IBM's n.Fluent software is currently used by the company's employees to translate electronic documents - including web pages and instant messages - between English and Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
With nearly 400,000 employees in 170 countries, IBM is well placed to tap people's ability to provide and update word translation pairs, with a particular emphasis on business and technical vocabularies.
IBM volunteers provided around 1.3 million words over a two-week period earlier this year, and there are current efforts to expand and improve the language data.
IBM envisages making the technology available as a product or service. A particular attraction of taking the product route is that - unlike web-based translation tools - it would provide greater security as there is no need for the text to travel outside the corporate firewall.
"To become a smarter planet, the world needs a shared vocabulary for collaboration -- particularly the business community," said David Lubensky, an IBM Researcher managing the n.Fluent project.
"We see n.Fluent as just such a tool, helping to expand commerce, cement relationships and make the world that much smaller, one word at a time," he added.
Other crowdsourced projects underway at IBM are aimed at making it easier for people to locate, transcribe, synchronise, tag, caption and share audio from video files.
The company identified real-time language translation as an emerging business area in 2006.
INTRODUCING ITWIRE TV
iTWire TV offers a unique value to the Tech Sector by providing a range of video interviews, news, views and reviews, and also provides the opportunity for vendors to promote your company and your marketing messages.
We work with you to develop the message and conduct the interview or product review in a safe and collaborative way. Unlike other Tech YouTube channels, we create a story around your message and post that on the homepage of ITWire, linking to your message.
In addition, your interview post message can be displayed in up to 7 different post displays on our the iTWire.com site to drive traffic and readers to your video content and downloads. This can be a significant Lead Generation opportunity for your business.
We also provide 3 videos in one recording/sitting if you require so that you have a series of videos to promote to your customers. Your sales team can add your emails to sales collateral and to the footer of their sales and marketing emails.
See the latest in Tech News, Views, Interviews, Reviews, Product Promos and Events. Plus funny videos from our readers and customers.
SEE WHAT'S ON ITWIRE TV NOW!
