Project Seeks to Translate Web Sites Into Spanish

By Nicole Wallace

To help Spanish speakers gain access to the breadth of information available on the Internet, the IBM Corporation, in Armonk, N.Y., is working closely with Hispanic organizations to develop software that translates information written in English into Spanish.

“Despite the fact that we are increasingly a global society, more than half of the content on the Internet is still in English, and much of the available translation software tends to have a high margin of error,” says Harry Pachon, president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, in Los Angeles, one of the organizations that is working with IBM.

IBM started the ¡TradúceloAhora! (Translate Now) Automatic Translation Project to try to remedy the problem. A half dozen of the company’s researchers spent more than six months building the software program. IBM has donated the translation software, as well as six personal computers and a printer, to 25 Hispanic community groups in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. It has also given the software to four national organizations, the Aspira Association, the Hispanic Federation, the National Council of La Raza, and SER-Jobs for Progress National.

The charities will integrate the software into the housing, job-training, legal-aid, and other services that they offer, and evaluate the product for IBM. The company plans to provide the charities with updated versions of the software every three months until the end of 2004. By then IBM hopes to have a finished product to distribute to many more organizations.

Stanley S. Litow, president of the IBM International Foundation and vice president of IBM Corporate and Community Relations, says the company is working with organizations that serve clients from numerous national and ethnic backgrounds, such as Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, and Salvadoran, which will be key to making the software useful.

“There’s not just one Spanish language,” says Mr. Litow. “We wanted people who speak with a variety of colloquialisms, and from a variety of backgrounds, so the software could really be as sharp and as clear and as effective as possible.”

For more information: Go to http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives.