Translation

At a recent New York Tech Meetup, Smartling‘s Sales VP Matt DeLoca introduced the company’s next BIG venture: Going small. Smartling has decided to enter the mobile platform to localize languages on mobile apps.

You have to give CEO Jack Welde credit.  Hitting the mobile front with translation services is a stroke of business genius.  In a market that’s already over flooded with useless apps, now with Smartling’s help, those apps can be available to just about everyone.  As most people are aware, unless your app is listed on the first few pages in the app store, chances are likely that only a few people will ever come across your app, much less download it.  But with Smartling’s help, those apps now have the unique chance to be overlooked in over 50 languages!

All joking aside, Smartling’s mobile app translation tool will help those more popular apps cater to a larger number of people.  This prospect opens many doors for advertisers as well, perhaps being able to offer translated ads depending on the language selected on the app.

So how does Smartling intend to offer their translation service to mobile developers? As a developer, you would first download a bit of code and incorporate it into the mobile app.  That code will activate whenever a user goes on that particular page in the app on their mobile device.  Smartling captures the app’s individual screens, text and contents, and displays them in their editing dashboard for translators, just as their product does for traditional websites.

While this product was still in development during the NY Tech Meetup, it is evident the company is steadfast in its determination to translate the web.  Clearly they are at the forefront of language technology, or at least, offering an easy way for human translators to donate their services through them.  Similarly, other companies such as Translation Cloud offer human post-editing/translation services, but offer their translators payment for their work through PayPal.

Either way, website translation is the next step and Smartling is taking it two at a time.