Ebay have announced that they will be offering a translation service to Japanese sellers who want to list products on its English-language service which they hope will encourage cross border trade.
The service will cause a slight delay in adding an item to the site but is relatively simple. Sellers will be able to type a product description in Japanese and it will be translated within 24 hours into English.
This is an excellent tool for Ebay. Ebay is unique in that it has a global appeal. Breaking down the language barrier can only improve its service and I am sure more languages will be added in the future.
International sales on Ebay more than doubled last year to $4.6 billion and now accounts for 54% of their total revenue.
A Chinese interface is already available for Ebay. Global Link Software allows sellers to list and manage products across 21 Ebay sites.
The Japanese service can also be used to translate buyer’s questions from English into Japanese and then translate the reply back again.
Explanations on how to list a product will be available in Japanese on a new website.
Ebay’s Japanese site is http://www.sekaimon.com/
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This is pretty cool. Do you know if this will be an automated translation or it would be human translation?
Umm… it’s possible with a 24 hour turnaround that it could be human translators. Although considering the popularity of Ebay and the benefit Japanese sellers will get from using this service and selling to the UK, USA and Australian markets the volume is likely to be massive and so I would imagine it may be automated translations. I will try and find out for sure… watch this space for an answer…..
Interesting, wonder if they’ll roll it out to other languages and if they do which ones first?!
Of course, what a great site and informative posts, I will add backlink – bookmark this site? Regards, Another blogger
Thanks for passing on these useful tools, this will help me alot.
I used LingoTip’s service to translate my eBay listings. It was reasonably priced and good quality.