Google may hold the upper hand in web-based automatic translation at the moment, but there are other players stepping up to the plate. At this year’s MIX 2010 Conference, Microsoft introduced their new Collaborative Translations Framework as a “technology that combines the scale and speed of automatic machine translation with the accuracy and context awareness of human translation.”
Microsoft is now approaching translation from a different angle than Google. They have accepted and voiced the fact that a machine will never be able to guarantee a completely accurate translation with every try. With this in mind they developed their Collaborative Translations Framework targeted at allowing website creators and owners to translate their content with a very simple Application Programming Interface (API).
By using the Microsoft suite of translator tools that are part of the Collaborative Translations Framework webpage owners can take control of how their site is localized based on the type of content being translated. While Google targets the everyday search engine user, Microsoft is marketing this API to the people who create websites and this may pay-off in a big way.
Read more about Microsoft’s new approach, and let us know what you think.
