Hi,
Is this the direction intellego platform wants to go?
At least that’s the impression I got from the various wiki, chat discussions, etc. If I understood correctly, the aim of the intellego “platform” is not to host/run engines directly. It is rather an API / website where the actual translation task is handed out to some “provider” responsible of the translation.
Now, that’s all good and nice. Seems like a gateway to all translation services …however, before making such a gateway, the question is just: who will be the providers?
For google, bing, and all “big guys” out there, APIs are available but of course these are paid services. But if I understood correclty from Mekki’s video, there is no budget for that. Right?
This leaves us with:
- small/startup companies: why would they join? What’s their incentive? Branding?
- academia: this is a buisiness too. Without funds, I doubt they’ll invest the effort to provide translation services. Most of them don’t even have online demos.
- ourselves with self-hosted engines: …however, this is a lot of work and expertise, requires infrastructures, and probably cannot be provided by a couple of volunteers working on weekends
So, it’s nice and all to want to make a platform …but who will actually provide the translations? …and how to guarantee they’ll stay in the long run?
It also raises several questions:
- wouldn’t users be annoyed if they cannot access known providers like google or microsoft?
- is there an infrastructure/budget planned in case it’sself hosted? …or even full-time employee?
- if we just have a single or two unknown providers, does it make sense to make a gateway/platform at all?
Cheers!