NORAD Santa Tracker gets help from local company with adding new language translation
SAN DIEGO — The famous North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) online Santa Tracker has added a new language to its site that is visited by millions of people every Christmas Eve.
With the help of Interpreters Unlimited, a language services company with an office in Miramar, NORAD’s Santa tracker has added Korean to its list of languages. The Santa Tracker now has nine languages for visitors.
“What started off really just being a few languages has now expanded,” said Shamus Sayed, Interpreters Unlimited Vice President.
Millions of kids across the world will now be able to track Santa online in nine languages, some include English, Spanish, French, plus the newly added Korean language.
“You’re doing it for the fun of doing it for the kids,” Sayed said.
The Santa tracker is ran by NORAD. NORAD has been partnering with Interpreters Unlimited for more than a decade for the online translations. Interpreters Unlimited also does the voice over translations for the NORAD Santa phone greetings.
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“To know there is a kid that can find it and relate to it in their own language, that is what we call localization, and it’s localized to them,” Sayed said.
Sayed said they are capable of translating nearly 200 languages, but NORAD comes to them when they need more translations.
“Even if it’s just one, that’s really neat. You get a smile out of the kids, you can see it. Say ‘oh wow, I can track Santa in Dutch, I can track Santa in Portuguese, I can track Santa in Spanish,’ it truly brings a worldwide impact to this,” Sayed said.
The Santa tracker will go live on Christmas Eve. Sayed said they expect nearly 20 million visitors to the site, plus another 250,000 calls into NORAD’s Santa phoneline.
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