Montreal Tech Watch

If there is an expertise that should shine in Québec and in Montréal, then it should be translation applications. The city’s diversity and heritage makes it an ideal setting for projects targeting the translation problem blossom.

I have already mentionned The Code Kitchen’s efforts in building a tool for localizing applications and how they provide multiple languages for their main product, CakeMail.

Today, Alain Désilets from the National Research Council of Canada presented Wiki-Translation.com at CodeFest’s 2nd day. As he explained in detail (Slides), translating content in wiki is a challenge, as there is never a definitive version or reference to work on. Worse, we might have several references, as the wiki’s contributors might have users in each country working on the same document and adding content on the same time. His presentation was in fact a kick-off meeting whose goal was to invite attending developers to participate in the project. Stephane Daury filmed his presentation today

I am not sure if the project would be successful, but, hey, I love challenges. Think about all Wikipedia content translated in each language, and all of this being done by harnessing massive collaboration.