An Israeli company is teaming up with Sony Communication Network Corp to provide online English-to-Japanese translation on Sony’s So-net home page. Babylon Ltd, a joint venture between Mashov Computers Ltd and Product Computers Ltd, offers single-word translation software, with which a user can click on an English word in a document and have it translated into another language. The company currently offers English to Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese and Hebrew. The program is available for free download from the company web site.
Babylon says that once the program is downloaded it sits on a Windows desktop and can translate text from web pages, business applications, graphic programs, emails and games. The program also features optical character recognition. The company is considering porting its program to the Linux and Macintosh operating systems.
In interview with AsiaBizTech, Babylon vice president Michal Frenkiel said that the company had developed the program because 80% of all web content is in English, which is not the native language of 70% of internet users. Asked how the company makes money with a free service, Frenkiel admitted that it didn’t. We decided to offer it for free, because it was the easiest way to acquire users, she said, We plan to charge companies that develop their businesses over the internet…we do have some definite business models in mind.
