Several technologies familiar to language service providers (LSPs) and language services adjacent industries make the list of new Chinese restrictions, including speech-related technology around corpus design, recording, annotation, and extraction; text prediction; voice recognition and microphone array technologies; and what was described as “Chinese and English composition correction technology,” among other seemingly broad descriptions of digital technology.

The updated restricted-export list does not outright ban these technologies, but requires special approval from Beijing for Chinese companies seeking to take such technologies to market overseas. China has found partners willing to comply with the restrictions, however, with government-backed iFLYTEK recently signing a deal with the Egyptian government to promote natural language processing and machine translation technology for Egyptian-Arabic and Chinese languages.

AI-based translation technology company SYSTRAN announced recently its new partnership with TED to build specialized neural translation models that are based on high-quality translations of TED Talks. Beginning with ten languages, SYSTRAN will use TED content to develop neural machine
translation models for technical content in a variety of fields.

These unique models are designed to meet the sophisticated translation needs of multinational companies, educational institutions, government agencies and other organizations by enabling accurate and fluent translations of learning, scientific, business, and technical content in ten languages.

A nonprofit organization whose slogan is “Ideas Worth Spreading,” TED has committed to global language access as one of its core foundations. Organizations in 150 countries participate in the TEDx initiative, which allows groups to apply for licenses to organize conferences made up of local participants, ranging from professors to scientists to writers.

Along with TEDx, the company currently has a major translation initiative of their online resources, with a team of over 35,000 human translators, who have produced almost 175,000 translations and captions in 115 languages. The data from this major cache of language resources will likely enable SYSTRAN to expand their neural translation models to even more languages as well.

“SYSTRAN is TED’s first-ever authorized partner in bringing together TED content and machine learning to develop a commercial product,” said Alex Hofmann, director of Global Distribution & Licensing at TED.

From all areas of telehealth care, emergency and public agency and legal aid support services, and everywhere else where language support is vital, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a growing need for improved access to American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters. Video remote interpreting (VRI) solutions have helped improve availability for deaf and hard of hearing individuals that need to connect with professional interpretation services, regardless of their location. This VRI-ASL service has solved many of the geographical challenges that exist today in terms of connecting to qualified ASL support, but it has not always been readily available after-hours and
overnight.

Recently, the Boostlingo interpreting platform has begun offering on-demand support for ASL video remote interpreting to include calls that occur outside the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST (US). Extending to full 24-hour 7 days a week access to ASL interpreters via its video remote interpreting platform, Boostlingo is widening the hours of coverage to provide connectivity for all deaf and hard of hearing individuals to ensure that they can receive appropriate care during a medical emergency at any time, through the use of the Boostlingo HIPAA compliant telehealth platform.

The COVID-19 Multilingual Information Access (MLIA) initiative is a collective effort from the LT community to improve information exchange about the virus, across all EU languages and beyond, by supporting the development of applications and services in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initiative covers all noncommercial research activities in various domains such as NLP, social sciences and humanities, and is endorsed by the European Commission and the European Language Resource Coordination (ELRC) and supported by key language technologies stakeholders in Europe including MT companies, universities, research centers and networks like CLARIN-ERIC, ELRA, the Universities of Padua, Utrecht and Lisbon, LIMSI, and Pangeanic S.L.

This community evaluation effort has been initiated as part of the CLEF Initiative and aims at accelerating the creation of resources and tools for an improved MLIA, with particular reference to a general public use case, including information on social, economic or political aspects related to the pandemic, like self-isolation, social distancing, school closing/reopening, and so on.

Olivier Uwishema, a Rwandan med student currently studying in Turkey, used money he saved from his monthly scholarship stipend to create the Oli Health Magazine Organization, a non-profit organization that helps young people in professional health education and scientific research. The organization has now partnered with Harvard Medical School and a team of people from all over the world for the creation and translation of accessible COVID-19 resources into English, Turkish, French, Kinyarwanda, Swahili, and 21 other languages.

Philip R. Shawe and Elizabeth Elting have settled out of court on long-running issues related to the sale of TransPerfect, a letter from Shawe’s attorney to Delaware Chancery Court stated. The one-time couple owned a 50-50 share of the New York Citybased translation services company, with the case over control ending up in Chancery Court.

The settlement provides for the transfer of Elting’s 50% ownership interest in Wordfast, LLC, a company with technology used by TransPerfect, as well as real estate holdings in New York and California.

In response to language barriers faced by different communities in accessing government COVID supports, a new shared project aims to make support programs readily available in some of the most widely spoken languages in British Columbia to bridge the language gap for newcomers and immigrants. The languages are Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, with Punjabi resources being released in the coming days. The websites are now live and can be accessed by every member of the public across Canada.

Emsi, a data modeling firm based in the United States, recently gave MultiLingual a look at its third quarter 2020 data set on the US language services industry, providing a status of job postings as well as the industry’s projected growth over the next two years. The industry has seen steady growth over the past few years, although the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a disruption and re-organization in demand. Here are a few takeaways from the report.

As of 2019, translators and interpreters made up over 40,000 jobs in the US, with average annual earnings of over $50,000. The report projects growth of over 19% by 2022, though these numbers depend on region. For example, the San Francisco Bay Area’s southern regions exceed the national growth average at around 23%, whereas the San Diego region projects a slower rate of 14%, according to the report.

Most jobs are found under the category of “Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services,” making up almost 40% of jobs in 2019. The “Other” category represented over 20%, while “Education and Hospitals” at the local level followed at around 17%. Both population size and region play a role in job rate with California, Texas, and New York leading.

The job demand remained steady between early 2017 and 2020, but Emsi reports a rise in demand in 2020, corresponding with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and health-related language services. The past couple months have seen a return to the national average.

LanguageLine Solutions represented the majority of unique job postings with over 20,000, and Soliant Health, Inc had over 6,000 postings. The top three job titles are bilingual interpreters, interpreters, and sign language interpreters, and the top hard skills for job postings are language translation, pronunciation, and language interpretation.

Among both industry and language-specific occupations, age demographics spread fairly evenly among people between 19-64, with the highest concentration of those 25-34 years of age. Furthermore, women make up around two-thirds of the industry, with well over two-thirds of those holding language service occupations. White workers also hold most industry positions at 70% but hold less than 50% of language occupations, with Hispanic or Latino workers representing the next highest demographic at around one-third of workers.

In terms of educational training, most in the industry hold a bachelor’s degree, though as many as 20% hold a master’s degree or higher. Spanish language and literature ranks highest among educational programs, with University of Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA, and BYU ranking among the top schools.

Emsi data comprises a hybrid dataset derived from official government sources such as the US Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Bureau of Labor Statistics. Leveraging the unique strengths of each source, the data modeling team creates an authoritative dataset that captures more than 99% of all workers in the United States. This core offering is then enriched with data from online social profiles, resumés, and job postings to give a complete view of the workforce.

Wordbee customers can now benefit from a seamless integration enabling access to high speed, high quality neural machine translation from the KantanMT platform.

XTM International, the company behind the enterprise cloud-based translation management system, announced the release of its new version of XTM Cloud. XTM Cloud 12.5, the “Powerful Connectivity” release comes with new integrations and CMS connectivity as well as usability and productivity enhancements. Read our improved release blog to find out more.

YTranslations has become an Authorized Citrix Service Provider and Advisor. Citrix is a application that allows users to securely connect to a virtual desktop, server, application, or roaming profile through a terminal (or other computer). In partnership with Podio, YTranslations developed a custom translation management system (CMS) that helps automate organizational processes. Features include automated project management processes (linguist project offer emails, assignments allocation); automated billing and financial processes (invoices, purchase orders); and automated linguist assessments and review performance system.

Localization specialist Eclair Versioning & Accessibility (EVA) has opened a new dubbing studio in Barcelona, and has added a state-of-the-art, additional recording room in its Vanves (Paris) facility, as it continues its current expansion plans.

The new room in the Paris facility will serve both theatrical and TV recordings, and becomes the fifth hybrid room enabled for both recording and mixing. The facility also has two rooms dedicated to recording and another two designed as mixing studios.

GTE Localize, a medium-size translation agency specializing in Asian languages, has opened a new office in Indonesia.

SDL has announced a long-term contract with the US Navy to standardize the creation, management, and delivery of all technical publications on the SDL Contenta Publishing Suite. The Navy Enterprise Subscription License (NESL) agreement re-affirms SDL’s role in the US Navy’s ongoing rationalization, reduction, and centralization strategy to lower the total cost of ownership of all technical publications.

The Slovenia translation platform TAIA, which makes use of deep learning methods, has received a 1.2 million euro investment from Fil Rouge Capital, a European venture capital fund. The funds are to be used to boost TAIA’s presence on foreign markets and a further development of the deep learning algorithms. According to TAIA INT, the company behind the platform, this is one of the biggest investments in tech companies in Slovenia this year.

Arriving a little over a year after version 2.0 debuted, the new Alexa Auto SDK appears focused on making it easier to add and run custom versions of the platform to more vehicles.

Along with the new ability to listen and translate simultaneously, the XiaoAI voice assistant will be able to carry out multiple tasks with one command. The AI will collect information about how people use connected smart devices to develop responses and follow-up ideas.

Wordbee announced the appointment of Andre Hemker as new Chief Executive Officer as of October 1, 2020 taking over from José Vega.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Amanda Ryan brings more than a decade of expertise in leadership, consulting, production, client services, and workflow development and optimization.

Jan Bareš brings over two decades of production, account management, and technology management experience to his new CTO role at Argos Multilingual.

“I have known Jesse for many years as he was a customer of US Translation Company and therefore, he has a deep understanding of our customer’s journey and a clear vision for how to build upon our 25-year foundation,” said David Utrilla, President of US Translation Company.

After a successful European-wide adoption in 2019, VMG has expanded its CaptionHub account across its Americas and APAC distribution network, now reaching audiences in over 80 countries across mobile, digital, and linear channels.