Money talks, and soon it will be easier to understand.
Language barriers can hinder international commerce, but that problem is increasingly being solved by machine-based translation programs, which are becoming sophisticated enough to enable people in different countries to communicate as if they spoke the same language.
Lily Chen, a sales manager with electronic-forklift company Taixing Jichuan Hydraulic Machinery Co. Ltd. in China, said she’s used Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s BABA, +1.48%[1] built-in translation tools to communicate with buyers in Europe and the U.S. In an interview with MarketWatch using the technology, she explained that her English was “not very good” when she began as a salesperson and the translation software first helped her conduct professional communications with a customer in Germany and, later, with other buyers.
“I was a little nervous at first, but from the customer’s reply, the customer fully understood the meaning of the translation, which made me feel very confident,” Chen said. She deemed the software able to handle “the professional vocabulary of electric forklifts,” including fork width, loading capacity and after-sale service.
Translation programs aren’t yet tracked specifically by economists, but they have the potential to boost international trade, which stood at $19.5 trillion last year according to World Trade Organization estimates.
E-commerce’s international expansion
One big opportunity exists in e-commerce, where the giants of online shopping are already beginning to incorporate translation technology into their businesses. Take eBay Inc. EBAY, +1.38%[2], the San Jose, Calif.-based online marketplace, which quickly learned that while the internet has made it easy to connect buyers and sellers, international expansion wouldn’t be particularly effective if shoppers weren’t able to understand product listings from abroad.
The result is a system that enables shoppers to make search queries in their preferred language and receive translated product listings, while also taking into account the context of a customer’s request. Machine translation has to be smart enough to adjust its behavior based on whether someone is looking for a Galaxy Note 10 smartphone or a galaxy-print sweatshirt, for example, since the branded product doesn’t need to be rendered into a different language.
“Anything that supports cross-border trade so that someone from outside the U.S. is capable of engaging in e-commerce is where the power of global trade lives,” said Sanjeev Katariya, an eBay vice president who focuses on artificial intelligence.
EBay’s push for machine translation has helped the company increase Latin American exports by nearly 20%, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and illustrates the potential for increased commercial activity as translation technologies gain wider adoption in business. ...