The October-November language industry conference season is well underway, so the press releases are flying fast and furious. Several announcements related to machine translation (MT) caught our eye, each supporting our contention in “The Business Case for Machine Translation” that the technology and practice is broadening, still not earning much revenue for their vendors, but provisioning for future growth. The news falls into three categories — core technology, integration, and enhanced services.

• Core technology improvements. Last week, Asia Online revved up its Language Studio Enterprise server with multiple deployment options (including SaaS), the ability to customize engines using smaller datasets, and support for multiple domains with ready-to-use data. Meanwhile, Google rolled out 285 new languages with the goal of removing linguistic barriers even for minority languages.
• Integration with other technologies. Welocalize and PROMT announced that they have integrated the latest release of the GlobalSight TMS with the PROMT MT engine. Sakhr Software ported its Language Buddy to the iPhone, allowing for live rendering into Arabic of English speech. Meanwhile, the Google folk have added a gadget for automated webpage translations based on browser language settings. TAUS rolled out a new search widget for drilling down into its translation memory data exchange. Finally, Deep Web Technologies prototyped a multilingual search with “a single, English-based search query” that has been machine-translated so it can explore databases in other languages, a feature that we have long sought.
• Value-added MT services. Asia Online and Moravia Worldwide partnered to offer language services clients the option of pairing the former’s statistical machine translation with the latter’s project management, repository management, language quality solutions, workflow, and post-editing. Moravia has been designated a “Center of Excellence” for providing Asia Online’s technology. We expect more such partnerships to be signed as MT software vendors look to expand their sales outlets and increase the availability of human-edited MT, a popular option among companies seeking lower costs but with no loss in quality.

As the technology improves, so too will the quality and ability to manage large volumes of foreign-language content. Integration with the rest of the technology stack will make this heretofore arcane technology more readily available through the communications channels favored by consumers and business people alike. And formalizing the value-add of language service providers means broadening the acceptance of MT output. These are all positive steps in the market’s response to President Obama’s call for machine translation to lower the barriers to commerce and collaboration.