November 2024

Toral Cowieson: Powering the Modern World With Unicode

Unicode’s text encoding standard ensures that characters display properly on your digital devices. CEO Toral Cowieson works at the heart of this international coalition that keeps technology working for everyone.

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t’s easy to overlook the unsung heroes who make the modern world work. For better or worse, it’s the flashy and the bombastic that grabs our attention — not the quietly capable people and technologies that keep your devices functional, your content comprehensible, and your professional toolsets useful.

That won’t come as news to any language professional. After all, people rarely consider the sophisticated work that goes into the translation, interpretation, localization, and culturalization they benefit from — at least until they encounter slipshod or unusable results.

But everyone gets their time in the sun, or at least, they should. And in this issue of MultiLingual magazine, we recognize our fair share of unsung heroes. Take our profile of Toral Cowieson, CEO of the Unicode Consortium, for instance. The phone in your pocket and the computer on your desk wouldn’t work very well without the Unicode technology that makes digitized languages function. Likewise, this issue highlights important advocacy efforts aimed at supporting language learning and serving marginalized populations. Finally, we cover several topics related to translation management systems, software that might not make hearts skip a beat but nevertheless remains an indispensable part of the modern translation ecosystem.

In a sense, language itself falls into this unheralded category. Arguably nothing is more important to humanity’s dominant position on Planet Earth, but few place the respect on their mother tongue that such a power warrants. Well, in the United States, November is the month dedicated to gratitude and thankfulness; so if you have a turkey dinner in your future, spare a thought for the linguists that make the modern world possible.

Event Recap

Toronto Localization Unconference 2024

Co-organized and co-moderated by Oleks Pysaryuk and Richard Sikes, the Unconference is minimally structured. After a round of introductions, participants brainstorm discussion topics and vote to prioritize them. This year, the hottest topic areas explored various angles of how to chart a career in the translation industry in the face of rapidly evolving AI.

Column

UNSCRIPTED

Poetry in Bamboo

The Story of Mangyan Calligraphy

By Tim Brookes

Bamboo carving is a traditional writing technique of the indigenous Mangyan people of the Philippines. Tim Brookes describes how ancestral poetry is inscribed onto the plant, highlighting the culture’s connection with nature and spirituality.

Education

The Decline of Language Learning in US Higher Education

A Call to Action for the Localization Industry

By Mimi Moore and Carrie Fischer

US college and university enrollments in courses for languages other than English fell 16.6% from 2016 to 2021. Moore and Fischer explore some reasons for the decline in language learning, offer a few solutions, and extend a call to action to the localization industry to start turning the tide.

profile

Toral Cowieson

Powering the Modern World With Unicode

Interview by Cameron Rasmusson

Unicode CEO Toral Cowieson works at the heart of the international coalition that keeps technology working for everyone. The group’s text encoding standard guarantees that the characters and scripts displayed on your digital devices function properly in your language of choice. MultiLingual spoke to her about this essential work that makes the world go around.

Language Access

Modern Mayans

A Hidden World Closer Than You Think

By Jace Norton

The author recounts his career journey from missionary to interpreter to company founder — and how he came to learn about indigenous languages and communities along the way. Now committed to providing language services to underserved populations, Norton encourages readers to look beyond their narrow surroundings to adopt broader perspectives on language access.

You won’t unlock the full potential of AI with current TMs

Supported by Translated

Data curation is crucial for enhancing translation quality and tackling efficiency and scalability challenges. To address these needs, Translated developed TranslationOS, the future-proof solution for AI-first localization.

Technology

The Case for TMS Connectors in the Hyperpersonalization Era

By Jourik Ciesielski, Laszlo Varga, and István Lengyel

Hyperpersonalization leads to better customer engagement, but few localization departments are currently prepared to achieve it. The authors argue that translation management system connectors can help by converging the multitude of platforms involved in multilingual content creation, translation, and publishing via orchestration.

Unlocking Localization Potential With a Successful TMS Migration

By Jan Hofmeister and Laszlo Varga

Sticking with an outdated translation management system can hold a company back. The authors explain the benefits of migrating to a more modern platform and outline the necessary strategies and steps for a successful switch.