audience

The overwhelming difference about online communication seems to be that folks worry about who might be listening in the shadows — the readers we affectionately call lurkers. It’s easy to endow that unseen audience with power and mystery that they may not seek or want.

The point we miss that most all of our communication is subject to “lurkers” in some form or another, and because we’ve learned to manage for them, we no longer think about the threat they also pose.
Examples include conversations and secrets that get repeated after we’re gone, emails that get passed on, and industry gossip in which people talk about us and at times, even claim to represent our view.

In any business communication, the point has always been to be sure that what we share is appropriate and useful — and offered with care. Online communication works the same way.

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

Buy the Insider’s Guide and Get your best voice in the conversation.