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Tweet Multi-Language with SpeakLike Twitter Translation

Written by Michael Phillips | Mar 31, 2009 5:00:00 AM

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.