Inside this month's issue:

How did your agency stack up against others that completed TAAR’s 2009 survey?

The role of the traditional sales manager needs to change.

Are you checking the financials of potential prospects before you dedicate your time to them?

Learn why Gmail is so popular and why it’s growing so rapidly.

SalesForce offers many benefits—and it is dramatically less expensive than traditional CRM systems.

Tips and tricks for using the Flip Video Camcorder.

Meet Ning—an online social media service that allows users to create their very own social networking sites.

Several useful—and free—translation services are available to decipher Internet content not written in English.

A new, intriguing iPhone application; sending crime tips via text messages; Secret Session at AMS Users Group Convention.

The Insurance Information Institute makes it easy for you to use their videos on your site to inform and educate.

April 2009

Personal Computing

Reid Goldsborough

The Sí's and Nein's of Computer-Aided Language Translation

The Internet is an American invention, and though it has spread around the world, the bulk of the communication conducted through it is still in English. Even so, depending on what you're doing, you can come across Web pages, blogs, and other Internet content in many other languages.

To deal with this multilingualism, various free advertising-supported translation services have popped up. The two most popular are Google Translate and Yahoo's Babel Fish.

You can copy and paste selected text to be translated or translate an entire Web page by typing in its location. At the time of this writing, Google Translate could translate text from 40 different languages into English, Babel Fish 12.

One problem, however, with any kind of automated or "machine" translation is that it's unable to accurately deal with complicated syntax, grammar, figures of speech, and jargon that native speakers take for granted. Just think ...

Log in to read whole article