Over 100,000 would-be translators are on the waiting list for Duolingo, a platform with a unique approach to crowdsourcing.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how translation is falling back into favor as a language learning method, at least among some educators. But can a promise of “learning a new language through translating it” motivate millions to get in there and start translating online?

This is exactly what is proposed by the Beta version of Duolingo: “With Duolingo, you learn a language for free, and simultaneously translate the Web.”

The concept comes from Luis Von Ahn, one of the creators of CAPTCHA -- the system that asks Internet users to type a word (or words) in a box in order to identify themselves as human beings.

Ahn’s latest project, which is far more ambitious, is “to translate all of the web, or at least most of the web, into every major language,” as he explained earlier this year at a TEDx event at Carnegie Mellon University.

His idea is to get Internet users to carry out sentence by sentence translations of material found on the Internet, with language learning as their incentive.

Even beginners can participate by translating simple sentences such as “I am a girl.” A system of language tests determines what level of sentences participants can start translating.

Personally, I have my doubts about how far one can really get in a language by doing no more than translation. But Ahn’s presentation of his concept is intriguing, and even riveting.

Initial interest is apparently high – so who knows how far Duolingo will go?

The subject will be worth checking up on a year or two from now.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.