The World Expo 2010 is open to visitors in Shanghai. The Shanghai World Expo sponsor has rolled out a free SMS translation service for Mandarin speaking visitors. This article explains what it's all about.

The World Expo has been open to visitors in Shanghai since May 2010 this year. The exposition traces its roots to the World’s Fair held in 1851 at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park London, UK. The first Expo was called the "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations". As the name implied, the fair provided a platform for various countries to showcase their national manufactured products. It set the example and standard for many other international exhibitions that followed. The World Expo is said to have tremendous influence in the development of societal art, design education, tourism, international relations, and global trade. After all, it is the meeting place for the world.

The 2010 World Expo is estimated to attract almost 70 millions of foreign and local visitors until the end of the year. The key attractions of the World Expo are the national pavilions, which are designed and built by the participating countries. These pavilions are usually administered by the country nationals, who can speak fluent English but may not have a good command in Mandarin Chinese. Therefore, the exhibitors have made an effort to ensure all information leaflets and direction labels are also shown in Mandarin Chinese together with English. However, when it comes to human interactions, some local Chinese people may find it challenging to communicate with the foreign pavilion exhibitors and personnel.

With this in mind, the Shanghai World Expo’s sponsor has rolled out a free SMS translation service for mandarin speaking visitors. The service will enable their users to use their mobile phone as a mobile translation machine. The user will first send a short message in Mandarin Chinese to the service provider and he/she will receive the English translation after a few seconds. The Expo organizers hope that the free SMS translation service will enable Chinese visitors to interact more frequently with the foreign pavilion staffs.

The SMS-based translation platform is aiming towards visitors who have elementary English language skills. The service will provide helpful assistance to people who do not use English often and tend to forget basic English words and phrases.

The SMS translation service is also divided into two categories, the software translations and the human translation. When the SMS comes through to the service provider, it will first be translated by software. This is similar to Google translate or Yahoo Babel Fish. However, some messages may be lost in translation because some Chinese words cannot be accurately translated into English using this service. That is also why the service provider has hired 20 professional translators on standby to carry out real-time translation if needed. However, the service provider has not given any explanation as to how they will know that a software translation is inaccurate. How would the human translator know if there is a mistake in the software translations out of thousands of queries every minute? Some food for thought perhaps.

Nevertheless, this is not the only service which the Expo organisers have come up with to help break the communication barrier. It is always good to know that we have a human respondent in the event that the SMS translation service is not effective.