Few months ago, I posted Multilingual, a short article (well, for my standards, at least) presenting a small idea that I had toyed with for some time.
The point is simple: if you live in UK or US, you might think that English is enough.
Some laudable experiments (e.g. “globish”) try to build a real shared language- a “simplified” English.
But a language has to belong to a community- and I do not see any “globish” community.
Why? Because each country “adapts” whatever cultural “borrowings” are added to its own original language (or languages).
It is not just the pronunciation- it is the lexicon.
The English language is quite flexible: wherever I worked in Europe, I found some new words that were… local words converted into their English equivalent.
I had the chance to work in different countries not just as a “visitor”, but on projects lasting long enough to build a common “lingo” with the other team members.
Usually, I was there only one or two days a week, and therefore I was able to compare different attitudes to cultural and language differences.
A common issue was: create a website that any customer, partner, consumer could read, whatever her or his mother tongue.
The obvious solution was: local language plus English.
But then, the issue was building a “suggested thesaurus” to be used by anybody writing material for online posting, so that it could be translated into the other target languages.
Why a “suggested thesaurus”? Because few people had the knowledge and skills to write the original content, and the only real translators available to produce the same material in another language would be… a colleague somewhere else.
Too time consuming. A thesaurus allows to use cheaper “translation farms”- or just to sign an outsourcing contract with the local university.
You guess- few companies, after the initial enthusiasm, bothered to allocate the resources or create the process needed to keep the “thesaurus” up-to-date.
Go around the web: you will see multilingual websites that look more like an archaeological drilling site, with different “layers” of information exposed in different languages.
Few months ago, while preparing Multilingual I contacted Google, and asked them: why don’t you create a “Powered by GoogleTranslate” or “GoogleTranslateReady” badge?
I finally got their answer- and, in pure Google/Microsoft style, was totally non committal but acknowledging (to avoid future IPR and copyright issues)… to the point that they did not even enclose the original message or the title 
The idea is simple: write in your own reference language, and then prepare a version that “survives” through GoogleTranslate.
Sometimes, it could be a simplified version; sometimes, just abstracts.
But it would save you from some appalling mistakes that I saw in the non-English versions of technical and business material.
Quite often, the real translator is not a specialist, but a sub-sub-sub contractor, or a student working for a “translation farm”.
As usual, I should walk the talk.
Therefore, from August 16th, every post on this slightly unusual blog will be updated, and contain a link to an adapted version that “survives” GoogleTranslate in few languages.
I will try to see if the process is reversible (English to Language to English) for few languages.
As a first step, I temporarily removed the multilingual items coming from my more personal pre-blog, draugiem.lv, that used to be referenced by “draugiem” and “gramata” in keyword searching.
Pre-blog, as usually I post there something, and only if and when it reaches at least 40 readers it migrates somewhere else 
A separate publishing zone will be set for those multilingual posts, also to avoid cluttering the “search” results.
Why I say “survive” GoogleTranslate? Well… try this link to the GoogleTranslateTools
For this test, I selected Spanish as the destination language.
To change language, just replace “tl=es” with “tl=
Translate this post into a language that you know, and then back to English- and let me know how it goes
I know few languages and I can read few more- but I would like to know the result in other languages.
The first posting on August 16th will be a new article, that will try to follow the new communication format, and then validate it with my “online community”, hopefully in at least a dozen of languages.
I would be really grateful if you were able to tell me how did it fare in other languages
Incidentally- I do not think that this approach will remove the need for translators.
Actually, it would allow to focus them where they are really needed, considering the time needed to train a professional translator and the current shortage of translators that can really convey all the nuances in the original text or speech.
I remember trying few years ago a software for PocketPCs- you talked in English or few other languages, and the software talked back in the destination language.
And, after trying few accents (and few people), I was impressed by the quality of the translation for basic material
So, I am not the only crazy one thinking ways to expand multi-lingual communication via automated translation.
It would be nice to teach the “basic language” approach, and then have e-mail software simply delivering the message in whatever language the addressee decides to use.
Stay tuned. And see you online.
Tags: automatic, basic, draugiem, google, language, lingual, multi, translate