While the world eagerly waited to find out who will be the next pope, “Habemus Papam” took the news to a new level by allowing people to read and share any news article, regardless of the language or location in which it was written.

The project was supported by Der Mundo, an online service that generates links which detect a reader’s preferred language and automatically translates the news article into it. The website is easy to use: if you read an interesting article on, say, the BBC simply paste the link into Der Mundo and your cousin in Paris will see it translated from English to French, while your friend in Tokyo will be able to read it in Japanese.

This is a fascinating concept and the early incarnation of what might become one of the most popular online translation tools.

More and more companies are having their websites translated and localised for new target audiences. However, most of this content is static, meaning just a single translation is required. But what about company and news updates? The ability to share news articles and updated content across languages could open up new doors for business, allowing them to share regularly updated content with those new target audiences.

In our increasingly global world, this should not be underestimated – provided the translation is up to scratch, of course!

For readers, it also offers new avenues, giving them the facilities to read from diverse range news sources. It would also be an opportunity for content for large global events, such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, to really reach an entire global audience. The London 2012 Summer Olympics welcomed athletes from 204 countries – just imagine if we had been able to read articles and perspectives from media sources of each of the competing nations.

Der Mundo was founded by Brian McConnell, who has made it his goal for more than ten years to remove language barriers when it comes to discovering new content online. As he says, “If you don’t know a page or article exists in another language, you won’t find it.”

Although “Habemus Papam” (which means “We have a pope” in Latin) only garnered 24 “Likes” on Facebook, it is the beginning of making a large global event language neutral. We previously blogged about Pope Benedict XVI using his new Latin Twitter account, just one of nine Twitter accounts he had to oversee to reach the 1.2 billion Catholic community. Imagine the possibilities if Pope Francis I was able to communicate in the language of any of his global followers.

In terms of translating quick updates, this may prove to be fantastic. However, larger scale translations will almost always have to take cultural sensitives and localisation factors into account. A professional translation agency, such as Today Translations, specialists in these very services, thanks to its team of professional translators, interpreters and linguists, all with many years of cultural knowledge.

Their fluency and linguistic knowledge are combined with cultural understanding to create accurate translations in over 160 languages. To discuss your translation requirements, please call us on +44 (0) 207 397 2770 or email us at [email protected].