Over the past two years, Language Weaver has felt a definitive shift in the demand and perspectives on automated translation.  Despite our assertion that statistical machine translation (SMT) was a new methodology that would change the paradigm for machine translation, back in the fall of 2005, Language Weaver was still battling the previous negative perceptions that machine translation had built up as a result of 30 years of disappointing rule-based MT results.  While the government was seeing success with statistical MT, translators felt threatened, language service providers were skeptical at best, the commercial enterprise saw little value in what any type of MT could provide.

Fast forward to 2007…   

This fall, Language Weaver has attended several events around the world, and it is clear that the dark cloud over automated translation is starting to lift.  Companies approached several times in the past are now talking to us out of their own free will; translators are opening up to the idea of working with SMT; and Language Weaver has been invited to speak at many conferences and seminars.

Why the change?   

We see several factors that are contributing to the shift:

1. Global companies are feeling pressure to bring products to market faster, leading to greater demand for translation at lower costs
2. Microsoft has developed and successfully deployed its own version of statistically based translation software (SMT) to translate knowledge base content resulting in an increase in user satisfaction – truly a compelling argument to consider SMT!
3. Information is power – maybe a bit cliché, but exabytes of new digital data are being created annually and users want access to this information in their own language
4. More countries are coming “online” and the language of the internet continues to diversify. Users that speak languages other than English are beginning to dominate the web
5. Language Weaver has several successful deployments of customized SMT in translation productivity environments, leading to 150-400% increases in productivity.
6. Google keeps automated translation in front of web users with their own version of SMT.

Given these factors, it is clear that statistical MT can have a significant impact on global communications.  Language Weaver has always seen great promise in this technology, but now we think that the rest of the world is starting to share our view.  Stay tuned…2008 should be an interesting year!

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