Leaders from major organizations in the world of translation, interpreting and language studies have announced that they’ll meet in a second Translation Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, tentatively scheduled for mid-March 2007. After the first summit (see MultiLingual, April/May 2006), they developed a list of action items (www.translationsummit.org). What progress has been made in these six months?
The organizations have taken on several large, long-term projects. The American Translators Association (ATA) and the National Association of Judicial Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) are continuing and expanding outreach programs to kindergarten-through-college students, as well as the issue of translation buyer education and a joint listing of translation and interpreting education programs. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) is planning a Language Olympics competition to highlight careers in translation and interpreting. Ray Clifford, director of the Center for Language Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU), is addressing funding questions.
The recent publication of ASTM F2575-06 Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation achieved one summit goal — combining the ASTM translation standard and the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) proficiency standards into one that focuses on translation specifications and selection of a translation service provider.
BYU’s Alan K. Melby spoke this September at the Colloque.net conference in Rennes, France, saying that accreditation using ISO 17024 as a framework would build a consistent standard for certification. And a study of translator tools of all kinds is being taken up by a group representing the ATA, the International Federation of Translators, and MITRE, with independent expert Jost Zetzsche leading the evaluation.
The exciting part of the 2006 summit was seeing that the right people were in the room to represent business, education and government language interests — and that they were all committed to working together to advance language learning, translation quality, appropriate use of technology, and translator visibility in the United States. We’ll keep you posted on this and the ATA’s new Language Technology Division (see page 9).
In this issue we focus on international advertising and marketing. Christa Tiefenbacher-Hudson describes the intersection of translation and marketing. Jesús Maroto outlines international strategies in advertising, while Reinhard Schäler offers some thoughts on the next waves of localization and how some products benefit from not being localized. Greg Churilov offers strategies for marketing translation services on the internet; Mario De Bortoli and Fabio Minazzi discuss working with media-rich content; and Kristen Giovanis details challenges that face client companies in regulated industries. Columnist John Freivalds provides an example in the story of Latvia — a country that changed its marketing strategy.
Beyond the focus, Paul Trotter explains the benefits of single-source authoring in general; Bill Hall concludes his series on the .NET 2.0 System.Globalization namespace; Kit Brown addresses how to measure success; and Tom Edwards answers questions about place names. And Georgia Roeming comments on language service providers and technology in Takeaway.
With this issue you’ll find a “Getting Started Guide” on the topic of writing for translation, especially the importance of high-quality source text. Carl Helbich, Sophie Hurst, Sharon O’Brien, Robert D. Anderson and Christine Bucher look at various facets of this essential and often difficult process.
