The monopoly of English in the Internet is long time gone. The Internet penetration in non-English speaking countries is through the roof, and tools to help webmasters and site owners go local are spreading very quickly.

Today Google announced the introduction of a new translation widget that, on the fly, displays the content in the visitor preferred tongue. It is a no-brainer to install it, a simple snippet of code that you can put anywhere on your site. The quality of the translations is not the highest, nonetheless this is a free and  quick way to get your site, or a rough idea of it, spread in roughly 50 languages.

A less immediate approach, but more powerful in the medium term is the crowd-sourcing one, which Facebook adopted very successfully for its own site. Today the social network announced that it is taking it a step further with the release of a new tool,Translations for Facebook Connect. Translations for Facebook Connect will be a free tool for developers to crow-sourced the translation of their sites. Once activated, the tool will display content in a visitor’s native language if they use Facebook Connect.

A few months ago, following the Facebook example, Ted launched the Open Translation Project, with the aim of providing translated and transcribed videos in multiple languages. Below you can watch the first video I translated in Italian, an amazing talk by Chris Anderson on the Long Tail of Technology.

Crowd-sourcing might seem a time-consuming solution, but the advantages are many:

-Quality of the translation;

-Engagement of your “fan” base: a user who is involved as a translator is participating to the making of your site. Additional loyalty programs, such as exclusive benefits, could strenghten this sense of belonging;

-Word-of-Mouth: a translator is a free ambassador of your brand and site.

So pick your approach and get your Babel started!

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