User:Communiguy/Sandbox

Mobile Translation
The emergence of 2G/3G mobile phones that roam globally across geographic and language borders has revolutionized the communication technology. Today the mobile phone technology is not just restricted to digital camera, SMS, multimedia messaging, emailing, gaming platform, wallet, and bar-code reading. Mobile translation to different languages is now slowly but steadily making inroads into this technology. Mobile translation uses a mobile phone to translate one human language to another. It is a form of automatic language translation or machine translation that is done through computer programming. At present, the message to be translated is typed and sent to a translation service via SMS or a dedicated application, where it is then returned in written form in the new language.

The importance of mobile translation cannot be overestimated. Thanks to globalization, a person can now choose to live and work in any country. But language barriers could still be a constraint. Holding a conversation in the new country may prove difficult even though the individual could get by with a basic vocabulary. Breaking the language barrier for interpersonal interaction becomes essential if one wants to integrate with that society. Language barriers could be a deterrent in the international business scenario too. The need to get past language barriers arise if a small business wants to develop internationally. A business identifies and evaluates potential foreign market opportunities through market research and then formulates a marketing plan. It is obvious that language barriers are a huge setback to such businesses. In the same way, international visibility and marketing too require access to some or the other foreign language. Thus, it is becoming a necessity for everyone within global organizations to communicate across languages instantly and effectively. Mobile real time language translation is no longer a wish–word.

History of Real Time Mobile Translation
As far back as 1999, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International-Interpreting Telecommunications Research Laboratories, based in Kansai Science City, Japan, was developing a translation system for the Japanese to exchange conversations with foreign nationals through mobile phones. The words spoken into the mobile phone went into a networked speech translation system of the Institute which then translated it within five seconds and sent the translated words (as voice) to the mobile phone of the other user. Similarly, the words of the other user was translated and sent to the first user. This system, however, was ready to be used only a few years later. [1]

A couple of years later, the Japanese company, NEC Corporation, developed a translation system that could be loaded in mobile phones. This mobile translation system could recognize 50,000 Japanese words and 30,000 English words, and could be used for simple translations when traveling. [2]

In the beginning of the 21st century, mobile phones began to be used in language learning. One of earliest projects was the Spanish study programs which included vocabulary practice, quizzes, and word and phrase translations. Soon after, projects were developed using mobile phones to teach English at a Japanese university. By 2005, they shifted their focus to providing vocabulary instruction by SMS. A similar program was created for learning Italian in Australia. Vocabulary phrases, quizzes, and short sentences were sent via SMS. [3] This phase marked the beginning of real time translation through mobile phones.

The year 2007 saw the advent of mobile translators where the translations were available in multiple languages. Now multilingual real time translation is the norm.

In the Information Technology Summit in 2007, one research paper focused on the availability of translation systems on mobile phones to provide domain specific communication across language barrier. SMS, being faster and available in all networks, was proposed to be used as a method of communication with the server to facilitate mobile real-time translation. [4] It was also in 2007 that Moka LLC in the USA brought to market the SMS-based multilingual translation service.

Advantages of Mobile Translation
Mobile translation has a number of practical uses.

Learning a foreign language: Learning a foreign language can get easier and cheaper with a mobile phone. Statistics reveal that most college students own mobile phones and find that learning a foreign language via mobile phone works out to be cheaper than on a PC. Further, portability of mobile phones makes it convenient for the foreign language learners to study outside the classroom in any place and in their own time.

Business networking: Conducting discussions with potential overseas customers with real time mobile translation saves time and can be instantaneous. Customer service solutions can be provided at a much lower cost when compared to the cost incurred through multi-lingual call centers. Real time mobile translation can also help networking within multinational teams.

Travel: Real time mobile translation can help people traveling to a foreign country for leisure or business to make oneself understood or to understand others.

Globalized Social Networking: Mobile translation allows chatting and text messaging with friends at an international level. New friends and associates could be made by overcoming the language barrier.

Challenges to Mobile Translation
Despite its numerous benefits, mobile translation poses a few challenges. Reduced screen size of the mobile phones and one-finger keyboarding are certainly bothersome and time consuming. But the more important challenge facing the mobile translation industry is the linguistic and communicative quality of the translations. The user needs go beyond the compositional and general purpose translation to the current requirement of inter-personal and cultural-dependent language translations. Two communication technology companies, Moka LLC and Transclick Inc, however, claim that their mobile translation applications take care of these aspects, that is, they produce context-sensitive accurate translations and are able to handle idiomatic expressions and slang. [5] These can be considered as exceptions to, rather than common, features of any mobile translation device.

Where translation with respect to language learning is concerned, the aspect of incorporating non-verbal communications, such as emotions and intonations, into mobile translation needs to be researched further. There are endeavors underway to translate spoken messages and to have the message returned as a spoken message. This would actually make it easier to pronounce the word/phrase and fathom the pitch of the speech, but where non-verbal communication is concerned, the technology is still to be developed. In the same vein, literary and other such documents need to be ‘interpreted’ rather than merely translated.

The Mobile Translation Market
The mobile translation market has a huge growth potential given the fact that there are three billion subscribers worldwide and it is increasing by more than 27% every year. [6] According to the UN statistics, the world’s most populous nations – China and India – are among the fastest growing mobile markets. With more than 600 million subscribers in the year 2008, China by far represents the world’s largest mobile market. And it is estimated that India is going to be the fastest growing wireless market in the world from 2008 – 2010.[7]

Thus, it will not be very difficult to gauge the possibilities of the mobile translation market. A research done by Common Sense Advisory, a research and analysis company estimates the translation market today to be around $14 billion. Since automated translation including mobile translation is powered by statistical algorithms and not by conventional rules-based methods, the untapped market could be worth more than $67 billion.[8]

Players in the Real Time Mobile Translation Market
Moka LLC: Moka language translator is a personal communicator that facilitates real-time multi-lingual communications via SMS. Moka claims to have developed new translation algorithms that have the most accurate English/Chinese translation in the world. The language translation technology used by the company adapts to text messaging slang terms, cultural expressions, dialects, abbreviations, and spelling errors. Language pairs include English to Pinyin, Chinese and Spanish; Chinese to English and Spanish; Spanish to English and Chinese. The language translator works on any cell phone. It does not require application download. Moka has launched service in China with China Mobile, and is also available on most carriers within the USA. In addition to their SMS-based service, Moka offers Moka Chat for Skype plug-in, allowing Skype users to have multilingual conversations using Skype chat. Moka is also launching Moka Chat for the iphone.[9]

Transclick Inc: Transclick language translator is user friendly, portable, and can be integrated with mobile smart phones. Depending on dictionaries, its real time language translation is 80%-100% accurate. The translator works on most cell phones. Language pairs include English to/from Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Farsi, Bahasa Indonesian and Hindi. The mobile translator is available for Skype, Blackberry, i-Phone and other mobile platforms with Java user interfaces. Services are accessible with software applications download. Transclick has plans to market translated IMs with dictionaries via mobiles to the military.[10]

SYSTRAN: Systran mobile translator helps in text translation as well as serves as a mobile dictionary in real time. It has been created exclusively for the traveling or busy person "on the go" to communicate in multiple languages. The language packs include English to/from Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. Application requires download.[11]

ECTACO: Lingvosoft, the software for translation on hand held devices, has been primarily devised for travelers. Based on text-to-speech and speech recognition technology, they provide a wide range of linguistic solutions. The language pairs include English to/from 180 languages. There is a choice between English, French, German, Spanish and Russian display languages. Application download into hand held devices is required.[12]

References:
1.	http://www.kansai.gr.jp/kansaiwindowhtml/news/1999-e/19991117_NEWS.HTML

2.	http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200511/30/eng20051130_224674.html

3.	http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num1/emerging/default.html

4.	http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4151821&isnumber=4151645

5.	http://www.moka.com/en/about-us.htm

6.	http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/02india.htm

7.	http://www.the-infoshop.com/study/iemr67103-global-mobile.html

8.	http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com

9.	http://www.moka.com

10.	http://home.transclick.com

11.	http://www.systran.co.uk/translation/translation-products/desktop/systran-mobile-translator

12.	http://www.ectaco.com/LingvoSoft-Suite-Deluxe-English-Spanish-for-Pocket-PC/

External links:
Moka LLC

Homepage of Transclick Inc.

SYSTRAN

Ectaco