September, 2010
Post Editing: Roaming the wild west
Katie Botkin
Last Saturday evening, after dark, my three brothers, four friends and I walked my parents' land to my brothers' summer camping spot by a mountain-fed stream. Through the tall, billowing grasses that surround our pond ...
|
September, 2010
African Languages in a Digital Age
Ultan Ó Broin
A statement in The New York Times Arts section of 21 April 2010 that "the future of the French language is now in Africa" reminded me of the complications of language policy on the world's second largest continent ...
|
September, 2010
Globish
Ultan Ó Broin
It's all the fault of "insecure marketing professionals anxious to display supposed cosmopolitan credentials." So says the Irish Times report of 17 February 2010 on the German rejection of "senseless Anglicisms." ...
|
September, 2010
Through the Language Glass
Rachel Schaffer
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also called the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (LRH), has been a staple of introductory linguistics courses for decades, probably ever since the early twentieth century, when Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf ...
|
September, 2010
Off the Map: Gender and culture
Tom Edwards
Perhaps one of the most fundamental aspects of who we are as human beings is our gender, as it extends beyond any cultural, linguistic, religious or political aspect of our existence. Gender defines much about us ...
|
September, 2010
World Savvy: Memo from Moose Jaw
John Freivalds
Some Americans think that the only way to have a real cross-cultural experience is to travel to the far reaches of Kazakhstan, like I used to do, but there is a unique and different culture just across the US northern border in Canada ...
|
September, 2010
The Business Side: Internationalization and Canada
Adam Asnes
Internationalization and ultimately localization is driven first by business needs, strategies and partners. That said, a US-centric view of software adaptation for Canada represents one of the most accessible opportunities ...
|
September, 2010
Perspectives: Tweaking global tweets
Christian Arno & Paul Sawers
Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) is generally considered to be the foundation upon which all subsequent evolutionary biology is based. It was — and still is — a seminal piece of work and was the result ...
|
September, 2010
Doing language business with the US government
Nataly Kelly
At Common Sense Advisory, we frequently field questions from language service providers (LSPs) throughout the world regarding the US federal government market for translation, interpreting and other language services ...
|
September, 2010
Translation industry in Cuba
Arturo Quintero
The island of Cuba, just 228 miles from Miami, is both very close and yet very far from the United States. This article does not aim to dwell on the well-documented history of this complex relationship. Instead, it explores ...
|
September, 2010
Adding personalization to the localization mix
Scott Abel
Localization is a hot topic among software manufacturers with tools they claim can help provide customers with relevant, laser-targeted content. More than ever, it seems, these firms are hyper-busy trying to get your attention ...
|
September, 2010
No recession for translation
Afaf Steiert, Matthias Steiert & Elanna Mariniello
The ideal situation for any industry is that it may experience a rapid and steady growth. This, unfortunately, is rarely the case and is more likely an industry aspiration rather than a reality, especially in the current economic climate ...
|
September, 2010
Using the Review Index to measure content change
Silvio Picinini
Virtually every time someone writes a piece of content, there could be a review of it. In the localization industry, the most notable one is a review of the translation performed by a translator. The name may vary ...
|
September, 2010
Takeaway: North America from the outside
Erin Vang
In 1998 I planned a trip to Norway and picked up a copy of Elizabeth Su-Dale's Norway: Culture Shock! A survival guide to customs and etiquette. I enjoyed the book, but it felt inside-out and backwards to me somehow ...
|
July/August, 2010
Post Editing: Case studying
Katie Botkin
Learning often goes something like this: you "know" things in general theory, and only pay attention and apply them to your life after trial and error. For the shrewd and savvy there is another option ...
|
July/August, 2010
PROMT Version 9
Eduardo Chacón
When it comes to rule-based machine translation (RBMT), two machine translation (MT) systems have been the major players in the market for quite some time: PROMT and SYSTRAN. PROMT, the younger of the two, was founded in Russia in 1991 ...
|
July/August, 2010
Off the Map: The 'sensitive' U.S.A.
Tom Edwards
In the course of my geocultural consulting, I see and hear intriguing things about various cultures, which is one of the reasons I love the work that I do. Along with that, I also witness how various people react to certain cultures ...
|
July/August, 2010
World Savvy: Code-sharing languages
John Freivalds
Lupiti, Galoshi par Tilti were Yiddish-Latvian words that my mother uttered meaning the rags and old shoes peddler is near. This peddler would go up and down streets shouting for housewives to bring out their stuff ...
|
July/August, 2010
The Business Side: The business why and how of simship
Adam Asnes
The subject of managing releases over worldwide markets can be a contentious one, with pros and cons on either side of business and development cases. The concept of simship is that if you are releasing your product to worldwide markets ...
|
July/August, 2010
Recruitment in the language industry
Denise Spacinsky
So often we hear harried hiring managers at the other end of the line talking about needing to hire their new person "yesterday." When a company's management knows they need new people, they mull it over for a while ...
|
July/August, 2010
Optimizing software localization
Frank Lin & Boris Gurevich
Every company seems to want the utmost when it comes to developing and releasing a product. However, the constraints of the project management (PM) triangle — speed (time), cost (resource) and scope (quality) — tell us that ...
|
July/August, 2010
Leveraging TMs with metadata
David Filip
Few would argue with the observation that companies are increasingly waking up to the true value of their corporate assets and trying to make the best possible return on them. Translation assets are no exception ...
|
July/August, 2010
XML authoring cures localization headaches
Scott Bass
How do you predict whether a localization project will be a pleasure or pain? One of the best indicators is the quality of the content that is going to be translated. That's a central lesson we've learned ...
|
July/August, 2010
Creating a framework for Arabic language technology
Mohamed Attia, Bente Maegaard, Khalid Choukri & Olivier Hamon
Arabic, one of the six official languages of the UN, is the first official language of more than 300 million native speakers in 23 Arab states located in western Asia as well as northern and eastern Africa and is widely spread ...
|
July/August, 2010
Learning from the best global websites
John Yunker
When it comes to web globalization, best practices are as easy to find as opening up your web browser. The only challenge, of course, is in knowing which websites to emulate and which websites to ignore. Over the past seven years ...
|
