Online Translation Services
The topic of online translation services has been raised more than once on Habré. They talked about various ideas of startups , and about the use of ready-made collective translation services , and even about how google can upend the world of online translation by crossing translate and voice . We want to tell you about our experience in launching and developing the “live” online translation service, with the help of which you can professionally translate texts , as well as telephone calls and online events. In Russia, services of this kind are not too widespread; in fact, we only offer them. Therefore, very often people who want to use our services or become our partners have questions about what we can offer and how it will work.Text translation
The online text translation service is a form that allows you to evaluate the cost of translation and place an order for translation on the site.
The main question that stood before us at the stage of service development was how to minimize time costs. The time of the translation, in our opinion, should be limited only by the speed of the translator. Therefore, the main purpose of the service is to minimize the time spent on routine operations: assessing the cost of translation, placing an order, payment. These are fairly standard functions of an online store that sells various products online, however, the practice of selling services online is quite rare, as it involves a number of difficulties. In addition, the work of our service involves the automatic distribution of text to a translator. Those. managerial work is also automated. Due to this, it is possible to minimize the time spent on translation - the text goes into processing immediately after its payment, and the time of translation is determined only by the physical capabilities of the translator.
A beta version of the service, built on the basis of these ideas, was launched in the spring of 2006, and at the end of 2006 the first integration of the service on the Lingvo Online site was already held. Now the services are provided by ABBYY Language Services . Currently, translation is carried out in 53 languages, the total number of translators supporting the work of various services is more than 400. The service is integrated on the portal ABBYYonline.ru, and in the program ABBYY Lingvo X3. This year, a number of new implementations are being prepared. True, it is worth noting that at present, automatic calculation and placing an order is possible only for language pairs containing Russian, since all the sites under consideration are focused primarily on the market of Russia, Ukraine and the CIS countries.
Our service has no restrictions on the minimum size of downloaded text - you can translate both non-specialized texts of a small volume (for example, personal or business correspondence), and specialized documentation of a large volume (for example, instructions, etc.). For this, various technological and production processes are used. Translation of serious voluminous documentation, of course, goes through a completely different processing than express translation of a short non-specialized text.
When express translation, you can focus on the fact that the maximum speed of a professional translator is approximately equal to 1 page per hour. If the volume of a small letter is about a third of the page, then with maximum optimization, our service will return the translated text to the client within 20-25 minutes after placing the order. The procedure for placing and paying for an order does not take more than 3-5 minutes. It should be borne in mind that at the moment our audience does not need such speeds, so we set the minimum comfortable time in 1-2 hours.
We believe that when integrating, for example, into a mail service, there will just be a need for maximum optimization of the time of work with the translation, and then the speed of work of 15-30 minutes for the translation of the letter will be very popular. If there is a need to translate individual sentences in 5 minutes (when integrating into IM, or social networks, for example), this will also be implemented, since we do not have any technological or organizational obstacles for this.
Translation of telephone calls
The idea of developing and developing this service was born in the analysis of the foreign translation market. In the United States and Europe, this service is quite common; PTP (telephone transfer) service providers are known along with mobile and fixed-line telephony providers. Our situation is completely different. PTP is a telephone conversation service with the participation of translators in the conference mode. The service can be used both for telephone conversations with foreign friends or business partners, and for ordinary face-to-face conversations through the speakerphone. Sometimes it is faster, easier and cheaper to put a speakerphone on the table, call our call center, connect an interpreter and talk with a partner, rather than look for and order an interpreter in the office.
Developing this direction, we strive to ensure that PTP becomes a mass service, since only with a large volume of customer requests can the service be truly convenient: reduce the response time when providing an interpreter to seconds and reduce the cost of translation. Just think how convenient it is - regardless of your location and time of day, to know that you don’t have problems communicating with people, in what language they wouldn’t speak, that in which case, it’s worth dialing a number and your conversation will be translated into any language, and immediately. That is what we are striving for.
Now, the PTP service is provided in scheduled mode (by pre-order) in 8 languages. So far, only regular customers can take advantage of the “fast” on-demand translation (at the time of contact). Order can be placedon the site , or by phone. As soon as the service is integrated with one of the telecom operators, most customer requests will be transferred to on-demand mode.
The provision of PTP services has revealed some peculiarities - when translating by telephone, working issues “on the fingers” are often discussed. A voice channel alone is often not enough to convey the necessary information, or to achieve full understanding with the interlocutor. Therefore, we decided to introduce an additional service - translation of web-conferences.
Web Conferencing Translation
Webinars are a powerful remote collaboration tool. Therefore, ways should be provided for convenient communication between people speaking different languages within the framework of a webinar.
Now we, together with Webinar.ru, offer the organization of multilingual web-conferences. At the same time, we expect that such web-conferences will be in demand not only for conducting business discussions with a small number of participants, but also for mass online events - broadcasts, conferences, round tables.
Consecutive interpretation is provided as standard for telephone conversations and online events, when the translator uses pauses in the interlocutor’s speech to complete the translation. We plan to create precedents for simultaneous translation (the translator speaks simultaneously with the speaker) to show that even massive and serious events can be held online and at the same time, the quality of the translation will not be inferior to the quality of the translation at ordinary events held offline.
Web conferences as a tool for simultaneous translation are quite convenient. For webinars, translation into several languages can be provided at once, and participants in the event will be able to choose the language of translation they need, i.e. "Room" in which the translator they need broadcasts. In the same way as in offline conferences. At the same time, additional equipment will not be required for web-conferences, and the cost of such a translation will be lower than for the translation of ordinary events.
By the way, it’s easier for remote translators to work - it’s one thing when you translate in the booth at an event, and quite another when you are in the office or at home - in silence and in a familiar environment.
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