Although Google has stated no plans to throw advertising into the multilanguage mix, Google Translate might draw international shoppers to English-only e-commerce sites, according to analyst Greg Sterling, who said Google Translate might very well boost e-commerce. Travel, he said, could be one of the early beneficiaries.
 Google is attempting to jump over language barriers in a single bound. The search king this week launched a new feature to convert search results into 12 different languages. The long-term implications could be a boon for e-commerce.Dubbed Google Translate, the tool is aligned with the company’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. The new cross-language feature allows searchers to find and view results on foreign language Web pages in their own native language.”If the ideal result page to a query is written in a language that you don’t understand, then up until now it would be very hard to get access to this information,” Google research scientist Franz Och wrote on Google’s blog. The tool is initially available for searchers who speak English, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.Theory in PracticeIt’s a promising theory, but what does this mean in practice? The way Google describes it, an Arabic speaker searching for restaurants in New York could now conduct a search of English-language sites, with Google translating the search results into Arabic.Here’s another example: If you are looking for wine tasting events in Bordeaux while on vacation in France, you’d type “wine tasting events in Bordeaux” into the search box on the “Search results” tab on Google Translate. You would then get French search results and a translation of the results in English.To tap the power of Google Translate, a searcher has to visit translate.google.com, enter a query in any language, select the language for results, and conduct the search. Behind the scenes, Google translates the query, performs a search, and translates the results.Google researchers believe the translation engine can provide good enough results for searchers to get the gist of information in a language they might otherwise be unable to read. “We think this feature will be particularly useful for our international users since although the majority of Internet users out there are non-English speakers, a majority of the content on the Internet is still in English,” Och wrote.E-Commerce ImplicationsWith a world of potential shoppers who might be willing to plunk down some hard-earned dollars with U.S. companies — if they could read the product descriptions — Google Translate might be a boon for e-tailers.Although Google has stated no plans to throw advertising into the multilanguage mix, Google Translate might draw shoppers to English-only e-commerce sites, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.”Google Translate could facilitate e-commerce through the discovery of sites,” he noted. “It potentially makes it possible for you to transact with businesses in other countries. There could also be suppliers in the B-to-B context that discover each other.”Content translated through the new Google tool won’t address cultural nuances, but it is a quick way for e-commerce players to find new exposure in foreign markets that might be interested in their wares. Travel, Sterling said, could be one of the early beneficiaries. With the Internet still developing and e-commerce still growing, the possibilities for the future of cross-language search, he concluded, are bright. |
