About

In the modern world, geographic distance and political borders have lost their historical meaning. Current technology allows one to interact instantly with some of the most remote locations on earth through access to the Internet. Globalization is the word most often used to describe this free movement of intellectual, financial and human capital between continents. The last remaining obstacle to unimpeded communication between people and organizations is the language barrier.

The IT industry has long considered the surmounting of traditional language barriers a critical goal. Results have been mixed, with a rapidly growing number of applications and services for machine translation on the market. Strategy, approach and opinion vary greatly and are reflected in the quality, reliability and accuracy of these products and services. A majority of these services provide machine translation through Internet based portals focused on specific content, fields and markets. This is all a natural step in the right direction.

However, at this stage services for machine translation are PC oriented and largely focused on web content translation. A large part of the global population does not own a computer nor seek translation of web sites. Their needs revolve around communication. Providing wireless access to translation services in order to communicate across linguistic and economic boundaries is a fundamental paradigm shift. The data reinforces that it is also a tremendous market opportunity given that these rapidly developing economies are experiencing exponential growth in mobile device sales and usage. The potential creative synergies unleashed between previously localized global communities will directly impact overall user base, reach and communication.