Stepes (pronounced / ' steps/) is an on-demand and just-in-time human translation platform. In December 2015, Stepes introduced the world's first chat-based mobile translation technology, allowing translators to translate from a smartphone. Its mobile app is a peer-to-peer translation application that pairs a translator to a business or person needing translation. Stepes can match translators to businesses in a variety of different industry and domain fields in over 100 languages.
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Development
Stepes was developed in conjunction with CSOFT International, a multinational localization company with headquarters in Beijing and San Francisco. Its creator, Carl Yao, is also the creator of TermWiki, a social knowledge network for industry and domain terminology in 100 languages.
The name "Stepes" is a reference to the Eurasian steppes, from which the majority of the world's current spoken languages originated. Stepes was launched online in early December 2015. As of January 2016, the Stepes mobile app can be downloaded from both the iOS and Android app stores. In May 2016, Stepes launched Stepes Translate, an online human translation interface that resembles Google Translate but is powered by human translators.
Basic functions
Chat-based translation
Chat-based translation describes the way Stepes feeds content to be translated to its translators on a smaller mobile screen. The Stepes mobile app breaks down longer documents into smaller chunks and sends them to the translator in the form of a text. Translators respond back with their translation, resulting in a back-and-forth “chat” which the Stepes app automatically compiles into a full translated document. Translators can also swipe left or right (the ‘swish’ function) to view the full translated text or the full original text. Chat-based translation allows businesses and translators to access translation regardless of time or geography.
Stepes holds multiple patents in the US and in China for its chat-based translation interface, swipe left and right for context review and software.
Stepes Translate
Stepes Translate expands the capabilities of on-demand machine translation systems such as Google Translate and Bing Translator. With Stepes Translate allows businesses and individuals to obtain instant quality human translations of text directly on their smartphone or desktop PC. The platform is available 24/7.
Stepes Live uses the familiar side by side interface of machine translation platforms like Google Translate. Users enter text into the source field which is translated by a human translator through the Stepes mobile app. Requesting users can see their translation progress live. For most requests, the translation is completed within minutes and appears in the target field for the requesting user to see.
Mobile translation approach
Mobile translation is the process for human translators to translate content directly on their mobile devices. Stepes uses only human translators (rather than machine translation) to translate content. All translations are done through a mobile phone using the Stepes mobile translation app or through Stepes' browser-based application.
The free Stepes mobile app is billed as much easier to use than traditional desktop-based translation software. The result is that anyone bilingual – about half the world's population – could potentially contribute to translation from their smartphones. Currently, there are only around 250,000 professional translators but 3.65 billion bilingual people in the world. Stepes currently has a network of 60,000 translators.
Language industry experts have dubbed mobile translation as the beginning of "Big Translation, large-scale translation efforts by people speaking two or more languages." Big Translation requires leveraging existing technological tools to scale up translation capabilities to a global level that matches current communication and information generation needs.