The Internet may be global, but it is still segmented into pieces by language barriers. Luis Von Ahn, one of the creators of CAPTCHA--the annoying system that asks you to type words and numbers into a box to ensure that you’re human--is on a gran mission on the Internet to translate the whole web; and anyone who wants to learn a new language can help.
Duolingo, a project that teaches users a language of their choosing, allows them to translate websites and documents in the process. "You can try to use computers to translate, but that doesn’t really work, and it won’t for the next 20 to 30 years. With humans, you need to find a way to motivate them to translate at a very large scale," explains Von Ahn. "You can’t ask people to translate the whole web because it would be way too expensive. Teaching a language is a way to motivate, and a lot of learning happens through translation."
Duolingo’s translation ability is surprisingly accurate and it is determined by skill level. So far, Duolingo has translated over 10,000 sentences, all from documents with Creative Commons licenses. By early 2012, Von Ahn hopes Duolingo can start accepting items from users to be translated. Duolingo is slowly accepting users from its waiting list, which contains over 100,000 eager translators: with one million users signed up, Duolingo could translate Wikipedia from English to Spanish in 80 hours. Sign up here.
We also recommend watching: "Google Translate Voice Now on iPhone: Talk to Animals" and "Word Lens: Real Time Augmented Reality Translator".
Luis Von Ahn: Let's Translate the Entire Web