There are few things more powerful than a parent who is engaged with their children’s education. With this in mind, IBM seems to be reaching out to Spanish speaking communities to help them access information that has been difficult in the past. While I’m not clear on the value of another web-based automatic translation tool, anything that is done to bridge language barriers and to improve eduction is important.   Read more.

Spanish is the primary language spoken in Isabel Perezs home.

“Because I don’t speak English that well, it’s difficult to help my children with their homework. Sometimes I don’t understand it,” said Isabel Perez.

Today, Perez can use new translation software.

IBM showed it off at a technology fair, held at San Joses Herman Intermediate School. The fair was aimed at getting Hispanic students excited about science and technology.

The free software is currently available only to schools and nonprofit organizations through an IBM grant.

It translates entire websites and even email from English to Spanish and vise-versa within seconds.

“We currently have three grant sites locally, and hopefully plan to get it implemented into Herman next year, once we complete the donations with their computer lab,” said Jennifer Hernandez from IBM Corp.

“This technology will allow me to communicate with my kids teachers, check on their progress and make sure their homework is complete,” said Perez.

“Our main goal is to get more parents involved in the students education,” said Lourdes Esparza from San Jose Unified School District.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 6:45 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.