April/May, 2008
Post Editing: Tools vs. toys — the tools have it
Sandy Compton
The first computer I used — OK, played with — was a 60-pound Tandy TRS-80 displaying green type on a black screen. It had about 100 KB of RAM, ran TRS-DOS and featured a game called Pirate in which I "died" — over and over again ...
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April/May, 2008
TranslatorsTraining.com
Ignacio Garcia & Vivian Stevenson
Jost Zetzsche's new site TranslatorsTraining.com puts a uniform comparison format to translation environment tool (TEnT) vendors so that you can see before you buy. Freelancers can now dabble before they take the plunge, while developers ...
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April/May, 2008
Off the Map: Keeping faith in spatial data
Tom Edwards
So you're driving down a narrow road on a dark and stormy night, and you look to your car's dashboard to see where your trusty global positioning system (GPS) unit is directing you. No more paper maps to fumble with and try to fold ...
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April/May, 2008
World Savvy: Your global home companion — Minnesota
John Freivalds
When I travel around the United States and even the larger world and mention that I lived in Minnesota, the response I get is typically about the "many lakes there" or Prairie Home Companion, the immensely popular radio-program-cum-franchise ...
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April/May, 2008
The Business Side: Lessons from globalization management system ashes
Adam Asnes
They say that the early bird gets the worm, but you could also joke about the second mouse getting the cheese. Personally, I think cheese tastes better. Metaphors aside, a point we've seen in our industry and beyond is that early ...
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April/May, 2008
Perspectives: Localizing a localizer's website: analysis
Gary Muddyman
As I write this article in January, we are deep into the planning phase of Conversis' revamped website. I always thought of our site as a sort of process where we could let the creative juices run wild, resulting in something spectacular ...
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April/May, 2008
The evolution of machine translation
Jaap van der Meer
It is amazing how much the world of machine translation (MT) has changed in just a few years' time. The word revolution would be appropriate to describe the change in attitudes. For 50 years, MT technology led an academic life, hidden ...
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April/May, 2008
Machine translation: not a pseudoscience
Vadim Berman
It always amazes me how the business model of fortune-telling works. The essential part of this industry is to have plan B ready — to explain why the future does not correlate with the predictions. The machine translation (MT) industry ...
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April/May, 2008
Putting MT to work
Lou Cremers
Machine translation (MT) has been around since the early 1960s, but even today companies hesitate to invest in the technology. On the other hand, there is no hesitation whatsoever to invest in translation memories (TM), although both ...
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April/May, 2008
Monolingual translation: automated post-editing
Hugh Lawson-Tancred
Men and women may have seven ages, but machine translation (MT) can be expected to have just three: comic relief, mass gisting and mainstream productivity enhancement. Perhaps the most important question currently confronting the industry ...
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April/May, 2008
Machine translation: is it worth the trouble?
Kerstin Berns & Laura Ramírez
We can answer this question clearly with "It depends." It depends on text volumes and types and what you are aiming at in the short-, mid-, and long-term perspective. Do you have large text volumes with very short translation times ...
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April/May, 2008
Challenges of Asian-language MT
Dion Wiggins & Philipp Koehn
When it comes to machine translation (MT) and manipulating text written in various scripts, every language has its unique characteristics, properties and challenges. Asian languages in particular have been very difficult to deal with ...
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April/May, 2008
Advanced automatic MT post-editing
Rafael Guzmán
"Why is translation difficult for computers? Because it involves problems that resist an algorithmic solution, including common sense reasoning, learning, and combinatory explosive tasks." -Doug Arnold, "Why Translation Is Difficult for Computers" ...
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April/May, 2008
Translation World weathers Montreal
Katie Botkin
Translation supposedly flips ideas and words between languages, and the first Translation World, held in Montreal, Canada, March 11-13, 2008, reflected this duality. The sessions were held in French and English, accurately representing ...
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April/May, 2008
Community interpreting in Canada
Lola Bendana & Effrossyni Fragkou
In Canada, community interpreting (CI) is used by both public service providers and users in the legal, health care, education, government and social sectors to communicate with people who have limited proficiency in one or both official ...
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April/May, 2008
Media images of translators
Kirk Anderson
In November 1999, the 40th ATA Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, was the venue for a fascinating session entitled "Translators and the Media: A Public Forum to Examine the Image of Translation and Translators in the Popular Media." ...
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April/May, 2008
An overview of Arabic-script languages
Bushra Zawaydeh
Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Pashto have received considerable attention in the United States and globally, especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The FBI, for instance, has shifted its focus since then towards preventing ...
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April/May, 2008
A letter to SDL's Mark Lancaster and Idiom's Mike Iacobucci
Bob Donaldson
Dear Mark and Mike, It is with some ambivalence that I greet the recent SDL acquisition of Idiom Technologies, Inc., and it is in that light that I write this open letter. I should say, first, that as one of Idiom's newer LSP ...
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April/May, 2008
Going Global Online
Alexandra Farkas
With less than 30% of internet users today speaking English, localizing your website makes good business sense. Most often, localization is the last push before the launch of a site or is done even after a site is launched. The thinking tends to be "Let's get the site done ...
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April/May, 2008
Localization Technology
Angelika Zerfaß
When you start thinking about translation and localization processes, you will sooner or later have to deal with the tools and technologies that are being used in this field. Here are some of the tools you should know about. You don’t have to own the tools yourself ...
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April/May, 2008
Expanding Your Business Globally
Laurel Delaney
Even the most ingenious idea designed to take your business to the next level won't be enough if you don't develop a clear and viable roadmap on how to get there. You must develop a successful global strategy. Why? Today's global business environment has too many ...
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April/May, 2008
How to Build an International Team
David Smith
Thinking about building an international team? The first question you should ask and consider carefully is "Why do you believe you need an international team?" If your answer is akin to
"keeping up with the Joneses" or portraying a more robust, global corporate size, then ...
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April/May, 2008
Using Common Sense to Go Global
John Freivalds
Once upon a time, about two decades ago, I was sitting in my office when a product manager from ACT IV microwave popcorn walked in. After pleasantries, he told me, "We're going international, and we need your help." "Oh goodie," I thought, "this will be fun." ...
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March, 2008
Post Editing: Making it fit
Sandy Compton
Our esteemed managing editor, Laurel Wagers, is ill, and everyone else on staff — and seemingly the rest of the planet — is extraordinarily busy, so this task has fallen to me, the lowly production guy. Usually I communicate ...
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March, 2008
Persuasive Games
Ultan Ó Broin
As Ian Bogost points out in Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, in spite of their commercial success, videogames "struggle for acceptance as a cultural norm." The US videogames' market is growing at 25% per year ...
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