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One of the Internet’s great promises is that it’s the ultimate democratizer. It’s open to everyone and allows all people to communicate.

But, so far, there have been several hitches in that plan. Not everyone has access to a computer and a broadband connection. Some governments still censor the Internet. And of course, we don’t all speak the same language.

For the World Wide Web to be truly global, shouldn’t Chinese speakers be able to chat online with people who only speak Spanish? And why should an English speaker be barred from reading blogs written in Malagasy or Zulu?

Integrating support for JT 3D data format, 3D InterOp provides CAD translation for product development applications that require accurate and fully-bounded 3D models. Data access, conversion, and post-processing solution delivers out-of-the-box 3D CAD translations, and resulting models are ready for use in engineering applications across PLM spectrum. Able to perform data import, conversion, and repair, software ensures model integrity for receiving application.

Spatial Corp., a leading provider of 3D development components for design, manufacturing and engineering applications, today announces the addition of JT support to its 3D InterOp product line. JT is a 3D data format used for product visualization, collaboration, and CAD data exchange. 3D InterOp provides high-quality CAD translation for product development applications that require accurate, precise and fully-bounded 3D models. More than a data access tool, 3D InterOp provides data conversion into ACIS and Parasolid formats, and post-processing functions such as checking, healing and stitching to ensure model integrity for the receiving application.

“Spatial’s high-quality CAD translation is due to our deep knowledge of CAD data formats and geometry kernels. Successful CAD translation requires both to perform contextual data conversion and model repair,” commented Vivekan Iyengar, Spatial Product Manager. “Unlike data access tools whose purpose is for visualization, 3D InterOp provides data access, data conversion and post-processing to meet the needs of the most demanding engineering applications.”

3D InterOp provides out-of-the-box 3D CAD translations, performing the complete job of data import, conversion, and repair in the industry’s most popular CAD kernels. The resulting models are ready for use in engineering applications across the PLM spectrum. Development partners also benefit from Spatial maintaining compatibility with the latest CAD and industry standard versions and eliminating the partner’s cost of on-going translator support and maintenance.

Spatial’s JT support includes reading of Brep and assembly information. JT support expands Spatial’s list of supported 3D formats – ACIS®, Parasolid®, IGES, STEP, VDA, CATIA V5 and V4, Pro/ENGINEER®, NX(TM), SolidWorks® and Inventor®.

JT support is available as an ACIS-based reader with Per Seat licensing terms. JT is also included standard in the 3D InterOp ACIS Suite. The suite option provides a cost effective way for application developers to provide a full suite of translators to their end-users.

About Spatial

Spatial Corp., a Dassault Systemes S.A. subsidiary, is a leading provider of 3D development software components for technical applications across a broad range of industries. Spatial’s 3D modeling software, HOOPS 3D visualization software, and CAD translation software components help application developers deliver market-leading products, maintain focus on core competencies, and reduce time-to-market.

Twitter has raised $155 million to date. That’s enough to hire a few damned good translators. But, as it starts down the “localisation” path trodden by many a Valley startup, the service is instead asking its users to volunteer their translation services.

Twitter wants to translate its site to French, Italian, German, and Spanish (more languages may follow), co-founder Biz Stone wrote.

But – typical of many geeks, who will never take the easy route of hiring a contractor when leveraging a social graph will do – Stone says he’s “offering a simple tool for people with experience in other languages to suggest translations for the Twitter website”.

This is the same tactic deployed by Netlog in 2007 and by Facebook last year.

Speaking of which, Facebook has hired away Last.fm’s former German SVP Scott Woods to head its German biz dev and advertising operations, Kress reports (via TCUK).

A bid to spur research into new translation technologies could revitalize an industry that has been laboring under a human-vs.-machine split for decades

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of words that translation services can convert per day.

For decades, machine translation has been the next big thing. With every tiny advance, companies and researchers predicted that speedy, accurate language translation, completed wholly by computers, was just around the corner. But the technology has never quite caught up, and the promise of a global market free of language barriers has yet to materialize.

But there is progress. Companies have combined the power of humans and computers to simultaneously double the speed of translation and nearly halve its cost. Where each translator once converted 2,500 words a day at a cost of some 25¢ per word, they can now offer 5,000 words a day at around 12¢-15¢ a word. The savings add up mightily when a project can, for example, involve several million words. Still, the amount of information generated in the Internet Age represents a deluge. Software has progressed, but language changes frequently and begs multiple interpretations. Even with today’s most cutting-edge technology, there are more words to be translated than most companies or governments could ever afford to handle. This shortfall limits opportunities for companies to market and support their products across languages, and to conduct business on a global scale.

Now, however, a direct challenge from the Obama Administration to achieve accurate, real-time translation of major languages—a challenge that comes with cash-for-research as an incentive—could spark new technologies and erode the language barriers that still hamper international business. As detailed in a Sept. 20 white paper from the White House, some $1 billion of the $787 billion stimulus package will go to such innovation projects. The effort is being touted as part of the Administration’s push to reinvigorate science and technology innovation in the classroom and workplace.

White House’s Translation Goal

In the White House paper, A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, the Administration lays out what it expects from the $1 billion federal investment in innovation. Amid new energy, health-care, and education goals, the report offers several specific “grand challenges” for the 21st century. Among them: “Automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world—greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.”

While it is not clear how much of the $1 billion in stimulus money will go directly toward translation efforts, any federal investment could go far in the industry. The machine translation industry hasn’t grown much, hovering around $100 million for years, and the recession has only exacerbated the situation, leaving plenty of linguists looking for work, says Don DePalma, chief research officer at Common Sense Advisory, a Lowell (Mass.)-based translation consultancy. “There’s a lot of pent-up intellectual capacity that could really improve natural language processing,” he says.

For global companies, the benefits of better, cheaper translation services are obvious. In a globalized marketplace, companies need to advertise their products in multiple languages. They need to drive traffic to their Web sites, especially where commerce requires it. And if companies want to have a respected, trusted global brand, they must provide support for their non-English-speaking customers. What’s more, customers perceive companies that speak to them in their native tongues as more credible, DePalma says.

The cloud computing conversation is taking place in the boardroom, and the data center manger needs to have a seat at the table, or risk losing control of key decisions about the future. That was the message from Andy Parham, the CEO of  Bick Group, in this morning’s opening keynote of the AFCOM Data Center World conference.

“Ours is the most strategically relevant business to the future success of major companies,” Parham said in the opening session at the Marriott World Center in Orlando. “But I believe we don’t do a good enough job connecting the value we deliver to the priorities of the executive office. I don’t see a lot of dialogue between the CEO and the data center, and I think that’s going to change.”

With the onset of the economic crisis, the high cost of data center expansion has become a C-suite issue, Parham said, even as the emergence of cloud computing has offered a new utility model. There’s been plenty of hype and confusion in the cloud computing conversation, but that doesn’t diminish the disruptive impact of the tend over the long-term, Parham said.

“The cloud contains a storm, not a shower,” said Parham. “Your role as a data center professional will be completely turned upside down in this period of change.”

The challenge is that data center professionals too often talk about technology rather than strategy. “We need to sit at the executive table and speak the language of business,” Parham said. “The executive office doesn’t buy data centers and space. What they buy is security and reliability.”

The challenge is that many data center professionals are either skeptical about the cloud or see the emergence of third-party clouds as a threat to the existing order – and their jobs. Parham says data center staff cannot afford to remain “stuck in old paradigms during a period of unbelievable change.”

The conversation about shifting assets to cloud computing is going to take place with or without productive input from the data center team, Parham said. The best strategy for data center management is to be pro-active and ensure that they have a role in shaping the strategy to best reflect the value of the existing data center operation and the potential benefit of running some apps in the cloud.

Parham said it is important for the data center team to “have a clear point of view about the cloud” during these conversations. He also warned attendees that cloud-bashing may be perceived as a defensive reaction, particularly as some cloud solutions begin solving the security challenges that loom large in enterprise resistance to the cloud.

Parham’s focus on translating the data center’s value to the executive suite stems from Bick Group’s consulting work with large companies seeking insight into the future of their IT infrastructure. He said in-house data center teams often are resistant to change, and thus lose a valuable opportunity to influence the process. In a  way, Parham said, he hopes that helping improve the data center team’s engagement with the executive office will help boards act more decisively in managing data center costs.

I regularly visit the coastal regions of Bangladesh for work. Whenever I meet a family, like in every other place in Bangladesh, the first personal question I am asked is: apnar bari kothai (where is your home)?

My standard, first response to the question is Dhaka.

This is usually met by a curious look, because very few people are really from Dhaka. Dhaka is a city of migrants, many of whom have lived here for generations, but have never owned it. For most, it is a city to be at, not a place to be from.

So I have to explicate with: I live in Dhaka now, but our family is really from Habiganj, Sylhet. This answer is met with: Oh! So do you visit Sylhet? How is your village?.

I don’t know. We lost everything to the river.

This earns me instant empathy. They take me in as one of them � a migrant soul detached from her roots, a survivor of our changing homeland. Then they want to tell me more about themselves because they feel a kind of kinship.

But I am not sure how similar our migrant experiences really are. Our home in Habiganj was washed away by the river even before I was born. I was born uprooted. Most of the people I meet at the coast are uprooted in the near past, some are being uprooted in the very present.

Apnar bari kothai?

That’s one of the first questions Bangladeshis tend to ask each other at the first meeting. You could be in the middle of a business meeting in Dhaka, a courtyard meeting at some remote village in the coast, a posh drawing room in Delhi, London or Washington, or just on cyberspace. But you can bet on this being among the first questions.

When they ask this, they don’t mean to ask where you live now. Like most overcrowded, growing-at-a-pace-faster-than-we-can-keep-up-with population, Bangladeshis are shifting � transitioning between our imagined homelands and our migrant realities. So when they ask about ‘home’, they mean the root. We want to know where it all began.

I’ve often wondered why. Why do we care where our roots lie, when we are branched so far from it? Why do we care where it all began when we know that we can never go back to it?

Salman Rushdie compares migrant people with translated work. When we marvel at the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, do we appreciate the Persian genius, or his translators into English or Bangla?

Similarly, Rushdie asks us migrant people to celebrate our transplanted, chutneyfied self.

People I meet often ask me if I speak the Sylheti dialect. I don’t. This is not commonly spoken in Dhaka, and I speak the chutneyfied dialect of the city. Maybe I should follow what Rushdie suggests.

But any celebration can only be done by those for whom the uprooting was a matter of choice. The children born to families losing lives and livelihoods to floods, cyclones, river erosions and all the other ancillaries that is climate change, what choices will they have? These children will not remember what home looked like. When I meet children at the coast, children who have been forced to leave their homes, which has its own socio-cultural milieu, I think that someday, they’ll end up like me, where Khulna – faissha fish – pot gaan will only exist for them in the stories their parents will tell them about the good old days.

This December, the mighty and powerful, and their hangers on, will meet in Copenhagen to discuss the future of the planet. There will be a lot negotiation, based on complicated modeling, on who will pay whom how much for cutting what amount of emissions for over how long. Somber sounding communiqu�s will be issued. Pundits will parse every single word of that document.

Will anyone think about the children who will not know how to answer apnar bari kothai?