OneHourTranslation.com was born when its founders were trying to translate Hebrew blog posts into English. Discovering no one could do it for less than a few dollars per “page” – a page being anything under 500 words or so – they were stuck paying big bucks for translation. Why? Because the system wasn’t centralized.
Fast forward to today. The service costs $ 0.07 per word and there are a number of languages available. The service works by contacting a network of thousands of freelance translators who are vetted by a community process and then allowed to pick and choose the jobs they want to take. It is, in fact, like having your own translator on staff.
We last talked about the company’s TwitTrans service but now they’ve created a number of CMS plugins including services for Drupal (WordPress is coming soon) as well as an API so you can build your own apps. Essentially this injects a translation project into the service and returns the translation once its done. This allows you to quickly and easily translate blog posts on the fly or even translate an entire website as it is updated, all in an amazingly short time.
Translation can get expensive, but it is a sight better than hiring a single person to do all the translation an suffer from the vagaries of their schedule and willingness to work.
The service is also hiring translators so if you speak Beothuk or Crimean Gothic you may be in demand. Sadly, at least for this audience, there is no current need for Klingon or Tolkeinien Elvish translators.
UPDATE – The guys at OneHourTranslation are offering 50 words for free. Use coupon code ‘TC50’