January/February 2012

Language | Technology | Business January/February 2012

Focus: Future of Language Technology The automated interpreter Machine translation for less-resourced languages The translation center behind Translators without Borders Ten essential steps to TMS selection for LSPs Cross-lingual text analytics: a new frontier in linguistics Localizing worldwide mobile apps Crowdsourcing your localization testing

01Cover#125.indd 1 12/14/11 12:41 PM 2-3 MLC#125.indd 2 12/14/11 1:27 PM on the web at multilingual.com

MultiLingual Search multilingual.com #125 Volume 23 Issue 1 January/February 2012 New expanded site-wide search! Editor-in-Chief, Publisher: Donna Parrish Managing Editor: Katie Botkin Editorial Assistant: Jim Healey Proofreaders: Bonnie Hagan, Bernie Nova News: Kendra Gray Production: Darlene Dibble, Doug Jones Downloads

Cover Photo: Kendra Gray • Search all of multilingual.com Webmaster: Aric Spence • Filter your results by information type Technical Analyst: Curtis Booker • Find what you need — fast! Assistant: Shannon Abromeit Circulation: Terri Jadick Special Projects: Bernie Nova Sure, multilingual.com offers over 2,100 industry resources, over 8,000 Advertising Director: Jennifer Del Carlo news items, events, articles and downloads galore, but with all that infor- Advertising: Kevin Watson, Bonnie Hagan mation available, how do you find exactly what you need? Our new site- Editorial Board wide search is the answer! Want to see how many times your company Jeff Allen, Ultan Ó Broin, Arturo Quintero, has been mentioned? Need to find that article on MT? Now you can. Jessica Roland, Lori Thicke, Jost Zetzsche Advertising If the site-wide search returns a large number of results, you may refine it by [email protected] filtering the information type: news, resources, downloads, articles, events. www.multilingual.com/advertising We are happy to make this wealth of information more accessible to you. 208-263-8178 Subscriptions, back issues, customer service [email protected] Get social with us! www.multilingual.com/ subscriptionInformation Submissions, letters Follow us on multilingualmag [email protected] Editorial guidelines are available at MultiLingual keeps a running tweet stream on its home page, www.multilingual.com/editorialWriter showing items that are in our Twitter conversation. Join the Reprints: [email protected] conversation and follow us directly at @multilingualmag to MultiLingual Computing, Inc. get industry-related information about articles, events, news 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2 Sandpoint, Idaho 83864-1495 USA and views as we share them. [email protected] www.multilingual.com © MultiLingual Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. For reprints and e-prints, please Subscriptions e-mail [email protected] or call 208-263-8178. MultiLingual (ISSN 1523-0309), January/February 2012, is published monthly except Apr-May, Jul-Aug, Oct-Nov for US$58, international $85 per year by MultiLingual Computing, Inc., The print magazine is mailed nine times a 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, ID 83864-1495. Periodicals postage paid at Sandpoint, ID and additional mailing offices. year (eight issues plus an annual resource POSTMASTER: Send address changes to MultiLingual, 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, ID 83864-1495. directory/index) for $58 domestically, $85 internationally, and includes full access to

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MultiLingual Language | Technology | Business January/February 2012 #125 Volume 23 Issue 1

n Up Front n Feature Articles n 3 multilingual.com n Focus: Future of n 6 Post Editing Language Technology n News 22 The automated interpreter n 7 News — Hassan Sawaf & n 11 Calendar Jonathan Litchman n Reviews 25 Machine translation for 12 The Interpreter’s Journal less-resourced languages — Reviewed by Nancy A. Locke — Andrejs Vasi,ljevs & Indra S m te Up Front n 31 The translation center behind Columns and Commentary Translators without Borders 14 Enterprise Innovators — Lori Thicke — Enrique Cavalitto 18 Off the Map — Kate Edwards 35 Ten essential steps 20 Perspectives — Andrzej Zydro´n to TMS selection for LSPs 58 Takeaway — Daniel B. Harcz — Benjamin B. Sargent & n 51 Buyer’s Guide Vijayalaxmi Hegde 57 Advertiser Index 41 Cross-lingual text analytics: a new frontier in linguistics — Meta S. Brown 44 Localizing worldwide mobile apps — Talia Baruch n About the cover Business Finely carved stone detail of a 47 Crowdsourcing your marker at the Mainz, Germany, museum honoring the language localization testing tech inventor Johannes Gutenburg. His far-reaching advancement of — Doron Reuveni printing technology is mirrored in the advancements that language technology is currently experiencing in the twenty-first century.

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4-5 TOC#125.indd 5 12/14/11 12:43 PM Katie Botkin Post Editing

Toasting tech

Drawing the old year to a close is Latvian and provide a study on creating your localization testing could come in. always a bit bittersweet, and hence the a Latvian MT system. Then Enrique While any issue on the future of nostalgic tradition of marking the new Cavalitto details the new ProZ.com language technology might seem ripe Dyear with a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” translation platform for Translators for technology reviews, we’ve opted And then we turn and look forward, without Borders, which allows nonproﬁt out of the implicit assertion than any toasting, in this case, 2012 — a leap clients to directly interface with one particular tool is “the future,” and year that happens to be eschatologically volunteer freelancers with very little instead Nancy A. Locke reviews The interesting, which has also been middle-man project management. Interpreter’s Journal, a book showcasing designated Alan Turing Year, after the Benjamin B. Sargent and Vijayalaxmi a Thai and Lao interpreter’s personal mathematician and computer science Hegde provide ten steps for translation journeys, professional and otherwise. pioneer, on the centennial of his birth. management system selection, In our columns, Lori Thicke interviews So what better way to start out this depending on your particular bent as a Will Burgett of Intel about automating new year of MultiLingual than by language service provider — who you multilingual chat and various other hot discussing the future of language are and what you’re looking to provide. localization topics. Kate Edwards talks technology? Hassan Sawaf and Meta S. Brown looks at cross-lingual about culture and religion, and Andrzej Jonathan Litchman start out this issue’s text analytics and why businesses Zydro´n makes a case for cloud-based focus by talking about advancements in should care, and Talia Baruch gives an translation tools. Daniel B. Harcz’s one of the longtime fantasies of anyone overview on localizing worldwide Takeaway covers translator database drifting into dreamland in the world of mobile apps. management, which wraps up what is language technology — machine And after all this theoretical overall a fairly techie issue. interpretation. Next, Andrejs Vasi,ljevs localization using advanced management So, happy 2012 to all our readers, and Indra S m te discuss machine and translation tools, you may need to whether they be reading on high- translation (MT) challenges for test your product, which is where Doron speed internet connections or from a less-resourced languages such as Reuveni’s suggestions on crowdsourcing traditional paper copy. W

fourth

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Industry trends. Workshops. Networking.

6 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

6-7 Postedit/NewsFront #125.indd 6 12/14/11 12:44 PM Fiji, first to greet the new year, brings linguistic diversity to tourists

Fiji is one of the ﬁrst places the sun

comes up every day, and hence is one of the News first nations to greet the new year, due to its near-equatorial latitude and the fact that it is located just west of the International Date Line. The Republic of Fiji is made up of a collection of more than 300 islands, which are home to various native and immigrant languages such as Kiribati and Rotuman. Many inhabitants speak Fijian as a native language. Non-native speakers often have the option of learning it in school, or of choosing Hindi, for example — Fijian Hindi is an offshoot of the Hindi dialects that were spoken by indentured laborers brought over from India around the turn of the twentieth century to work on Fiji’s sugar cane planta- Clockwise from top left: Packing up tions. Indo-Fijians make up around 37% of a picnic breakfast for visiting tourists on a sandbar near Beqa Island as the tide rises. A Fiji’s population, according to the 2007 cen- mother and child returning from church in a sus, and their lingua franca borrows words village on Beqa Island — almost two-thirds of from both native Fijian and Hindi. English, ethnic Fijians are Methodist. Fishing provides Fijian and Fijian Hindustani are all official a source of income and nutrition for many languages of Fiji. Fijians. Native Fijian itself is an Austronesian language related to others dispersed through the Pacific and Southeast Asia, such as Fili- pino, Hawaiian and Maori. Fijian is written using the Roman alphabet (contrary to Fiji Hindi, which is often written using Devana- gri script), although the orthographical rep- resentation of phonetic sound varies widely from that of English. For example, Beqa, an island located off the coast of Viti Levu, is pronounced with labial and velar prenasal- ized plosives, which would be written something like “mbenga” in English. There has been a push in recent years to make Fijian compulsory in schools in order to promote cultural understanding. Most Fijians over HIGHER the age of 14 speak English, which often proves to be helpful in tourism. Most signs STANDARDS and advertisements are in English, although there is a small translation community for cross-cultural needs.  Tourism is the leading industry of Fiji, with FOCUS ON CEE LANGUAGES the largest contingent visiting from nearby  ON MARKET SINCE 1995 Australia, followed by New Zealand, the  ISO 9001:2008, EN 15038 USA and the United Kingdom. Fiji is tropical,  without hosting native poisonous creatures, [email protected] and its turquoise-to-deep-blue waters at- tract honeymooners, divers, surfers, sailors and even white-water rafters. Fijians tend to be welcoming of outsiders, sharing songs and pronunciation. Much of the land for re- sorts and resort hotels is leased, rather than bought, since by law, much of Fiji’s landmass www.aspena.com is owned collectively by native Fijians.

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branch office in The Netherlands. Cristina de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition to multilin- Business Segar Soudaly Alvarez will manage the gual translation and localization services, new office. the company has expanded to offer mul- Across opens special business unit TripleInk www.tripleink.com timedia and audio and video production. Across Systems GmbH, a manufacturer Osborne Solutions of corporate translation management sys- Rosetta Translation updates website www.osborne-solutions.com tems, has established a new business unit Rosetta Translation Limited, a translation for language service providers offering and language services provider, has rede- Quicksilver adds special solutions, products and services. signed its website and logo. The site features audiovisual department Across Systems GmbH www.across.net a blog launched earlier this year, and a quote Quicksilver Translations, a provider of form is available on every page. translation and documentation services, Global Language Solutions expands Rosetta Translation Limited has created an audiovisual department Global Language Solutions (GLS), Inc., a www.rosettatranslation.com offering translation for dubbing, lip- translation and interpreting company, has synchronization and subtitling; subtitles opened offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina, New look and move for CONTRAD for the deaf and the hard of hearing; and and Budapest, Hungary. The company has CONTRAD, a language services provider, audio description. Verònica López has been also expanded its European services and has rebranded the company name and hired to head the audiovisual team. now offers quantitative market research. logo and has redesigned its website. The Quicksilver Translations Global Language Solutions, Inc. company has also relocated to a new office www.quicksilvertranslate.com www.globallanguages.com space under supervision of Marek Makosiej, recently named managing director. New website, url for Total Recall Rheinschrift updates website CONTRAD www.contrad.com.pl Total Recall Software ApS, developer of Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, a language the translation memory tool Snowball, has services provider, has updated its website. Updated website and new redesigned its website and changed its web Although the company specializes in local- services for YYZ Translations address. The company has also designed ization for the German language market, it YYZ Translations, a language services Snowball Align, a document alignment tool. also provides translations into most other provider, has redesigned its website. The Total Recall Software ApS western European languages. company has also started its own blog www.snowballtrans.com Rheinschrift Übersetzungen and has introduced new services such as www.rheinschrift.de over-the-phone and legal interpretation in Sajan opens Singapore office addition to voice-overs. Sajan, Inc., a provider of language transla- TripleInk now in The Netherlands, YYZ Translations http://yyztranslations.com tion technology and services, has opened an celebrates 20th anniversary office in Singapore. The new office is staffed TripleInk, a multilingual marketing com- Osborne relocates and rebrands by a multilingual project management group munications agency, is celebrating 20 years Osborne Solutions, previously Osborne that covers multiple areas of subject matter in business. The company has opened a Localization Services, has relocated to Rio specialty, including travel and hospitality,

8 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

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business, manufacturing, gaming and infor- www.argostranslations.com content in multiple languages, support for mation technology. Global Lingo Ltd. www.global-lingo.com Apple’s Help Bundle format, and the ability Sajan, Inc. www.sajan.com Andrä AG www.andrae-ag.de to reuse help content. Netwire www.netwire.com.br PandaWare Company www.pandaware.com TranslateMedia acquires Central Translations Resources WTIpress TranslateMedia, developer of the transla- Atelier Convivialité, a developer of trans- tion management workflow system STREAM, TAUS Tracker lation software, has created the WordPress has completed the acquisition of the London- The TAUS Data Association, a web-based plugin WTIpress. The plugin is designed to based legal and financial translation services platform for sharing language data, has provider, Central Translations. launched the TAUS Tracker, a directory of TranslateMedia www.translatemedia.com machine translation, translation memory and language technology tools. The tracker Hornet Design Studio relocates is currently a beta version listing over 100 Hornet Design Studio, a provider of desk- tools in 12 categories. top publishing localization and localization TAUS Data Association www.tausdata.org engineering services, has moved into a larger facility in Biale Blota, Poland. ‘How to Craft a Hornet Design Studio www.hornetdesign.eu Multilingual Web Strategy’ Common Sense Advisory, Inc., an indepen- LSA Video dent market research firm specializing in the Language Services Associates (LSA), Inc., language services industry, has released “How a language services provider, has formed to Craft a Multilingual Web Strategy.” The re- the subsidiary LSA Video to be the new host port uses the US Hispanic market to showcase for LSA’s video remote interpreting services. the best and worst online ethnic marketing Language Services Associates, Inc. strategies from 12 global companies. www.lsaweb.com Common Sense Advisory, Inc. www.commonsenseadvisory.com People Lingoport white paper and case study Recent industry hires Lingoport, Inc., a provider of software ■ Latitudes, a provider of training, coach- internationalization tools and services, has ing and consulting services, has hired Ray- added a white paper on global keyboards mond Reyes as chief executive officer. and input methods to its series of reference ■ PTIGlobal, a localization, interpreta- materials. tion and translation services provider, has Lingoport has also added a case study hired Jordan Bulloff as its new global pro- that explains the internationalization and ject manager. localization efforts of Cisco TelePresence, ■ Moravia Worldwide, a globalization a video conferencing system developed by solution provider, has hired Renato Beni- Cisco Systems. natto as chief marketing officer. Lingoport, Inc. www.lingoport.com ■ Argos Translations Sp z o.o., a provider of language services, has hired Rocio Products and Services Cava to head its business development unit in Madrid, Spain. Verifika ■ Global Lingo Ltd., a language services Palex Languages & Software, a language provider, has promoted Fiona Lindley to junior services provider, has introduced Verifika, an project manager. automated translation quality assurance tool. ■ Andrä AG, a manufacturer of transla- The tool has features that help reduce the tion management software, has hired Oliver false positive rate, provide auto-corrections Collmann as director of business development. where possible, and give the user the choice ■ Netwire, a provider of translation solu- to ignore errors in reports. tions, has added Letícia Abreu to its quality Palex Languages & Software www.palex.ru assurance team, and Fábio Martins has been hired for project management. Simple Help Editor 5.0 Latitudes www.latitudescoach.com PandaWare Company, a software prod- PTIGlobal www.ptiglobal.com ucts producer, has developed the latest Moravia Worldwide version of its cross-platform Help author- www.moraviaworldwide.com ing software Simple Help Editor 5.0. New Argos Translations Sp z o.o. features include support for localizing help

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translate posts and pages using the Web The software integration covers three main SwiftKey X 2.2 Translate It service, a web-based translation areas of data synchronization: contact data, TouchType, a developer of text entry management system that includes terminol- invoicing terms and conditions, and pay- software, has announced an update for its ogy management and translation memory ments and charges. Android keyboard, SwiftKey X. Version 2.2 capabilities. XTRF Translation Management Systems features improved multitouch typing sup- Atelier Convivialité www.xtrf.eu port, Arabic and Hebrew languages, and http://atelierconvivialite.com enhancements to the software’s Fluency Linguan prediction engine. TermWiki Pro Drobnik KG, creators of web development TouchType www.touchtype-online.com CSOFT International, Ltd., a provider of lo- tools and iPhone and iPad applications, has calization, testing and software development, designed Linguan, a localization tool for multi - MemSource Cloud updates has launched TermWiki Pro, a secure glossary language application development. The tool MemSource Technologies, a developer of platform for freelance translators, language enables better communication with transla- cloud translation software, has released a service providers and global businesses. tors during the development stage. new version of MemSource Cloud. Updates CSOFT International, Ltd. www.csoftintl.com Drobnik KG www.drobnik.com include new Microsoft Excel import options and machine translation improvements. Rosetta Shanghai adds LTC terminology management service MemSource Technologies interpretation service LTC, a provider of language technology www.memsource.com Rosetta Translation Limited, a translation solutions, has expanded its solutions to in- and language services provider, has added clude a terminology management service, a Clients and Partners interpretation to the list of services offered process of collecting an organization’s key at its Shanghai, China, location. terms, brand literature and industry jargon ENLASO partners with Rosetta Translation Limited into an existing or recommended termbase. Internationalization Labs www.rosettatranslation.com LTC www.ltcinnovates.com ENLASO Corporation, a provider of enterprise language solutions, has partnered with XTRF 2.4, XTRF-QuickBooks iAPPS v4.7 Internationalization Labs, LLC, a globaliza- XTRF Translation Management Systems has Bridgeline Digital, a provider of interactive tion consulting ﬁrm, adding international- upgraded its translation company manage- business technology solutions, has introduced ization audits, code remediation, consulting, ment system XTRF to version 2.4. Improve- a localized version of its iAPPS web experi- testing and training to its list of services. ments include the bundle workﬂow module ence management platform. Version v4.7 ENLASO Corporation www.enlaso.com providing project process automation. sup ports over 100 different currency options Internationalization Labs, LLC XTRF has also enhanced its translation and connections to international payment www.i18nlabs.com management system with QuickBooks, an and tax providers. accounting program developed by Intuit Inc. Bridgeline Digital www.bridgelinedigital.com GlobalEnglish selects Cloudwords GlobalEnglish Corporation, a developer of global business solutions, has selected Cloudwords, Inc., an online translation management platform, to assist with its corporate communications translation needs. GlobalEnglish Corporation www.globalenglish.com Cloudwords, Inc. www.cloudwords.com

STARt from pole position! Lexcelera wins BNP Paribas contract Lexcelera, a translation services provider, Documentation – Translation – Publication has been awarded a contract with BNP Pa- STAR – your single-source partner for corporate product communication ribas, a global banking group, for machine translation (MT) enhancements, including dictionary building and MT customization in several language pairs. star-group.net Lexcelera www.lexcelera.com Verztec selected by aviance Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd., a provider of multilingual communication services, has been selected by aviance, UniIever’s luxury division, to localize marketing materials, including iPad applications, from Thai to English, Malay and Mandarin. Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd. www.verztec.com

10 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

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Translation Technology: Localisation e-Learning Course March 26-28, 2012, Monte-Carlo, Monaco. Calendar January 9-March 23, 2012, online. Globalization and Localization Association Imperial College London, Humanities Department www.gala-global.org/conference www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpd/courses/subject/other/localisation April Computer-Assisted Translation Course January 18-21, 2012, Monterey, California USA. WWW 2012 Monterey Institute of International Studies April 16-20, 2012, Lyon, France. www.miis.edu/academics/programs/translationinterpretationshort IW3C2, Université de Lyon, www2012.org

Winter School in Language and Speech Technologies TMS Inspiration Days January 23-27, 2012, Tarragona, Spain. April 19-20, 2012, Krakow, Poland. Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics XTRF, www.inspirationdays.eu//index.php http://grammars.grlmc.com/wslst2012 TAUS Tokyo Executive Forum CIUTI Forum 2012 April 19-20, 2012, Tokyo, Japan. January 26-27, 2012, Geneva, Switzerland. Translation Automation User Society, www.translationautoma Conférence Internationale Permanente d’Instituts tion.com/executive-forums/taus-tokyo-executive-forum.html Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes, www.ciuti.org TAUS Asia Translation Summit February April 24-25, 2012, Beijing, China. Translation Automation User Society, www.translationautomation.com/ ITA 2012 International Conference conferences/taus-asia-translation-summit.html February 13-15, 2012, Jerusalem, Israel. Israel Translators Association 2012 LTTC International Conference www.ita.org.il/index.php?cnt=_conferences April 28-29, 2012, Taipei, Taiwan. The Language Training & Testing Center Outsourcing World Summit www.lttc.ntu.edu.tw/conference2012_eng/index.htm February 20-22, 2012, Lake Buena Vista, Florida USA. International Association of Outsourcing Professionals May www.iaop.org/Content/23/154/1099/Default.aspx ELIA Networking Days Munich Intelligent Content 2012 May 3-5, 2012, Munich, Germany. February 22-24, 2012, Palm Springs, California USA. European Language Industry Association The Rockley Group, www.intelligentcontentconference.com www.elia-association.org/index.php?id=123 March Confab 2012 May 14-16, 2012, Minneapolis, Minnesota USA. Content Strategy Applied Brain Trafﬁc, http://confab2012.com/index.php March 1-2, 2012, London, UK. eBay, contentstrategyapplied.eu 2012 ALC Annual Conference May 16-19, 2012, New Orleans, Louisiana USA. GDC Localization Summit Association of Language Companies March 6, 2012, San Francisco, California USA. http://alcus.org/education/conference.cfm IGDA Game Localization SIG, gdconf.com/conference/gls.html First International Conference on Conference for Software User Assistance Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation March 11-14, 2012, Memphis, Tennessee USA. May 17-19, 2012, Forlì, Italy. WritersUA, www.writersua.com/conference/index.html SSLMIT, SITLeC, http://npit1.sitlec.unibo.it

Going Global 2012 TechComm Summit March 13-15, 2012, London, UK. May 20-23, 2012, Rosemont, Illinois USA. British Council, http://ihe.britishcouncil.org/going-global Society for Technical Communication, http://summit.stc.org

AIIM Conference 2012 LREC 2012 March 20-22, 2012, San Francisco, California USA. May 21-27, 2012, Istanbul, Turkey. Association for Information and Image Management European Language Resources Association www.aiim.org/Events/AIIM-Conference www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2012/lrec2012.htm

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8-11 News/Cal #125.indd 11 12/14/11 12:45 PM 12-13 LockeReview #125.indd 12 12 T | worked intheMiddleEasttosendhomemoney;andherencoun tions, ill-fatedvegetable farmventure andlongabsenceswhilehe lazy andspoiled brothers; herfather’s professional peregrina- the authordescribesherhard-working, no-nonsense mother;her anecdotes are indeed“engaging.” Inadisarmingly guilelessvoice, family and herlife. As the blurbon the back cover promises, the author seems mostateaseandanimated whenwritingabouther experience. amount ofcrossover betweenpersonal memoirandprofessional while theremaining third relates tointerpretation. There is afair sonal memoir, and23%relates toThai-Westernrelationship stories, these annotations reveals that45%of thebookis devoted toper- interesting toaspiring orworkinginterpreters. Aquicktabulationof experience asaninterpreter, whichmightbemost relationship stories”;andtheauthor’s professional social commentarythatfocuses on“Thai-Western the book’s mainthemes:theauthor’s personal story;

MultiLingual The emphasis onpersonal memoiris notsurprising sincethe An annotatedtableofcontentsclearlysetsout ing withprofessional andpersonal success. business ventures andburnout,conclud- (the UnitedStates),marriageanddivorce, and professional,adopted homeland in her experience inJapan,tohertrials, personal nings inIsaan (Thailand)andstudyabroad terpreter, from herrelatively humblebegin- describes theuniqueexperienceofonein- titled Poomsan Beckermightbemore aptlyen- a ThaiandLaoInterpreter Reviews The

An Interpreter’s Journal Interpreter’s Journal:Storiesfrom translator livinginMontreal. Nancy A.Lockeisawriterand January/February 2012 Personal story shows enthusiasm and commitment for the profession Reviewed byNancyA.Locke Journal Interpreter’s The by Benjawan

because it

The Interpreter’s Journal: Journal: Interpreter’s The Stories from a Thai and Lao Stories from aThai and Lao 230 pages, $15.74. 230 pages, Poomsan Publishing, 2011. Poomsan Becker. Paiboon Interpreter by Benjawan Benjawan by - The Sting series describes workingasatranslator andcultural coachforthetelevision ence betweenconsecutive andsimultaneous interpretation. Becker tion contexts, andprovides anopportunitytoexplainthediffer- courtroomthe out of andintosomeequallyinteresting interpreta- can easilyhave more thantencasesperday.”). guage pairworkloadscanbeoverwhelming (“Spanish andChinese varies greatly depending onculture; andthatdependingonlan- forms animportantpartofcourtinterpreting; thatcourtattire for over 200languages; thatnavigatingcomplexethicalissues ing educationcourses every twoyears; hasqualifiedinterpreters system requires itsinterpreters tocomplete30hours of continu- Through personal anecdote, readers learnthattheCaliforniacourt ons, andmentalhealthfacilities”towhichshe willnowhave access. about the“hostofwonderfulplaceslikecountyjails, statepris- Lao interpreterthe courtsystemin California,” Beckerenthuses in having passedtheexam tobecome“thefirst registered Thaiand tion ofherprofessional experiencesasaninterpreter. For example, One chapter (“Thai & Lao Language Services”) takes the reader One chapter(“Thai&LaoLanguageServices”)takesthereader The narrative style dictatestheorganization oftheinformation. The voice doesn’tchangewhentheauthorembarks onadescrip- King oftheHill , providing phoneinterpretation foremergency servicesand, about the idea of maybe living” in the Bay area. about theideaofmaybeliving”inBayarea. softened thetransition andmadeherfeel“comfortable The Thaitempleandgrocery inBerkeley, however, “saw nakedmenwalkingalongTelegraph Avenue.” shockaggravated by jet lagwhen,asshe relates, she up, dude?”),she must have beeninastateofculture seems tobealltherage atotherrestaurants. Shefinds secret,of a rather pungent-smelling ingredient that opens asmall unnamedfast-foodrestaurant. Shelearns supplement thefamilialincome,author’s mother influence herpersonal andprofessional lifechoices. ters with orienting. Inadditiontooverdosing onslang (“What’s day intheSanFrancisco area must have beenquitedis- a matterofmonths itis bannedby themunicipality. ent is ipes withexcellent results. Problem: the secret ingredi- the ingredient atthelocalmarketandaddsittoherrec- Some ofthestoriesare very funny—forinstance, to Despite hermeasured narration ofit,Becker’s first ganja , workingontheDVDtransfer ofthemovie farang (marijuana, for the uninitiated), and within (marijuana,fortheuninitiated),andwithin (foreigners) whowouldprofoundly [email protected] 12/14/11 12:45PM Reviews

back to court, interpreting for a Thai drug- “ladies” (according to an informal survey of see portrayed in commercials for the latest smuggling kingpin. Western men, “good housewives and good clothes, washing machine, or skin-whiten- Chapter 18, “Mistakes and Misinterpre- cooks,” “feminine” and “sexy”) and “the ing product.” tations,” again written in a personal and allure of the handsome foreigner” (read: The book could do with more rigorous anecdotal style, drives home the impor- Western) left me a little cold, as did descrip- editing. Transitions from one subject to tance of quality interpretation and qualified tions of Thai men as inveterate drunks, another are sometimes abrupt and dis- interpreters. Becker describes how a mistake gamblers and philanderers. Some reflec- concerting. Occasionally, tense shifts are translating a Thai expression as unconscious tions just made me sad: “Thai society has ambiguous, which is not surprising, since instead of as unaware of what was going the idea that Eurasian kids are cute and will as Becker explains, “[In Thai, v]erbs in the on “could have changed the nature of the grow up to look like movie stars. Such kids past tense and present tense are the same, case from one of self-defense to attempted are always in demand for advertisements but adverbs of time are used to differentiate murder.” She describes a host of challenges and TV shows, and many do indeed go on them.” There are also some glaring spelling that an interpreter faces: people who speak to become celebrities, regardless of talent.” errors (“Nancy Pelozi”; “when I worked on too quickly, people who mumble and Despite an attempt to put a cheery gloss the movie The Sting, staring Robert Redford people who are emotionally or psychologi- on it, the author’s own sadness pervades . . .”) and typos (“I look at the audience to cally unhinged. Add colloquialisms, neolo- the chapter entitled “Trips to Thailand”: “I find the person I’ll interpreter for.”) gisms and specialized terminology, and can’t say that people today are any happier That said, there is a good deal of infor- environmental issues to the mix, and the than when I was growing up. Years ago we mation to be found amid the anecdotes. complexity of the interpreter’s profession didn’t have much beyond the basics, but Becker’s descriptions of diverse courtroom becomes apparent. Becker writes: “Even a we didn’t feel deprived. Everyone was in situations and brief accounts of confer- chair squeaking or paper rustling can be a the same boat. Now, with the ubiquitous ence interpreting paint a vivid picture of distraction. Most people don’t notice these and gratuitous marketing everywhere, all the professional reality. Her enthusiasm and little sounds, but they can make the inter- villagers want to have what they see pre- commitment to the profession, to the Thai preter miss certain crucial words, especially sented on the television. Their role models community and her new home in the United the word ‘not’. Now that’s an important one are the picture-perfect family [sic] they States are palpable and contagious. M you don’t want to miss.” Becker dons a sociologist’s hat when she describes Thai-Western relationships. Aside from relationships per se, the chapters devoted to the topic contain interesting information about the modern history of Thailand, the diverse cultural and language groups in the region, reflections on culinary matters, the modern penchant for Western-inspired nicknames (“Ball, Win, Boy, Mickey, Bank, Ice, Cream, Cake, Crys- tal”) and intergenerational friction caused by emigration. Invariably, the cultural issues resonate in the courtroom where long, difficult-to-pronounce names, the lack of significance attached to surnames, the penchant for nicknames and frequent name changes motivated by astrology or the advice of a monk create confusion and sometimes, particularly in a Western context, suspicion. Different approaches to transliteration leave even our intrepid Becker stumped at times. The Interpreter’s Journal is not a hand- book or how-to for interpreters. Despite efforts to keep the three themes separated, well-organized and clearly identified, there is a great deal of overlap. For instance, there’s a helpful (if short) bibliography on page 74 in a technically “personal” chapter that a reader might miss if he or she keeps to the chapters identified as “interpreting” chapters. In addition, the chapters on relationships seem out of place in an “interpreter’s journal.” The romantic aspirations of Thai

www.multilingual.com January/February 2012 MultiLingual | 13

12-13 LockeReview #125.indd 13 12/14/11 12:45 PM Enterprise Innovators Lori Thicke

Automating Intel’s

Column multilingual chat

Intel, the world leader in silicon inno- customer support site, we deliver fully automatic vation, develops technologies, products useful translation in five of those languages: Latin and initiatives to continually advance American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, I Simplified Chinese and Korean. Fully 97% of those how people work and live. Founded in languages are done by MT, while 3% is done by 1968 to build semiconductor memory human translation on content for legal, safety, war- products, Intel introduced the world’s ranty and some new products to increase translation memory (TM). We also have the MT system integrated first microprocessor in 1971. Today, Intel with our translation management system for MT plus has over 82,000 employees globally. post-edit. Based in Hillsboro, Oregon, Will Burgett Thicke: What were the gains of using MT? What is the product manager for Translation kind of savings resulted? Will Burgett, Burgett: The most important gain was giving cus- Innovation & Services in Marketing Intel. tomers access to all the customer support informa- Solutions at Intel. tion in their languages. Even if it isn’t always perfect translation, it gives them a more consistent experience so that Thicke: Intel is truly an innovator in this space. How is it that they aren’t navigating and browsing first in their language and Intel was already deploying machine translation (MT) while oth- then back into English. We have a number of methods to mea- ers were just talking about it? sure customer satisfaction with machine translated content, and Burgett: I actually started to look at MT options in 1997 those satisfaction rates compare well with the baseline English when I was a manager in Intel’s International Product Develop- measures. In some MT languages (such as Simplified Chinese) we ment organization. But at that time, the better-performing, even show higher levels of satisfaction than with the English. higher-quality MT systems were still on mainframes, which were Bottom line, our customers are happy to have all the content in extremely expensive with a negative return on investment (ROI). their language, and they are able to get their information and It was only much later, in 2007, through involvement with the solve their problems. Translation Automation User Society (TAUS) that we encoun- The second benefit is the huge cost avoidance and cost sav- tered promising and affordable statistical-based MT solutions. ings. We’re able to output three times more translated content Thicke: When did you first start using MT, and for what kind at half the budget. of content? And last but not least, a project cycle for customer support Burgett: We started using statistical machine translation used to take ten business days, and now our project cycle for (SMT) in 2007 and developed a pilot system for Latin American the MT languages is on an automated 24-hour cycle where any Spanish. We integrated that system into the Intel customer sup- new content added to the customer support knowledgebase is port website to deliver and publish raw translation (no human edit). The support knowledgebase was so huge that with just a human translation option, we had only budget enough to Lori Thicke is cofounder and general manager of Lexcelera, translate a moderate percentage of the English into the differ- cofounder of Translators without Borders and a member ent target languages. Today, of the ten languages on the Intel of the MultiLingual editorial board.

14 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

14-16 Thicke #125.indd 14 12/14/11 12:46 PM Column

automatically translated and published many do, measure the ROI on localizing the ability to support different lan- with no human intervention. their products for their target locales guages in a 24x7x365 mode and find Thicke: But if this process is all auto- and the resulting increases in sales. Intel the talented people who can speak all mated, don’t you worry about random develops and delivers hardware, software, the key languages and have the techni- errors and really bad translations? services and innovative solutions. In such cal skills. Of course, these are also very Burgett: Oh, yes, definitely; we still a rich product ecosystem, with so many expensive resources. Multilingual chat maintain good quality control and assur- market and technology influences, it is can greatly enhance global flexibility ance practices. We conduct periodic a challenge to separate out the revenue and give us more options on where those inspections of our MT sites to look for impact of localization from all the other resources are located geographically. problems, and we have our product sup- influences in that ecosystem. There are so Thicke: What are the challenges you port engineers in the different geographic many environmental variables that drive faced in developing an MT solution for chat? regions looking for issues and submit- sales; it’s a challenge to isolate just the Burgett: Of course there were a num- ting them to a bug-tracking system for impact of support — and much more so ber of challenges, some technology-based, investigation and fixing. We also have a the impact of localized support — from some human-based. Good integration mechanism in place for our customers all the other variables and influences. between two very different applications who know some English, which easily lets But we are working on some ideas and is always a challenge, and such was the them toggle back and forth between the techniques that may help us make those case with the MT system and the chat translated and English pages. kinds of measurements in the near application. Neither was designed with Thicke: Software and products, espe- future. the other in mind, so you have to come cially global consumer products such as Thicke: So now Intel is once again up with some creative solutions as well cell phones, may be localized into 10, 20 pushing ahead. Multilingual chat strikes as some less desirable workarounds. In or 30 languages, but the online content me as the next great frontier for MT. the chat application you have both the that supports global clients is tradition- What business drivers are behind Intel’s client and agent sides of the application, ally not localized into the same number interest in automating multilingual chat? and both have to see the text in their of languages. That may mean whole mar- Burgett: In general, chat is a con- native language as well as the translated kets that don’t have access to support tact medium that has seen tremendous language. In addition, we wanted to add a content in their language. Why is that? growth in recent years. Customers seem feature that allowed a reverse translation Burgett: It’s a universal problem for to be more satisfied with chat than with for real-time feedback on the quality of anybody who develops international other kinds of contact mediums, includ- the translation. On the human side of the products. Money! For some products, the ing phone and e-mail. Chat is also much equation was the wide range of opin- margins may be so small, the competi- less expensive, and a good agent can ion on what quality is and what is good tion fierce, or the volume of content handle three or more customers at the enough for the purpose of reasonable too great to be able to afford human same time. One of the biggest chal- communication. We put a pretty good rat- translation and still make a profit. That’s lenges using chat on a global scale is ing system in place to help our evaluators why translation automation is so critical. For example, the customer support site has 10,000 files that have to be translated, and without MT it would cost many millions of dollars more. It is also why organizations such as the TAUS Data Association (TDA) are so vital. Sharing TMs through TDA helps us train and customize MT engines, increase leveraging and reuse of translations, and improve translation quality by finding the right terminology. Thicke: Can we as an industry determine precisely the percentage increase of sales that result in a market when support content becomes available in the local language? Burgett: That’s certainly the Holy Grail for us GILT folks. Research by industry analysts points out that internet customers prefer buying from sites localized in their languages; developers favor buying from companies that deliver localized software tools and documentation; and most customers want their troubleshoot- ing and support information in their language. Software companies can, and

www.multilingual.com January/February 2012 MultiLingual | 15

14-16 Thicke #125.indd 15 12/14/11 12:46 PM Column

and quality assurance (QA) team score the sales. We developed three prototypes environments, such as sales. But more quality of the real-time translation, but using different MT systems, but the needs to be tested specifically in that people still have widely varying opinions same chat application. Our test lan- specific environment. based on their likes and dislikes. guages were English < > Latin American Thicke: Are you planning to also trans- Thicke: Tell us about the pilot you ran. Spanish and English < > Simplified late community content? Burgett: Our objective was to research Chinese. The team created eight differ- Burgett: We’re interested in multi- the quality, performance and usability of ent chat scenarios, for a total of 4,000 lingual collaboration and interaction using MT to deliver multilingual interaction chats. Using a Likert system to evaluate opportunities of all kinds. Translating capability for both customer support and the quality of the multilingual chats, we social media and dynamic content in real first did a baseline evaluation using our time is the big wave of the near future. localization QA team. For the full evalu- Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, commu- ation, we recruited support agents from nities or blogs, people want to commu- the Latin American Call Center and the nicate and to share opinions, ideas and People’s Republic of China. These agents experiences. They want to collaborate, played the roles of both customers and debate and define, and they want to do agents who scored the chats based on it globally. User-generated content is the Likert scale. Besides quality, we also infinite, valuable and ephemeral. Only collected data on performance and translation automation in real time can usability. tackle this tsunami of content. And far Thicke: What key metrics were you from putting human translators out of measuring? Were they the right metrics? work, I think it’s going to create a whole Burgett: Using the Likert scale for the new universe of business opportunities quality scoring, we used 1 to 5, where a for them. score of 1 meant that the translation was Thicke: What is the importance of “Not Understandable” and 5 indicated community content to Intel? the translation was “Understandable and Burgett: Social media, including com- Actionable, most text translated accu- munities, can build relevance in a mes- rately.” Using some good data analysis sage because it involves the audience and techniques, we crunched the numbers a voice of many over the voice of a few. and came up with a variety of different We are building loyalty and brand senti- ways to look at the data. Lastly, we had ment through our communities by better all the participants fill out a survey and understanding our customers’ needs that feedback form to get more detailed opin- help us find the innovative products and ions, experiences and sentiment. I think solutions. Communities are “the big ear” for the most part these were all good to customer value, and we must be able metrics to use, although I think we could to do that listening and communicating have used some automated measure- in their language. ments such as BLEU and NIST to get some Thicke: Do you intend to do any contrasting measurement perspectives. normalization of source text to trans- Thicke: In our work with rules-based form abbreviations such as LOL and just engines, we find it pretty easy to make the plain idiosyncratic spelling so that an MT leap to customer support content when engine can better recognize the words? the engines have already been customized Burgett: Ah, yes, this kind of unstruc- on product terminology. With SMT for tured, Wild West content has many chat, were you able to use essentially the perils for translation automation. Short same engines you built for support? Or did answer: yes, we need to work on it you have to create new engines? using multiple techniques, including Burgett: Actually, we used a broad normalization. range of training methods and found Thicke: So, what’s the future for that we got good results from all three of multilingual collaboration and real-time our prototypes. translation at Intel? Thicke: What were the results of Burgett: Paul S. Otellini, our president your pilot? and CEO, has said that “Intel has arguably Burgett: Our conclusion was that an audacious vision: This decade we will yes, indeed, we can get good results create and extend computing technology integrating MT into chat and that the to connect and enrich the lives of every performance and quality are good person on earth.” And we will connect enough for customer support type and enrich those lives in their languages. environments. We also feel that the Translation automation will play a grow- quality levels would work well in other ing role in that vision. M

16 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

14-16 Thicke #125.indd 16 12/14/11 12:46 PM October 6-8, 2010 4-6 June 2012 Le Palais des Congrès de Paris Paris, France

October 17-19, 2012 Bell Harbor Conference Center Seattle, Washington

Sponsorship and exhibit information available on request. [email protected] [email protected]

www.localizationworld.com

17 LocWorld#125.indd 63 12/14/11 12:47 PM Off the Map Kate Edwards

Comparative cultural values Column

Whenever we travel to or experience other like to illustrate this point with a couple of examples, particularly ones where Western culture tends to differ from much of cultures, our ever-comparative brains look for the rest of the world. Wsimilarities and differences and then weigh those One of the preeminent issues of Western culture of late has against any potential emotions, memories and been the ongoing debate over the degree to which systems of ideas we may already possess about a specific faith and belief should or should not be integrated with systems of government and public administration. In the United culture. The fact that we all do this is completely States, this embroiled discourse is labeled “the separation of natural, and it’s built upon an innate sense of curi- church and state,” and it has continued to polarize segments osity that we all possess in childhood and hope- of the population. Indeed, this has also been a discussion fully carry into our adult lives. echoed in many other Western nations. However, my interest in this example isn’t the debate, but rather how the interaction Most of us absorb these observations and store them away as of faith and government may affect content development and interesting, entertaining or enlightening pieces of knowledge distribution. that help us appreciate the diversity of human culture while As I’ve mentioned previously, we as content creators and helping us reflect upon our own. Unfortunately for some people, localizers must be especially sensitive to the underlying dynamic such observations are a means to judge, divide and create hier- forces of the cultures into which our products and services are archies of “us versus them,” “haves versus have-nots” and so on. distributed. If a certain culture has a more obvious faith-based Throughout history, some of the worst aspects of human nature approach to its daily activities and public administration, then have revealed themselves from this perspective. the guidelines regarding acceptability will be different from a So what does this have to do with content production and culture based on a more secular approach. Generally speaking, localization? Quite a bit, actually. Our keen ability to observe a society based on faith tends to be less flexible to the context and compare is the same force that can really open doors to in which information appears because there is a higher standard localized and culturalized content or very quickly close them. to which it is adhering. In such cases, if something potentially The core issue is that of expectations and values, and how one’s problematic appears in any context, there is higher potential for set of cultural expectations is automatically compared against local backlash. any kind of information. We make a value judgment in terms This whole issue came to mind once again on a recent trip I of what aspects of that information do or do not fit with our took to Thailand. During my extended stay there, I was fasci- personal and broader cultural norms. When the assumptions nated to observe how this notion of the division between faith contained in the content are juxtaposed with our cultural and government stands in sharp contrast to the debate raging expectations, it’s often easier to perceive how certain informa- in Western countries. In Thailand it doesn’t hold much mean- tion or cultural norms in one context may conflict with the ing. To provide more context, Thailand’s population is approxi- expectations for what fits in another. Thus, if a product or batch mately 95% Buddhist while the country has historical influences of information contains content that doesn’t fit with a person’s or culture’s expectations and is blatant enough to disrupt the intended experience, then the stage is set for potential problems. Kate Edwards is a geographer and the principal consultant of When we produce content for global distribution, we must be Englobe, a Seattle-based consultancy for geocultural intelligence keenly aware of this human propensity for value judgment, as it and content strategy. Previously, Kate spent over 13 years at can certainly influence the effectiveness of our information. I’d Microsoft as a geographer and its senior geopolitical strategist.

18 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

18-19 Edwards#125.indd 18 12/14/11 12:48 PM Column

Figure 1: A statue depicting the god Vishnu riding on Garuda. Figure 2: The Thai government’s official seal depicting Garuda. from Chinese and regional folk beliefs. many businesses bearing a royal endorse- become such a fundamental element Buddhism manifests itself overtly in ment, and it is also used on all official of modern business and society (not Thai society, with a great many temple documents issued by Thailand’s govern- without its complications still), while in complexes around the country and the ment. As a Westerner, this blatant mixing other locales such as Japan it’s slowly prevalence of large stupa monuments of religious imagery with government emerging as an issue requiring broader — mound-like buildings containing function was surprising to see as my own consideration. Buddhist relics. On a local level, nearly cultural context doesn’t maintain this In 2009, Microsoft was criticized over every household and business maintains expectation. an image used to market its business pro- a san phra phum or spirit house, which Another example from the Western ductivity tools. The image included three is meant to serve as a shelter for the perspective is the concept of “diversity,” figures in the United States — an Asian- building’s guardian spirit, usually known as related to ethnicity. In the United American man, an African-American as Chao Thi or Phra Phum. Offerings of States and many Western countries, man and a Caucasian woman. However, flowers and food are often given at the diversity is a critical consideration in in Poland, the African-American man’s small shrines, which are typically located many areas of life and work. Sometimes head was sloppily replaced with that of near the front of the property. it has been taken to extremes in either a Caucasian man. Once this difference Faith is overt and pervasive in Thai direction, but most people accept the was discovered, a debate over diversity society, but it also extends to the gov- need and value of both cultural and eth- ensued and accusations of racism arose. ernment as well; it’s not just a cultural nic diversity in our societies. And yet, this Was it racism or the adapting of content institution but one that has become concept can be pretty foreign in non- to fit local expectations, when Poland, entwined in political life. In actuality, Western locales — let’s consider Japan as like Japan, is dominated by one ethnic there was a movement in Thailand as a case study. The Japanese population is group (96% ethnic Poles)? recent as 2007 to revise the country’s 98.5% ethnic Japanese, leaving a small It’s easy for Western cultures to make constitution so that Buddhism is estab- 1.5% minority of non-Japanese, about assumptions about other locales and lished as the official religion. How- 1% of which is Chinese and Korean. impose our values, especially when cer- ever, this defeated proposal was quite With such an unsurprising dominance tain aspects of our societies have become controversial and ignited a significant of ethnic Japanese given the geography so ingrained or polarized. While we can’t debate that even garnered the atten- and history of the country, it’s reasonable help our propensity for comparison, the tion of Queen Sirikit, who expressed her that such a culture hasn’t had to deal development and the distribution of concerns against it. with the issue on a grand scale. content require us to step beyond our Nonetheless, the government is This isn’t suggesting that Japan is free personal context and find some level of infused with aspects of Buddhist belief. of diversity issues or that the subject is objectivity. Our function is to observe the One example is the use of the figure of ignored — far from it. The country has differences and then out of respect for Garuda. Garuda is a bird-like humanoid long dealt with issues of internal gender local expectations to adjust our strate- figure in Buddhist and Hindu beliefs that diversity as well as social class dispari- gies without making a value judgment, serves as a vehicle for the god Vishnu ties, and in more recent times it’s had to unless a company is intending to make a (Figure 1). This character of Garuda can confront the issue of ethnic and cultural point of imposing its own cultural values, be seen in many religious contexts, but diversity as its shrinking population which usually doesn’t go over well. In it’s interesting in Thailand that Garuda growth requires increased immigration the course of localizing and culturalizing has a political connotation (Figure 2). to maintain a competitive economy, a content, we need to be mindful of these The figure, which is known locally as the trend many Western countries are fac- differences and address them sensitively Krut Pha, can be seen on the exterior of ing as well. In the West, diversity has and appropriately. M

www.multilingual.com January/February 2012 MultiLingual | 19

18-19 Edwards#125.indd 19 12/14/11 12:48 PM Perspectives Andrzej Zydro´n

Cloud computing, SaaS and translation tools Column

Over the past 20 years we have seen substan- The other thing that has characterized the CAT tools industry tial progress in the field of computer-assisted is the lack of support for standards. Take word counts as an translation (CAT) tools and technologies, and example. There are as a many different word counts as there are O CAT tools, although a standard called GMX/V has existed since with the advent of cheap desktop computing 2007. Some companies even had different products that produce and the internet we have seen the barriers to differing word counts. entry drop. To start a localization company, all Things are about to change dramatically. In my 21 years working in localization I have never ceased to be amazed you need is a PC, an internet connection and at how inefficient the traditional desktop paradigm is for a a list of potential customers and translators. highly collaborative environment such as translation. E-mail- Currently, over 80% of the global translation ing files backward and forward, shifting work from transla- market is run by small to medium-sized enter- tors to reviewers and then possibly back again all introduces delays and potential points of failure. Google, SalesForce.com, prise (SME) organizations. Twitter and Facebook have shown the future is not on the desktop, but on the internet. In the last ten years we have This fragmentation, however, has in many ways acted as a seen a tremendous improvement in internet bandwidth and barrier to CAT tools adoption. Large translation companies technology. Ten years ago, I was using a 54Bbps modem, and can afford to build automated workflows and CAT tools or I am currently connecting at 40Mbps using FTTC technol- could buy them from their competitors, but for many SMEs ogy. Browser technology, standards and software have also this is less feasible. By and large, SMEs have to rely on desk- progressed dramatically over this period, and this trend will top CAT tools. no doubt continue. In 2010, we saw the introduction of a Although these can be attractive as solutions for SMEs, they new breed of CAT and translation management system (TMS) nevertheless force them into an ever-increasing dependency on based on the SaaS (software as a service) model. the tool providers. The PC licensing model means that customers are on a constant treadmill of upgrades that may add little in Benefits of SaaS terms of improving the usability of the tools. There are a number One of the great benefits of a SaaS solution is that it does of other issues with desktop CAT tools. For language service not involve a major one-off purchase of a software license. providers (LSPs), there is the problem of how they provide access You pay monthly and should not commit to more than a one- to these tools for their translators. Since most translators are to-three month subscription. Full support and maintenance subcontractors and are usually located geographically far from are included in the subscription price. A proper SaaS imple- the company, it can be difficult to provide them with the neces- mentation will allow customers to vary their licenses from sary CAT tools. This often means that the translators have to buy month to month. As we all know, translation work comes in the tools themselves. peaks and troughs, so you should only pay for the number of Let’s establish some fundamental principles here. LSPs do not licenses required per month. translate; they project manage translation and localization jobs. With a true SaaS you should get at least three to four soft- Translators and reviewers should not have to pay for CAT tools. ware updates automatically during a year, insuring that you get They should have the necessary translation memory (TM) matching, terminology identification and so on prepared for them in advance and have the necessary tools provided for them for free. Andrzej Zydroń has been working in IT for 35 years, 22 of which Any such tools should be completely intuitive and learned within have been in localization-related systems at Xerox, Ford and 15 minutes. Oxford University Press.

20 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

20-21 Zydron#125.indd 20 12/14/11 1:27 PM Column

all of the improvements to the software ture, allow users to safely migrate their files via e-mail with all of the associated in the subscription price. SaaS systems, assets from system to system without problems, such as files being incorrectly due to the nature of the development fear of lock-in. This is critical as the marked as spam. With a SaaS solution, process associated with server-based industry still suffers from this propri- all the assets are updated and shared in systems, can benefit from a constantly etary mentality. Even Open Standards are real time, and the data remains securely improving environment with regular “extended” or so badly implemented by on the server. updates. There is no two-to-four years’ some tool providers as to make mov- Another interesting feature of wait for the latest version of the soft- ing data as difficult as possible. With a browser-based user interfaces is that ware, and you are guaranteed access to properly implemented Open Standards the design tends to be much cleaner and the latest version. system, these issues do not arise. functional than with desktop packages. In addition, you are supplying your With a browser-based environment, the The translator can concentrate on what translators with tools that require no support and asset sharing issues associated he or she has to do: translate, rather than licenses on their part and that do not with desktop packages disappear — unless, having to be a filter or obscure package require installation and training. Issues of course, your internet goes down or you feature expert. such as having to split up large files into live in an area with spotty service. As a last A well-implemented SaaS browser- smaller units for translators or joining resort, if bandwidth is a problem, you can based platform will support all major very small files together to form a viable always download the translatable file in a browsers, thus allowing translators who translation package cease to be an issue. standard format such as XLIFF and work use MacOS or Linux to be able to use A well-architected SaaS solution will be offline, but you lose the benefits of interac- their existing platforms to translate able to handle files of infinite size — just tive real-time sharing. online. Small and medium-sized LSPs can try putting a 500-page word file through In addition, the SaaS support staff now compete on an equal footing with a desktop CAT tool or join multiple have direct access to any problems that the industry giants. They can have access small files into a viable package size for might arise and are able to provide a to even better technology and tools than translation. Such a system will be able to level of support unimaginable in a desk- the industry leaders all for a modest handle multiple translators working on top-based package. An added advantage monthly outlay. SaaS TMS and CAT tools the same file at the same time as well as is that multiple translators can work on have created a completely new environ- reviewers and correctors. the same file at the same time, obviat- ment that will change the localization Major LSPs that provide TMS and CAT ing the additional onerous task of cut- marketplace ecology for good. This is solutions say that they do not make any ting up files into smaller multiples and indeed a pivotal moment in the industry money from software sales and that this then the equally difficult task of trying and one that will mean more competi- is merely a component of their strategy. to stitch them back together again tion, better tools and the ability to take However, they may nonetheless try to after translation and review. Having a on the challenge of an ever increasing force subcontractors to use and pay for browser-based server centric system workload as the demand for translation using their software. The situation gets also means that there is no need to send constantly increases. M much worse with any SaaS solution offered by a major LSP. Locking in all of your linguistic assets with a competitor From the leaders of Open Source MT: is a dubious strategy at best. You not only effectively hand over all of your - Build your own engines translator information but also your TMs and terminology. You become a mere vassal of your competitor and are not - Update at will only forced to give them vital informa- D I Y tion, but also have to pay them for the - Retrain with new material privilege. A proper SaaS TMS/CAT solution will - Create new engines allow you to integrate a customizable pangea.com.mt web-based ordering and payment system - Control Panel & Stats into your own website so that customers can upload, get quotes, pay online pangeanic.com and initiate the workflow for translation - Customize your own SMT jobs. This gives small and medium-sized LSPs some of the same advantages that - Integrate MT in your workflow large LSPs have. With a SaaS solution, you can also use advanced technology - SaaS to integrate your SaaS instance directly with customers’ content management or workflow systems. - MT API developments for CAT & Web Open Standards systems, especially S M T those implementing the OAXAL architec-

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20-21 Zydron#125.indd 21 12/14/11 1:27 PM The automated interpreter

Hassan Sawaf & Jonathan Litchman Technology

Earlier this year on Jeopardy, IBM’s Wat- facturers and FedEx in parallel with the Defense Advanced son won over $77,147 and showcased the lat- Research Project Agency’s project SUR that ultimately resulted in a system that could recognize about 1,000 words. The earli- est advances in speech recognition and language est versions of ASR were able to understand digits and simple Etechnology with its answer to the Final Jeopardy words and were precursors to the automated systems employed question, “William Wilkinson’s ‘An account of by airlines and banks today, with which many of us have the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia’ become all too familiar: “If you would like to speak to a customer representative, say representative.” inspired this author’s most famous novel” with ASR took another big step during the IT revolution of the “Who is Bram Stoker?” 1990s. In 1991, Philips launched the VOICE System 4000, which was capable of longer, more complex dictation and iPhone’s much-discussed Siri is not only the virtual assistant to quickly became standard in hospitals. Dictation systems were millions, but she is fending off marriage proposals with a simplic- also popular in law offices, hospitals and other industries where ity and grace that belie the technology’s sophistication: “My End paperwork and forms dominated. The government was also User Licensing Agreement does not cover marriage. My apolo- developing and utilizing ASR systems for security and monitor- gies.” In addition to processing long voice commands and syn- ing applications. thesizing a response, Siri is interpreting the meaning of language. In combination with the vast increase in computational Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has been advancing power, the internet played a large part in fueling the latest rapidly, hitting the consumer market at full force and making breakthrough in today’s ASR technology. ASR technology is a case for being the hottest technology of 2011 and possibly now able to gather more context for the input it receives and is 2012. Today, the most sophisticated consumer and enterprise able to use statistical probability to determine the most likely machine translation (MT) engines have fully integrated ASR output. In other words, the computer is now thinking and inter- technology for speech-to-speech and speech-to-text translation preting the user’s meaning. However, challenges remain. capabilities. Simply put, ASR is a game changer with far reaching implications for businesses, consumers, translators and Context challenges the language service industry. Imagine traveling abroad and While ASR and MT both use computers to interpret meaning, holding conversations without having to learn the language. ASR is much more sensitive to incorrect use. The main reason for Machines are breaking the language barrier and enabling cross- this is because there are many additional variables that influence lingual conversations. The technology is here, after more than the quality of ASR. These variables can include the positioning 40 years of development and research. of a microphone, background noise, accents and speech patterns. Many people are surprised to hear that at its core, ASR tech- When translation enters the picture, the obstacles facing nology is actually fairly old — ancient in technology years. In ASR multiply exponentially. The largest challenge by far is a fact, in the 1970s ASR was first applied by Faceplate manu- lack of context. For example, if the user would like to translate an English sentence into Arabic, the automated interpreter does not know if it is addressing a single male or a group of females, for example. This knowledge Hassan Sawaf is the chief scientist for SAIC’s is critical for the machine to translate the sentence linguistics and cultural intelligence operation. correctly, as some languages use gender and number Jonathan Litchman is a senior vice president to generate the correct form of a term. An unwitting at SAIC and leads the company’s linguistics mistake can offend the addressee, as the linguistic dif- and cultural intelligence operation. ferentiators have significant cultural meaning.

22 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

22-24 Sawaf #125.indd 22 12/14/11 1:28 PM Technology

A lack of context is also to blame for approaches. Siri is an example of a rule- MT, its impact on businesses competing the classic MT mistake when a word has based language-comprehension system in an increasingly global marketplace multiple meanings and the machine does behind statistical ASR. promises to be immense. ASR is not not know which to select. For example, SMT involves the use of previously likely to be used for formal or important in translating “How do you get to the translated content to determine which cross-lingual business matters such as bank?” the user could be referring to the words and phrases have the highest prob- speeches or board meetings. However, financial institution or the river, dependability of conveying the correct mean- it will enable informal cross-lingual ing on the location and whether he or ing. However, this requires a significant communication on a scale where human she has a checkbook or a fishing pole in amount of electronic translated data for interpreter involvement is impractical. hand. the complex algorithms to be effective. This is not an insignificant achievement. This is why, even with the multiple Watson is an example of a statistical- Human interaction and communication approaches and variables that impact based language-comprehension system form the core of business and real-time ASR and translation quality, the accuracy behind statistical ASR. meetings, which are often where real of a system correlates highest with the A true hybrid approach integrates work is accomplished. amount of effort and time spent tailor- rule-based and statistical methods into Over the years, technology has become ing the machine for a specific context. In a single engine. This has several advan- easier to use, less cumbersome and more the advertising world, copy will refer to tages for MT, ASR and their integration. personalized, which will further extend the text in an advertisement, whereas in In 2006, the National Institute of Stan- ASR’s impact on the business world. For most industries the intended meaning is dards and Technology’s Open Machine example, the early days of video con- to duplicate. This leads to misconceptions Translation Evaluation revealed hybrid ferencing featured a plethora of bulky regarding the quality of MT in the transla- approaches to have the highest accura- equipment including heavy monitors tion community, as many are unfamiliar cies, especially on noisy data (speech and and large cameras. It was thought to be with tailored, more accurate systems. inaccurate text input). Also, combining unlikely that this equipment was going the two systems allows the system to to be mobilized for anything but impor- Approaches to MT do more with less. Hybrid systems can tant, large meetings. ASR and MT were two very divergent translate phrases or sentence fragments, Today, most desktop computers, laptops fields until the 1990s, when there was a as well as develop new languages faster and even phones have video conferencing move toward integrating the two tech- and with less training data. In other capabilities enabling small, informal and nologies. ASR was housed in the engi- words, hybrid systems use the best of impromptu meetings to be held on an neering and signal processing disciplines, both worlds to overcome the context unprecedented scale. ASR and MT will while MT was a focus of the linguistics, challenges human language technology allow these meetings to be held across bor- literature and art fields. With speech faces. ders and languages so that businesses can being central to language and human With ASR technology advancing rap- be better coordinated and more efficient. communication, this integration was only idly and becoming fully integrated into Just as video conferencing became the a matter of time, but the internet, with its large amount of video and audio data, drove the integration of ASR and MT. Integrating ASR and MT into a single platform is important to ensure there are no errors in translation that occur when one engine’s corpus has a word the other does not. This is cutting-edge technol- Profitable localization company based in the ogy, and there are few fully integrated Middle East, with more than 5 million dollars in products available. The type or approach of the MT engine revenues and growth over 30% a year, is looking is a significant factor in the successful integration of ASR. For those unfamiliar to be acquired. with MT technology, there are three main approaches: rule-based (RBMT), statistical (SMT), and hybrid (combining rule- Only serious potential buyers are welcome based and statistical). to email [email protected] with information RBMT applies hand-crafted rules used to analyze and translate one language about yourself, contact details and information to another. Because languages are filled about the company you represent. with irregularities, words with multiple meanings and phrases with meanings beyond their literal translation, RBMT on its own might miss some semantic meaning and can be less accurate — or just more difficult to read — than other

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industry standard the more user friendly it lation technology. There are even phone translators have adopted MT to a stun- became, ASR and MT technology are on commercials urging people to rethink the ning degree. A survey presented at ProZ. the same trajectory. possible by showing an English speaker com’s Great Translation Debate revealed In addition to the vital role ASR and using his phone to translate his sentence that 25% of freelancers used MT three MT will likely play in internal commu- for an elderly Italian man, despite the com- years ago compared to the 60% who do nications within the enterprise, they will pany not having the technology in-house. so now. have an external role as well. ASR and In other words, the consumer technology ASR does not increase efficiency of MT will be able to help businesses cross is not as widespread as commercials or the translation like MT does, and so it is more the language divide to communicate smart phone app market would lead you likely to enable translation on a more with their customers. to believe. informal level and meet unmet demands For example, the New Jersey Depart- However, other technology compa- rather than redirect business or modify ment of Health is currently issuing tablet nies are developing competing offerings translator work processes. ASR combined devices with speech translation programs for consumers. The next generation of with MT will potentially increase business to health care workers in clinics across the consumer speech translation applications opportunities for translators and LSPs, state so they can better communicate with will be tailored for a specific purpose or even though it is unlikely to affect the patients who do not speak English. While industry, such as travel. This will provide interpretation business. The increase of the program is in its early stages, so far it greater accuracy by contextualizing the multimedia content on the web increases has been deemed a success and illustrates environment or purpose for which the the opportunity for translation if the that the regular use of ASR for transla- technology will be deployed. Also, con- speech is converted into transcripts. Many tion services in the workplace is not in the sumers will be able to utilize these appli- of these transcripts will need to be post- distant future, either; it is here today. cations when they do not have an internet edited and will increase the demand for connection, which is not always available human post-editors. Sheer volume makes Future consumerization when traveling. it impractical for the vast amounts of ASR technology has made and will ASR and MT will not likely be used multimedia online to be translated by continue to make waves in the consumer in formal situations or for long com- humans alone. marketplace. Smart phones have utilized munications such as lectures, but rather ASR may also reinforce a concept for ASR for years, with Siri being the lat- it will enable informal conversations at translation services that MT has already est, most advanced example. While it a level where the expense of a human introduced — the idea of “acceptable remains to be seen if ASR will be used for translator doesn’t make sense. No lon- inaccuracy.” Businesses will continue to lengthy tasks or processing documents, ger will travelers have to flip through determine the level of accuracy needed ASR holds tremendous promise to add an English-to-Spanish dictionary to ask for specific purposes and will seek the productivity to people’s everyday lives by a Madrileño where they can find the most cost-effective offering at that level more quickly accomplishing small tasks nearest bathroom. The automated inter- of translation. Automated translation throughout the day. preter will enable natural conversation and inaccuracies may be acceptable in an Integrated ASR and MT consumer appli- in real time, but human translators and internal chat, whereas human translation cations are another story. The technology interpreters need not worry. MT has and full localization will be required for an is still very advanced for the consumer quickly developed from a novelty to a ad campaign. In other words, businesses market. While there are multiple con- technology that has redefined the lan- will want to control the level of transla- sumer applications for speech translation guage service industry. Today, most lan- tion they need and pay accordingly. available for smart phones, in reality they guage service providers (LSPs) use some Both ASR and MT technology advances are just different user interfaces utilizing form of MT to increase the efficiency of will move from word-to-word translation Google Translate as the main speech trans- their human translators. Even freelance toward advancing the art and meaning of communication for businesses and individuals. More languages will be able to be translated. It’s entirely possible and even plausible that the language barrier will disappear within the next decade. The translations will become more accurate as the technologies are able to gather additional context from inputs outside of speech, such as GPS or optic technologies. The applications for the technology in the immediate future are numerous as well. The technology could be used to automate closed captioning across languages and the implications for the traditional business supply chain are tremendous. It’s promising technology, even if it’s not quite Star Trek’s Universal Translator yet. M

24 | MultiLingual January/February 2012 [email protected]

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Machine translation for less-resourced languages

Andrejs Vasiljevs, & Indra S m te

We have been witnesses to the evolution from tor currently provides MT for more than 50 languages. However, human to machine-assisted translation. This is a for smaller languages such as Latvian or Estonian, translation propitious time for rapid advances in language quality is quite poor, particularly for domain-specific texts. While large languages have the benefit of large markets Wtechnologies. We now have enough computing that successfully amortize investments in proprietary systems, power to support the complex algorithms that smaller languages also suffer from smaller consumer markets drive statistical machine translation (SMT) and and lower overall translation volumes. Many producers of goods and services supply content mostly in larger languages powerful open-source tools like Moses. In recent because the cost of human translation into smaller languages years, SMT has become a major developmental is prohibitively high and the quality of existing MT solutions is breakthrough by providing a cost-efficient and insufficient. In the localization and translation industry, huge fast way to build and use machine translation pools of parallel texts in a variety of industry formats have been accumulated, but the application of this data has not yet been (MT) systems. fully utilized in modern MT. At the same time, this industry is experiencing unrelenting pressure on efficiency and perfor- However, even recent advances fall short of fulfilling expec- mance. Clients expect more to be translated in nearly real time tations regarding MT systems. The quality of an SMT system at lower prices. largely depends on the size of training data. Obviously the Presently, integration of MT in localization services is in its majority of available parallel data has been generated by major early stages and is mostly the realm of large agencies working languages. MT works by statistically comparing the parallel with the large languages. The cost of developing specialized corpora of two languages and calculating the probabilities that MT solutions is prohibitive to most players in the localization are used to generate the most likely translation. As a result, and translation industry, while the quality and confidentiality SMT systems for the most widely used languages are of much afforded by the free generic MT offerings are not sufficient to better quality than systems for less-resourced languages. reap substantial efficiency gains in the professional localization This quality gap is further broadened by the linguistic struc- industry setting. ture of many smaller languages. Languages such as Latvian, MT has been a puzzle in the area of natural language pro- Lithuanian and Estonian, to name just a few, have a complex cessing since its inception in the early 1940s. Historically, three morphological structure and free word order. To learn this main MT strategies have been prominent: direct, interlingual additional complexity from corpus data by statistical methods, and transfer. The rules-based transfer MT strategy with a rich proportionally much larger volumes of training data are needed translation lexicon has returned good translation results and than for languages with a simpler linguistic structure. found its application in many commercial MT systems, such Another drawback preventing wider implementation of MT is its general nature. Although free web translators provide rea- Andrejs Vasil,jevs is the cofounder and chairman of the board sonable quality for many language pairs, of Tilde, a European language technology and localization they perform poorly for domain and user- company involved in several pan-European R&D projects. specific texts. Current free systems cannot be As the business development director at Tilde, Indra adjusted for particular terminology and style S m te drives innovation in language technologies at requirements. For example, Google Transla- Tilde to serve the needs of less-resourced languages.

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as SYSTRAN, PROMT and others. How- 1 Upload your texts or select free data from LetsMT! public repository. ever, this strategy requires immense time and human resource investments to incorporate new language pairs or to enhance translation quality. The more competitive SMT approach has been getting ever-growing traction since the first research results in the late 1980s with the Candide project at IBM for an Eng- lish-to-French translation system. The SMT strategy, first suggested in 1949 by Warren Weaver and then abandoned for 2 Create and train your system. several decades until the late 1980s, has proven to be fruitful approach to foster development of MT. Cost-effectiveness and translation quality are the main reasons the SMT paradigm has become Add more texts the dominant current framework for MT 4 for training. theory and practice. With the advent of the web, the wide availability of data in digital form and the cost reductions experienced in the computing power have made this approach the most potent. In a majority of cases, SMT research and Translate with it online development activities have focused on a 3 or use from where you work. dozen of widely used languages, creating a technological gap for “smaller” under- resourced languages. The rules-based approach requires a large investment in developing elaborate supporting tools such as morphology analyzers, syntactic parsers, extensive Figure 1: Conceptual workflow of the LetsMT! dictionaries, and a complex set of hundreds of interrelated rules for analyzing, transferring and generating output sentences. Belgium Bulgaria Czech Republic Platform for SMT development Estonia Germany Building an MT system is a compli- Localization Services: Hungary Latvia cated task that requires expert knowl- Adapt to the local market. Lithuania China edge and the necessary infrastructure. Slovenia Russia We thought that it would be possible to Slovakia Poland create an online MT factory that would USA simplify MT development for smaller languages and specific domains. This concept started our work on a cloud- based platform. What are the characteristics of a good platform for the SMT development? It Individual needs call for individual must be easy to use, with no complicated solutions. We customize our code. It must process and store your approach to localization to meet your localization needs in a cost data, taking care of a variety of formats effective way. and alignment of parallel sentences. We deliver languages. Worldwide. International production facilities SMT training should be a few mouse clicks away, and then you should be able Cutting edge technology to access and use the results in a familiar

Technical translation teams tool whenever and wherever you need [email protected] Fully staffed engineering to translate. It would be great to have www.skrivanek.com department someone do the heavy lifting and collect additional corpora to improve quality.

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platform is to share resources. The platform provides a repository of data collected by project partners and by the users of letsmt.com. You take your data, supplement it with the data already provided on the platform and generate your MT engine (Figure 2). Although the project is endeavoring to accumulate large collections of parallel texts in a variety of industry formats, languages and domains, the most successful data collection effort is the online repository of translation memory (TM) data by the Figure 2: LetsMT! architecture. TAUS Data Association (www. tausdata.org). TAUS is a visionary In order to continue its commitment ing open-source SMT technologies to pioneer in the data collection give-and- to reducing the technology gap for small develop an online collaborative platform get approach. To further advance beneﬁts languages we became involved in the for sharing data and building MT sys- provided by the TDA, LetsMT! is working European Union-supported LetsMT! pro- tems (Figure 1). on the integration of its MT generation ject. In its quest for both language diversity LetsMT! provides a simple interface to services with the TDA data repository. The and facilitating cross-border communica- step you through the process of creat- uniqueness of the LetsMT! platform lies tion, the European Union (EU) is supporting your own MT engine. The volume of in its commitment to the privacy of data. ing projects that can use easily accessible, open-source parallel resources is limited, Although you may use publicly available affordable technologies to bridge the lan- which is a critical problem for SMT, data and share your own, other users guage divide in a multilingual world. The since translation systems trained on cannot see the content of the corpora or LetsMT! consortium includes the project data from a particular domain, such as download them out of the platform. It can coordinator Tilde, Universities of Edin- parliamentary proceedings, will perform be used only for the generation of MT burgh, Zagreb, Copenhagen and Uppsala, poorly when used to translate texts from engines. If you chose not to share your the localization company Moravia and the a different domain, such as news articles. data, it cannot be seen or used by other semantic technology company SemLab. To attack the most difﬁcult problem for LetsMT! users. All categories of users — The aim of the LetsMT! is to take small languages — the lack of training public organizations, private companies, advantage of the huge potential of exist- resources — the core concept of the individuals — can upload their proprietary

The Language Technology Experts

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Web Services Terminology Interface Layer Translation Management Memory Advanced Leveraging External Machine Authoring CAT Tools Collaboration Translation Solutions TranslationTranslation MManagementanage System www.multicorpora.com For Governments • Enterprises • LSPs USA / Canada: 877.725.7070 Europe : +32 (0) 2.213.00.20

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resources to the repository and create a tailored SMT system trained on these resources. The latter can be shared with other users who can use them further on. Collecting Cleaning Pre-processing To ensure scalability of the entire system, TM data data LetsMT! is hosted in the Amazon Web Services infrastructure, which provides Machine an easy access to on-demand computing Translation resources. LetsMT! services for translating texts can be used in several ways: directly through the LetsMT! web portal, through MT Post-processing Post-editing a widget on a user’s web page, through re-training browser plug-ins, or through integration in computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools and different online and offline applications. Localization and translation TM repository PE productivity TM update Evaluation industry businesses and translation pro- repository fessionals can access LetsMT! services in their production environments, typically involving various CAT tools. Figure 3: Integration of MT in the localization process. To create our own English-Latvian system, we used the Giza++ and Moses and user assistance materials for soft- Total size of the Latvian monolingual SMT toolkits for data alignment, training ware and user manuals of IT&T appli- corpus was 391 million words. of SMT models and translation (decod- ances. To increase word coverage, word Since Latvian belongs to the class of ing). The total size of the English-Latvian and phrase translations were included highly inflected languages with a com- parallel data used to train the translation from bilingual dictionaries (0.51 mil- plex morphology, numerous inflectional model was 5.37 million sentence pairs. lion units). We used a larger selection forms of words increase data sparseness. The parallel corpus includes publicly of parallel data that was automatically For this reason the SMT system was available DGT-TM (1.06 million sen- extracted from a comparable web corpus extended within the Moses framework tences) and OPUS EMEA (0.97 million (0.9 million sentences) and from literary by integrating morphologic knowledge. sentences) corpora, as well as a propri- works (0.66 million sentences). We introduced an additional language etary localization corpus (1.29 million The monolingual corpus was prepared model over disambiguated morphologic sentences) obtained from TMs that were from news articles from the web and the tags in the English-Latvian system. The created during localization of interface monolingual part of the parallel corpora. tags contain morphologic properties generated by a statistical morphology tagger. The resulting system was evaluated with an automated metrics BLEU score of 35.0.

MT for localization The localization industry is experiencing unrelenting pressure to provide more efficient services, particularly due to the fact that volumes of texts that need to be translated are growing at a greater rate than the availability of human translation, and translation results are expected in real time. For several decades, the most widely used CAT tools in the localization industry have been TM systems. Since TMs contain fragments of previously translated texts, they can significantly improve the efficiency of localization work in cases when new text is similar to previously translated texts. However, if a text is from a different domain than the TM or in the same domain from a customer using different terminology, benefit is minimal.

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Developers of CAT tools have recog- Evaluation scenarios and results ity expectations were involved in the nized the benefits from integrating MT We wanted to evaluate how usable evaluation. into their TM systems (Figure 3). For our English-Latvian MT system was for The quality of each translation was example, SDL Trados Studio 2009 sup- localization tasks and based our evalu- evaluated by a professional editor in ports three MT engines: SDL Enterprise ation on a measurement of translation the standard quality assurance process Translation Server, Language Weaver, performance. Performance was calcu- of the service provider. The editor was and Google Translate. ESTeam Translator lated as the number of words translated not made aware whether the text was and Kilgray’s memoQ are other systems per hour. translated using the baseline scenario that also support the integration of MT. For the evaluation, two test scenarios or the MT scenario. An error score was Although the idea to use MT to opti- were employed: a baseline scenario with calculated for every translation task. mize the localization process is not new, TM only, and an MT scenario with a There are 15 different error types grouped it has not been explored widely in the combination of TM and MT. The base- in four error classes: accuracy, language research community. Different aspects line scenario established the productiv- quality, style and terminology. Different of post-editing and machine translat- ity baseline of the current translation error types influence the error score dif- ability have been researched since the process using SDL Trados Studio 2009 ferently because errors have a different 1990s. Increasing the efficiency of the where texts are translated unit by unit. weight depending on the severity of an translation process without degradation The MT scenario measured the impact error type. For example, errors of com- of quality is the most important goal for of MT in the translation process when prehensibility — an error that obstructs a service provider. translators are provided with not only the user from understanding the informa- In recent years, several productivity matches from a TM (as in the baseline tion — have a weight of 3, while errors of tests have been performed in the trans- scenario), but also with MT suggestions omissions/unnecessary additions have a lation and localization industry settings for every translation unit that does not weight of 2. Depending on the error score, at Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk. The have a 100% match in TM. Suggestions the translation is assigned a translation Microsoft Research trained SMT on MS coming from the MT were clearly marked quality grade: Superior, Good, Mediocre, tech domain was used for three languages for translators to treat them carefully. Poor or Very Poor. for Office Online 2007 localization: Span- Typically, translators trust sugges- The test set for the evaluation was ish, French and German. By applying MT tions coming from a TM, and they make created by selecting documents in the IT to all new words, on average a 5%-10% only small changes if a TM suggestion domain from the tasks that have not been productivity growth was obtained. is not a 100% match. Translators usually translated by translators in the organiza- In experiments performed by Adobe, are not double-checking terminology, tion before the SMT engine was built. about 200,000 words of new text were spelling and the grammar of TM sugges- This ensures that TMs do not contain all localized using rule-based MT for trans- tions, relying on the fact that TMs should segments of texts used for testing. Docu- lation into Russian (PROMT) and SMT for contain quality data. However, transla- ments for translation were selected from Spanish and French (Language Weaver). tors must pay particularly careful atten- the incoming work pipeline if they con- Authors reported an increase of translation to suggestions coming from MT, as tained 950-1,050 adjusted words each. tor’s daily output by 22%-51% (Flournoy it may be inaccurate or ungrammatical. Each document was split in half, and the and Duran, 2009). At Autodesk, a Moses In both scenarios, translators were first part of it was translated as described SMT system was evaluated for translation allowed to use whatever external in the baseline scenario; but the second from English into French, Italian, German resources were needed (such as diction- half of the document was translated and Spanish by three translators in each aries), just as during their regular work. using MT. The project manager ensured language pair (Plitt and Masselot, 2010). Five translators with different levels that each part of a single document was For measuring translation time, a special of experience and average productiv- translated by a different translator so workbench was created to capture keyboard and pause times for each sentence. Plitt and Masselot reported that although all translators worked faster when using The MT, the proportion varied from 20% to 131%. They concluded that MT allowed R SETTA Help Us translators to improve their throughput Foundation to Break Down Language Barriers on average by 74%. Tilde also evaluated the results of the LetsMT! platform for “Access to information is a fundamental right.” using an English-Latvian SMT integrated Reinhard Schäler into TM in a localization workflow. We Founder of The Rosetta Foundation chose a simple method and measured the change in performance of transla- Special Thanks to our Supporters: ONTRAM tors working with and without MT using CNGL MultiLingual Computing Inc. CDAC a platform integrated plug-in for SDL Welocalize Localisation Research Centre PROMT Trados 2009. A quality assessment was And thank you to all of our individual supporters. also performed according to a standard internal quality assessment procedure. www.TheRosettaFoundation.org

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that the results are not affected by famil- respectively. At the same time, the error Another valuable initiative is the iarity to a translated document. score increased for all translators. Although establishment of the META-NET network. Altogether, 54 documents were trans- total increase in the error score was from Recognizing that data is the equivalent lated. Every document was entered in 20.2 to 28.6 points, it still remained at the of other natural resources, the EU has the translation project tracking system quality evaluation grade Good. We have not committed to involve language research as a separate translation task. Although made a detailed analysis of reasons caus- institutions and commercial entities in a a general-purpose SMT system was used, ing an error score increase, but a possible network to find, catalog, standardize and it was trained using specific vendor TMs explanation could be a higher rate of error make publicly available those language as a significant source of parallel cor- in translated segments originating from resources that are currently being held pora. Therefore, the SMT system may be MT than in translations made from scratch. in companies and universities across considered slightly biased to a specific There were significant differences in the Europe. These initiatives are significant IT vendor or a vendor-specific narrow results of different translators, from perfor- steps to help diminish the digital divide IT domain. The test set contained texts mance increase by 64% to decrease by 5% between small languages and large, and from this vendor and another vendor for one of the translators. Analysis of these make the world of knowledge universally whose TMs were not included in the differences requires further study, but most accessible. training of the SMT system. We will likely they are caused by working patterns For the industry as a whole, it would identify these texts as narrow IT domain and the skills of individual translators. be useful to address several problems and broad IT domain for easier reference that are detrimental to the continued in the following sections. Approximately Synchronicity and challenges progress of MT. Development costs one-third of the texts translated in each There are several other exciting devel- would lessen if in the name of interoper- scenario was in the broad IT domain. opments increasing the quality and acces- ability APIs of different systems would The results were analyzed for 46 trans- sibility of MT to less-resourced languages. be developed in a standardized way. The lation tasks (23 tasks in each scenario) by Among those that promise to improve other challenge in data-driven MT devel- analyzing average values for translation quality is the EU-funded research project opment is population of the web with a performance (translated words per hour) ACCURAT, which aims to find, analyze and raw machine translated output. When and an error score for the translated texts. evaluate innovative methods to acquire automatically collected and included in Usage of MT suggestions in addition to the more corpora from the web. The premise is the corpora used for MT development, it TMs increased productivity of the transla- to use not parallel (word-for-word) trans- greatly diminishes the quality of result- tors on average from 550 to 731 words per lations, but to use content from different ing MT system. Therefore, we would like hour (32.9% improvement). There were languages with similar content and to to rally the industry behind an effort significant performance differences in the research how to extract parallel data from to tag machine-translated content. We various translation tasks; the standard this comparable corpora. This could help envision a world where speakers of small deviation of productivity in the baseline get more data in smaller languages and languages will have the same access and MT scenarios was 213.8 and 315.5, narrow domains for MT development. to information and services as large language speakers, no matter where in the world they are and no matter where Thanks to Translators without Borders, the necessity arises. Translation will be available on-demand in real time, deliv- mothers in India receive ered on your smart phone, TV, refrigera- health information by SMS tor and work desk, where MT will merge seamlessly with voice technologies. We in their language. intend to continue to be a part of this exciting frontier of technology. M Join our global community of professional translators, Donate Now! volunteers and NGOs. Our mission is to increase access References to knowledge through humanitarian translations. TranslatorsWithoutBorders.com Flourney, Raymond, and Christine Duran, Our Mission: “Machine Translation and Document Translators without Borders Localization at Adobe from Pilot to facilitates access to knowledge Production.” MT Summit XII: Proceedings of by translating information the Twelfth Machine Translation Summit, that would not otherwise be August 26-30, 2009. www.mt-archive.info/ available in the language of MTS-2009-Flournoy.pdf the people who need it. Plitt, Mirko, and François Masselot, “A Productivity Test of Statistical Machine Translation Post-Editing in a Typical Localisation Context." The Prague Bulletin on Mathematical Linguistics, 93 (January 2010): 7-16. www.mt-archive.info/MTMarathon- Designed by UNITpartners.com 2010-Plitt.pdf

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The translation center behind Translators without Borders

Enrique Cavalitto

A new, fully-automated translation center means of volunteers, even if much appreciated and welcomed by the humanitarian NGOs, are but a drop of help in an ocean of need. that Translators without Borders can donate ten With this in mind, a new and improved platform was made times as many translations to support humanitar- available to Translators without Borders by ProZ.com in mid- ian work around the globe. Translators without 2011. The new translation center (http://twb.translationcenter A .org/workspace) incorporated the clients as active participants in Borders is an independent nonprofit association their translation projects and thus brought the whole translation dedicated to helping non-governmental organi- workflow into a shared environment. This NGO involvement zations (NGOs) extend their humanitarian work allows a “self service” operation where clients can post their own by providing free, professional translations. The translation jobs, interact with the translators and retrieve the trans- funds saved through the use of volunteer transla- lated files. Project management is needed only when one or more files require formatting or when exceptional circumstances arise. tions can then be used by the NGOs in the field, “Technology was the piece we were missing as we tried to meet enabling them to extend the scope and reach of the need for translations in support of humanitarian work,” says their humanitarian work. Lori Thicke, cofounder of both Translators without Borders and its sister organization Traducteurs sans Frontières, established in While the objectives are different, the operational procedures Paris in 1993. “On the one hand we had an enormous pool of of Translators without Borders are not dissimilar from those of motivated volunteers, and on the other, we had more NGOs asking a translation agency. The company must select the right clients, for help than we could handle. Our obstacle was the project man- in this case the humanitarian NGOs, in order to ensure that their agement. Now that most project management tasks have been translation needs are in line with the organization’s scope, and automated, our role is simply to facilitate the relationship between it must select the right translators as well. Due to the nature of the translators and the NGOs that need their help. This is what will humanitarian work, Translators without Borders can only accept allow us to truly ramp up our capacity.” experienced professional translators since in most cases there is no time for reviewing the translations. Also like a translation Technology and community agency, Translators without Borders matches the translation To give an idea of the scale that the new translation center needs of the clients with the abilities, availability and willingness is making possible, Translators without Borders donated around of the translators in the pool of service providers and provides a one million words to charities in 2010. After less than a year using workflow based on solid processes to maximize the deliverance the translation center, it is currently translating the equivalent of translations with a minimum of overhead. of four million words per year for humanitarian NGOs such as When the Haiti earthquake brought an unprecedented number Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), UNICEF, of volunteers from the translation community, Translators with- Partners In Health and Oxfam. Within a few months Translators out Borders’ screening mechanisms were overwhelmed. To help it respond rapidly to the crisis, ProZ.com created a platform for screening translators and for posting jobs among the translators in the pool. This screening center proved useful, and the recruit- ing operation was substantially streamlined. However, the coor- A telecommunications engineer, project dination of projects was still a demanding task, and this limited management professional and translator, the scalability. Scalability is crucial because the contributions Enrique Cavalitto currently acts as the translation provided by Translators without Borders and the dedicated teams coordinator for Translators without Borders.

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Figure 2: Top section of a work order page including tabs for overview, source ﬁles, supporting material, client information and project information.

Figure 1: Creating a work order is a simple process designed with end clients in mind.

Figure 3: Notified translators find information on the Figure 4: The comments section of the workflow page enables client and project and may accept or decline available tasks. communication among translators, the client and the project manager.

without Borders expects to add enough Translators without Borders pool of pro- munications strategy. We need to be able volunteers and NGOs to increase this fessionals at a rate of more than 50 new to communicate these health messages figure to ten million words per year — translators every month. In particular, all over the world. Thank you, again.” significant, considering that every dollar ProZ.com’s Certified PRO Network envi- saved is another dollar available for car- ronment of screened professionals has Design ing for people at risk. Operations have been a major source of volunteers, par- A key concern in the design was that, expanded not only in volume but also in ticularly helpful when new language pairs even though the translation center was linguistic diversity, evolving from a few are urgently needed to respond to a crisis. powered by ProZ.com, Translators with- Eurocentric language pairs into more Since the screening process used in this out Borders is the real force behind the than 50 language pairs, including trans- program is similar to the one adopted by whole operation, and the organization’s lations into Swahili, Yoruba, Tigrinya, Translators without Borders, volunteering identity had to be carefully preserved. To Bengali and Haitian Creole. certified PROs are immediately accepted this end, a “white label” philosophy was One remarkable project was the local- into the pool. followed in the design of the platform in ization by volunteers of GoodPlanet’s The end results are much appreciated. such a way that all players or visitors to web page (www.desforetsetdeshommes Nand Wadhwani of The Mother and the translation center see the logo and .org), which involved over a quarter of a Child Health and Education Trust, India, colors of Translators without Borders, million words into 27 target languages says, “Thank you for the English to Hindi and the whole experience looks and feels (TLs), including Persian, Slovenian, Indo- translation. I was very happy with the like a part of the organization’s web page. nesian, Japanese, Finnish and Yoruba. speed and efficiency in which the whole This is also a design consideration for These results, of course, can’t be process took place. Our HealthPhone future applications since the translation explained by technology alone. The real project aims to provide vital health mes- center has the capabilities to serve as a power behind the translation center lies in sages and information for mothers, other tool for organizations or agencies to man- a vibrant community of volunteers who caregivers and communities to save and age translation projects with minimum have responded to every request for help protect the lives of children and help overhead. As in the current application, from the humanitarian NGOs. The ProZ them develop to their full potential. jobs are posted by end clients and deliv- .com community has been populating the Translation is at the heart of our com- ered by translators with minimal project

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translation. Additional files to support of submitting and managing work orders the work, such as glossaries, transla- is very well designed and user friendly,” tion memories (TMs), dictionaries and says Stephen Volante, Communications templates, can also be uploaded. At this Coordinator at Partners In Health. point, the work order has been created Simple work orders involving one Figures 2 and 3), and the client will be or more documents of less than 2,000 notified when translators involved in the words each (a size appropriate to the project post questions or comments in work of volunteers) are automatically the corresponding workflow page (Fig- processed by the translation center ure 4). The client will be able to reply in without any intervention from a project the same page. manager, except for routine supervi- From the client point of view, the sion. These direct cases represent a sig- process involves filling out a form and nificant proportion of all posted jobs. In uploading some files, answering any more complex work orders, the project questions from the translators and wait- manager will prepare the source files ing for the final notification that will before they are offered to the translator. let them know that the translated files The main task is to split large files into are ready to be downloaded. The NGOs volunteer-ready sections, but a general have found the interface easy to master. review is also usually performed before “I love the website. Easy to use, fast launching the notifications to the queue turnaround, user friendly,” says Griselda of valid translators. Garibay, Vincentian Family Administra- Beyond this point the project man- tor at Zafèn. ager should basically have a look at the Multiple contacts within client orga- evolution of the work order and take nizations are supported. Experience with action only in the presence of excep- new clients shows a surprisingly fast tional events, such as a translator fall- learning curve, with work orders posted ing behind schedule. At the end of the on the same day they were given access project, the project manager could be to the translation center and with little or asked by the client to reassemble a split no requests for help to the support sys- file and deliver the final file in the TLs, tem. “We have been extremely pleased but in general the client NGOs manage Figure 5: Panel displaying status, with the translations that we’ve received this last stage by themselves. time information and people on the job. from Translators without Borders volun- To quantify the project management teers, and we consider that the process savings of the translation center, in a management involvement. White labeling means that the whole operation will be perceived by all participants as an integral part of the managing organization. Since the NGOs served by Transla- tors without Borders are end clients with little or no translation experience, the translation center has been designed to be extremely simple to use. To post a project, someone from the NGO simply logs in to the translation center and then navigates to the page for the creation of It’s not just a name change. a new work order (Figure 1). The first element to be entered is a project that It’s evolutIon. will provide the framework to one or more translation orders. Displayed in the work order and partially included in the notifications sent to translators, this informaiton helps the client identify projects he or she can relate with and improves the matching between project is now and provider. Next, the client uploads the files to be translated and indicates language pair, Zurbarán, 23. 1º 60 State Street, Suite 700 www.zinacle.com Boston, MA 02109 USA deadline, field of expertise and notes 06002, Badajoz SPAIN Phone +34 924 20 56 05 Phone (617) 854-6541 or special instructions for the requested

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single month Translators without Borders a work order have been accepted, no The path ahead managed a third of a million words trans- further notifications are sent out. This Some additional translation center lated in 20 language pairs for 21 clients by approach minimizes the “spamming” features are already on the drawing 131 translators. The whole operation was effect on translators by sending as few board, besides the continuous improve- coordinated by a single project manager notifications as possible to have the ments based on feedback from the field who spent only a few hours per working tasks assigned. and on usage patterns. Features in the day on these activities. Even this minimal The second stage is translation: The pipeline for future commercial opera- intervention time shrank even further individual files have been assigned to tions include all issues related to quoting when almost 100% of the projects became providers for their translation. The most and billing in normal, paid translations; posted directly by the clients themselves. important feature at this stage is the com- additional and more complex mecha- The first stage in the workflow is ments section where translators and the nisms for filtering the pool for a project sourcing. After the work order is posted, client can exchange questions, answers and for sorting the translators within this the platform identifies the subset of the and project information (Figure 4). A panel pool; and the ability to integrate project pool of translators who are enabled for on the top-right side of the workflow page information with the administrative sys- the assignment, depending on their lan- present from top to bottom the status of tems in the managing organization. guage pairs and domain specialization. the work order, time information, the One important modification is already Once the valid translators have been people associated with the job (project well advanced. An optional layer of identified, they are ranked in accordance manager, client contact and translators) proofreading services in the workflow with a predefined criterion and notified in and some action links for the work order will improve the consistency of files small batches separated by fixed delays. (Figure 5). split and translated separately and also Default values are batches of five trans- When translators end their assign- implement the full workflow of organi- lators separated by 15-minute delays, ments, they can upload their translated zations that include proofreading in their but both parameters are configurable. files and report the task as completed. quality policies. This will also enable the These notifications include a link to The upload mechanism can be used also implementation of mentor and appren- a project page, with optional descrip- to exchange glossaries and TMs among tice relationships needed by Translators tions of the client, the particular project, the translators in the project. The last without Borders to build local translation plus the file to be translated as well as stage involves delivery. Once all the sec- capacity in less-resourced areas of Africa any special instructions. The translator tions have been uploaded and declared and Southeast Asia, an urgent preoccu- can review the offered file and all the as complete by the individual transla- pation of the organization, given the dire information before deciding whether to tors, a notification is sent out to the need for people in the world’s poorest accept it or not (Figure 3). When one of client reporting that the job is complete regions to be able to access information the notified translators accepts a task, and ready for download. Feedback and in their own languages. it immediately becomes unavailable to other end-of-project messages are also The translation center designed for all other translators. Once all tasks in exchanged at this point. Translators without Borders is by no means the only solution available for automating project management tasks in a web services model, though it is the only one integrated with the 80,000 active ProZ .com members. There are, in fact, a number of sophisticated platforms on the market today, some offering TM and machine translation capabilities that the translation center doesn’t yet offer. Platforms may be for internal use within a language service company or, at the other end of the spec- trum, may constitute a translation marketplace where buyers and sellers of language services interact online. “Our experience with the translation center is showing us that automated systems for community sourcing is the future of the industry, whether for commercial or humanitarian work,” says Thicke. “Going direct to the translator opens up huge opportunities for us to be able to help more NGOs in more languages. It is giving us the capacity to find a scalable solution for the problem of people who can’t access global knowledge because they don’t speak the right language.” M

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Ten essential steps to TMS selection for LSPs

Benjamin B. Sargent & Vijayalaxmi Hegde

Companies adopt a translation management a singular, hyper-efficient production model. Companies of this system (TMS) to address an array of challenges, type build a unified system for producing all client work — a single conveyor-belt that delivers superior results as measured but the selection process can be challenging in by price and volume. Citself. It generally involves developing selection Paradigm B: No qualms about customizing for specific criteria, making a shortlist, identifying best-fit client requirements. At your company, the idea of process effi- solutions using weighted business and technical ciency applies at the client or project level. Your company views each customer as unique and deserving a customized solution. requirements, and undergoing a proof-of-con- Your company has no interest in being a price leader, seeking cept before making a final decision. This article instead a premium for value-added operations. Big projects and provides a simple ten-step model for language large customers are the norm for your company, and the goal of service providers (LSPs) to use when selecting automation is to advance efficiency in the client environment. Paradigm C: Can’t we just agree on a single toolset? technology vendors for shortlisting. Your company makes no distinction between client and LSP production environments, seeking instead a limited number of Create a shortlist of available technology choices tools that work efficiently with the maximum number of cli- Companies need to eliminate choices that do not match the ent opportunities. In fact, your company would prefer if the basic criteria in their business or technical requirements. In technology question would just disappear. Who cares? Your 2010, we visited or interviewed 31 companies based in 16 coun- company wants to be an LSP, not an IT services firm. tries and devised a rubric for classifying styles of technology Here is how the typology will affect your company’s TMS adoption among technology-savvy LSPs. We determined that selection (Figure 1): If you wholeheartedly embrace Paradigm A, what distinguishes an LSP as being “technology-savvy” is not your company will be building your own TMS — not selecting the style or where it sits on the adoption continuum, but rather a commercial TMS. Dream Machine Builders may consider but how closely its adoption style matches the business strategy rarely adopt specific components into an otherwise proprietary of the company and by extension the interests and proclivities stack. Technology is your company’s differentiator, so it can’t of its owners or operators. TMS selection by LSPs should start justify buying a commercial system used by other LSPs. with a frank assessment of the organization’s technology adop- If your company falls between Paradigm A and Paradigm B, tion style based on the tech-savvy typology. To challenge any you may be a Super Servicer. Your company is happy to buy assumptions about where your company sits in the typology, individual components as long as they serve their purpose and we suggest the following exercise: Select the base-level paradigm below that best character- izes your ideal market positioning as a tech- Ben jamin B. Sargent is a senior analyst at the independent savvy LSP. market research firm Common Sense Advisory (CSA). His Paradigm A: Automation within our pro- primary focus areas include website globalization and TMS. prietary production environment is vital. In Vijayalaxmi Hegde is a research associate this archetype, viewing process and efficiency at CSA. Her primary focus areas include as internal issues for your company has led to multilingual search and emerging markets.

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If your company can relate to both Paradigm B and Paradigm C, it is a prime candidate for adopting a TMS. The problem is, which one? Unlike Off-the-Rack Operators, Smart Shoppers want to dem- onstrate competence in multiple systems. On the other hand, they aren’t willing, like Assiduous Assemblers, to buy a new system for every pretty client that waltzes in the door. We recommend distinguishing the business information management from language processing needs. If your company is on board with Paradigm C, it should choose a single system that works for all its clients. Traditionally, this meant buying Trados licenses and managing your company with Excel spreadsheets. Today, companies are more likely to adopt a business- oriented TMS to replace the spreadsheets. And while many still opt for SDL Trados, increasingly we see Off-the-Rack Opera- tors looking at language-oriented TMS, and especially cloud-based solutions. Your second step is to decide on a Figure 1: Intentions behind LSP adoption behaviors. translation management orientation. To Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. make a shortlist, ﬁrst determine which integrate seamlessly with existing compo- ing for a single TMS. Your company may orientation your company needs (Table nents. As comprehensive TMS solutions already have several. Your company may 1). If your company already has adequate improve, consider whether adoption of be tempted by ideas such as federation coverage for either business information a commercial system could reduce costs (“one TMS to rule them all”), but interoper- management or for language processing without loss of productivity. Consider ability issues argue against that. Assiduous from your existing systems, then look for solutions that would improve the speed of Assemblers should eventually expect to systems with the other orientation. If your integration with client systems. replace proprietary business information company is looking to beef up its capa- If your company ﬁts Paradigm B like management modules with commercial bilities in both areas at the same time, the proverbial glove, then it won’t be look- business-oriented TMS solutions. then your company should be shortlisting

Translation & Localization

Your German Language Specialist Outstanding I translation and localization I post-editing services Localization I proofreading I project management

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comprehensive solutions (Table 2). An Are current systems Build shortlist from systems Business Language alternative is to look for matchups that adequate? in this orientation pair complementary systems with differ- All systems go Yes Yes No TMS needed ent orientations. Business or language orientation options are point solutions, in Happy with business Evaluate language-oriented Yes No this context. applications TMSs Step three is to choose between best- Happy with language Evaluate business-oriented of-breed and comprehensive solutions. No Yes applications TMSs There is an age-old argument about Evaluate comprehensive or whether it’s best to string together a set Replace the whole lot No No paired TMSs of point solutions for specific functions, or adopt a unified platform that already Table 1: Simple logic for determining required TMS orientation. has multiple functions pre-integrated. Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. There is no one answer beyond the classic “it depends.” Year LSPs face significant risk in swapping Technology Vendor Product Orientation Introduced out their business information system, upon which they conduct the day-to-day ]project open[ ]project open[ 2003 Business operations of running their company. Advanced International Adopting a comprehensive TMS pushes Projetex 2001 Business Translations (AIT) this risk into the red zone because the Agile Web Solutions LTC Worx 2007 Business production model is now also affected. We recommend that LSPs opt for point LSP.net Online Translation Manager 2008 Business solutions so that they can replace one Plunet BusinessManager 2003 Business piece while other keeps going in business-as-usual mode. To adopt a com- Silverink Espresso 2007 Business prehensive TMS, treat it first as a point XTRF XTRF Enterprise 2004 Business solution on the language side and fold in the business modules gradually after Atelier Concicialitá Web Translate It 2010 Language the production line is up and running Cloudwords Cloudwords 2011 Language smoothly. Kilgray memoQ 2004 Language Unless your company has development resources waiting around for Lionbridge Translation Workspace 2009 Language something to do, the expense and MemSource MemSource Cloud 2010 Language headache of marshaling the resources required to integrate and maintain point SDL SDL TMS 2001 Language solutions will be an issue. The cost of XTM International XTM Suite 2002 Language integration and maintenance is justified when the point solutions are a “best-fit" Across Systems Across Language Server 2003 Comprehensive for your organization or, as noted above, Andrä AG/Ontram, Inc. Ontram+ 2008 Comprehensive to avoid undue business risk. We recommend adopting a comprehensive solu- MultiCorpora MultiTrans Prism 2000 Comprehensive tion for organizations with constrained Sajan GCMS 2003 Comprehensive resources. Comprehensive systems come with SDL SDL WorldServer 1998 Comprehensive unified reporting, at least in theory. First- STAR CLM (Corporate STAR Group 1990s Comprehensive time adopters may have fuzzy require- Language Management) ments in this area, but for advanced Text United Translation Hub 2008 Comprehensive users the analytical and business process management functions of a single end- Translations.com GlobalLink 2003 Comprehensive to-end system create a notable benefit. Welocalize GLobalSight 1997 Comprehensive Step four is to list your cloud options and understand them. Cloud entrants Western Standard Fluency Enterprise 2009 Comprehensive now include LSP.net, Text United, Atelier Wordbee Wordbee 2009 Comprehensive Concicialitá and Wordbee. Meanwhile, Clay Tablet Clay Tablet 2005 Middleware the existing players in the market have learned to sell their wares using cloud- Table 2: Commercial TMS solutions sorted by orientation. Components of comprehensive related buzzwords. Most vendors now systems may also be available as point solutions, for instance, Prism Flow from MultiCorpora. offer hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. or cloud-architected variants. Because

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cloud can mean many things, here are the There are variations of all of these imagine radical growth as throughput variants as we define them: models, but buyers should be prepared often doubles every 18 to 24 months. Hosted. We use this word to designate to decide among these four approaches Step five is to insist on interoper- dedicated instances located at and man- before establishing their shortlist. Of ability. All TMS shoppers should aggres- aged in a remote data center operated course, good old-fashioned on-premise sively pursue the issue of interoperability. by the vendor or a third party where the installations are still an important option Translation supply chains represent an buyer has purchased the software. for companies with existing IT resources exceedingly heterogeneous operating SaaS. We use this acronym to des- ready and willing to manage a new piece environment. Any TMS buyer could rea- ignate dedicated instances hosted in of complex software. sonably expect that downstream partners a remote data center operated by the may use a variety of translation environ- vendor or a third party where the buyer Future-proof your selection ments requiring slightly different pre- rents the software, paying by the month During the requirements definition packaging of project files. Ideally then, or through usage charges. SaaS may be phase, perhaps the most challenging the TMS your company purchases would single tenancy (a dedicated instance of aspect is to identify and assess future exchange project data and content with the software) or multi-tenancy (a shared needs. What follows is an assembly — other TMSs. Buyers must start demand- application instance but typically with no doubt incomplete — of some of the ing this capability. Today, the most you secure, segregated data). hot issues that buyers should be sure to can expect is the ability to prepare files Public cloud. In this model, cloud- account for in their planning documents. for processing by multiple toolsets. ready software is purchased but deployed In addition to quantifying reuse, buyers Companies buying a TMS can also into a public cloud, such as the Amazon should also benchmark systems for per- reduce or eliminate one of the biggest Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). formance — size of memories, process- challenges of translation management Private cloud. In this model, cloud- ing times, and throughput for various and organizational transformation–merg- ready software is purchased and deployed content and file types. As we suggested ers and acquisitions. For LSPs and trans- into a private cloud, operated on premise in our most recent report on machine lation buyers alike, when that moment or through a third party. translation (MT), planners should also arrives for buying or getting bought by another company, interoperability at the TMS level will soften what is otherwise a potential train wreck. In the sixth step you should plan for hyper-utility of linguistic assets. In addition to pre- and post-processing to prepare files for translation or for delivery Agility to the client, the centralized TM modules will soon be expected to include tools It’s about the speed, isn’t it? for scrubbing and purging memories, Today’s competition is about getting and also for selecting subcorpora for the your products or content to your global purpose of training project or product customers faster. Rapid development line-specific MT engines. leads to very short release cycles, TMS deployments increasingly com- and almost instantaneous publication. bine translation memory (TM) and ter- Use our agile localization best practices minology management with MT so that to accelerate your localization process segments not matched in the TM can and jump ahead of the curve. be routed for pretranslation in MT. This And remember, you don’t need to technique replaces every segment during be purely “Agile” to be truly agile. pretranslation, thereby leaving no source language content except for reference purposes. In the seventh step you should learn from the companies that have gone before you. Talk to other practitioners about what they’ve experienced since their initial deployments. Here are some of the things we hear when we ask, “What do you wish someone had told you beforehand?” Once the system is up and running, your company will want to bring in more groups, offices, departments and business www.moraviaworldwide.com/agile-localization units, so look at the acceptability to new groups. Will your system be adequate for

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Translation Software and Language Technology Client-adapted MT Lingenio is specialized in innovative develop- Sysﬁlter - Easy and Effective! ment and research in the fields of machine • Sysfilter tools are available for Adobe Solutions for Enterprises translation and dictionary technology. Our prod- InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop®, Corel- Safaba develops customized high-performance ucts and technologies have been recognized Draw®, MS Visio and PowerPoint® by renowned awards. Lingenio collaborates • Text transfer to XML or MS Word (as *.RTF, automated language translation solutions for commercial enterprises and LSPs. Our team of with different companies and universities. DOC or DOCX) • translate: translation software for single • After translation, the text can be imported highly trained expert developers specializes in state-of-the-art machine translation technology users and workgroups automatically into the original document – creation and management of user diction- • Compatible to all common translation tools and its integration into commercial translation workflows. Safaba’s proprietary technology aries and translation memories 100 Euro provides high-quality machine translation that – AutoLearn: interactive and self-reflective Coupon Code: x2012 is adapted for each client. Our technology and learning functions ™ cloud-based delivery model support highly • translateDict : intelligent dictionaries Valid for Sysfilter Pack 3X - a complete filter – IntelliDict®: context-sensitive search package for your company. scalable, secure and low-cost translation solutions ® for a broad range of commercial clients. – FlexiFind : easier-to-use search Register with us and redeem your coupon code. We also offer customized solutions for companies and institutions. ECM engineering Safaba Translation Solutions Lingenio GmbH Breitenbrunn, Germany Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA Heidelberg, Germany [email protected] • www.sysfilter.de [email protected] • www.safaba.com [email protected] • www.lingenio.de

Text United Solutions for Translation Platform Language Workers Cross-lingual Text Analytics! Text United is an innovative translation platform Enhance both speed and quality of your work Is the information you need trapped in a covering all of your professional translation with Kaleidoscope’s special solutions for foreign language? LinguaSys technology enables needs. Our unique approach to terminology • Online translation review with globalReview you to liberate subject matter and sentiment from text in any language. LinguaSys’ text and in-country review allows you to protect • Terminology life cycle management with analytics operate on the original native-language the core of your brand, while letting it shine in quickTerm different colors on foreign markets. Text United text, not translations, for maximum accuracy. platform facilitates collaborative and transparent • Query management with smartQuery LinguaSys provides customization to meet translation processes and provides advanced • and other complex tasks with expertTools your unique business requirements. Talk to us language technologies like translation memories Get the most out of your SDL software! about your needs for domain-specific terminol- and terminology management, deployed centrally Get the choice of industry leaders – get ogy, hard-to-find languages or any language and automatically. Text United is available on Kaleidoscope’s special solutions for language challenge facing you. subscription, with no up-front costs. workers. Text United GmbH LinguaSys Vienna, Austria Kaleidoscope GmbH Boca Raton, Florida USA • Chicago, Illinois USA [email protected] Maria Enzersdorf, Austria Darmstadt, Germany • Canberra, Australia www.textunited.com [email protected] • www.kaleidoscope.at/mlm [email protected] • www.linguasys.com

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those needs? When a single department Completing the process meet a single must-have item. This list adopts a technology, there is no corporate So, your company has determined has to be tiny. After the first pass at pri- mandate, and there will be potentially the type of system you are looking for, oritization, you may start with 20 or 30 insufficient funding to encompass the organized your business requirements, items here. Move most of them into the needs of the entire organization. This can checked with IT for technical require- “Need-to-have” category. lead to the selection of departmental solu- ments, and made your shortlist. What’s Need-to-have: This is the category tions that won’t scale, causing pain and next? Every organization may have spe- you will assign the weighting to. Keep frustration later. You should also look at cific technology selection procedures, but it as small as possible. Most of the items adaptability with new systems. Planners here is what you can expect, in general. you start with here should be pushed must think about what’s in the pipeline Step eight is to weight your selection down to nice-to-have, in order to make and what industry trends might indicate criteria. The more detail in your criteria, room for the things individual stake- for future investment. Take advantage the better, at least to start with. After holders claim are must-haves for them. of industry research to learn where the completing the collection phase, the win- Ideally, you can keep the actual weight- market is going. nowing begins. At this stage, combine ing to about 30 items. For LSPs, the jumble of systems and and compress the descriptions as much Nice-to-have: These are all the remain- work methods makes reporting a time- as possible. The tighter your descriptions ing needs that it would be really cool if consuming activity forcing a bare-bones and the more crystallized the thinking the system can do it. Realize that if you approach. For enterprises the lack of a gets, the easier it will be to prioritize. do a good job with the must-have and system today means reliance on what Vaguely worded and overlapping require- the need-to-have categories, you’ll end suppliers tell you. TMS opens access to ments will get you nowhere. Initially, up with a system that in fact takes care data that executives will start asking for, divide things into three categories: of many of these items. Don’t clutter up and your company will want to provide Must-have: Limit the show-stopping the weighting by trying to include them as evidence of your team’s effective must-haves to as small a number as all. It only defocuses your process and management. Plan for this by anticipat- possible. These are critical requirements makes the decision less obvious. ing new reporting demands. that preclude any system that cannot Step nine is to choose one or both proof-of-concept models. There are two approaches to proof-of-concept testing, and we recommend doing both. First is the proof-of-concept demo. Invite the top three scoring vendors to present their solutions in person after giving them your detailed requirements. Ideally, this is a live demo using your actual content samples. The second is piloting. When it’s feasible, progress to using the best-fit system for a live project. This will require dedicating resources and may involve extra costs. The payoff is a deeper understanding of how the system performs and, more importantly, how your team responds to the particulars of one or more systems in a production context. The final step is to calculate the total cost of ownership. Consider the three-to five-year cost of licensing and maintenance, infrastructure for on-premise deployment, customization and integration services, training, plus internal tar- iffs for IT resources and administration. By shortlisting properly and future- proofing your requirements, your company will only have best-suited applications in your final pool of candidates, and the chances of making a mistake will be greatly reduced. But don’t be shy about asking for assistance from your peers and industry experts wherever you find them. More opinions in this case will likely mean better opinions for your company to choose from. M

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Cross-lingual text analytics: a new frontier in linguistics

Meta S. Brown

In Atlanta, a brand manager needs to know tion and a weak economy put growing pressure on businesses what consumers are saying about soft drinks in to improve their practices; they must adapt or they will die. Text is a form of data and, on the one hand, a rich source of Thailand. In Washington, D.C., an intelligence information. On the other, it is bulky, difficult to analyze and Iagency analyst wonders if an international often ambiguous in meaning. A number’s a number, but a piece terrorist group is using twitter to organize a of text might be in any one of a myriad of languages, further bombing. In Tokyo, electronics engineers want complicated by the education, personal style and even the mood of the individual writer. Text analytics centers on converting text to better understand quality problems that are into some more easily usable form of data. Cross-lingual text leading to product returns in North America. analytics makes this process possible when the end user of the These diverse professionals share common con- data doesn’t speak the language of the original text. Cross-lingual cerns. Each of them needs information that is text analytics enables business people to find order and meaning amid massive quantities of otherwise incomprehensible text. locked in some form of text, such as posts to Data analysis yields value only when those with influence and a social network, e-mails or web form submis- the power to make decisions choose to put that analysis to use. sions. The volume of text involved is large, and The cleanest data, most powerful computers and shrewdest analysts do no good if the analysis is ignored or regarded as a mere the person who needs the information doesn’t conversation piece. Predictive analytics methods, such as statisti- understand the required language. cal hypothesis testing and modeling, data mining and operations research, examine relationships among variables and reveal the These professionals have different problems, roles, languages ways in which elements of a system influence one another. Cycles and cultures to explore, but one shared solution: cross-lingual of data gathering, analysis and field testing provide meaningful text analytics. Market pressure and global competition drive information appropriate to guide decision-making. What’s more, demand for cross-lingual text analytics, and the technology is a worthwhile analytics program is planned with an eye to pro- advancing to meet the challenge. Cross-lingual text analytics viding actionable information, not just interesting insights. Text is where the action is and will be for years to come. Informa- analysis methods, which center on converting unstructured text tion about analytic methods and their use in business has been into categories based on subject matter and sentiment, convert widely available throughout the past century, yet there has been the rich but largely unmanageable resource of text data into a rapid rise in interest over the past few years. A confluence of categorical data. Organized into categories, text data can be changes in technology and economic climate has created both opportunity and pressure for businesses to initiate or expand their use of analytics. Once requiring tedious hand calculation, statistical analysis has become cheaper and easier with the widespread availability of computers and improvements in software. The rising use of Meta S. Brown is general manager of analytics computers has also brought a rise in the volume of the raw at LinguaSys. She is a frequent writer and material for analytics — data. At the same time, global competi- speaker on advanced analytics applications.

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Identify and Translate Retrieve Analyze Export disambiguate search terms relevant native- and/or search terms documents language text summarize analysis

Translate documents of interest

Figure 1: The cross-lingual text analytics process.

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it possible to define the rel- Japanese  sented in response to certain evant information in the user’s Interpret keywords so that a shoe retailer native language, automatically might specify that an ad be translate search terms into the Accept and search Twitter archives  displayed in response to a user target language(s) and perform mentioning a specific brand of a more accurate search with soda shoes, while a dentist might lighter resource demands. select terms such as toothache So is it possible to obtain Autoselect and gums bleed. clear value from imperfect tech- All Synonyms But terms often have several nology? We’re often surprised meanings, and the context in to discover that others interpret soda (3 interpretations) which terms are mentioned our written words in ways dif- Japanese last name speaks to the intent of the ferent than what we intended user. The person who posts when writing. The human brain a sweet drink containing carbonated water and flavoring “I’m saving up for a pair of is the best tool for generating Manolo Blahniks” is in a shoe- and interpreting language, but shopping frame of mind. The it is not perfect. A given seg- one who posts “What kind of ment of text is not interpreted fool would save for Manolo consistently by a single human Blahniks?” is not, or not for that on multiple occasions, let alone particular brand. To the extent by multiple humans. Since that linguistics can differenti- there is no empirical method for ate these meanings, it adds determining intended meaning, a sodium salt of carbonic acid; used in making soap powders value for everyone involved in the baseline for benchmarking and glass and paper the process. Publishers adopt- software performance is always ing linguistics for ad targeting comparison to a modest sample will have happier and more of human interpretations of Figure 2: Disambiguation of a search term. loyal customers and may com- text, a rather fuzzy basis for mand higher advertising prices; evaluation and improvement. Linguistics specific to the customer, such as weather, advertisers will see better returns through technology is consistent, but otherwise not date or time of day. Advances in linguis- improved targeting; and users will view nearly as effective as humans at interpret- tics, coupled with the latest in dynamic advertising more appropriate for their ing language. How are we to put language advertising tools, open the door to adding interests. technology to use when the results are so new and valuable information to that mix. Organizations ignoring foreign lang- often incorrect? Consider this example of an existing uage text are leaving an important Many applications simply don’t re- online advertising model. Businesses pay market and competitive intelligence quire perfection or anything close to it. to place their ads in front of users of a resource untapped, giving the advantage Consider the everyday practice of direct social networking site. These advertisers to language-savvy competitors. Bulk marketing, appealing directly to individu- can tailor the selection of users who see translation of textual data is unnecessar- als to make a purchase or contribution. the ad by a number of elements that are ily slow and expensive, and yields poor Most direct marketing solicitations end up known from the user’s profile, such as quality results. Cross-lingual text analyt- in the trash — real or virtual. The direct age, gender and city of residence. Fur- ics yields fast, accurate text analysis and marketer can accept this because the ther, they can specify that ads be pre- cost-control as well. M values of a few positive responses more than offsets total costs. The most successful practitioners are constantly testing the effects of small changes to the process, perhaps a new envelope for a traditional mailing or a new subject line in e-mail, in the quest for optimum returns. Internet communications are awash with similar opportunities, and online business powerhouses such as Amazon and Google are continually testing elements of offers and presentations. The offers presented to an individual consumer take into account whatever information the advertiser has available. This may include past behavior, such as purchasing and browsing history; demographics, such as gender and age; and information not

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41-43 Brown #125.indd 43 12/14/11 12:51 PM Localizing worldwide mobile apps Technology Talia Baruch

The urban nomad sounds familiar, almost like accounts. In most other verticals, reaching markup revenue someone we’ve transformed into. We’re on the goals is largely determined by word count volumes. In the mobile arena, however, text is minimal, and language service go, and we demand instant information anytime, providers (LSPs) need to transition their work scope budget- Tanywhere. The urban nomad in us is never bound ing to a different ballgame model. Typical features in mobile to one place. Wherever we are, across oceans and localization include short user interface (UI) strings; multiple continents, our carry-on mobile device is our target language (TL) simship releases; focus on layout design; and compatibility with a variety of platforms. Culturalization port of communication with the world around us. plays a role in mobile localization, by adapting the usability We pull it out to check our calendar, to interface and design elements to enable a native look and feel for each with our connections, to play games, to purchase market. But remember, it’s the strings that interface with the goods or just to slide-flick through our menu user. If they aren’t localized properly, your entire localization enterprise effort will have been in vain. Our objective is to avoid bar while we’re trapped in the elevator, trying to stop-ship bugs during testing. Therefore, we need to include the avoid the other occupants. In 2012, smart phones developers, UI designers, technical writers and marketers in the and tablets will become our principal devices, frontline internationalization and localization planning during the product development stage. It costs 30 times more to fix surpassing the usage of PCs. internationalization bugs during testing than up front. Multiply that by the number of TLs and you’re looking at a serious cost Mobile web traffic is already surpassing PC-based traffic. creep. Steve Jobs once said, “Design is a funny word. Some According to ABI Research, by 2015, mobile commerce will have people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you reached $119 billion worth of goods and services purchased via dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” mobile phone. In the less developed world, mobile phones will play a central role in e-commerce, as they are often the only pathway Localizing apps to the internet. This means that companies are quickly planning Mobile applications follow the same system internationaliza- their mobile commerce strategy to get to the forefront and stand tion principles we practice for software localization. Highlights out within this dominant market. Mobile storefronts now fit into are isolating text from code; prepping resource bundles for companies’ broader multichannel outreach to consumers. There- translation; creating a locale-independent architecture, thereby fore, when we examine pipeline paths for the localization industry, preserving locale-specifics requirements; and cultural settings. it is the mobile vertical that waves frantically for our attention. The local API controls the locale formats: date/time/currency One of the hurdles localization vendors face in the mobile and so on. vertical is the conceptual method of budgeting localization Running a pseudo-localization test at project outset saves time and money during the build testing phase. It verifies that the application is supportive of your TLs and locale requirements: double-byte characters for East Asian languages; bidi- Talia Baruch is an independent localization rectional display for Middle Eastern languages; and diacritics and culturalization consultant with 15 years' for Central and Eastern European languages. It is also a helpful experience optimizing companies’ international process for developers to identify any need for redesign of the outreach. She founded Copyous, which develops UI elements to accommodate for expanded text. Pseudo-local- and manages localization programs. ization can also be used to determine the actual character space

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restriction for different UI strings within English word appears in the middle of the application. Mobile localization hurdles a string in between Hebrew words, for When products are first designed for example, we’ll see word inversion issues. mobile applications and then transferred Apple developed a tool that identifies to desktop, source text is composed to fit problematic strings upfront and flags in small screen space and in constrained them for translators at the outset. In dialog boxes/buttons. A common issue many programming languages, string in those scenarios is when an English concatenation — joining strings end to source string is a short abbreviation, as end — is a binary infix operator. For in H2, representing “second home phone example, the string Turn and switch will number.” In most languages it will be » User vs. system command be concatenated with to the run position. impossible to find an equivalent transla- » Mixed language strings Commonly, name and address strings are tion for a two-character word, or even » Text expansion joined. The word by is often tied with a a standard comprehensible abbreviation » Right-to-left and vertical text name on the author's page. Program- conveying the same meaning. In lan- » Concatenation mers love to concatenate strings because guages where verbs have a feminine and » Contextual reference it allows for cleaner back-end support, masculine conjugation, such as Hebrew, reducing input of the same strings. it is important to identify whether the UI English is a language that tolerates string command relates to the system — simple interface fonts that support non- concatenation because the word order open, close, clear — or to the user. If the Roman characters and enable uncorrupt is predictable. However, in German, for command is for the system, the verb will rendering of special characters, such as example, word order varies depending remain in masculine singular form. How- fadas in Irish, umlauts in German and on syntax and tense. A verb appears ever, if it addresses the user, the company cedillas in French. at the end of a sentence in split verb needs to make a conscientious decision Brand names typically stay in English. structures. Another language challeng- on whether to apply masculine, feminine Therefore, strings that incorporate brand ing concatenation is Thai where there’s or both formats. In Hebrew, the feminine names will have mixed English and TL no space between words. Concatenation verb conjugation is formulated by add- text. For example, brand name terms is localization’s worst enemy. The iso- ing the letter yud to the base masculine such as Mobile Me, iPhone and Apple lated concatenated strings are translated format. A company that elects to endorse Store will remain as-is, embedded within separately, out of context. Once they’re the politically correct approach and rep- the translated words in the same string. compiled in the build, they often form resent both genders would add a back For bidirectional languages, this intro- messed-up sentence structures in the TL. slash followed by the letter yud for every duces multiple bugs during testing. Usu- French, Spanish and German expand user command in the UI. The downside ally, there’s no issue if the string begins by 30% from the English. Therefore, the is multiple bugs during functional testing with an English word. However, when an localized UI would get truncated in the and loss of “personal touch” in the user experience with the handheld. Right-to-left text for Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi and Urdu and vertical text for Asian script require a different UI layout. Right- to-left UIs will display image inversion from right to left on the screen. Asian script is double-byte vertical and takes up more screen space, thereby changing the layout displayed in the source Eng- lish mobile version. Mobile applications with Arabic UI are increasing rapidly as the use of smart phones in the Arabic market is vastly growing. It is projected to have reached 50% of market share by 2015. Most popular mobile devices used in the Arab world today are RIM Black- Berry (50%) and Apple iPhone (30%). The number-one mobile broadband community in the world is Saudi Ara- bia. That said, most mobile applications today do not support right-to-left text. It is best practice to avoid use of italics Europe & ROW: [email protected] or bold font type for digital screens. It [email protected] affects the readability of special charac- USA: ter languages. It is also advised to apply

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dialog boxes. Furthermore, unlike Eng- Apple and other companies also enable ferent operating systems: iOS, Android, lish, German is a language that doesn’t the translators to view a mock-up of the BlackBerry and Windows OS. Several test- tolerate abbreviated nouns, and German application for added context within ing elements need to be performed on the nouns can get shamelessly long. These the layout. Developing linguistic assets device itself. Software emulators can’t rep- are often truncated on buttons. Hebrew, is mandatory — a glossary of approved licate all functional instances or UI screens. in contrast, is a language that contracts key terminology with corresponding When the application’s localization is in by 70%-80% from the English. Asian definitions and instances in the UI, and multiple languages, it isn’t feasible to send languages have lower character count, a style guide defining messaging, voice the device to every in-country tester. This is but require larger font size for clear and formats. not the case for desktop applications, where readability on the small screen. It is Localized content for mobile devices in-country testers can download and install best practice to design large text boxes is pre-installed in the client-side devices, the software for remote testing. for the source English UI. Clearly, due whereas some other messages related to Mobile applications target the general to the very small screen size in mobile, services, for example, are routed through public, as opposed to certain software text abbreviation is common. Another a server and hence follow a separate applications or corporate websites that growing trend triggered by the character localization workflow. The challenge is to may target industry professionals. Con- space limitation is the use of graphics or produce error-free localized text embedded tent localization should correspond to icons instead of text. This also generates into the devices. It is easier to fix bugs in the content type and style: more col- a more international look. desktop products by simply applying a loquial translations for the former, as One of the greatest challenges transla- patch in the next release. opposed to the more formal tone translators face in mobile localization is receiv- Remember that sorting rules vary tions appropriate for the latter. ing isolated, contextless UI strings for even within Roman alphabet languages. Launching a mobile localization ad- translation. Sometimes the resource bun- Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Polish and venture doesn’t end with the application dles for translation would have isolated Hungarian use Roman characters, but localization. There are additional pieces single words representing a command these Central European languages also of affiliate content that will consecutively button in the UI. The translators would include characters that do not appear in require localization as well: associated need to identify what part of speech it is Western European languages. In Czech, marketing copy, application description representing, such as a verb or a noun. for example, the digraph ch is sorted and localized screenshots for the app store. One of the ways Apple provides con- after h and before i. Accented letters also When you explore new market oppor- textual reference to the translators is by follow different sorting rules compared tunities for your application performance, batching the iPhone source UI applica- with English. research what types of applications are tion strings for translation per the dif- popular in the target markets. We often ferent feature components. All UI strings Testing and marketing customize the application performance, pertaining to the camera, calendar or Another challenge introduced by mobile usability and functionality to the locale clock would each get batched separately. is the need to test compatibility with dif- culture and usability. Another consideration is determining dominant mobile operating systems and carriers in the target markets. For example, China Mobile is the leading carrier in China. In the Arab world, BlackBerry is still the leading device, while Apple iOS takes the second-place trophy. Switzerland is an example for a challenging mobile market, featuring three spoken languages: French, German and Italian; three dominant operating systems: iOS, BlackBerry and Android; and three major carriers selling these operating systems: Swiss- com, Sunrise and Orange. This translates into a total of 27 test instances, all for one market locale. The early nomad would travel in search of fresh pasture. The urban nomad travels in search of fresh opportunities. His or her modular, fast-paced lifestyle demands multiple adjustments in the relocation from one place to another. It is the little lit screen flickering in the back pocket that keeps the humdrum aligned, centralized in cyberspace — the home away from home. M

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44-46 Baruch #125.indd 46 12/14/11 12:52 PM Business Crowdsourcing your localization testing

Doron Reuveni

Congratulations! If you’re trying to find the Localization testing challenges best way to test your web and mobile products Let’s say, hypothetically, that you’ve just launched a Mandarin version of your mobile app. Like the rest of your for localization, it means your application was applications, this one was developed and tested using in-house popular enough to warrant expansion into mul- resources. But for this assignment, you need a native Mandarin C speaker to confirm that nothing was lost in translation. Luck- tiple markets. The need for localization testing is a mark of true success. Unfortunately, it’s also ily, Peter in the marketing department speaks, reads and writes Mandarin — problem solved, right? among the most difficult quality-related chal- Not so fast! While translation validation is indeed part of the lenges to solve since it requires highly special- localization process, it’s not the only part. First, is Peter fluent ized skills from software-savvy native speakers enough in Mandarin to fully understand metaphors, similes and slang? Will Peter be pulled from his day-to-day job to validate who live in-market. content revisions, and can he vet every part of your localized application, including your mainstream app content, your error Most web, desktop and mobile apps are used under unpre- messages and the system-generated e-mails your app sends? If dictable, real-world conditions — well outside the sterile con- Peter is really going to oversee ever-changing content such as fines of any testing lab. And because every country’s language, comments, message boards and ratings, it sounds like Peter’s culture, currency, taxes and standards are different, in the realm got himself a new full-time job. And what about when the app of localized apps it’s imperative for companies to prepare their is launched in German, French or Portuguese (in their various applications to survive in ever-changing foreign markets. With country-specific iterations)? Are you really going to become a company’s users being distributed all around the world, it’s Rosetta Stone’s best customer in order to keep up? crucial that a portion of a company’s app testing and validation Assuming you (or your CFO) have already rejected the idea of is distributed around the globe, too. solving this solely through in-house linguists, what other options This calls for a better way to test, one that meets the “indo you have? Free translation tools, while innovative, are too the-wild” demands of localization. Enter crowdsourcing. By often overtly literal and ill-equipped to handle localization on using a community of diverse and talented professionals, such a huge scale. Other options include outside consulting ser- crowdsourced testing provides companies with native speakers vices specializing in localizing your content, but these often lack worldwide to run complete localization, verifying accuracy and an effective third-party mechanism to validate their own work. context across currency conversions, dates, special characters Putting aside matters of expertise, cost and personnel, there’s still and static content. that small matter of localization testing criteria, which includes: ■■Content. Both static and dynamic content, such as cata- logs, search results and metadata. ■■Dates. Is the date January 1 or 1 January? Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest, cofounded uTest in ■■Characters. Différent länguages have ðifferent set∫ θf February 2007. Prior to uTest, he was the senior vice characters. president of technology at Enigma, Inc. He has more ■■Character display. Arabic and Hebrew languages display than 20 years of experience delivering software right to left, which wreaks havoc with the way some browsers applications to Fortune 500 companies and startups. display your content.

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■■Postal codes. In some countries, postal codes contain letters. ■■Phone numbers. There are different formats for different markets. ■■Direction. Some languages are written left to right; others are right to left. ■■Currency conversion. This is especially important for internet retailers. ■■Tax calculation. VAT, sales tax and other fees vary from country to country. So now that you have a better idea of what you’re up against, how can you expect to build an in-house staff of software-savvy linguists? Answer: Most companies can’t, at least not without some serious investments in both money and time. But what you can do to overcome the challenge of localization is to leverage a crowdsourced community — one that includes native speakers who live in-market all around the globe. Traditionally, decision makers had two basic options for completing assigned tasks: through an in-house staff or with an outsourcing firm. With the introduction Figure 1: A chart of Cherokee syllabary using Unicode encoding. of crowdsourcing, there’s now a viable third option that’s much less costly and who we are, and bugs that impact cultural blend of staffing allows you to scale your time consuming. Here’s the formal defini- identity can often be the most frustrat- resources up and down in a fluid man- tion of the term, as coined by journalist ing. For example, take the Cherokee tribe ner, meeting tight deadlines during peak Jeff Howe in his book, Crowdsourcing: of Native Americans. Like many Native periods of development and testing, while Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving American tribes, their community was controlling costs during slow periods. The the Future of Business: “[Crowdsourcing displaced by the advancement and settling end result of this scalable community- is] . . . the act of taking a job tradition- of Europeans. However, one of their mem- driven workforce is faster time-to-market. ally performed by a designated agent bers, a man named Sequoyah, had the This is more an observation than a tip, (usually an employee) and outsourcing foresight to invent a written system for but independent thought is the lifeblood it to an undefined, generally large group the Cherokee language. With that system, of creativity. With a diverse community of people in the form of an open call.” the Cherokee were able to keep detailed of professionals that transcends loca- What’s the significance? Well, for one, it records of their history and communicate tion and background, you can avoid the enables you to make decisions on a per- with other members of their tribe who group-think that often stifles internal project basis, which comes in handy with were now spread across the country. teams. When a community is following localization projects since they are often Today, Cherokee is spoken by thou- a lead, no matter how large the crowd, too infrequent to warrant building out an sands of people in the United States and it will simply reflect the one leadership entire staff of linguists. The opportunity still uses Sequoyah’s complicated writing voice. The consensus view from inside for executives today is to get the most system. It’s possible for Cherokees to your company can drown out objections bang for their buck by building in-house communicate in their language using any and alternate points of view. This is often strengths around key employees and core modern communication device, including an unintended byproduct of strong lead- competencies, while also tapping into iPads and iPhones. This is because Uni- ership. Again, a global community brings variable resources like crowdsourcing. code includes support for the Cherokee diverse opinions and experience, as well syllabary (Figure 1), and any modern as fresh eyes, which can result in more Crowdsourcing tips device with good Unicode support can complete testing coverage. First, start with why. In many ways, handle the Cherokee language. Also, to get the most out of crowd- testing is about finding and potentially Second, build a team that matches your sourcing, find communities that enable fixing what doesn’t work. Testers seek out product, your task and your users. The best community members to build their online problems because nobody wants to use online communities of professionals serve reputation. This increases accountability or sell buggy software. But with local- as a perfect complement to in-house teams. and performance by rewarding good ization testing, there’s an added reason Build a team that blends the strengths of actors and punishing bad behavior. Per- for testers to care: You’re protecting the your full-time employees (brand, reputa- formance ratings and recognition levels very things that are valuable to an entire tion) with those of the community (flex- enable your firm to choose the right culture of people. Cultural identity is an ibility, cost-effectiveness, testing coverage professionals, and promote the desired extraordinarily important component of across locations, languages). Having this behavior with members of the community.

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Use crowd diversity to mirror real- world conditions. Forget the fact that you are paying these people to write test cases or find bugs. While that’s the primary job to be done, a secondary but Europe’s No. 1 powerful benefit is that your product is being validated in the hands and minds Greek Localizer of real-world users in real-world condi- Since 1986, EuroGreek has been providing high- tions. Select the members of the com- quality, turnkey solutions, encompassing a whole munity to best match your customer base, range of client needs, for the following language by location, language and expertise. The combinations: community working on your app should How to Be match the users you hope to target. • English into Greek Remember that not all crowds are cre- World Savvy • Greek into English ated equal. When selecting a community • German into Greek to work on your products, choose wisely. International Marketing Communications • French into Greek Some communities tend to be noisy, with All EuroGreek’s work is produced in our Athens Market Research lots of opinionating, but not much actual production center and covers most subjects: productive work. Choose a community Marketing • Technical that has proven success and showcases • Medical/Pharmaceutical the past performance and reputation of • IT/Telecommunications community members. Also look for those • Economics/Legal communities that can point to clear, demonstrable wins — other customers All EuroGreek’s work is fully guaranteed for they’ve worked with to solve real busi- JFA Marketing quality and on-time delivery. ness problems. An important measure- EuroGreek Translations Limited ment for community sites is whether Minneapolis, Minnesota USA they include tools that help you manage [email protected] London, UK • Athens, Greece the ongoing process. It is easy to build www.jfamarkets.com [email protected] • www.eurogreek.com a marketplace website that connects an employer with a freelance worker, but this alone does not provide ongoing community-building. However, you still need to call the shots. Crowdsourcing does not change a fundamental truth of software testing: Effective, detailed communication and Your Polish project management are both key to any Medical Translations successful project. This is true in managing Competence Center in-house resources or outsourced partners, MediLingua is one of Europe’s few companies and crowdsourcing is no exception. Assign Since 2000, Ryszard Jarza Translations has specializing in medical translation. We provide an internal project owner to keep the infor- been providing specialized Polish translation, all European languages and the major languages mation flowing and to manage the process. localization, marketing copy adaptation, of Asia and Africa as well as the usual translation- Though crowdsourcing may be thought and DTP services. We focus primarily on life related services. of as a solution for startups and small businesses, we find that many large orga- sciences, IT, automotive, refrigeration and Our 450-plus translators have a combined nizations are also turning to the crowd for other technology sectors. medical and language background. localization testing. As Google’s senior We have built a brilliant in-house team made We work for manufacturers of medical engineering director Patrick Copeland up of experienced linguists and engineers who devices, instruments, in-vitro diagnostics and says, “our global customers have different guarantee a high standard of quality while software; pharmaceutical companies; medical demands of our products. We want prod- maintaining flexibility, responsiveness and publishers; national and international medical ucts to ‘feel local,’ and we need to support accountability. Our services are certified to EN organizations; and medical journals. features that may be unique to specific 15038:2006. markets. For instance, in Indic-based Call or e-mail Simon Andriesen or visit our languages, using a standard keyboard website for more information. is difficult, so we develop strategies like virtual keyboards or category browsing Ryszard Jarza Translations MediLingua BV for search. As we specialize our products Wrocław, Poland Leiden, The Netherlands for certain markets, it introduces more [email protected] [email protected] challenges for testing. When we can’t www.jarza.com.pl www.medilingua.com

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find internal talent, community-based key success factors for Mozilla’s success, days reviewing the various localized sites, testing is an interesting solution to this in my opinion.” with a particular focus on the German, challenge.” When ReviverSoft localized its website French, Danish and Japanese versions. Mozilla’s quality assurance (QA) direc- and product into 22 languages, the com- “We had been sending a lot of long files to tor, Matt Evans, also has some thoughts pany chose a major localization services the translators, so you never know when on the subject: “I think the biggest mis- company to do the translation work. After text is going to be cut off in certain areas conception is that it is all lumped under the website and product had been localized, of the site, since length often varies,” says one label and that crowdsourcing is Mark Beare, the company’s founding part- Beare. “We needed to make sure that the done according to some crowdsourcing ner, needed a way to test the accuracy of text rendered correctly, and we needed to manual or standard. It isn’t correct to these changes. He decided on an indepen- know where text should be changed to have crowdsourcing and community- dent third party to validate the accuracy make it more relevant.” driven projects under the same umbrella. and completeness of its localization efforts. Within a matter of days, Beare and his Strict crowdsourced projects tend to be Beare adopted crowdsourcing to find team had received complete feedback on targeted toward tasks that are discrete and native speakers who live in-market to all of their recently translated versions. distributed in nature. Community-based ensure the company’s apps were ready for “What we found was that, for the most approaches tend to be longer lived and are localized success. “We really needed native part, testers were able to use the software typically for public benefit. Membership is speakers for this assignment. These are the with the translations provided, so that considered a privilege, and betterment of countries where we’re selling our products, was good confirmation. We did, however, the community as a whole is usually at so it was extremely important that the find a few issues where the text was not the top of the list of shared goals among material was accurate and made sense.” rendered correctly and where certain con- the members of the community project. With the help of his dedicated project tent needed to be changed completely.” In addition, you find the rise of leaders manager, Beare and his team assembled As ReviverSoft expands into more within community projects that drive the diverse testers in terms of language and locations around the globe and as the project forward. Community citizenship location. With the setup complete, this young company grows in number of and passion for the project have been the team of experts spent the next several employees, Beare expects to continue crowdsourcing its localization testing. Numerous benefits can be achieved when adopting crowdsourcing for localization testing, including cost containment. INTRODUCING TO YOU: Crowdsourcing allows managers to use lower-cost outside support without being OUR “AUTOMATIC TRANSLATORS” tied down by the long-term commitments of outsourcing firms. On a monetary side- Uwe Michalis Brigitte note, companies that venture into local- Alessandra ization often have trouble retaining users outside of their home market. Users who feel that they have a hand in the success of a product will have a stronger emotional commitment to the product and the com- Isabella pany, creating powerful connections and a Yasmin potential army of fans. Today’s customers, no matter where they are, tend to expect apps to be complete and functional from day one. The era of beta-testing in foreign markets as a substitute for QA is long gone. Since localization testing tends to occur dur- Aleksey Stéphan ing the latter phases of the product’s life BECAUSE LOCALIZATION IS NOT JUST ABOUT TECHNOLOGY. cycle, a time when deadlines are fast IT’S ABOUT PASSION TOO. approaching, crowdsourcing can alleviate delays that often stifle companies around Thanks to the Xlated Team, your products will break language barriers. peak release times. M Our professional mother tongue translators work hard in their native countries to make the language of your software less “automatic” and more “human”. References Beare, Mark. Personal interview. 22 June 2011. Copeland, Patrick. Personal interview. 22 February 2011. A Translators’ Company, not just a Translation Company. www.xlated.com Evans, Matt. Personal interview. 15 December 2010.

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Authoring tools 51

geographies to meet language service and technology provid- conferences 51 AssociAtions ers and to network with their peers. Hands-on practitioners come to share their knowledge and experience and to learn enterprise solutions 51 from others. See our website for details on upcoming and past conferences. locAlizAtion services 51 Localization World Ltd. 319 North 1st Avenue, Sandpoint, ID 83864, 208-263-8178, Fax: 208-263-6310, E-mail: info@localizationworld locAlizAtion tools 54 .com, Web: www.localizationworld.com See ad on page 17 nonprofit orgAnizAtions 54 Globalization and Localization Association Description The Globalization and Localization Association nterprise olutions trAnslAtion MgMt systeMs 54 is a fully representative, nonprofit, international industry e s association for the translation, internationalization, local- trAnslAtion services 55 ization and globalization industry. The association gives members a common forum to discuss issues, create innova- trAnslAtion tools 57 tive solutions, promote the industry and offer clients unique, collaborative value. Globalization and Localization Association 23 Main Street, consulting. Core technologies: Transit (translation memory), Andover, MA 01810, 206-329-2596, Fax: 815-346-2361, E-mail: Across Systems [email protected], Web: www.gala-global.org Multiple Platforms TermStar/WebTerm (terminology management), GRIPS Languages All Description Across Language Server is the (product information management), MindReader (context- world’s leading independent linguistic supply chain tech- sensitive authoring assistance), STAR CLM (corporate lan- nology. It provides a central software platform for corporate guage management), STAR CPM (corporate process manage- language resources and translation processes. The all-in-one ment), i-KNOW (competence management), and SPIDER enterprise solution includes a translation memory, a termi- (Interactive Electronic Technical Manual). STAR Group Wiesholz 35, 8262 Ramsen, Switzerland, 41-52- TAUS nology system, and powerful PM and workflow control tools. 742-9200, 216-691-7827, E-mail: [email protected], Web: Description TAUS is a think tank for the translation indus- It allows end-to-end processing so that clients, LSPs and www.star-group.net See ad on page 10 try, undertaking research for buyers and providers of trans- translators collaborate seamlessly. Open interfaces enable the lation services and technologies. Our mission is to increase direct integration of CMS or ERP solutions, among others. the size and significance of the translation industry to help Across clients access the Language Server via LAN, WAN the world communicate better. To meet this ongoing goal, or web, or as a hosted service. Across customers include locAlizAtion services TAUS supports entrepreneurs and principals in the trans- Volkswagen, HypoVereinsbank, SMA Solar Technology and lation industry to share and define new strategies through hundreds of other leading companies. a comprehensive program of events, publications and Across Systems GmbH Im Stoeckmaedle 13-15, D-76307 Karlsbad, communications. Germany, 49-7248-925-425, E-mail: [email protected] TAUS Oosteinde 9-11, 1483 AB De Rijp, The Netherlands, 31-299-672- Across Systems Inc. Glendale, CA 91203, 877-922-7677, E-mail: 028, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.translation [email protected], Web: www.across.net See ad on page 4 automation.com ADAPT Localization Services Languages More than 50 Description ADAPT Localization Services offers the full range of services that enables clients Authoring tools to be successful in international markets, from documentation design through translation, linguistic and technical localization services, prepress and publication management. MultiCorpora Serving both Fortune 500 and small companies, ADAPT Multiple Platforms has gained a reputation for quality, reliability, technological Languages All Unicode languages Description As language competence and a commitment to customer service. Fields technology experts since 1999, MultiCorpora is exclusively of specialization include diagnostic and medical devices, IT/ dedicated to providing language technology software solu- telecom and web content. With offices in Bonn, Germany; Congree Language Technologies tions to enterprises, language service providers and govern- Stockholm, Sweden; and Barcelona, Spain, and a number of Languages English, German, French Description Congree ments. Its flagship product, MultiTrans Prism, offers an certified partner companies, ADAPT is well suited to help cli- provides the leading technologies in the area of authoring innovative and complete turn-key translation management ents achieve their goals in any market. assistance. It combines authoring memory, terminology, and system. MultiTrans Prism is an enterprise client-server appli- ADAPT Localization Services Clemens-August-Strasse 16-18, 53115 rule-based quality and style control into integrated prod- cation that consists of four core components which together, Bonn, Germany, 49-228-98-22-60, Fax: 49-228-98-22-615, E-mail: ucts. These distinguish themselves through their outstand- or individually, enable communications in more than one lan- [email protected], Web: www.adapt-localization.com ing linguistic intelligence, support for all editors, and their guage; they are business management, project management See ad on page 40 availability optionally either in real time during text creation (workflow), advanced translation memory and terminology or for after-the-fact checking routines. Congree’s products management. RR Donnelley, Nomura, the Translation Bureau are available in various stages of expansion, and they can be of Canada, UNESCO and many others rely on MultiTrans to scaled at will, from the individual workstation license to the manage their mission-critical translation operations. company-wide client/server solution. MultiCorpora 102-490 St. Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, Quebec, Congree Language Technologies Im Stoeckmaedle 13-15, 76307 J8Y 3Y7 Canada, 819-778-7070, 877-725-7070, Fax: 819-778- Karlsbad, Germany, 877-922-7677, 49-7248-92545-0, Fax: 49- 0801, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.multicorpora.com Alliance Localization China (ALC) 7248-925-444, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.congree.com See ad on page 27 Languages Major Asian and European languages Description ALC offers document, website and software translation and localization, desktop publishing and interpreter services. We conferences focus on English, German and other European languages to and from Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian languages. We use TRADOS, CATALYST, SDLX, Transit, Wordfast, memoQ and other CAT tools, as well as DTP tools STAR Group including CorelDRAW, FrameMaker, FreeHand, Illustrator, Multiple Platforms InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop and QuarkXPress. Our Languages All Description STAR Group was founded in customer-oriented approach is supported by strong project Switzerland 27 years ago with the exclusive focus of facilitat- management, a team of specialists, a large knowledge base Localization World ing cross-cultural technical communications in all languages. and advanced methodologies. We always provide service Description Localization World conferences are dedicated The company has grown to be the largest privately held mul- beyond our customers’ expectations at a low cost and with to the language and localization industries. Our constitu- tilingual information technology and services company in high quality, speed, dependability and flexibility. ents are the people responsible for communicating across the world with 42 offices in 32 countries. Its advanced tech- Alliance Localization China Suite 526, Building B, No.10, Xing the boundaries of language and culture in the global nology developments have propelled STAR to its current Huo Road, Fengtai Science Park, Beijing 100070, P.R. China, 86- marketplace. International product and marketing manag- market position. Core services: information management, 10-8368-2169, Fax: 86-10-8368-2884, E-mail: customer_care@ ers participate in Localization World from all sectors and all translation, localization, publishing, on-demand printing, allocalization.com, Web: www.allocalization.com

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EuroGreek Translations Limited iDISC Information Technologies Binari Sonori Language Greek Description Established in 1986, EuroGreek Languages Spanish (all variants), Portuguese (European and Description Binari Sonori is a leading provider of interna- Translations Limited is Europe’s number one Greek local- Brazilian), Catalan, Basque, Galician, Valencian Description tional media localization services since 1994, with a unique izer, specializing in technical and medical translations from iDISC, established in 1987, is an ISO-9001 and EN-15038 team of project managers, studios, engineers and selected English into Greek and Greek into English. EuroGreek’s aim certified company based in Barcelona with branches in Ar- linguists spread over 30 countries worldwide. Solid proce- is to provide high-quality, turnkey solutions, encompassing a gentina, Mexico and Brazil that focuses on localization into dures and transparent relationships with clients guarantee whole range of client needs, from plain translation to desk- all variants of Spanish (European, Latin American, USA and high quality of text, audio and video, timeliness and flexibil- top/web publishing to localization development and testing. Neutral), Portuguese (European and Brazilian) and the other ity. We are accustomed to working for global companies that Over the years, EuroGreek’s services have been extended languages spoken in Spain (Catalan, Basque, Galician and need to reach a broad range of markets with their media and to cover most subject areas, including German and French Valencian). Specialization fields are websites, software local- entertainment products. Specialized support available for any into Greek localization services. All of EuroGreek’s work is ization, technical documentation, business, automotive and media localization activity, from effective audio localization produced in-house by a team of 25 highly qualified special- marketing materials. All commercial tools are available. In- to international content creation. Highly professionalized ists and is fully guaranteed for quality and on-time delivery. ternal tools help reduce management costs and increase qual- one-stop shop supporting today’s media localization projects. EuroGreek Translations Limited ity, consistency and on-time deliveries. Continuous support Binari Sonori S.r.l. Viale Fulvio Testi, 11, 20092 Cinisello Balsamo, London 27 Lascotts Road, London, N22 8JG United Kingdom to the client achieves the best project results and establishes Milano, Italy, 39-02-61866-310, Fax: 39-02-61866-313, E-mail: Athens EuroGreek House, 93 Karagiorga Street, Athens 166 75, long-term, honest partnerships. [email protected], Web: www.binarisonori.com See ad on Greece, 30-210-9605-244, Fax: 30-210-9647-077, E-mail: production iDISC Information Technologies Passeig del progrés 96, 08640 page 28 @eurogreek.gr, Web: www.eurogreek.com See ad on page 49 Olesa de Montserrat, Barcelona, Spain, 34-93-778-73-00, Fax: 34- 93-778-35-80, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.idisc.es

E-C Translation Ltd. is now EC Innovations, Inc. Future Trans The Greek Partner Languages All Description E-C Translation Ltd., the Languages All Middle Eastern and African languages Languages English, German, Greek Description Intertrans- technology-driven language services company with a Future Trans is an ISO 9001:2008 certified Description lations Ltd. is a leading Greek translation and localization mission to provide high-quality localization solutions, is language service provider and the leading translation and service provider, established in 1995, with extensive experi- pleased to announce the rebranding of its business to EC localization agency in the Middle East and Africa. We’ve ence in medical and pharmaceutical products and equip- Innovations, Inc. Over the past 14 years, EC Innovations, been in business since 1994 and currently employ more ment, legal, financial, mechanical, automotive, engineering, an ISO 9001:2008 certified organization, has grown to than 90 in-house professionals, with branches in Egypt, the electrical, technical, software, media and marketing, tour- over 200 full-time employees, providing multilingual and US, Turkey and South Africa. We have developed extensive ism, health and nutrition, the food industry and so on. interdisciplinary services worldwide. The new name and industry specific expertise in IT, telecommunication, auto- Among the tools used to ensure the quality of our pro- image are a reflection of our completeness as a full-fledged motive, financial, medical, legal and many other fields in jects are TRADOS, Transit, SDLX and other CAT tools and localization solutions provider. Hereafter, EC Innovations translation and localization. Currently we provide transla- for DTP, InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop, QuarkXPress, will continue to focus on providing our customers with tion in all Middle Eastern and African languages. Future Illustrator, CorelDRAW and FrameMaker. We have proudly the highest quality of language and technology solutions Trans offers translation, typesetting, technical writing, acquired ISO 9001:2000 and DIN EN 15038:2006-08 certifi- while maintaining our reputation for being a customer- localization, multilingual project management, audio pro- cations and are members of ATC and GALA. We provide free centric organization. duction, consulting and testing. samples upon request. EC Innovations, Inc. 501 Silverside Road, Suite 105, Wilmington, Future Trans LTD 10th Abdul Rahman El-Raﬁe St. Dokki, Giza 12311, Intertranslations Ltd. El. Venizelou 4, 176 76 Athens, Greece, 30-210- DE 19809, 617-775-3506, Fax: 508-762-5304, E-mail: info@ Egypt, +202 33350040, Fax: +202 37608966, E-mail: egyptinfo@ 92-25-000, Fax: 30-210-92-25-500, E-mail: xynos@intertrans ecinnovations.com, Web: www.ecinnovations.com future-trans.com, Web: www.future-trans.com See ad on page 13 lations.gr, Web: www.intertranslations.gr

New markets for your products and solutions

Janus Worldwide Inc. Languages 80 and growing Description Janus is a leading WHY provider of language solutions to the world’s most global ? companies. Our flexible, scalable and proven approach enables our team to deliver services with top-quality results TOTAL SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR BUSINESS both on-time and on-budget. Industries we serve include IT, telecom, life sciences, energy, financial and automotive. Languages: Major ASIAN languages, including Korean, Japanese, S-Chinese, T-Chinese, Thai Some of the services we offer are: functional and linguistic testing; software, website, and multimedia localization; and Established in 1995, E4NET has successfully accomplished many major projects for cust- technical, e-learning, and marketing translation. Our processes are backed by the ISO 9001:2008 quality certifica- omers such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, PeopleSoft, Oracle, 3Com, Sun Microsystems, tion and our clients include Microsoft, IBM, Siemens and Sony, EMC and BEA Systems, based on accumulated experience and know-how. We spe- Volkswagen. We have nine offices in Asia, Europe and the cialize in the ﬁelds of IT such as ERP/CRM/DBMS, consumer software, hardware/equipment, US to facilitate communication globally. Janus Worldwide Inc. Derbenevskaya nab., 11B, Ofﬁce B208, OS, server application, management, multimedia and so on. E4NET can provide all types of Moscow 115114, Russia, +7-495-913-66-53, US 855-526-8799 Fax: +7-495-913-66-53, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www. localization, including the full scope of software testing services in Windows, Macintosh, janusww .com Linux and Unix as well as DTP, audio recording and video translation services.

[email protected] • www.e4net.net Find us at www.facebook.com/ Tel: 822-3465-8500 • Fax: 822-3465-8502 multilingualmagazine

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Your Vision. Worldwide.

Full-service Translation, Localization and LinguaGraphics — Multilingual DTP; Web, PTIGlobal Multilingual Testing Languages All commercial languages for Europe, Asia Flash and Software Localization; Engineering Languages Over 60 Description Net-Translators provides and the Americas Description PTIGlobal is committed to Languages All, including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Farsi, turnkey translation, localization and multilingual testing developing ongoing, long-term partnerships with its clients. Greek, Hindi, Hebrew, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, services and customized strategy-to-deployment localiza- This means a dedication to personal service, responsiveness, Punjabi, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese tion solutions. For over ten years, they’ve helped technology high-quality output, and sensitivity to clients’ cost goals Description LinguaGraphics is a leading provider in the companies and medical-device manufacturers prepare their and timelines. Backed by over 30 years of experience in area of multilingual desktop publishing and web/soft- products and services for global markets. For software appli- technical translation, PTIGlobal provides turnkey localiza- ware/Flash localization engineering. Our seasoned DTP cations (GUI, online help and documentation), marketing tion services in 30 languages simultaneously for software, professionals and localization engineers are working with the materials, websites and more, Net-Translators’ customer- web applications, embedded devices, wireless applications latest tools on top-of-the-line equipment to produce a wide focused, professional teams deliver consistent, accurate results and gaming technology. Projects employ our expertise in range of projects in InDesign, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, in compliance to international regulations. Their one-of-a- end-to-end project management; internationalization con- Photoshop and Flash. We specialize in typesetting high-end kind Multilingual Testing Center is specially equipped and sultation; glossary development; native language transla- marketing and communications-type material in difficult staffed to offer the ultimate testing environment for local- tion; multilingual web content management; translation and rare languages at very competitive rates. For a quote on ized products. ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485:2003 certifica- memory maintenance; localization engineering; linguistic your next project, please visit us at www.linguagraphics.com. tions and a long-standing reputation for quality have earned and functionality testing; desktop publishing; complete You have our word that we will never compromise on quality Net-Translators the trust of industry leaders worldwide. multilingual video and audio services; as well as onsite and do the utmost to make your project a success. Net-Translators managed services. USA Cupertino, CA, 800-320-1020, E-mail: salesusca@net- LinguaGraphics, Inc. 194 Park Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238, 718- PTIGlobal 4915 SW Grifﬁth Drive, Suite 200, Beaverton, OR 97005, translators.com 623-3066, 718-789-2782, E-mail: [email protected], Web: 503-297-2165, 888-357-3125, Fax: 503-352-0729, E-mail: info@ www.linguagraphics.com USA Marlborough, MA, 617-275-8128, E-mail: salesuseast@net- translators.com ptiglobal.com, Web: www.ptiglobal.com Europe London, England, +44-20-3393-8385, E-mail: saleseu@net- translators.com Middle East Or Yehuda, Israel +972-3-5338633, E-mail: salesil@ net-translators.com South America Posadas - Misiones, Argentina, +54-3764-487029, E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-translators.com See ad on page 59 Logrus International Corporation Localization and Globalization Partner Languages EE, EA, ME, WE, rare languages Description Languages 50 languages including English, Chinese, Japa- Logrus offers a full set of localization and translation services nese, Korean Description Saltlux was founded in 1979 as for various industries, including top-notch software engi- the first localization and globalization service provider in neering and testing and DTP for all languages, including South Korea. With over 30 years of accumulated experi- bidirectional and double-byte ones. The company is proud ence and know-how, Saltlux is an ideal and esteemed global of its unique problem-solving skills and minimal support technical communications partner. We specialize in multi- requirements. The company offers all European and Asian Greek Localization Experts Since 1983 lingual translation and DTP, technical writing services, soft- languages as well as many rare languages through its offices Language Greek Description Founded in 1983, ORCO S.A. ware localization, web globalization and so on. We provide and established long-term partners. With its production is a leading translation and localization service provider, spe- site in Moscow, Russia, Logrus provides a winning combi- cializing in software localization and technical translations our clients with a one-stop production line, starting with nation of quality, experience and affordability. With over 14 (IT, telecommunication, medical, automotive, engineering, the authoring of documents and going on to localizing, years in business, the company has received multiple awards marketing, financial). ORCO deals primarily with English- designing and editing, digital publishing, two-way elec- for excellence from its long-time customers, including IBM, into-Greek projects, although translation from several other tronic manual production and database establishment. Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and others. European languages can be taken aboard. With its experi- With this business direction, we are striving to grow into Logrus International Corporation Suite 305, 2600 Philmont Ave- enced in-house personnel, ORCO offers all language services and excel as a leader in global technical communications. nue, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006, 215-947-4773, Fax: 866-241- at the highest quality level, including localization, product Saltlux, Inc. 5~7F, Deokil Building, 967 Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, 3633, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.logrus.ru testing, engineering, DTP and so on. Our client list includes Seoul 135-848, South Korea, 822-379-8444, Fax: 822-379-5996, many IT companies such as Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft and E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.saltlux.com Oracle, as well as international corporations such as Abbott, Ford, Nokia, Sony, Kaeser and Hitachi. ORCO S.A. 6, Vas. Soﬁas Avenue, 106 74 Athens, Greece, 30-210-723- 6001, Fax: 30-210-7249124, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.orco.gr

Moravia Worldwide Languages All Description Moravia Worldwide is a leading TOIN Corporation globalization solution provider, enabling companies in the Languages Japanese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, information technology, e-learning, life sciences and finan- Korean, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese and European languages cial industries to enter global markets with high-quality Description TOIN is a solidly established Asian MLV with multilingual products. Moravia’s solutions include local- Pangeanic & PangeaMT more than 45 years’ experience. Our services encompass Languages Spanish (all variants) and all Spanish state of- ization and product testing services, internationalization, translation, localization engineering, DTP, MT post-editing, ficial languages, EN/FIG/other EU languages, all other multilingual publishing and technical translation. Hewlett- workflow/process consulting and project management. TOIN languages including Asian ones on demand Description Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and offers global reach and exceptional strength in Asia, with head- Pangeanic is an independent Spanish LSP with sister offices Symantec are some of the companies that depend on Moravia in Tokyo and Shanghai working for the global enterprise quarters in Tokyo and additional operations in the United Worldwide for accurate, on-time localization. Moravia market (major accounts in the electronics and computing States, Europe, China and Korea. The company has been Worldwide maintains global headquarters in the Czech fields) as well as for smaller organizations, MLVs and cross- helping Global 1000 companies in industries such as auto- Republic and North American headquarters in California, national institutions. We offer a wide range of GILT services motive, IT, telecommunications, life sciences, e-learning, with local offices and production centers in Ireland, China, always adhering to stringent quality standard procedures computer software/gaming, semiconductors and consumer Japan and throughout Europe. To learn more, please visit — EN 15038 and ISO 9001. Pangeanic has an experienced products. www.moraviaworldwide.com. team devoted to MTPE (post-editing of machine transla- TOIN Corporation Moravia Worldwide tion output). PangeaMT, our customized open-source SMT Japan Shiba 1-chome Building, 1-12-7 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo USA 199 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360, 105-0014 Japan, 81-3-3455-8764, Fax: 81-3-3455-6514, E-mail: 805-557-1700, 800-276-1664, Fax: 805-557-1702, E-mail: info@ technology, enables us to offer domain-specific MT engines [email protected], Web: www.to-in.co.jp moraviaworldwide.com, Web: www.moraviaworldwide.com that are fully tailored to the clients’ needs, helping them be- North America Minneapolis, MN, 612-926-0201, E-mail: aki-ito@ Asia 86-25-8473-2772, E-mail: [email protected] come more productive cost-effectively and rapidly. to-in.co.jp, Web: www.to-in.com Europe 420-545-552-222, E-mail: [email protected] Pangeanic Trade Center, Profesor Beltrán Báguena 4, Suite 106, Europe London, United Kingdom, 44-20-8644-8685, E-mail: Ireland 353-1-216-4102, E-mail: [email protected] 46009 Valencia, Spain, 34-96-338-5771, Fax: 34-96-338-5772, [email protected], Web: www.to-in.com Japan 81-3-3354-3320, E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], Web: China Shanghai, P.R. China, 86-21-3222-0012, E-mail: shen-yi@ See ad on page 38 www.pangeanic.com, www.pangea.com.mt See ad on page 21 to-in.co.jp, Web: www.to-in.com

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technologic solutions, dedicated to each client’s needs. access to information across languages, independent of WhP has become for several years a renowned actor in the economic or market considerations, including localization translation and localization world. By placing clients’ needs and translation companies, technology developers, not-for- at the forefront and by carrying out huge efforts and best profit and non-governmental organizations. practices for each individual client, WhP has gained the loy- The Rosetta Foundation Unit 13 Classon House, Dundrum Business alty of international accounts (such as Oracle, Dell, IBM, Park, Dublin 14, Ireland, +353-87-6736414, E-mail: info@therosetta transcript GmbH & Co. KG Crossknowledge, Total, Amadeus and HP) in the fields foundation.org, Web: www.therosettafoundation.org See ad on Languages All Description transcript is a leading provider of software, online applications, training and e-learning, page 29 of translation services specializing in technical transla- video games, and so on. WhP maintains its headquarters in tions and software localization. The company’s specific France with local offices and production centers in China focus is on business and ERP software, and it has a di- and Slovakia. versified customer portfolio. Thanks to our global part- WhP Espace Beethoven BP102, F06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, ner network, we are equipped to handle both large-scale France, 33-493-00-40-30, Fax: 33-493-00-40-34, E-mail: enquiry projects as well as smaller speciality items. With our per- @whp.net, Web: www.whp.net manent staff of experienced in-house specialists plus a carefully-selected and maintained pool of freelance trans- Translators without Borders English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, lators, transcript has earned itself the reputation of being Languages Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Swedish De- a reliable and flexible business partner. The deployment scription Translators without Borders is an independent of state-of-the-art CAT tools ensures efficient translation registered nonprofit association based in France that assists cycles with high throughput, and it also guarantees con- non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by providing free, sistent terminology. professional translations. Founded by Lexcelera in 1993, transcript GmbH & Co. KG Beethovenstrasse 8, 50674 Köln, Germany, Xlated Ltd. Translators without Borders has provided over two mil- 49-221-272738-10, Fax: 49-221-272738-11, E-mail: contact@ Languages Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, transcript.de, Web: www.transcript.de lion dollars worth of free translations. Thanks to the funds Russian Description Xlated is a young and dynamic local- saved, NGOs are able to extend their humanitarian work. ization service provider, founded and managed by transla- Translators without Borders Passage du Cheval Blanc, 2 rue de la tors with 15+ years of specialization in software localization. Roquette, 75011 Paris, France, 33-1-55-28-88-09, Fax: 33-1-55- Thanks to a proven knowledge of internationalization and 28-88-09, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www localization processes, a team of highly skilled and moti- .translatorswithoutborders.com See ad on page 30 vated professionals, and an intelligent use of the most recent translation technologies, we offer a wide range of Ushuaia Solutions multilingual services for small to large and complex soft- trAnslAtion Languages Spanish (all varieties), Portuguese (Brazil) Des- ware localization projects. Services include terminology cription Ushuaia Solutions is a fast-growing Latin American management, translation of GUI and user documentation, MAnAgeMent systeMs company providing solutions for translation, localization linguistic and functional quality assurance, engineering, and globalization needs. Ushuaia Solutions is focused on multiplatform DTP and consulting. being creative and proactive to meet tight time frames with a Xlated Ltd. Riverbank, Kells Business Park, Kells, Co. Meath, Ireland, +353-(0)46-9250005, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.xlated. high level of quality and a cost-effective budget. Customizing com See ad on page 50 its processes, Ushuaia assures project consistency and technical and linguistic accuracy, thus reducing clients’ time- to-market. Ushuaia combines state-of-the-art technology locAlizAtion tools Projetex: Translation Management System with top-notch experienced native translators, editors and Version 8.5, Windows software engineers. Our mission is to work together with our Languages English, Arabic , Bulgarian, Simplified and Tradi- clients, thereby creating a flexible, reliable and open relation- tional Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, ship for success. German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Pol- Ushuaia Solutions Rioja 919, S2000AYK Rosario, Argentina, ish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, 54-341-4493064, Fax: 54-341-4492542, E-mail: info@ushuaia solutions.com, Web: www.ushuaiasolutions.com See ad on page 34 Serbian, Slovenian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian Description Twelve years ago Projetex was the first transla- SDL tion management system around. Now it is the most com- Description SDL, the leader in Global Information Manage- prehensive translation management software for translation ment, enables companies to engage with their customers agencies, with over 250 distinct features developed from throughout the customer journey – from brand awareness, 1999 to 2011. By using this translation management system, to sales and after-sales support – across languages, cultures you can double the productivity of your project managers. and channels. SDL’s best-of-breed web content manage- Let them work regular office hours without the need for VistaTEC ment, eCommerce, structured content and language tech- overtime. Make them more happy and motivated by estab- Languages All Description VistaTEC is a leading provider nologies, combined with its language services drive down lishing a clear workflow and reliable collaboration platform. of globalization services and specializes in the localization costs of content creation, management, translation and Built-in AnyCount word count software and CATCount. and testing of enterprise, mobile and desktop applications. publishing to increase conversion ratios and customer sat- Used by 750 translation agencies in 59 countries worldwide. VistaTEC provides translation, technical consulting, engi- isfaction. Learn more at www.sdl.com. Live chat support. Multiple testimonials and business cases. neering and testing, language review, transcreation and SDL Globe House, Clivemont Road, Maidenhead SL6 7DY United Special discount for MultiLingual readers. brand integrity services during the design, development and Kingdom, +44-1628-410-100, E-mail: [email protected], Web: Advanced International Translations Arhitektora Gorodetskogo 11b, marketing cycles of client’s products. www.sdl.com See ad on page 60 Kiev 01001, Ukraine, +380-44-221-24-01 Fax: +380-44-221-24-30, VistaTEC E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.projetex.com Europe VistaTEC House, 700 South Circular Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8, Ireland, 353-1-416-8000, Fax: 353-1-416-8099 onprofit rgAnizAtions USA East 2706 Loma Street, Silver Spring, MD 20902, 301-649- n o 3012, Fax: 301-649-3032 USA West 1800 West El Camino Real, Suite 108, Mountain View, CA 94040, 408-898-2357 Fax: 408-898-2362 E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.vistatec.com See ad on page 43 MultiCorpora Multiple Platforms Languages All Unicode languages Description As lan- The Rosetta Foundation guage technology experts since 1999, MultiCorpora is Languages All Description Access to information is a fun- exclusively dedicated to providing language technology damental right. We want to relieve poverty, support health software solutions to enterprises, language service pro- care, develop education and promote justice through access viders and governments. Its flagship product, MultiTrans WhP International to information and knowledge across the languages of the Prism, offers an innovative and complete turn-key Languages All European and major Middle Eastern and world. The Rosetta Foundation supports the not-for-profit translation management system. MultiTrans Prism is an Asian languages, including local variants Description Since activities of the localization and translation communities. It enterprise client-server application that consists of four 1994, WhP International has offered a set of linguistic and works internationally with those who want to provide equal core components which, together or individually, enable

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communications in more than one language; they are efficiency or want to support collaboration within your business management, project management (workflow), teams – consider Wordbee. advanced translation memory and terminology manage- Wordbee S.A. 66 rue de Luxembourg, L- 4221 Esch-sur-Alzette, ment. RR Donnelley, Nomura, the Translation Bureau of Luxembourg, +352-54-55-80-875, E-mail: [email protected] Canada, UNESCO and many others rely on MultiTrans to Wordbee USA 1631 NE Broadway, #251, Portland, Oregon 97232, Choose Us and Speak With the World manage their mission-critical translation operations. 503-287-0023, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.wordbee. Languages 37 languages Description Biro 2000 is located com See ad on page 45 MultiCorpora 102-490 St. Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, Quebec, in the heart of Europe (Slovenia). We’ve been in busi- J8Y 3Y7 Canada, 819-778-7070, 877-725-7070, Fax: 819-778- 0801, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.multicorpora.com ness since 1992. Our clients come from all areas of indus- See ad on page 27 try, but for the past few years our work priorities have concentrated on the following areas of expertise: life sciences, legal, IT, cell phone, automotive and technical industries. Our work has focused on Eastern European languages. We’re ISO 9001:2008 and EN15038:2007 certified. We utilize the following programs in our work: XTRF Translation Management Systems memoQ server, Trados SDL Synergy, Across Language Multiple Platforms Server and Transit XV. Description XTRF is a global management system for Plunet BusinessManager BiroTranslations (Biro 2000 d.o.o.) Stegne 7, 1000 Ljubljana, translation agencies. With built-in cutting-edge Java tech- Slovenia, +386-1-513-18-20, Fax: +386-1513-18-21, E-mail: Multiple Platforms nology, XTRF is a flexible, customizable and web-based [email protected], Web: www.birotranslations.com See Description Plunet develops and markets the business and software, enabling web access for a company’s suppliers ad on page 8 workflow management software Plunet BusinessManager and customers. It’s designed to help translation companies — one of the world’s leading management solutions to streamline all of their daily activities, and it guaran- for the translation and localization industry. Plunet tees smooth management of the company while reduc- BusinessManager provides a high degree of automation ing administrative costs. Project management, invoicing, and flexibility for professional language service providers quotations, ISO 9001 reports and CRM are the main fields and translation departments. Using a web-based platform, covered by the system. Designed by translation and local- Plunet integrates translation software, financial account- ization professionals and created by the best IT team, this ing and quality management systems. Various functions powerful tool will reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks Diskusija – Translation and Localization and extensions of Plunet BusinessManager can be adapted and increase a company’s effectiveness. Languages Central and Eastern European languages De- scription Founded in 1993, Diskusija specializes in tech- to individual needs within a configurable system. Basic XTRF ul. Walerego Sławka 3, 30-653 Krak´ow, Poland, 48-12-2546- functions include quote, order and invoice management, 126, Fax: 48-12-2546-122, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.xtrf.eu nical translation and localization services from Western comprehensive financial reports, flexible job and workflow European languages into all Central and Eastern European management as well as deadline, document and customer languages with a strong focus on Baltic languages (Lithu- relationship management. trAnslAtion services anian, Latvian, Estonian). Our experienced team is able to Plunet GmbH Prenzlauer Allee 214, D-10405 Berlin, Germany, 49- handle projects of any complexity. We guarantee a profes- 30-322971340, Fax: 49-30-322971359, E-mail: [email protected], sional and personal approach to our clients’ needs, the use Web: www.plunet.net of state-of-the-art industrial technology, quality management at all stages of a project, on-time delivery, competitive rates and flexibility. We have extensive expertise in the following industries: IT, software, hardware, telecommunications, medical equipment, medicine, pharmacology, Arcadia Translations accounting, finance, automotive industry, electronics, leg- Languages English, Spanish (all variants), Brazilian Por- islation and EU documents. tuguese Description Arcadia Translations, a translation Diskusija Seimyniskiu g. 1A, LT-09312 Vilnius, Lithuania, 370-5- Text United agency based in Argentina, provides translation and local- 2790574, Fax: 370-5-2790576, E-mail: [email protected], Web: Windows ization services from English into Spanish and Brazilian www.diskusija.lt Description Text United is an innovative translation plat- Portuguese. We value quality, words and communication, form covering all of your professional translation needs. and we offer integral linguistic solutions that include a Our unique approach to terminology and in-country re- wide range of services such as translation, editing and view allows you to protect the core of your brand, while proofreading of documentation, software localization, letting it shine in different colors on foreign markets. Text web solutions, voice-over and DTP services. We have United platform can be used by in-house staff, external an experienced in-house staff who guarantees our high translators and by in-country reviewers. It facilitates collab- standard of quality. Our values as a company are cost- orative and transparent translation processes and provides effectiveness, responsiveness, customer-oriented service, advanced language technologies such as translation memo- reliability and fast turnaround. Follow-Up Translation Services Languages English, Brazilian Portuguese Description ries and terminology management, deployed centrally and Arcadia Translations Marcelo T. de Alvear 1671 piso 8 dpto 50, automatically. Thanks to transparency of the supply chain, Buenos Aires 1060, Argentina, 5411-5353-3390, Fax: 5411-5353- For 22 years, Follow-Up has been one of the best single- Text United helps reduce cost of translation by 25%. Avail- 3395, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.arcadia-t.com language translation companies in Brazil. We’re equipped able on subscription, with no up-front costs. with a large network of professional translators, effectively Text United GmbH Attemsgasse 7/D20, Vienna, Austria, 1220, trained project managers and state-of-the-art technology 43-660-735-7355, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www resources. We’re capable of working locally and on the .textunited.com See ads on pages 9, 39 cloud. Our areas of expertise include IT, finance, medicine and marketing, among others. Follow-Up’s main partner and founder, Luciana Lavôr, is now a certified localization professional by California State University. Another part- BENEXtra Korea ner at the company, Ana Beatriz Fernandes, has recently Languages Chinese, Japanese, Korean Description BENEXtra become an official public sworn translator. Therefore, Korea, one of the top quality localization/translation ven- under her supervision, we also have a legal translations dors in Asia, enjoys an excellent reputation and wide rec- department. Wordbee ognition among world-class players such as Dell, IBM, Follow-Up Rua Visconde de Pirajá, 351, Sala 815, Rio de Janeiro, Enterprise Version, Multiple Platforms Microsoft, CA, Google, Autodesk, Cisco and the California RJ 22410-003 Brazil, 55-21-3553-7223, Fax: 55-21-3553-7223, Languages All Unicode Languages Description Wordbee state government. With our hands-on, practical experience E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.follow-up.com.br provides you with all the features and functionality found in IT marketing collateral translation, software localization, in traditional enterprise TMS products, combined with Asian language localization, and our accumulated expertise real-time team collaboration and flexible, intuitive work- in audio translation, we are ready to work together with Stay informed — flows, project management environment and an intuitive you, helping you sustain growth and create and capture user interface. Implementation is remarkably straight- new value. Get the latest language forward, with no servers to purchase, complex migration BENEXtra Korea Second Floor, Gukdong Building 1163-7, Gaepo- industry news at steps or consultants needed for implementation. No need Dong, Gangnam-Gu, Seoul 135-960, Korea, 82-2-572-4987, to integrate and pay licensing for multiple translation Fax: 82-2-3462-4987, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www www.multilingual.com/news and workflow tools! If you need to improve control and .benextra.com See ad on page 24

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in a wide range of software that includes Trados, SDLX, Transit, CATALYST, RC-WinTrans, Idiom, Across, Multilizer, Passolo, RoboHelp, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, CorelDraw, Illustrator, Freehand and Dreamweaver. We view our projects from the ForeignExchange Translations Medical Translations Only customers’ perspective and in turn gain the trust of our clients, steering our commitment to provide not just transla- Languages 42 languages and growing Description Foreign- Languages 45, including all EU languages Description tion services but complete solutions. Exchange is the global leader in providing translation MediLingua is one of the few medical translation special- services to life sciences companies. We work with many ists in Europe. We only do medical. We provide all European PTSGI 6F, #23 Section 6, Min-Chuan East Road, Taipei City 11494, of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, medical device Taiwan, 886-2-8791-6688, Fax: 886-2-8791-7884, E-mail: market languages and the major languages of Asia and Africa, as well @ptsgi.com, Web: www.ptsgi.com manufacturers, biotech companies and CROs. Our pro- as translation-related services to manufacturers of devices, prietary Multilingual Compliance Process combines expert instruments, in vitro diagnostics and software; pharmaceutical linguists, best-of-breed technology and measurable transla- and biotechnology companies; medical publishers; national tion quality in a process that is both robust and completely and international medical organizations; and other customers scalable, ensuring your projects are finished on time and in the medical sector. Projects include the translation of docu- within budget. For more information on how we can help mentation for medical devices, surgical instruments, hospital meet your translation requirements or for a quote on your equipment and medical software; medical information for next translation project, please contact us directly or visit patients, medical students and physicians; scientific articles; Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, Ursula Steigerwald our website at www.fxtrans.com. press releases; product launches; clinical trial documentation; Language German to/from major European languages De- ForeignExchange Translations 1001 Watertown Street, 3rd Floor, medical news; and articles from medical journals. scription Outstanding localization requires world-class ex- Newton, MA 02465, 617-559-9760, Fax: 617-559-9764, E-mail: MediLingua Medical Translations BV Poortgebouw, Rijnsburgerweg perience. Rheinschrift gives your business a native voice in [email protected], Web: www.fxtrans.com 10, 2333 AA Leiden, The Netherlands, +31-71-5680862, Fax: +31- the German-speaking world. We offer more than 20 years’ 71-5234660, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www experience providing translations and localizations for soft- .medilingua.com See ad on page 49 ware and hardware manufacturers as well as for the sectors of business, technology, legal matters and medicine/medical applications. Our services also range from glossaries, post- editing, project management and desktop publishing services to many other related services. Rely on Rheinschrift to deliver the most competent translations and meet your deadline, LIDO-LANG Technical Translations whatever it takes. Languages All Description LIDO-LANG Technical Trans- Neotech Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, Ursula Steigerwald Rolshover lations, based in Poland, is one of the leading translation Languages From major European languages into Russian, Strasse 99, D-51105 Cologne, Germany, +49-(0)221-80-19-28-0, companies in Central Europe. Having the capacity to offer Ukrainian, Kazakh and Azeri Description Neotech is the Fax: +49-(0)221-80-19-28-50, E-mail: [email protected], services in virtually all world languages, we specialize in largest translation company in Russia and CIS countries, Web: www.rheinschrift.de See ad on page 36 Central and Eastern European languages. LIDO-LANG spe- offering a full range of linguistic services to global corpora- cializes, above all, in technical translation, but thanks to our tions. Neotech is the first translation company on the Russian network of over 2,000 translators specializing in different market that has certified its quality management system to branches, we also work in IT and telecommunication; adver- international ISO 9001:2000 standards. Neotech’s key areas of tising and marketing; economics and finance; law; technol- expertise are in the oil and gas industries, auto manufacturing, ogy and industry; medicine and science. The quality of our medical, information technologies and telecommunications. services is enhanced by over 50 years’ experience in the trans- The business techniques introduced and applied by the com- Translation and localization into Polish lation sector and by the quality certificates of ISO 9001 and pany currently serve as the best practice within the transla- Language Polish Description Ryszard Jarz˙a Translations is EN 15038 standards. tion industry. Neotech is leading the drive to continuously an established provider of Polish translation, localization, LIDO-LANG Technical Translations ul. Walerego Sławka 3, 30-653 develop translation market standards and to implement new marketing copy adaptation and DTP services. We focus Kraków, Poland, 48-12-2546-123, Fax: 48-12-2546-122, E-mail: levels of business and interpersonal communications into the primarily on life sciences, IT, automotive, refrigeration and ofﬁ[email protected], Web: www.lidolang.com translation industry within Russia and abroad. other technology sectors. Our in-house team is comprised Neotech 23/1 Matrosskaya Tishina, 107076 Moscow, Russia, 7-495- 787-3331, Fax: 7-495-787-1189, E-mail: [email protected], Web: of experienced linguists with medical, engineering and www.neotech.ru See ad on page 15 IT backgrounds. We guarantee a high standard of quality while maintaining flexibility, unparalleled responsiveness and reliability. Our services are certified to EN 15038:2006. Ryszard Jarz˙a Translations ul. Barlickiego 23/22, 50-324 Wrocław, Poland, 48-601-228332, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www LinguaLinx Language Solutions, Inc. .jarza.com.pl See ad on page 49 Languages All Description LinguaLinx is a leading provider of global content and language intelligence to organizations around the world. The content experts at LinguaLinx help PTSGI manage and localize messaging to enhance efficiency and Languages English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, provide consistency across all forms of communication. With Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog, Viet- offices around the world, LinguaLinx provides organizations namese, Arabic, Farsi, Russian, German, French, Italian, with localization solutions that fit their needs including: Spanish, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, Skrivanek s.r.o. translation and interpretation, marketing communications Norwegian, Danish, Hebrew, Irish, Finnish, Swedish, Luxem- Languages All, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe and website localization, translation memory deployment, bourgish, Romanian, Urdu, Ukrainian, Nepali, Latin, Latvian, Description Skrivanek is a world leader in providing a wide multilingual SEO, translation readiness assessment and Slovak, Slovenian, Bengali, Hindi, Pashto, Tamil, Punjabi, range of language services, specifically translations span- global content management. Unify your global organization Singhalese, Marathi, Hmong, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, Mon- ning a multitude of languages and the effective localization with a customized content intelligence strategy and ensure golian, Somali Afrikaans, Armenian Description For over of products on international markets. Established in 1994, that your messages resonate across borders with language 45 years, PTSGI remains the largest language service pro- Skrivanek has managed to dominate the European transla- intelligence. To learn more, visit lingualinx.com. vider in Taiwan providing multilingual translation, website tion market, creating a network of 53 branches covering 14 LinguaLinx Language Solutions, Inc. The LinguaLinx Building, 122 and software localization, interpretation, desktop publish- countries. Its well-stocked staff of professional translators, Remsen Street, Cohoes, NY 12047, 518-388-9000, Fax: 518-388- ing, technical writing, game software and online translation experienced project managers and dedicated software engi- 0066, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.lingualinx.com into more than 100 languages. Our expert teams are skilled neers and DTP specialists has enabled Skrivanek to provide outstanding quality translation and localization services in any conceivable language and volume, creating an enviable clientele representing major leading corporations in various industries. Skrivanek’s quality of service is backed by EN ISO Participate in discussions about the global language industry 9001:2001 certification. Skrivanek s.r.o. International Project Management Centre, Na at www.multilingualblog.com Dolinách 22,147 00 Prague, Czech Republic, 420-233-320-560, Fax: 420-241-090-946, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www .skrivanek.com See ad on page 26

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visual, online and print media since 1991. Our experience in Kilgray tools are accepted and appreciated as premiere adapting technical documentation and marketing communi- translation technologies. cation materials covers a wide range of industries, including Kilgray Translation Technologies P.O.B. 7, H-1255 Budapest, Hunga- biomedical and health care; building and construction; finan- ry +36-30-383-9435, Fax: +36-1-312-6019, E-mail: sales@kilgray. cial services; food and agriculture; high-tech and manufactur- com, Web: www.kilgray.com See ad on page 6 SpanSource ing; and hospitality and leisure, as well as government and Languages Focus on Spanish and Portuguese, other language nonprofit organizations. Using a total quality management combinations through partners Description SpanSource process and state-of-the-art software and equipment, our team provides translation, localization and related services from of foreign language professionals delivers the highest quality Western European languages into all regional varieties of translations in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner. Spanish as well as other language combinations through our TripleInk 60 South 6th Street, Suite 2800, Minneapolis, MN 55402, network of select SLV partners. Our domain focus is on health 612-342-9800, 800-632-1388, Fax: 612-342-9745, E-mail: info@ MadCap Lingo care and life sciences, software and IT, heavy machinery and tripleink.com, Web: www.tripleink.com Windows automotive, legal and financial, oil and gas, corporate train- Languages Unicode support for all left-to-right languages ing and educational materials. Our comprehensive service Description The leaders in technical communication bring portfolio also includes unparalleled desktop publishing and you MadCap Lingo, an XML-based translation memory multimedia localization engineering support for e-learning (TM) tool designed to improve translation efficiency, elimi- materials. Our in-house staff of 25 includes project manag- nate redundancies and reduce project costs. MadCap Lingo ers, senior linguists, desktop publishers, software engineers offers an easy-to-use interface, Unicode support for all left- and graphic designers, which prove to be fundamental in Zinacle to-right languages, and a rich list of features for assisting SpanSource’s centralized, customer-centric approach. Languages All, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe translators throughout the localization process, including SpanSource SRL Santa Fe 1264, 1ºB, Rosario, S2000ATR Argentina, Description Like most other companies in the translation support for the major industry TM systems. MadCap Lin- 54-341-527-5233, Fax: 54-341-527-0035, E-mail: info@span sector, we have been in business for over 20 years. We are go also includes tracking and organization capabilities to source.com, Web: www.spansource.com also a leading supplier of translation services, as are most of support large, single-source, multichannel publishing pro- our competitors. We offer top quality translations in all the jects. Through its strategic partner Microsoft Corporation, world’s main commercial languages, at competitive rates, just MadCap delivers solutions optimized for Microsoft Win- like the rest. And, like almost all the others, we work to tight dows, Visual Studio, and the .NET environment. Free trial deadlines. But . . . we are different! Do you want to find out downloads are available at www.madcapsoftware.com. why? Our USP is our flexibility in solving any unexpected MadCap Software, Inc. 7777 Fay Avenue, La Jolla, CA 92037, 858-320-0387, 888-623-2271, Fax: 858-320-0338, E-mail: sales issues that arise during projects. We have the creativity to find @madcapsoftware.com, Web: www.madcapsoftware.com See ad Synergium solutions, the professionalism to deliver impeccable work, and on page 2 Languages Eastern European with focus on Baltic and the reliability to fulfil our commitments. CIS languages Description Synergium is one of the lead- Zinacle Zurbarán 23 1, 06002 Badajoz, Spain, +34-924-205605, ing integrated language service providers in the Baltics Fax: +34-924-205-604, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www. with representative offices and in-house teams of expert zinacle.com See ad on page 33 project managers, translators, editors and software engineers in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russian Federation and Ukraine. The company has more than six years of experi- trAnslAtion tools SYSTRAN ence in translation and localization services covering main Multiple Platforms technical industries such as automotive, environmental, EU, Languages 52 language combinations Description SYSTRAN financial, IT, legal, medical and telecommunications. Due to is the market leading provider of machine translation solu- its cutting edge technologies, individual and thoughtful ap- tions for the desktop, enterprise and internet. Our solutions proach, Synergium has been recognized by world-renowned facilitate multilingual communications in 52+ language pairs companies such as Google, Microsoft, Philips Healthcare, and in 20 domains. SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 7, our latest GlaxoSmithKline, and many others. Kilgray Translation Technologies achievement, is powered by our new hybrid MT engine which Synergium Žalgirio 88-404, 09303 Vilnius, Lithuania, 370-5-275- Windows combines the predictability and consistency of rule-based MT 26-56, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.synergium.eu Languages All Description Kilgray Translation Technolo- with the fluency of the statistical approach. The self-learning gies is the world’s fastest growing provider of computer- techniques allow users to train the software to any specific assisted translation tools. In 2005 the company launched domain to achieve cost-effective, publishable quality transla- the first version of memoQ, an integrated client-server tions. SYSTRAN solutions are used by Symantec, Cisco, Ford translation environment designed to facilitate interoper- and other enterprises to support international business opera- ability and teamwork. All of Kilgray’s products — memoQ, tions. For more information, visit www.systransoft.com. the memoQ server, qTerm and the TM Repository — SYSTRAN Software, Inc. TripleInk Multilingual Communications optimize productivity and control of the entire translation North America 4445 Eastgate Mall, Suite 310, San Diego, CA 92121, process and environment. Rated #1 by Common Sense 858-457-1900, Fax: 858-457-0648 Languages All major commercial languages Description As a Europe Paroi Nord - La Grande Arche, 1, Parvis la Défense, 92044 multilingual communications agency, TripleInk has provided Advisory among translation-centric TMS systems, and used Paris La Défense Cedex, France, 33-825-80-10-80, Fax: 33-1-46-98- industrial and consumer products companies with precise by thousands of translators, language service providers, 00-59, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.systransoft.com translation and multilingual production services for audio- and enterprises throughout the world, memoQ and other See ads on pages 46

Advertiser index Across Systems GmbH 4 Kilgray Translation Technologies 6 Safaba Translation Solutions 39 ADAPT Localization Services 40 Lingenio GmbH 39 SDL 60 Aspena 7 LinguaSys 39 Skrivanek s.r.o. 26 ATRIL 16 Localization World Conference 17 STAR Group 10 BENEXtra Korea 24 MadCap Software, Inc. 2 SYSTRAN Software, Inc. 46 Binari Sonori S.r.l. 28 MediLingua Medical Translations 49 Text United 9, 39 BiroTranslations 8 Moravia Worldwide 38 Translators without Borders 30 Business for sale 23 MultiCorpora 27 Ushuaia Solutions 34 E4NET 52 Net-Translators Worldwide 59 VistaTEC 43 ECM engineering 39 Neotech 15 Wordbee S.A. 45 EuroGreek Translations Limited 49 Pangeanic/PangeaMT 21 Xlated Ltd. 50 Future Trans 13 Rheinschrift Translation Services 36 Zinacle 33 JFA Marketing 49 The Rosetta Foundation 29 Kaleidoscope GmbH 39 Ryszard Jarz˙a Translations 49

www.multilingual.com January/February 2012 MultiLingual | 57

51-57 Buyer'sGuide#125.indd 57 12/14/11 12:53 PM 58 TakeAway#125.indd 58 58 | empathic andprofessional enoughtodeserveachance.WhenI do mybesttoestablishwhether theyare flexible,accurate, résumés, search formistakesintheirEnglishandgeneral others automatically. Iread translators’ motivationletters and weigh several factors. SomeoftheseIapplyconsciously, some net andsubmitsanapplicationforinclusioninmydatabase, I reputation-based results, although notalwaysinstantly. exotic-language freelancer inplace,Icanexpect monetaryand much lessfierce competition,whichmeansthat onceIhavean amount ofeffortisrewarded byhigher-payingprojects and Chinese orArabic translator, forinstance.However, theextra them inmydatabasethantosecure areliable Russian,Spanish, acceptable rate withthem,testthemandeventually include capable exotic-languagetranslators, agree onamutually bucketful everyday. Ittakes considerably more efforttolocate receive applicationsfrom majorlanguagetranslators bythe is typicalofrepresentatives ofrare, exoticlanguages,while I subsequently sendingmeanapplicationbye-mail.Theformer or bythefreelancer findingmycompanyontheinternetand country, jobpostingordirect contactatatranslation portal; tabase: eitherbymyinvitationthrough acampaigningiven two waysafreelancer orvendorcangainentrance intomyda- ones includedatanearlierpointintime.There are basically freelancers inthedatabaseandfilteringoutofinactive a shiftininterest. Thisnecessitatesaconstantinclusionofnew their workwillhavedeteriorated duetopersonal problems or rates toalevelyoucannotafford. Orperhapsthequalityof bound tohavegoneoutofbusinessordecidedraise their running smoothlyandefficiently, someofyourtranslators are complete andwell-functioning,everythingappears tobe E Takeaway MultiLingual When afreelance translator finds myagencyontheinter- However, bythetimeyoufeelyourtranslator databaseis ing atotalofover250languages. of several thousandnativefreelancers represent- it, thankstothefactthatitcontainsdetails freelancer database.Ihavealwaysbeenproud of ness around 1997,Ihavemanagedmyagency’s Ever sinceIfoundedmysmalltranslation busi- Daniel B. Harcz translator database Managing a January/February 2012 short testinhisorherspecialty, andifheorshepassesthetest, acceptable rate isagreed upon,Ihavethecandidatecompletea better results thanoff-lineconversations. Whenamutually programs forthispurpose,asIbelievethatinteractivity yields discuss thepossibilityofacooperation. Iuseinstantmessaging deem thecandidateappropriate, Istarttalkingtohimorherand contribution [email protected]. To offeryourown Daniel B. Harcz hasbeenrunningHarcz&Partner Ltd.since1998. things thatkeepsmemovingahead. their cultures, andthisconstantcommunication isoneofthe editors, thereby gettingtoknow theirwaysofthinkingand his onlyclient. send himisattestedtobythefactthatthisday, Ihavebeen of hisoutput.Hisappreciation fortheregular assignmentsI without asinglecomplainteverbeingreceived ofthequality years now, completing atleast1,000Icelandicprojects forus jobs hisway. Hehasbeenworking formycompanyten taught himthebasicsofprofession andstartedsending in freelancing, andhiscommunicationskillswere excellent.I a university degree andastrong interest ingettingengaged tor. Hehadneverdoneanytranslation workbefore, but had favor ofonewhoexhibitedallthetraits ofareliable transla- English intoIcelandictranslation services.Isoondecidedin landic peopleresponded andexpressed aninterest inproviding campaign inIcelandthesummerof2001, and37nativeIce- plain theinsandoutsofourprofession. Iconductedamajor place, andinsuchanevent,Iammore thanhappytoex- not yetfamiliarwiththewayinternationalcooperation takes easily, too,atsuchanearlystage. already establishedfrom myside—butwhichcanbelostpretty an application,exceptfortheinitialtrustthatinsuchcasesis in touchwithagiventranslator myselfinsteadofwaitingfor agreement tosignandreturn. Theprocess issimilarwhenIget ers ofthesamelanguage,Isendoutourtwo-pagenondisclosure which isevaluatedbyoneofourwell-establishednativespeak- I havealwaysenjoyedcommunicatingwithtranslators and When Icontacttranslators, itoftenhappensthattheyare Takeaway onalanguage-industryissue, send a M [email protected] 12/14/11 12:54PM full-service Translation, Localization, & Multilingual Testing in more than 60 languages

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