Firm Gives Web Sites The Spanish Touch

December 25, 2003

BY STEPHEN POUNDS, PALM BEACH POST STAFF WRITER

BOCA RATON -- The numbers are compelling to Will Fleming and Adam Rubenstein.

Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States, with a population of 38.8 million. And they are growing by more than 1.7 million a year. They have purchasing power of about $540 billion.

"If you look even further out, in only four years, 2008, the disposable income of the Hispanic community will top $1 trillion," said Ramon Rodriguez, chief operating officer of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Given those staggering demographics, the two Wharton School MBA graduates from the University of Pennsylvania wondered why there aren't more Spanish-language retail Web sites. They started a company called MotionPoint to help close the language barrier.

"It's not that those companies don't appreciate the demographics," said Fleming, MotionPoint's chief executive.

They found that the hassle of getting the translation right had scared many large retailers away. That's where MotionPoint comes in. MotionPoint is an "application service provider," or ASP, that offers a subscription software service over the Internet -- in this case software that translates English-language retail sites into Spanish.

MotionPoint does Web translation work for Sears, BrandsMart USA, Hudson Bay Co. and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

The company employs 20 people who use a software tool that converts a site to Spanish from English and then copy-reads behind the translation to make sure the most appropriate version of a word was chosen. Without it, a sales message could be lost.

"If you're saying a set of audio speakers will blow you away, the translation might come out that they'll kill you," said Rubenstein, MotionPoint's chief operating officer.

Another problem in translation is the alignment of the Web page. Translated words don't always have the same number of letters. For example, the Spanish translation for credit card is tarjeta de crédito.

 Still another challenge is integrating the site with other automated functions such as inventory control and order fulfillment.

"We've taken the hard stuff and automated it through our software," Chief Technology Officer Enrique Travieso said.

Fleming and Rubenstein declined to disclose the company's sales or how much money they spent to start MotionPoint. But they haven't found their service to be a hard sell.

The Broward Center's box office had gone bilingual over the summer so the next logical step was to convert its Web site, said Linda Birdsey, director of marketing for the Broward Center.

"We polled our Hispanic constituents and found that while they are bilingual, they prefer to receive their information in Spanish," she said.

Broward's Spanish-translation site went live in October. Since then, one of its shows, a performance by Latin entertainer Willie Colon, sold 40 percent of its tickets over the Web.

There's a reason why the Hispanic population embraces Web sites in Spanish rather than English, the Hispanic Chamber's Rodriguez said. "The greatest thread in the Hispanic culture is its language," he said.

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