Super Editor: Translating the Web

Fair Exchange or Clever Scheme?

There's a man who wants to translate every page, every article, every video, every file, and every thing else on the worldwide web. 

His name is Luis von Ahn, which might ring a bell for some people. He is the CEO of ReCAPTCHA and one of the brainiacs behind CAPTCHA to authenticate accounts by determining whether a user is a crafty program or a true human being.

If you've ever gone through one of these things, you know it can be excruciatingly tidious to prove you're a human being. 

While ReCAPTCHA is always to working to make sure its random letter system doesn't go wrong - like this 

- von Ahn is busy devising a way to translate EVERYTHING on the web.

Such a feat has been attempted by such groups as Google (who coincidentally procured CAPTCHA), but the results have been  . . . Well, unintelligible. The weak transalations hardly convey the original message or content, and even some of the most fluent bilingual individuals have a hard time comprehending the loose translation.

The solution is either a) hire truely bilingual professionals to translate the web, which is far too expensive or b) devise another program to be 100% accurate, which is near impossible.

What von Ahn has come up with is a a trade-off. 

A new group will soon be offering free eduacation in exchange for some work.

To be fair, language education is expensive is sometimes a waste of hard work and time. 

So is translating web. 

While this may be an honest exchange, it does feel as though the company may be able to turn some serious dimes without paying any of its contributors. 

I'm torn on this idea. What do you think?