Blogos

Nifty typing aid for Latin script characters

2009-06-25T22:30:00Z

There is a free online editor for typing ‘special’ characters in Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, IPA (English), Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. I am referring to the characters that are beyond the standard ascii set, and in some programs are hard to find the insert keystroke for. The nice thing about this is you don’t need to change any settings on your own computer. Just go to the TypeIt website, select the language, the character, and then copy and paste it into your program. Thank you to Tomasz P. Szynalski who created the site!

Obama translated into Farsi and Arabic

2009-06-24T17:13:01Z

Perhaps it was in response to claimed mistranslations of previous statements. Whatever the reason, the Obama administration has posted a translation of his opening comments at a press conference (June 20, 2009) in Farsi as well as Arabic (down-loadable). (Note to White House: when you finally publish a pdf, remove the version number—“final_2” looks like a working title.)

And, as always, using current technology as much as possible, the White House also tweeted the translation in Farsi and posted a subtitled version of his opening remarks.

That #Linkedinfail Firestorm

2009-06-23T22:51:01Z

Much debate ensued, and continues, and you can read the opinions of CSA, Matthew Bennett, and Nick Peris for a good take on the various perspectives.

Many questions, and different opinions there. Not much I can add except that a) I don’t think we can conflate all kind of community, volunteer, crowdsourced, user community and such like translation together so easily, a subject I will return to, b) we might consider that the Facebook crowdsourcing translation model should be considered as much, if not more, a part of a user engagement strategy as just a localization one, so the model may not apply depending on your content, market, and branding, and c) this whole episode is as good a case study about change management (or lack of) as any you’ll get in your MBA textbooks.

About all we can agree on now, I think, as I pointed out as a result of the San Mateo Localization UnConference last year and the thoughts of Sun Microsystems, is that this stuff ain’t free in either the short or long run. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this one…

Update: [29-June-2009] The story has also made the New York Times - Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour.

Localization Unconference Dublin

2009-06-23T22:46:00Z

I’ve been so busy with international travel (it’s a hard life) that I haven’t had a chance to mention it on Blogos. Suffice to say for now, until I get back to the subject, that it was a super event, with the best part of 50 people attending. Congrats to Tony, Mark, Antoin, Martin and Henry for getting this together and to Vistatec Ireland for the premises.

Here’s to the next one!

Google Translator Toolkit: Share and Share Alike?

2009-06-16T14:02:00Z

By now, you have probably seen all sorts of chatter on Google’s new Translator Toolkit. Just as with anything Google does, it seems clean and useful. But what do professional translators think? That seems to be a mixed bag—and people appear to be adopting a “wait and see” attitude.

I was a little concerned in reading the help pages to see: “By default, we save your translations to a shared, publicly searchable [sic] translation memory.” The help goes on to describe how to avoid the default condition.

I just wonder, until we all decide that no one owns TMs (will we decide that? when?), this seems to be a bit risky. Translators will have to be on their toes to avoid sharing TMs that belong to their clients.

Twitter

2009-05-14T21:20:00Z

Anyway, after about a month, and picking up about 180 “followers” hanging on every letter of the @localization wit, wisdom and erudition encapsulated in those 140 character “Tweets”, I can say I really like the medium. Besides the directness implicit in making comments on just about anything in 140 characters or less, there’s something refreshingly honest and a lot more robust about Twitter communications. Unlike blogging-which for the most part is really a load of guys with beards moaning about stuff, making contrived pronouncements about subjects they haven’t really a clue about, or suits scratching each other’s backs now, anyway, isn’t it? Unless it’s been written by me, of course.

In the localization/internationalization space (I refuse to use the word “globalization"), I can see a number of possibilities for Twitter, some of which we’ve explored already in the past month’s exchanges (and some are being implemented as cloud or collaborative customer solutions by enterprises already, by the way):

* Cloud service and solutions - vendor feedback, terminology queries, internationalization issues ("my Tweetdeck don’t work with Japanese characters, what’ll fix?"), location of resources, tools support ("how do I do X or Y in Trados?"), and so on. Real time and searchable knowledge.

* Communications, marketing and promotion - announcements, headsups on events, soliciting submissions, calls for papers, making time-bound offers, spreading the word virally, and more. Although I certainly want more from Twitter than just reading Tweets about what conferences and reports are for sale, directing me to the standard press releases for more details. If you’re using it for that, don’t be surprised is somebody asks you for a discount. Or a hard question about the content. You’ll have to respond. Great way to build a network of contacts, gather market intelligence, too.

* Information filtering by peers - gathering information, links, opinions, survey responses, obtaining recommendations, and so on. Using the intelligence of your followers to mine raw data for you.

* Real time commentary and feedback on events, products, services - for example, using hashtags to track webinars, or conference presentations as the event occurs. Come to think of it, why even bother going to the conference at all to obtain the real time feedback? It’s all there on public view as it’s recorded (for example, the Twitter “hashtag” #DuLu.) Listening to customers, users, and so on.

There are all kinds of possibilities, admittedly low-level at present, and non-revenue generating. You can get a flavor by looking at these Twitter hashtags: #l10n, and #i18n.

I can see some limitations at present, namely the lack of any supporting metadata around Tweets which would allow analysis, but I am sure that can be dealt with over time.

Anyway, all I can do now is encourage you to come on over to Twitter and hook up with us @localization and @multilingualmag. 10 minutes a day is all you need to join in the fun.

I’ll get back with more Blogos stuff as soon as the beard grows a little more.

Now Oracle has a new Sun

2009-04-20T17:25:00Z

Recent commentary by a Cyber Cynic is not so glowing, and I’m always tempted to give cynics more credibility than CEOs (though I probably shouldn’t, since CEOs typically have more to gain or lose). Any thoughts?

Spring drama with Sun and the big Blue yonder

2009-04-06T17:28:00Z

Now the deal may have turned sour. If due diligence rather than just price slowed the IBM acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems, trying to sort everything out may have made IBM drag its feet. The Wall Street Journal reported March 20 that IBM was researching Sun’s business contracts in standard preparation for a possible merger, and said the research was expected to take “a number of days.” Weeks later, speculation on both corporations’ continued reticence pointed to potential intellectual property entanglements.
Both IBM and Sun’s portfolios contain open-source and commercial licenses as well as third party patent and cross-licensing deals. Of particular interest is an agreement Sun forged with Microsoft in 2004, ending a lawsuit over Java software. Sun had brought suit alleging that Microsoft maintained an illegal monopoly in the “worldwide market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems,” and also that Microsoft distributed “source code in the Java platform” outside a license that Microsoft received from Sun. After the private anti-trust lawsuit ran into Estoppel, Sun struck a deal, netting $700 million for dropping the Java suit against Microsoft, and $900 million for a patent-sharing agreement that could be extended for up to ten years. Whether in shrewd observation or sour grapes, Microsoft now wonders why IBM would even want Sun.
IBM, whose software business depends heavily on Java, would need to carefully dissect this agreement and others before continuing with acquisition, even if the price is right. IBM has not returned calls to comment on this, and the implication for the localization industry if the deal does or doesn’t go through is unclear as well. Most everyone I’ve chatted with so far seems to assume that either way, it would be more or less business as usual.

Localizing team spirit and other impossibilities

2009-03-10T20:02:01Z

Here’s the tricky thing about localizing sports: if you forget which one you’re playing, or fall back on instincts that used to work perfectly in the old sport ethos, it can kind of hurt. Sam spotted someone about to score and went in for the kill, smashing him, as he used to do in football, skull-to-skull, full steam ahead.

He forgot that neither of them wore a helmet. He woke up staring at his hands, wondered at the blood on them, and stepped out to get his face bandaged (and be lectured by two sisters to stop giving himself concussions). The other guy went to the hospital and got 20 stitches.

I’m really not sure if this kind of damage can occur with cross-cultural instincts elsewhere, but I’m willing to bet so. I’m also willing to bet that localizing your instincts might be one of the hardest things to do, short of learning the hard way.

A love story

2009-03-06T17:14:00Z

And, I am not talking about human characters. Jost Zetzsche of International Writers Group fame has a great newsletter, The Tool Kit. A computer newsletter for translation professionals, it is filled will useful tips and interesting commentary—even if you are not a translator. A free version is available for the asking and a premium edition is only $15 a year.
Occasionally, Jost features a character that he loves and writes about why he is taken with it.

These are listed as “Characters with Character—a love story”. If your browser is Java-enabled, you can see his comments when you mouse over each graphic. Check it out! And, fall in love.

Mapping endangered languages

2009-03-05T00:29:00Z

Following the end of the International Year of Languages (2008) and International Mother Language Day, The United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released an “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger". Available as a downloadable 19 MB file, there is also a time-draining interactive version that had me virtually traveling all over the world to “visit” the endangered language sites. Each language entry in the interactive Atlas contains a tab for comments designed to collect feedback from speakers of endangered languages and experts who study these languages. (Thanks to John Prieur of Language Line for this information.)

Continuing the theme, the current issue issue of The UNESCO Courier focuses on languages at risk of disappearing. UNESCO’s Lucía Iglesias Kuntz states, “When languages die, not only words disappear, but ways of seeing and describing reality; we lose valuable knowledge and worlds of thought.”

Blogos Wordle Cloud

2009-03-03T20:46:00Z

Create your own word cloud at Wordle.

"The Linguists" chronicles the search for endangered languages

2009-02-22T00:49:01Z

The film The Linguists, which was shown at Sundance, will be aired on public television in the United States on February 26, 2009. Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the film chronicles the work of David Harrison of Swarthmore College and Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute as they traveled around the world to record languages that are in danger of disappearing.

Interviewed this morning on NPR, the pair of language specialists speak 25 languages together. But they are most interested in the languages that may be gone by tomorrow. The movie promises to be an interesting watch.
If you do not have access to US public television, or your station is not broadcasting the film (mine is showing it at 2:00 AM — thank heaven for TiVo), you might want to order the dvd from the film’s website.

A sweet goodbye to the Year of Languages

2009-02-19T21:16:00Z

UNESCO’s International Year of Languages (2008) comes to a close with International Mother Language Day on February 21, 2009. The Orphan’s Lullaby project, a “multilingual celebration of languages spoken in Africa, and a multilingual expression of uniting for children and uniting against AIDS” has create a sweet lullaby on video to commemorate the day.
The lullaby is sung in English, but you can see translations of the lyrics into languages such as Wolof, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Arabic, French, Lingala, Afrikaans, Chichewa, Hindi and Igbo, and learn more about the Orphan’s Lullaby project on Alex Smith’s blog.
For more on the International Year of Languages, see Don Osborn’s great collection of links.

Lost in the Editing

2009-02-19T10:07:00Z

Why is this phrase popular? This is why.

The story itself reflects badly on the Irish police, and gives life to the claim by Irish author, poet, playwright, freedom fighter, and er, well-rounded Guinness drinker, Brendan Behan that the only foreign language the police force knew was “Garda“:

The Polish term for driving licence, “Prawo Jazdy”, has been taken down in error by members of the traffic corps as the actual identity of the motorists they stopped.

Other “lost in translation” stories are here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and ...

Ironically, if the phrase itself was to be easily translatable, it should have the article included: “Lost in the translation.”

Of course, I’ve used this tiresome phrase myself, even though I thought the movie was mediocre at best. I was being lazy. Come on media people, at least pretend to be original, and try watching more than one movie, or buying a dictionary. You could even try playing on “Locale Hero,” “Support Your Locale Serif,” “Austin Powers: Internationalization Man of Mystery,” “Miss Interpreted,”....