Why Translation Migration Matters

Here’s something I can’t wait to try out: Google recently announced it’s making business reviews easier to access and read when you’re traveling, via automatic translation. For someone like me, who travels and works constantly, this is huge. It lets you avoid the hassle of copying and pasting reviews from their search and maps results into a translation app. Now, you can just access them directly on your device in the language it’s set to. No more fumbling around with going back and forth. I love it. Here’s a link if you want more details: https://goo.gl/JvFFpo

It’s hard to avoid accounts of the impressive AI-related progress being made, right now, in natural language processing (NLP) and neural machine translation (NMT). These systems deploy language tech based on neural networks (similar to how our brains actually work), enabling machines to ‘learn’ situationally and develop predictive skills based on context.

The upshot: translations that sound more natural and human, happen faster and more reliably, and get better as you go along.

Industry analysts expect the proliferation of NMT to change the landscape of the global enterprise sphere.

The arrival of NMT and CMT (custom machine translation) also means that what used to take copious amounts of time and money for language processing, can now happen fast, inexpensively, and with far greater accuracy and naturalness. And that has huge implications.

Laying Groundwork for Global

Late last year, Microsoft, Google, and SYSTRAN all launched significantly improved, AI-enhanced tech into their core language products and services, on a major scale. (For one look at what they’ve done, check out Microsoft's Neural Machine Translation system.

This technology will show up initially in traditional translation programs, which is no small deal. Large innovators are rolling out better translation products and services all over the globe, across hundreds of languages spoken by millions of people. There are more than 1.2 billion native Mandarin Chinese speakers alone (around 16% of the world's population). The eight common languages that will get addressed first, together account for about 1/3 of the world’s people. Spin that outward and you start to get a sense of the global impact.

Closer to home, consumers will interact with increasingly sophisticated messaging apps and chat bots, primed to surface big time in a shopping/shared economy/transportation/social app near you, along with your many personal digital assistants.

From Ripples to Waves

For anyone expanding into emerging economies, and for small enterprise opportunities globally, NMT will remove barriers to growing client businesses, empowering people to communicate and interact along new channels.

In opening to foreign markets, foundational business functions like invoicing, inventory, and cash flow will all be exponentially easier with more sophisticated translation tools. These nuts-and-bolts tasks are universal and unavoidable, but large companies have well-funded specialists to deal with them. For small and medium-sized businesses, it will be a significant force multiplier to be able to handle transactions like these in-house, efficiently, with minimal costs.

Smaller businesses will also be able to access these powerful new instruments to help them market their brand, and identify new opportunities and relationships far beyond what they previously could have reached.

Tapping more easily into language tools that help them build new communities and networks will be a game-changing advantage, enabling faster turnaround times, better servicing of customer needs, and stronger data protection and security.

With over 7 billion internet users expected by 2020, providing content to users in their own language is a must-do. Niche businesses that rely on word of mouth, social and viral marketing, and finely-targeted demographics, will get a significant assist from NMT as they innovate ever-evolving and adaptive market expansion.

Into Practice

Other expected applications abound. In the shift toward expanding into developing Asian markets, for example, online and mobile retailers are expected to be the biggest consumers of machine translated content. NMT removes the need to hire small armies of specialty translators to navigate foreign documents, audios, emails, chats, and technical materials. Previously this would have been slow, expensive, and riddled with setbacks. By using advanced NMT within a fully-automated system, large quantities of documents can be translated with far greater precision, much more economically.

We also know that localization is key to gaining market share and building trust with new constituencies, and the trend toward it becoming an ongoing, continuous process, rather than a sporadic and project-driven one, is well underway—bringing with it a need for real-time and on-demand NMT and CMT capabilities.

The travel industry—a burgeoning sector in itself, let alone in natural overlaps with other areas of global expansion—is a virtual ground zero for the types of advantages NMT offers. Remember what I said about Google’s new seamless auto-translation for business reviews? That will include reviews of local businesses, local attractions, shopping, restaurants, pubs, and commerce centers, and it segue ways nicely with new travel-oriented features being pushed out by established players, like Facebook.

Another key application for this technology is around the ongoing expansion of cloud migration. As this and online content-sharing continue growing, translation capacity that can optimize the power and flexibility of the cloud will offer a significant competitive advantage.

Other enterprises that stand to benefit from enhanced language translation are as varied as the imaginations of their inventors. For example, enterprises dealing with medical, educational, or manufacturing equipment, processes, or apps could see significant gains from NMT as they grow into new markets. And data analysis will see big impacts as it’s increasingly deployed at every level of commerce and marketing, for businesses of all sizes.

The Upshot

For those of us focused on building global networks, it will play a major role in delivering more agile globalization, accelerating time to market, and reaching way more customers.

NMT will be a powerful new tool in scenarios where cultures meet and people interact: decreasing turnaround time, boosting productivity and optimizing localization.

The roll-out for advanced NMT has begun in force, and it will be both interesting and instructive to see the changes it will bring over the next few years. We’ll almost certainly see new areas of application for small and medium-sized businesses that we can’t fully anticipate now.

GoDaddy is all about the promise of future experiences. Our vision is bold and worldwide—embracing and strategically deploying new technologies is at the very center of what we do. The advancement of NMT into global prime time will provide another amazing tool for us and our client partners, as we go about changing the world one new business at a time.

To continue the conversation feel free to comment below, follow me on Twitter, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

                                                                                                  - James Carroll