Internet Globalization News

Twitter Crowdsourced Translation Center - Don't Fire Your Translator Yet

In a move that very few companies can make, Twitter announced today the release of their new (crowdsourced) Translation Center, a product that will allow users to translate the Twitter interface (for free).

As the Twitter team says in the blog post, crowdsourced translations are not new for them, since users have been able to translate the Twitter interface for almost two years (for free).

Why is it that only a few companies can make a move like that? Mainly, because most companies do not have millions of passionate users around the world willing to translate (or do, as a matter of fact) anything for free. So far, Facebook is probably the only other company that has successfully implemented a crowdsourced translation platform.

In the case of Facebook, though, millions are still spent in what is called "linguistic quality assurance", performed by professional translators through a Localization Service Provider. And, as a high ranked Facebook employee mentioned at a conference, crowdsourcing their translations is mainly used for speeding up the overall localization process, rather than a way of saving money.

With this in mind, what can companies that do not have millions of users willing to work for free, or that do not want to leave their legal or technical translations to non-professionals do? Basically, have a localization manager internally to manage their translation projects, and find one (or more) high quality translation vendor. Cloudwords, a new start-up based in San Francisco, just released a web-based translation management platform, that helps companies not only manage their translation projects, but also find the best translation vendors for their needs -- if the crowdsourced solution is not for your company, I suggest you take a look.

via blog.twitter.com

Crowdsourcing translations isn’t new for us. Since October, 2009, we’ve counted on Twitter users to volunteer as translators and help us localize Twitter. For this launch, we created a completely new system, based on feedback from translators, to improve the translation experience.

image via tadej.eu

Some Mind-blowing Social Media Statistics Revisited

As we have done in the past, it is time to stop for a moment and check some impressive numbers related to usage of some internet services. The original report was published at the end of January/2010.

via econsultancy.com

• There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
• There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
• Towards the end of 2009, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
  
• The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
  
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
• Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
• 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati's new State of the Blogosphere.
• At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
• India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
• More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
• 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
• 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.

Astronomers have found a galaxy forming stars in a long tail behind it. The stars are being left behind as the galaxy plows through a galaxy cluster.

User Content Creation Around the World: Development Matters

Interesting research about what kind of activities Internet users have around the world. It is remarkable how the level of maturity of a market (measured in terms of Internet penetration) might explain what activities users perform. For example, while in mature markets like the US, Canada and the UK, blogging and microblogging are not as popular as managing a social network profile, in China these activities are much more important for local users.

via www.emarketer.com

In the US, a mature Internet market, managing a social network profile was the top online user-generated content activity, participated in by 44.2% of Web users. This was followed closely by uploading photos. Uploading video, blogging and microblogging were significantly less popular.

Users in the UK and Canada had similar rates of social network use and photo-sharing, and also tapered off dramatically when it came to more advanced user-generated content activities.

Japan,another mature Internet market, has markedly different participation in user-generated content activities. Much lower percentages of Web users manage social network profiles or upload photos, for example. The “Global Web Index” report notes that this is actually a sign of advanced behavior: The survey measured only activities conducted on a PC, and in Japan, many such activities are now mobile-based.  

Meanwhile,participation was generally high in China, where overall Internet penetration is only 29.6% according to estimates. A majority of users uploaded photos, and nearly one-half had a blog. More than one-fifth used a microblogging service, far ahead of the more advanced economies.

Users generating (mobile) content