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