4.1. Translation Services
Maintained by Vorontsoff, Wesseling & Partners, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Aquarius is a directory of translators and interpreters including 6,100 translators, 800 translation companies, 91 specialized areas of expertise and 369 language combinations. This non-commercial project helps to locate and contact the best translators in the world directly, without intermediaries or agencies. Aquarius Database can be searched using location, language combination and specialization.
Founded by Bill Dunlap, Euro-Marketing Associates proposes Global Reach, a methodology for companies to expand their Internet presence into a more international framework. this includes translating a website into other languages, actively promoting it and using local banner advertising to increase local website traffic in all on-line countries. Bill Dunlap explains:
"Promoting your website is at least as important as creating it, if not more important. You should be prepared to spend at least as much time and money in promoting your website as you did in creating it in the first place. With the "Global Reach" program, you can have it promoted in countries where English is not spoken, and achieve a wider audience… and more sales. There are many good reasons for taking the on-line international market seriously. "Global Reach" is a means for you to extend your website to many countries, speak to on-line visitors in their own language and reach on-line markets there."
In his e-mail of December 11, 1998, he also explains what the use of the
Internet brought in his professional life:
"Since 1981, when my professional life started, I've been involved with bringing American companies in Europe. This is very much an issue of language, since the products and their marketing have to be in the languages of Europe in order for them to be visible here. Since the Web became popular in 1995 or so, I've turned these activities to their on-line dimension, and have come to champion European e-commerce among my fellow American compatriates. Most lately at Internet World in New York, I spoke about European e-commerce and how to use a website to address the various markets in Europe."
4.2. Machine Translation
Machine translation (MT) is the automated process of translating from one natural language to another. MT analyzes the language text in the source language and automatically generates corresponding text in the target language.
Characterized by the absence of any human intervention during the translation process, machine translation (MT) is also called "fully automatic machine translation (FAMT)". It differs from "machine-aided human translation (MAHT)" or "computer-assisted translation (CAT)", which involves some interaction between the translator and the computer.
As SYSTRAN, a company specialized in translation software, explains on its website: