Tech Stream

Tech Stream 022

17 July 2009

Listen and download: MP3

The fictitious babel fish. An image form the BBC TV production of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Its a special Tech Stream program this week with a focus on language translation.   We’re not quite at the stage yet where we can put a babel fish in our ears and understand every language on the planet, but we’re making some smaller breakthroughs online which are making communications across languages or access to international web content a lot easier. Listen with the MP3 link above or find out more after the jump…

My first guest is Zhang Lei, co-founder of Yeeyan.com which, in their own words lets you “discover, translate and read the Internet beyond your language”.  There is an English version of the site at en.yeeyan.com too and they also translate Guardian content for a Chinese audience at guardian.yeeyan.com/

We then meet Cheongsong Ho from Viikii.net, an online community where users can collaborate and produce translations and subtitles for international videos.  Both of these web services use crowd-sourcing communities to do their translating.

Machine translation is a much more imprecise art, and while both Yahoo and Google have been offering software translation online for many years, its only now that we are getting access to real-time language translation.  This has made it possible for a website like Babelwith.me to exist.  The site allows users to start an IM chatroom and then text-chat in over 45 different languages with people from around the world.  We meet Bobby Gruenwalde, pastor and innovation leader at lifechurch.tv, which runs the Babelwith.me

Finally we wrap up with our own Lili Tu from Radio Australia’s bayvut.com.au Vietnamese website, with her experience of language translation online and a quick plug for their fab new site.