Jaap van der Meer of TAUS wrote a great article on translation in the next century. A few choice quotes:
In this new regime, translation is multidirectional, from any language into any language. Quality requirements are different for different users and different usages. Machine translation is good enough for the largest volumes of dynamic web content, whereas pre-sales texts require a step-up in quality from the current one-translation-fits-all policy.
And
It is still unsettling of course when you realize that 90% of the translated words will be generated by machine translation engines, probably at no charge to the end-user. But considering there is a non-stop stream of multimedia information, the translation market will certainly innovate and assert its value in different ways.
And speaking of this next wave of translation, have you seen Google’s new Global Advertiser service? Google has now officially gotten into the web globalization business.
