What is the Vision and Mission of Transclick for the next five years and beyond?
By Robert Levin, CEO of Transclick ® Copyright © 2006
Sources and references
“The Holy Grail of computer science is artificial intelligence, and this is the idea of learned behavior. Machine Translation is another one that we believe is really ready for prime time, to take and have lots of documents be made available in different languages.”
Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
February 26, 2004
"A renewed international effort is gearing up to design computers and software that smash language barriers and create a borderless global marketplace."
Steve Silberman, Contributing Editor to Wired Magazine, 2003
“Universal translation is one of 10 emerging technologies that will affect our lives and work 'in revolutionary ways' within a decade”, Technology Review editorialized in January 2004.
“…we must overcome our language barriers and develop technology with real-time digital translation so anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else. Just imagine what it would be like to pick up a phone, call anywhere in the world, and have your voice translated instantly so you could have a conversation without language being a barrier. Just imagine if the translation many of you are receiving through your earphones here today could be accomplished digitally and instantly. I can see the day when we have a true digital dialogue around the world -- when a universal translator can instantly shatter the language barriers that so often hold us back in this global Information Age.”
Vice President Al Gore,
15TH INTERNATIONAL ITU CONFERENCE
Monday, October 12, 1998
Transclick's Mission, Vision & Values
Mission
Transclick is dedicated to innovation and global leadership by developing wireless and portal-based messaging systems and real-time language translation to enable instant global collaboration between for people in global e-commerce, government, not-for-profit NGO’s and education.
Vision
Transclick envisions and will implement technology solutions that enable anyone to communicate, anywhere, at any time, in any major language. Transclick will continuously set the standard for excellence and innovation in global collaboration web services and multilingual communications through its people, processes and technologies.
Values
Excellence in customer service, reliability and satisfaction through:
- Integrity
- Innovation
- Teamwork
As the wireless internet supercedes the fixed line internet, the global communications revolution takes on a new global dimension. Mobile phones began to roam globally in 2003 and 2004 saw the emergence of new “Global Phones” that roam globally across geographic and language borders.
Transclick is the award-winning world leader in the application of real-time translation combined with messaging over wireless networks. Transclick’s language technology and collaboration solutions are seamless integrated and this package of best of breed language technology can be easily integrated into existing company processes.
A week after September 11, 2001, I was studying online for a Master’s in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The phone rang. It was the United States Army Research Laboratory, our largest client at that time. They strongly suggested (i.e. we did not have a choice) that Transclick change the language pair (which was Spanish and Chinese) of our “Speech-to speech-translation over a Mobile Network” grant of $860,000:
“Can you switch to Arabic speech translation?” I hesitated before I answered. The Internet bubble had burst in March 2000---the venture capital markets were still shut off for capital for start-ups. The wireless market had not yet taken off. I gulped, felt a wave of cold fear as if 9/11 was happening all over again. I took a deep breath and whispered: “Of course we can--when do you need it?” Two years later, Transclick won “Best Messaging Technology 2003” and four other prestigious wireless industry awards after filing 3 very strong global patents on speech translation and SMS, instant messaging and email translation over networks of mobile phones and other wireless computing devices.
Transclick is focused on this new global communications niche since this is where one can find the most globally networked and most globally minded citizens who more often than not encounter language barriers and still find it essential to collaborate globally across language barriers. Transclick will be there, on their Global Phone, or globally roaming tablet computer or PDA such as Blackberry, using Palm, Java, Symbian, Microsoft and BREW-enabled smart-phone operating systems, to help them communicate across these invisible global barriers.
Transclick, in 2006 and 2007, is launching in press briefings on four continents, the award-winning Translated Instant Messenger (TrIM) for global enterprises, as well as our translation API on over 100 wireless carriers on six major platforms in order to enable cross-language border communications.
This will positively impact global public and private digital diplomacy as well as to other fields that use Web-based applications, such as medicine, travel, education and enabling the military for communicating with its allies and non-governmental organizations.
Transclick for External Communications
will enable business, social and humanitarian networks to:
- Conduct instantaneous discussions with potential customers, friends and humanitarian aid recipients from all corners of the globe with those who speak little or no English.
- Obtain real-time feedback from international customers who prefer to comfortably communicate in their native language. Strengthen inter-company communications.
- Provide instantaneous customer service solutions to customers at a lower cost than more expensive multi-lingual call centers.
- Increase your online business by adding allowing non-English speakers to read the dynamic portion of your e-commerce web site that can not be constantly updated by static localization.
- End linguistic isolation of entire sectors of the economy and social and political entities.
Transclick for Internal Communications
will enable business, social and humanitarian networks to:
- Maintain closer relationships within multinational teams and individuals in international offices through a network of instant messenger and email translation web services.
- Share best practices across language borders and facilitate distance e-learning and corporate training in multilingual teams.
- Strengthen intra-company communications and foster positive and constructive feedback where there was previously a linguistic bottleneck.
Transclick's 5-year goal: by 2011, by smashing language barriers through global mobile networks, we (and the millions who use our global collaboration tool) will help bring the world together. Our advanced language technology server farms, globally networked with collaboration platforms, will contribute to borderless economies and enable closed and polarized societies (that are otherwise linguistically isolated) to globalize their conversations—thus fostering global Open Societies and borderless economies.
If applied to foster communication to promote a greater good, Transclick’s multilingual technology could turn out to be the single critical ingredient that brings people together globally and universally to resolve conflicts and misunderstandings between societies and tolerate our differences. Transclick’s technology can bring the world together with a great sense of being a globally interdependent community with vital common interests at stake.
Transclick is creating a global network of like-minded and enthusiastic citizens of the world available to connect online, share ideas and resources across language barriers not only to exchange ideas, goods and services, but also to achieve a higher calling:
- to promote peaceful co-existence,
- to support environmentally sustainable economic development and
- to positively influence the quality of life and future of the planet Earth.
A global conversation is already taking place between global elites in English and the second most common global language: broken English at the World Economic Forum and other elite forums. The United Nations consume tens of millions of dollars of translation services each year to enable delegates to the United Nations to represent governments around the world but that leaves over 4 billion people out of the global conversation. Despite the global trend toward learning English, over 140 million non-English speakers are going online every year.
Our goal is to enlarge the global conversation by enabling one billion people by 2011 who have mobile access to the Internet but do not communicate in English to converse with both the English speaking world and the non-English speaking world. Such a conversation can create a global social network of online open societies leveraging advanced language technology. One billion people will be able to join the global conversation in spite of limited resources and linguistic isolation. Such a conversation can support globalization with a humanitarian face that is environmentally sustainable and embraces tolerance, diversity, new ideas and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such a conversation can support a new type of globalization that supports social ventures, women and children who are locked out of the global economy, humanitarian and environmental NGO’s, and micro-enterprise economic development. We have a new vision in which entire societies will speak to each other, not only through the fragile thread of highly politicized international public diplomacy but also through the globalization of broadband-enabled, wireless and digital social networks across ideological, cultural, religious, ethnic and linguistic barriers. There are not enough simultaneous interpreters and human translators on the planet to intermediate between hundreds of millions of people using internet instant text messaging, email and wireless short messaging services (SMS) who are currently text messaging in their home languages. Over 70% of American multinationals are receiving a torrent of email in foreign languages every day. What is needed is a method of communication using language technology over remote computing devices without going through the $30+ billion annual expense of translating to and from the lingua franca of English. There is a rising shortage of qualified human translators with access to vertical market terminology data bases. Human translation is becoming a major bottleneck in global communications.
Instant Messaging, email and wireless text messaging translation technology, through Transclick , is now available.
Push to Talk. Click to Translate: TransClick ® .
Let the global conversation begin ®.
Copyright © 2006
