[photopress:Flags.jpg,full,alignleft]One of the things I don’t understand is the near total absence of non-English real estate web sites. Maybe the industry is too distracted by Web 2.0 and other battles in front of them to notice & exploit this HUGE opportunity. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places. However, I believe if Google has difficulty finding what I’m looking for, it’s probably hard to find.
Having spent many years at Microsoft, I learned the value of software localization. You may be surprised to learn the Microsoft makes over 40% of it’s revenues from outside the United States. Frankly, you haven’t lived as a software engineer, until you’ve seen your code running in Japanese and Hebrew. (In case your curious, Hebrew & Arabic is much harder to deal with than East Asian languages). Another data point is that my bank (Washington Mutual) has ATMs that speak English, Spanish, Chinese and Russian and offers offer free homebuyer education workshops in Spanish.
Although, all real estate is local, not all real estate consumers are locals. According to the 1990 & 2000 US Census data, the percentage of people in the US who don’t speak English fluently is growing. Over 10% of our population only speaks Spanish. The number of Asian only language speakers in the US is growing at rate similar to (though smaller in number) to the Hispanic population.
For example, John L Scott, Windermere, & Coldwell Banker Bain, all let you search for a bilingual agent. Unfortunately, that feature of their web sites is only useful if you know enough English to understand you can search for bilingual agent! If you don’t understand English, how are you going to be able to find that feature to begin with? There’s not a single word of non-English content to be found on their web sites. That major shortcoming aside, I have to give them credit for at least trying to make things easier for the non-English speaking public.
Fortunately, I’m not the the only one who thinks this way. There are industry advocacy groups such as the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals and Asian Real Estate Association of America that are trying to make things easier for Spanish & East Asian speaking consumers & real estate professionals. A Latino Advertising & Marketing blog entry, states (surprise surprise) that bilingual real estate agents are in demand with Latino home buyers. And if you or your web site doesn’t speak their language, ColConnect is a company that can help you, since they focus on bilingual web design & marketing for real estate & mortgage professionals. An example of their client web sites can be found in English and in Español.
OK, so your thinking, how can I take advantage of this? Here’s what I’d do…
If your bi-lingual or multi-lingual advertise that fact. Join an industry advocacy group such as NAHREP or AREAA. Make your web site multi-lingual. Have one side of your business card in English and the other in your second language. Exploit your linguistic superiority!
If your not bi-lingual, make friends with somebody who is. (Maybe you can hire them as translators?) Link to relevant foreign language real estate content. You should also make your content machine translatable. I don’t speak Spanish, Chinese or Russian, but I know computers that do (which is the next best thing to knowing people who do). Read old Rain City Guide postings and get creative.
If you speak any language, (foreign or domestic) talk with the MLS or your broker and see if there’s a way to change to MLS schema so that it’s contains remarks in Spanish and other foreign languages. As along as they are in the database, perhaps they can increase the size of the remarks field, so agents won’t be compelled to use abbreviations anymore (and make life easier for software translators). Perhaps, the MLS can add $25 to the cost of a listing to cover the cost of a human translating the remarks section into 4 or 5 different languages? After all, why should the listing agent or seller care what language the buyer speaks, as long their check doesn’t bounce? Anyway, I suspect MLSes are limited by their software vendors, and if enough professionals demand these features from their MLS, it might just happen someday. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago, that sold data was a pipe dream too.
Make sure you when you develop your web site’s content or enter listings into your MLS, you use complete sentences with proper spelling, simple languages, and no abbreviations. Then visit a site like AltaVista’s Babel Fish, World Lingo or Google’s Translate and verify that your translated test looks OK. You may not understand the translated page, but if your translated page comes back with a lot of English words & abbreviations, you’ll know you need to revise it so the computer will do a better job of translating it. Translate the text twice (English to foreign language and back to English) and if the text comes back funny get a thesaurus and try to pick words that the computer less likely to get confused with. Even though computers don’t translate human languages nearly as well as humans do, they are better than nothing at all, (they are also much cheaper than people and getting smarter every day).
I’m shocked by the total lack of multi-language MLS search tools and foreign language realtor web sites. I would’ve thought that large brokers would’ve smelled the money by now and pursued this opportunity more aggressively. Regardless, I’m planning on getting Zearch to speak a second & third language by the end of the year and I suspect that others will follow my lead since the demand for non-English real estate services is only going to grow. After all, money is the universal language that everybody understands.
One of the things I find interesting about an automated translator, is that for something like a website, it doesn’t even have to be very good… Just good enough. I’m a firm believer that if we simply translated a few of the best posts into different languages we’d not only open ourselves up to new markets…
One of the three MLS’s to which I belong now offers listings in 13 different languages. I haven’t made time to learn more, but it is clear that reaching out to all segments of the market will reap great benefits.
–Jim
Dustin,
I’m looking forward to software translators getting much better. Microsoft and their arch-rival Google are spending big bucks on making this a reality. I think multi-language blogging is a development to watch closely, even though English language blogging is just catching on.
Jim,
I think I read about that on Inman a few months ago. I visited Immobel’s site, looked at Issaquah, WA listings in French, and I noticed a few things.
1. They didn’t localize the remarks sections (which is tricky/interesting part). They only localized the application, but not the data. Still, it is a one small step / one giant leap type of accomplishment and I have to give them credit for being among the first to get that far.
2. Our own Eileen Tefft spends some of her marketing budget there. Or at least number1expert.com does.
3. They need a lot of Web 2.0 mojo, but the currency conversion on top of the language translation is a nice touch. (The Exchange rates they use seem a bit dated, but I don’t follow ForEx markets very closely, so perhaps the old greenback is fallen sharply lately).
In your case, does your MLS (I assume it’s MRIS) localize the Remarks as well, or just localize the application? Do you have any idea what the “marketshare” of different languages is in the greater Baltimore/DC area?
Honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t even had a chance to look at it yet, as MRIS is my secondary MLS. Sadly, I have no idea as to the language demographics either.
I believe that the Houston Association of Realtors have done a nice job. All but the data is translated.
Translated Version:
Gran poste. He estado probando realmente hacia fuera el servicio de traducción de Systransoft. Después de mirar pescados de la interferencia ha conducido al parecer por su software pero con el jefe de AltaVista a través de la tapa. He puesto tan los pescados de la interferencia en ejecución para ahora hasta que deseo pasar el $800/yr para el servicio directo de SYSTRAN. Tan mientras que puedo hablar solamente inglés, estoy dispuesto a intentar y engange otros en su lengua materna.
English Version:
Great post. I’ve actually been testing out Systransoft’s translation service. After looking at Babble Fish apparently it’s driven by their software but with AltaVista’s header across the top. So I’ve implemented Babble Fish for now until I want to spend the $800/yr for direct service from Systran. So while I may only speak English, I’m willing to try and engange others in their native language.
Translated Version:
Gran poste. He estado probando realmente hacia fuera el servicio de traducción de Systransoft. Después de mirar pescados de la interferencia ha conducido al parecer por su software pero con el jefe de AltaVista a través de la tapa. He puesto tan los pescados de la interferencia en ejecución para ahora hasta que deseo pasar el $800/yr para el servicio directo de SYSTRAN. Tan mientras que puedo hablar solamente inglés, estoy dispuesto a intentar y engange otros en su lengua materna.
English Version:
Great post. I’ve actually been testing out Systransoft’s translation service. After looking at Babble Fish apparently it’s driven by their software but with AltaVista’s header across the top. So I’ve implemented Babble Fish for now until I want to spend the $800/yr for direct service from Systran. So while I may only speak English, I’m willing to try and engange others in their native language.
Between Google’s and Microsoft’s efforts, in their never ending battle for control of the Earth’s knowledge, I’m looking forward to this technology getting better & cheaper.
It’s going be interesting to see what markets embrace which languages. It’s a given that California & Texas, will embrace Spanish, but everything else is less clear to me.
This blog post is from almost two years ago, but I am just coming across it now. In the last couple years there have been some minor developments in automatic translators, but most likely they will not reach a level that they should be used for your professional website. Language is so complex and a literal translation rarely suffices. Being bilingual I laugh at the translation that these machines come up with and in the end they are actually more confusing to the consumer. In regards to the Hispanic market in the US, there is a real estate website totally tailored to Spanish speakers http://www.VivaReal.us. The company mentioned in this post ColConnect is behind the project and they are also integrating some bilingual blogging software for professionals in a few months.