Translation Sharing is Caring

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The TAUS Data Association (TDA) was founded about two years ago with the goal of creating a widely used and trusted platform for companies to share their translation memories. The idea was that companies could achieve greater cost savings and greater quality if they worked together and reciprocally shared their previous translated text strings. For companies within a given industry, the cost savings can quickly add up.

I received their update newsletter this week. After 18 months in operation, TDA reports:

  • TDA membership has doubled to 90 members
  • Database volume has grown to 3.2 billion words in 320 language pairs
  • 50,000 searches per month on the free TAUS Search
  • Over 12 billion words downloaded by members to train MT engines, and improve services and tools
  • Free open APIs used by members and non-members to integrate their tools and services

Between the APIs and the more affordable membership fees, TAUS appears to be making the right moves to not only expand its membership but expand the reach of its platform. With the major translation vendors (and Google) offering proprietary platforms, it’s nice to see an independent alternative. But more important, it’s nice to see companies sharing. It wasn’t very long ago that the idea of sharing TMs was considered on par with divulging corporate secrets. But sharing of TMs and the building up of large-scale databases of translated strings will provide the foundation for some really innovative (and hopefully accessible) products and services, should TAUS wish to pursue them. It will be interesting to see what develops…

Link: TAUS Data Association

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John Yunker

John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.
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