Embedding Free Online Machine Translation into Monolingual Websites for Multilingual Dissemination: a Case Study of Implementation

A growing number of websites that are only available in one language rely on free online machine translation (MT) services to disseminate their contents in a variety of other languages, in order to make themselves accessible to Internet users with different linguistic backgrounds. This approach to the management and delivery of digital information that bypasses professional localisation and translation raises a number of thorny issues, but clearly shows that free online machine translation services are regarded as valuable tools to overcome language barriers in the online environment. However, the vast majority of websites that adopt this strategy fail to take full advantage of the potential offered by free web-based MT, mainly due to poor consideration of crucial issues in human-computer interaction and web usability that are vital to ensure that Internet users have a positive and successful online experience. This paper presents the key stages and challenges involved in implementing this approach to the multilingual dissemination of online content, whereby free online machine translation is embedded into the architecture of a monolingual website. The main technical and practical issues are illustrated by means of an implementation case study based on the website supporting London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, followed by the discussion of the selected results of extensive user testing and evaluation.