Startup Hopes To Crowd-Source the Developing World

GalaticGrub writes "Technology Review has an article about a startup that wants to build a business out of crowd-sourcing the developing world. The company, called txteagle, seems to be interested mainly in using local knowledge to translate information into less common languages. The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and CEO Nathan Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in 'software localization,' or translating its software for specific regions of a country. 'In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages,' he says. 'You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like "address book" into all of these languages.'"

Comments

My hovercraft is full of eels

[14erCleaner]

What could possibly go wrong with this plan?

The locals may not know how to translate it either

[Anonymous Coward]

They may not have any one particular translation for words either. Remember, a lot of these small languages have relatively few people who are not well connected with each other, which is necessary to expedite the definition of new words for new technologies.

Forget computers, these people may never have used a paper address book before..

Babelfish

[tverbeek]

Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like "address book" into all of these languages.

Duh... use Babelfish.

Does this make much business sense?

[MikeRT]

Kenya has a population of about 37M people. That means that most of those languages are bit players in the country. It's questionable as to how many of those languages would actually have a large enough population that cares about using their primary language on their phone to exclusion of cheaper translations for much larger languages, and how many people using those languages could even afford a phone.

Utterly Ridiculous

[rjstanford]

'In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages,' he says. 'You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like "address book" into all of these languages.'"

Nokia is exactly the sort of company who could, very easily, hire 60 different people (full time no less), who all had English (or whatever) as a second language and also had writing skills, each of whom could be in charge of the localization for their particular "first language". The additional manpower cost would be truly insignificant to their bottom line, and they'd end up with well-translated manuals, support documentation, et cetera.

This has a far greater relevance for someone with a low- or un-funded project than a major multinational corporation.

Re:Utterly Ridiculous

[John Hasler]

Nokia is exactly the sort of company who could, very easily, hire 60 different people (full time no less), who all had English (or whatever) as a second language and also had writing skills, each of whom could be in charge of the localization for their particular "first language". The additional manpower cost would be truly insignificant to their bottom line, and they'd end up with well-translated manuals, support documentation, et cetera.

It might be "insignificant to their bottom line" but it could still exceed their profits in these very small markets.

Re:A sign of the unfortunate fact...

[zappepcs]

I have no mod points so let me just comment that this is a well spoken post. Globalism is on the rise, and we need someone to help assume some of this debt. Once they speak English we can begin sending them "you have been specially selected... " credit card applications and such. Not to mention how the illegal pharmaceutical market will blossom.