Within the translation industry, ProZ is widely known as the leading public network of freelance translators and buyers of translation services.
But here comes Google…
According to Blogoscoped, Google is about to launch the Google Translation Center.
This is an exciting development, though I don’t expect everyone to suddenly ditch ProZ for Google. Why? Because much of the appeal of ProZ is the community, which Google does not appear to be trying to support. Still, freelancers will certainly want to investigate this potential new resource.
I’ve called out ProZ as one company under threat from Google Translation Center. But EVERY translation agency needs to keep a close eye on this service. It could be a threat. It could also end up being something translation agencies use themselves — instead of paid platforms from SDL. Naturally, for this to happen this new platform has a lot of evolving to do. Still, I can’t help but wonder.
There is no mention of whether or not Google will support machine translation and/or translation memory. I’m assuming they will.
I have LOTS of questions and this service isn’t even live yet. So we shall see what happens. But this is big news, no question.
I wrote awhile back, that the translation industry as we know it is over. The technologists have taken over and they’re bringing brute force computing and massive networks to the table to reduce costs and increase time to market. This is just another sign of this macro trend.
What do you think? Is Google going to disrupt the translation industry or is this new platform going to fall flat?
(Thx Chris for the heads up!)
Update: I just read an insightful article on this Google’s service at GigaOm…
