Columnist Cohen Says Twitter Translation Tools Keep Tweets From Being Lost in Translation

Most B2B firms have Twitter accounts these days. However, once they begin to work Tweets into their social media and link building strategy, many firms find themselves the recipient of Tweets from foreign countries that they can neither read nor decipher their purpose. Are they requests for business? Spam? How can you tell? What if you want to Tweet someone who doesn’t speak English? What do you do?

That’s what Jeffrey L. Cohen writes about in his article “4 Ways B2B Companies Can Translate Tweets” on SocialMediaB2B.com. Cohen reviews four of the most popular translation tools available on the internet specifically designed to bridge the translation gap between Tweeters. The first tool he discusses is Tweetdeck, the desktop tool that you may be using already to monitor your Twitter traffic. What most people don’t know, he says, is that Tweetdeck has a built-in language support option that you can find in the “Services” area. It also allows you to “un-translate.” Next, Cohen discusses the hootsuiteiphone app for iPhone. He calls it a “quick way to translate incoming tweets to your native language while on the go.”

Another web-based tool that Cohen likes is Twaitter, an update scheduler that also has Google Translate services embedded into its programming. Type an update, click the language you want it to translate to, and send. Cohen saves the most recent service for last. Tweetmeme, the popular retweet tool, recently announced that it has added Google Translate tools as well.