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Online Auctions Go Polyglot
Title: Online Auctions
Go Polyglot
Author: by Neil Irwin
Source: The
Washington Post
January 23, 2001
MultiCity.com
Inc., a Tysons Corner company that provides software to let
Web sites instantly translate between languages, yesterday introduced
a product to make Internet auction sites multilingual.
The product, MultiAuctions, will be offered to companies with
Web sites with auction capabilities, such as business-to-business
exchanges. It lets site visitors see on-screen text in any of
seven languages -- English, French, Spanish, Italian, German,
Dutch and Portuguese. The MultiAuction software translates text
from the original language to any of the others.
Auction item names and product descriptions can be translated
to Japanese, Chinese and Korean as well.
Webmasters can download a free version of the product that includes
on-screen banner advertising. Alternately, business clients
can license the product for a monthly fee and have it integrated
into their sites without ads.
MultiCity, founded in 1999, has offered similar translation
products that work with Internet chat rooms, message boards,
opinion polls and other features of Web sites. The company says
about 300,000 Web sites worldwide use its products.
The company received a $15 million round of venture funding
led by Grotech Capital Group last year. It hopes to capitalize
on increasing use of the Internet outside of the United States
by providing software tools that bridge language barriers. Most
automatic translation technology remains rudimentary, but it
is gradually improving. The longer or more complex the text,
the more prone to errors machine translation is. Short labels
and descriptions are easier for software to translate accurately.
Copyright 2001, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
and The Washington Post.
All Rights reserved.
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