Press release translations have been the bane of my existence for years, the fact is that even using native professional translators’ comments from clients have been frequent. Certain languages are more difficult than others and certain topics are more complex than others – and often the comments are not necessarily about errors but rather about style or preference. That said, they are still comments, and they need to be managed.
In addition to managing clients comments the process has been time consuming, fraught with peril, and very expensive. Professional translators regularly charge 0.25 cents per word or $100 for a 400-word press release and there is either a 24 or 48 hour turn around – just managing the process in the editorial team includes several more steps handling each release that requires translations and lets not talk about a global release that could require over 10 translations.
Enter Google, the basic free Google translation app has been around for years, and in fact, translation software applications have been around for well over a decade and often used by professional translators to create a first draft that then they edit and correct. But these apps have had shortcomings and generally produced weak translations, the perception of automated translations in the industry has and still is largely negative and for good reason. That is until Google upgraded its translator adding Artificial Intelligence and produced an API for integration.
The Artificial Intelligence driven Google Translate API learns from use and has been learning for a couple of years now, the quality of translations at this point is magnificent. Not great but magnificent. And the API integration into the issuer user interface (UI) is easy and quick. The entire process has become both time and cost efficient. Microsoft has also launched a translation API and while it is commercial grade it is not as accurate as the Google application.
The disruption begins when this process moves in-house, it takes one click and 10 seconds to translate a release and both Microsoft and Google charge per character with costs dropping at the one-billion-character level. The cost difference is so large that this cannot be ignored, how about $0.30 to translate a 400-word release! Yes, 30 cents for the entire 400-word release. Both translators offer 100 languages and currently the Google app has more than 200 million users daily.
The disruption continues with aggressive use of these applications, according to Wikipedia half the web sites in the world are in languages other than English, in fact, English is not the largest language in the world. Mandarin and Spanish are both larger than English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali and Russian follow. The point is a release distributed in English and 4 other languages grows exponentially in value and ROI as it now will show up on searches in other languages. In fact, the iCrowdNewswire AdRelease™ powered by Google includes 4 translations at no cost. We will distribute 5 versions of a release without any charges for either the additional distributions or translations dramatically increasing the reach of the release. AdRelease™ offers three versions Basic at $200; Enhanced at $400; and Premium at $600, versions are based on views. The Basic product will deliver 30,000 views; Enhanced 60,000 views; and Premium 90,000 views. These products are flat fee, no overage and pay as you go.
This is here now, and it is here to stay, as I mentioned earlier the Artificial Intelligence powered applications learn and get better with use but today they are magnificent, and with +200 million daily users they will only get better.
You can see more about the AdRelease™ powered by Google at http://icrowdnewswire.com/adrelease/