Genealogy site Geni
is going global today with the addition of its site translated into 22
new languages, including Spanish, German, French, and Hebrew. The site
will add dozens more languages in the coming weeks.
Noah Tutak,
President of Geni, said that this additional language functionality is
a result of the site’s international user base. Half of Geni’s traffic
comes from outside of the U.S. But what’s even more compelling than
Geni’s availability in additional languages is the technology that is
helping to translate the site.
Geni’s engineers have developed a Ruby On Rails-based translation
engine that crowdsources language translations of the site. Called
tr8n, the technology allowed for Geni to be translated by a few dozen
volunteers into seventeen languages in less than two weeks. Translators
can vote on existing translations, or submit their own inline while
browsing the site. The tr8n engine even takes into account the grammar
rules of each language to provide accurate translations for any context.