This Tyee article looks at the CanWest experiment to offer instant translation of its e-paper products into 12 different languages. While that's not a bad idea, critics say the service's translated pages are unintelligible nonsense (make your own joke here).
Canwest's translations are tough to decipher, but experts say the motive behind offering them is clear: they want to tap into Canada's thriving ethnic media readership, and the advertising revenues that come with them.
UBC journalism professor Mary Lynn Young notes mainstream metropolitan newspapers have seen declining circulation -- and increased ad sales -- over the last 50 years, a trend examined in a Tyee story last winter.
In a new media environment, however, winning new readers and ad dollars is key to any publication's continued survival, a fact made resoundingly clear in Canwest CEO Leonard Asper's speech this past May. ...
According to a 2005 Environics Research survey, the Chinese-language dailies Sing Tao and Ming Pao have a daily readership of 65,000 and 50,000, respectively. The Taiwan-focused World Journal gets another 16,000 readers a day.
The Punjab-language Indo-Canadian Times has 55,000 weekly readers in the Lower Mainland, and double that across the continent.
While the Vancouver Sun still enjoys a healthy daily readership of 463,400, pulling in tens of thousands more through online translations is an alluring idea for an industry battling for advertising revenues. One indication: the Sun sent its managing editor to this month's Chinese Media Summit, and CBC brass was there, too.
"There's a growing interest," said Yu, who was in attendance.
Free software
The question is how to spin English into other languages cheaply and quickly -- but accurately.