Akatombo Web Log
Monday, April 17, 2006
Blog translation packages - brainstorming session
We have been working on ideas for a few new services to offer here at Akatombo Media, and one of the things I’m considering rolling out in the very near future is a service for translating an English blog into Japanese (with the reverse possible should I find a market that demands it). Inspired in part by Andrew’s comment on a previous post about Japanese blogging, the idea is still in the formative stages, but a fair idea of how things will work is beginning to emerge. This post is an attempt to get my thoughts together, and recruit some early users to put the service through its paces before we make it available to the world at large.
So here are the details of the basic idea:
Target: People (primarily small to medium-sized non-Japanese owned or managed businesses, but anyone who wants it really) with an English blog, who would like to have a Japanese blog mirroring the content on their English site updated nearly as quickly and written by a native speaker.
System: Depending on the client’s blog setup, we would like to automate the service as much as possible. In most cases it should be as easy as you posting your entry in English, and it showing up on your blog in Japanese by the same time the next business day.
Setup: You will, of course, be required to have a blog ready that can handle posts in Japanese. We can help you get that set up at our normally hourly rate, or if you want a design specifically targeted at the sensibilities of the Japanese web user in your demographic target, we can agree on a price for the design of your Japanese site ahead of time. Just contact us and we’ll get started on a proposal for your site.
Pricing: We’ll have to work to find the sweet spot for pricing, but at the moment I’m thinking that we’ll probably charge a monthly fee based on some type of average monthly posting amount. If you are posting every day you’ll pay more than if you are posting once a week, and if you write all long posts you’ll pay more than someone who writes the same amount of brief posts.
Selective translation: We may also be able to offer translations of only some of the posts that you put up, but one of the key points of the service is simplicity, so this would only be possible under certain conditions. The bright side is that if this is what you need, we can help you to meet those conditions.
Further Thoughts: It seems to me like it might be desirable to some, that comments to the site also be translated. This would require a greater workload and more back and forth between you and us for each interaction with users, but it is certainly a possibility if there is a demand for it. Translating comments one-way (we translate all new comments that come in from users, and provide a report daily) would be even more readily doable.
So what do you think? Would you find a blog translation service useful? If so, would you like to be one of the pilot customers of the service at a temorarily discounted rate? Let me know, and if you’d like your comment to be private, please feel free to use the contact form
- Posted by Andrew Shuttleworth
Hi Bob,
Interesting idea. I would be interested for sure, but just putting on my critical hat for a minute, outside the Japan Bloggers community, I don’t know any non-Japanese business owners that blog. I would guess that your target market may be relatively small.
I would suspect that there is more of a market by Japanese bloggers who want their posts translating into English so that they can be viewed by the world. All you would have to do is throw up an add on or collaborate with one of the Japanese blog service providers and I’m sure you’d be swamped!
I’m happy to be a BETA tester. Perhaps you could name the service something like xlog (x=translate) if that’s not already taken.
Good luck!
Andrew
April 20th, 2006 09:36 AM - Posted by UltraBob
Hi Andrew,
thanks for the comment, and I’m sorry it took me so long to respond to it. As the latest posts may indicate, I’m up to my neck in programming work at the moment. I’m actually looking at offering English to Japanese translation first specifically because the market is much smaller. I do know a few other foreigners with operations in Japan who blog, but I only need a few at first to see if this is a service that will be worth the time and effort.
In addition to that, I would like it to be an enabling service. I’d guess that a partial reason why more of the foreign business people you know, at least the Internet savvy ones, don’t blog is that they can’t blog consistently and fluently to their target market, assuming they are targetting Japanese customers. This service would be a way for people to form new avenues for communications with customers, and a great way to add a more human face to the business, a key aspect for a small business in gaining the trust of customers.
Oh by the way, if and when we release the service, probably in July, it won’t be in BETA. My current thinking on this type of thing is that if you aren’t ready to stand behind it you shouldn’t be releasing it. Of course my thoughts on this fluctuate from time to time, but BETA doesn’t seem right for a service like this. You would be in the initial limited number of pilot customers we let in to get an idea of the ratio of resources to customers that we’ll need to run the service.
Oh, and about doing blog translation en»ja, I’d like to do it eventually if ja»en works out, but since it won’t be the core of our business, at least initially, I’d like to ramp up slowly.
April 27th, 2006 10:54 AM - Posted by Andrew Shuttleworth
Thanks Bob. Certainly look forward to July.
Your comments about business users is interesting. I would certainly have more incentive to start a business blog if I knew that it would be translated into Japanese without too much hassle.
January 2nd, 2007 01:24 AM - Posted by UltraBob
Just a quick update on this. I’ve gotten really busy with a consulting project for the WorldBank, and haven’t had time to set the infrastructure for this in place. I wonder if this would still be a service of interest? If you would be interested in this service please comment here, use the contact form, or e-mail me directly. I’d love to sit down with a potential user and see what their needs would be.
June 13th, 2007 05:28 AM