Cucumis - A Small, Free Translation Community
Michael Arrington
23 comments »
We came across Paris based Cucumis this evening. It is a community site for people who speak at least two languages and want to trade translation services. Translate text to earn points, then spend the points to have text translated into one of 22 languages. As a user’s reputation grows they earn “expert” status and receive more points for translations. The service itself is free, and Cucumis is a one-man project.
The site is admittedly crudely designed, and there is no shortage of for-pay translation services on the Internet. The fact that the service is limited to use by people who are willing to contribute to the community by translating others’ texts is also a severely limiting factor in their market potential. This is clearly not a VC-fundable company, nor is it intended to be.
But it’s limitations add to its charm, and it has a strong community a year after launch. Each day, 40 or so texts are translated and 100 new members join.
Cucumis may do just fine as a small site for a few thousand translators to trade services.
My business advice should they ever wish to earn revenue (sorry I can’t help myself): If they add a business layer that allows people to purchase points to be used for translations without having to translate other texts themselves, and allow translators to trade earned points for cash, they could leverage the community to create a real business.
But first they need to hire a designer.
Cucumis? He he… Web 2.0 never fail to amaze me when it comes to names.
Hey Mike,
You should also check out Friends Abroad which mathes people who want to learn foreign languages. Run by big UK investor Simon Murdoch. (Big in the scale of his investments not physical size.)
for non profit usage, the design is enough, at least I like it:)
if this website begins to seek business profit, I think the character of this website will fade away.
the design is quite nice actually…minimal but practical. If they’ll manage to leverage their “social sphere” as a community based service for translations (something that could appeal to the web 2.0 generation more than the traditional trans. services), then the monitezation would be trivial and useful.
I liked the design, really…
We are developing similar business.The basic issue for us is evaluate the work of the people , to leak the noise and give guarantee to the customer with low rates.In free service this is more simple, I believe
Coming soon…
Wow a post on techcrunch, looking at the referers of the new members of cucumis, I could not miss it
.
. I tried to make it as simple as possible, because… I’m not a designer.
. Believe me, it’s not a “web2.0″ name.
Thx for those who like the design
> To cjcm, in fact, when I thought about cucumis, I simply didn’t even know about the web2.0 word
> To keanu, I have the same opinion. Cucumis will not become a commercial website. But I’m open to any way to earn money with it (they are already ads for non members) as money is the surest way to make it live as long as possible.
> Oscar Calvo, we had the same problems at the begining of cucumis. A lot of very bad translations etc… Then the system has been adjsuted with automatic checks and big red warnings, and it’s just fine now. The most important, is the team of expert that moderate the translations. They are 30 for now and I want to THANK THEM ALL for the great ( & voluntary) work they do.
Awesome work, JP!
It is indeed, very simple. Only wish the flags had names on them, not cursor activated names :p
Spreading the word!
i think its cute - not sure the design is really that bad. its a standard web 1.0 design and I have seen thousands (probably millions) worse.
as someone who is learning german now, this kind of site may come in very useful.
I know that this site wasn’t build to be commercial, but it’s an interesting business model that I think would work–Build a non-commercial community driven site, then slowly phase in commercial aspects that benefit you (the site owner) as well as the community you are built around. The interesting part is rewarding the community instead of the usual bait-and-switch free service goes commercial plan.
Hola.Me gusta Cucumis.
Think there are quite a few options for this site to transform this into a revenue generating service
Some options I can think of are,
If people can buy points and use that to have their requirements translated - the site owners can make money (you have already mentioned this)
Can translators ‘bid’ for translations and the site owners can make money as an intermediary
If the strength of the network grows fast enough, and the statistics suggest rate of match between a translator and translated as high enough some real time services can be thought of.
People who know some language combinations might be tougher to find and so those combinations might be charged and not free as it is currently
The site may need a little work, but the logo rocks!
I think it’s a great idea, and JP sounds like a nice guy.
The logo also made me laugh, very cool.
And, nothing wrong with keeping it simple.
Ahhh, you stole my recommendations!
I can only wish the service the utmost success, although I wish it also offered Polish
Having worked with 10s of professional translators on 1000s of pages of translation in my previous business, for web content I would actually prefer amateur translation over professional, even if they are using semi-automated machine translation as an aid to understanding the original text.
For web content, quite often you are not looking for a word-for-word translation. What you are really after is natural language from someone who understands the subject matter.
A professional translator tends to translate using language that is “academic”, though grammatically correct.
Unfortunately the vast majority of people searching for everyday information are not “academics”
I posted on Cucumis in Oct. I like the whole idea & the simple design.
Bon continuation JP, glad to see you & your team are getting some good reviews in ‘high places’