This week, there were rumblings about the forthcoming beta release of Google’s new translation management system (TMS), called Translation Center. If you’re familiar with Google Translate, you might be thinking, “Big deal, this is just a low-tech, human version of what they’re already doing.” If so, you would be wrong: This is big news for the practice of translation. It seems that Google has been stalking the sector.

We predicted in 2006 that Google would open up its statistical machine translation engine for general usage — and so it did, as we reported in March 2008. Last December, we published our first report on collaborative translation, in which we explained how collaboration tools and open source concepts could increase translation efficiency. We’ve written about the merits of crowdsourcing and how companies like Facebook, Google, and Sun Microsystems have pioneered work in this area.

Google seems to have been listening. In December of 2007, we suggested a gmail-like model for translation memory and forecasted that a company from outside the language industry with no interest in selling tools — such as Ask, Google, or Yahoo! — might be well-served to make such an offer. Google has apparently done just that. It claims that its new translation management system (TMS) gives users the ability to request translations, find translators, and upload documents for translation into more than 40 languages. It also enables freelancers to create and review content in their languages using free translation tools. Yes, free.

Why would Google take an interest in supporting human translation activities? One big reason: It needs human support in order to build up its translation memory, so that Google Translate can evolve from a “me translate pretty one day” prototype to a reputable and reliable language conversion machine. True, there are some large sources of free translation memory out there already — such as the enormous database offered by the European Parliament. But, to truly enable mass quantities of information to be shared around the globe, Google needs richer, vaster sources of TM than what’s currently in the public domain. After all, the typical web user might want to communicate now and then regarding things other than, say, official EU declarations and proceedings.

Adding humans to the mix enables Google to gradually create a very large storehouse of translated words and phrases — exactly what TAUS is aiming for with its data sharing initiative and what Asia Online is doing with its human-enhanced statistical MT engine. In a nutshell, Google will unite its cloud with the crowd to get as many helping hands on the job as it can.

We’ll reserve our detailed comments on Google Translation Center until we can actually try it out for ourselves and see how it fares alongside other TMS programs — our in-depth report with translation management system scorecards for translation management suppliers will be published soon — but the big picture value of this news for the industry is clear. Even in its beta form, Google Translate showed decent promise for the future of automating written language mediation — it is a well-built machine translation engine.

What separates Google from the rest of the MT field is that this machine is backed up by a manufacturer with plenty of money, data center power, disk space, and network infrastructure, not to mention expertise in the assembly and productization of raw information materials. But now, with the addition of humans, it has the opportunity to become well-oiled in addition to having a sturdy construction. What remains to be seen is if Google can find enough oil to maximize MT performance. Thankfully, translation memory is a plentiful resource — one that won’t require any drilling.