'Net Features : twitter, translation

Media Monitoring With CyberAlert

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:29:00 GMT

Media monitoring service CyberAlert released three new features and services today worthy of note. CyberAlert’s daily email alerts to users now include language identification and an automated translation service for non-English language clips. Translating only the headline and body text of the article, sidebar text and ads that appear on the source page are excluded.

The next feature is “News on Your Site”. Users of the CyberAlert 4.0 news monitoring services can select, edit and republish headlines and excerpts of news clips on their website (or intranet).

CyberAlert users will need to order the service, but doing so enables them to specify the design (size, color, position, header) of the daily news featured.

Finally, Twitter is the latest addition to CyberAlert’s consumer discussion monitoring service. Those clients using BlogSquirrel (blog monitoring service), Netpinions (consumer buzz tracking), and CyberAlert VDO (video monitoring and clipping) can now receive Twitter tweets containing their key words.

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Translate Your Tweets?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Not that many English-speaking Twitizens will need to have their tweets translated, but a new service in twinslator.com makes it possible.

The Twitter translation tool is powered by Google Translator and Twitter of course. Worth a look for sure should you be interested in tearing down language barriers and spreading your marketing message to Twitterers in other countries.

All you will need to do is type your tweet, select a language and press update to get the translation. Users have the option to “twin their tweet” (able to post both tweets on a twitter profile directly from the site, or post only the translated tweet to the profile.

Tweet Multi-Language with SpeakLike Twitter Translation

Mike Phillips — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Look through your Twitter followers and you're bound to have some from foreign countries. And they are bound to have hundreds of other connections in those countries that might not speak English. SpeakLike can help, by translating your tweets to become "tweaks." Tweaks can be translated into any two of the currently 10 supported languages. And it's done through a crowdsourcing model, by a group of human translators around the world.

"Machine translation just won't do," says SpeakLike Founder and CEO Sanford Cohen. "The only way to ensure you are communicating the message you want is to have a human involved. SpeakLike makes this possible for all Twitter users.

To get involved, you must sign up on the SpeakLike website, where you can find a free trial. After that, you buy "credits," where one credit is worth $.01 of translation services. According to their website, translating from English to most major languages runs 5 credits per word. English to Japanese is 8 credits. For Twitter, they offer a flat rate of 25 credits, or $0.25 per tweet. Which, compared to their regular rate, is a pretty good deal.

This would appear to be a good way to get some International brand exposure on the cheap. Instead of translating an entire blog post to another language, you can get your point across for $0.25 and hopefully, if your content is strong, the receiver will take on the translation task on their own.