IBM just announced a new cloud-based service that enables developers to automatically translate cloud and mobile apps into the world’s most-spoken languages.
The beta version will support English as the base language and nine additional languages including: French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean.
Consumers in today’s globalized, digital marketplace expect a user experience that can be easily tailored to their unique needs, including their preferred language. A 2014 survey by Common Sense Advisory of more than 3,000 consumers in 10 non-English speaking countries spanning Europe, Asia, and South America shows that 75 percent prefer to buy products in their native language. Sixty percent rarely or never buy from English-only websites. For retailers and companies with consumer-facing apps, this service helps meet the criteria for expanding customer reach and loyalty in today’s fastest growing markets – in which shoppers are increasingly turning to online and mobile experiences.
By automating translation of all text seen by an app’s user, Globalization Pipeline lets developer teams focus on core activities and avoid the time- and resource-intensive tasks traditionally associated with software translation, such as setting up translation processes, managing translation vendors, and rebuilding and redeploying apps whenever there is a translation update.
This is achieved by integrating quick and efficient app translation into continuous delivery processes (DevOps), a collaborative, agile methodology which allows teams to rapidly build and update apps.
- Key features of IBM’s Globalization Pipeline service for Bluemix include:
- Machine translation combined with human post-editing capabilities to ensure quality and consistency;
- Support for a variety of app source file formats; and,
- A comprehensive set of open source software development kits (SDKs) which enable developers to update translations transparently without having to rebuild or deploy their apps.