Metaglossia: The Translation World

Xcelerator Machine Translation Ltd. is pleased to announce the official launch of its cloud-based statistical Machine Translation platformKantanMT.com in June 2013. The Enterprise Ireland ‘high potential start-up’ founded by well-known industry entrepreneur Tony O’Dowd aims to fill a gap within the localisation industry by offering an MT platform that is easy to use, easy to manage and extremely powerful.

Members of the KantanMT community have been enjoying free usage of the platform since the launch of the BETA site in September 2012, giving them the opportunity to experiment with machine translation and to develop new business strategies around it.

One member notes that: "As a technology, machine translation will become even more fundamental than translation memory for LSPs in the years ahead. Making it successful will require not only investment in knowledge development and process integration, but also to find the right platform for your needs. Simplicity and flexibility made us choose KantanMT," Teddy Bengtsson, Founder/Director, Roundtable Studio.

KantanMT.com has been well backed by significant VC investments from Delta Partners, Enterprise Ireland and several private investors and is now accelerating and scaling its platform to meet the growing demands of the expanding MT community. It is currently in BETA testing of a REST- based API which will enable members to translate segments individually, in real-time, and still benefit from the high-quality, secure and user-controlled translation service that KantanMT customers expect.

The official launch of KantanMT in June marks a turning point for this innovative young company which is already making its mark in the translation industry. To date, KantanMT.com has signed up over 1,500 localisation service providers, who have uploaded over six billion words of training data and translated over 360 million words on the KantanMT.com platform.

Charte européenne des langues régionales.

Le ministre de l'Education Nationale s'est dit mardi sur France 2 "favorable" à un renforcement de l'enseignement des langues régionales au moment où le Sénat entame aujourd'hui l'examen de son projet de loi.

Some of the gains for Sony shares in Tokyo get "lost in translation" after the English version of a Nikkei report proves to be wrong.

.....

The Nikkei enjoys a very strong reputation for breaking business news in Japan. In fact, its website includes a small section devoted solely to that day’s exclusive stories.

But it turned out that this particular development was the figment of a lone translator at the newspaper. Sony quickly pointed out that the original, Japanese-language version of the story said only that Sony had agreed to look at the proposal, but that ultimately, it still considered the entertainment arm as a key component of the company. It called on the Nikkei to correct the English version, which it did.

And so, after trading more than 11% higher in early Wednesday action, the Japanese shares of Sony pared their advance, though still managing a solid 6.9% gain in late afternoon trade. Perhaps that 4-point difference before and after the correction of the English-language report represented the money of investors who don’t speak Japanese.

Comment les enfants peuvent-ils atteindre leur plein potentiel dès lors que l’enseignement qu’ils reçoivent leur est donné, dès l’enfance, dans une langue qu’ils connaissent mal et avec laquelle ils ne sont pas à l’aise ? C’est pourtant la dure réalité vécue par des enfants originaires de groupes ethniques minoritaires dans des pays où se côtoient de nombreuses communautés linguistiques. En Afrique, le problème est d’autant plus compliqué du fait de la prévalence de langues étrangères et coloniales dans le domaine de l’enseignement, et du fait du manque de volonté  des gouvernements de tenter l’expérience de les remplacer.  Alors même que l’Institut de l’UNESCO pour l’Apprentissage Tout Au Long de la Vie (UIL) emprunte la voie difficile du changement politique, d’autres institutions tentent de soutenir les langues africaines par d’autres moyens : par exemple, le Professeur Prah, fondateur du CASAS (Centre d’Etudes Appliquées pour le Société Africaine)  , pilote le projet Harmonisation et Standardisation des Langues Africaine dont l’objectif est d’établir une liste de langues et de dialectes africains mutuellement compréhensibles alors que d’autres mettent au point des technologies de synthèse vocale dans le but d’aplanir les difficultés d’apprentissage pour les minorités linguistiques.  

Par Matthew Labrooy

Il existe en Afrique de très nombreux enfants qui vivent dans des zones rurales et qui n’ont que peu, voire pas, d’accès aux outils d’éveil et ne peuvent bénéficier d’un enseignement dans leur langue maternelle, et ce bien que les dernières études disponibles tendent à prouver que les enfants originaires de communautés ethniques minoritaires qui ont la possibilité d’apprendre dans leur langue maternelle ont de meilleurs résultats scolaires et font une meilleure utilisation des outils pédagogiques qui leurs sont proposés par la suite. L’UNESCO plaide en faveur de l’utilisation des langues africaines dans l’enseignement depuis 1953, époque à laquelle a été publié un rapport qui a fait date et qui insiste sur l’importance d’enseigner aux enfants dans leur langue maternelle ; dès cette époque, ce rapport exhortait les gouvernements africains à abandonner les langues des anciens pays colonisateurs dans tous les domaines liés à la gouvernance et à l’instruction.

Soixante ans après la publication de ce rapport intitulé The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education (Utilisation des Langues Vernaculaires dans l’Enseignement), l’UIL continue de devoir se battre. Pourtant, si les choses n’ont que peu évolué au niveau politique, les preuves se sont accumulées et un nombre croissant d’études démontre, d’après un  Rapport de l’UIL publié en 2010, les « conséquences négatives de ces politiques : un enseignement de qualité médiocre et la marginalisation du continent », menant à ce que le Professeur Prah appelle « l’oubli progressif de la mémoire collective ».   Le rapport intitulé  “Why and how Africa should invest in African languages and multilingual education” (Pourquoi  et Comment l’Afrique devrait investir dans les Langues Africaines et dans l’Enseignement Multilingue), identifie plusieurs secteurs dans lesquels le changement doit s’opérer et constate que la fourniture d’un enseignement multilingue faisant appel aux langues maternelles fait écho à d’autres problèmes politiques, culturels et développementaux beaucoup plus profonds sur le front desquels des changements doivent s’opérer avant que ne puisse être mise en place une quelconque réforme de l’enseignement.

Le rapport met également en avant l’importance des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (TIC) dans le multilinguisme. L’Unesco reconnaît elle aussi le rôle des TIC et vient de lancer un programme afin que le Multilinguisme dans le Cyberespace (Multilingualism in Cyberspace) devienne réalité. Même les entreprises privées commencent à reconnaître les avantages à utiliser les langues africaines : « Des sociétés multinationales comme Microsoft se sont rendues compte qu’il était rentable pour elles d’investir dans les langues africaines car elles veulent s’adresser à près de 100 millions de locuteurs Kiswahili qui vivent dans 6 pays africains différents ». Wikipédia a lancé ses services dans plusieurs langues africaines parmi lesquelles le malgache, le yoruba, le tswana et le chichewa, bien que le nombre d’articles dans ces langues soit très variable, allant de quelques centaines à plusieurs milliers.

D’une manière plus générale, les outils numériques d’aide à l’apprentissage pour les enfants  sont en passe de devenir incontournables dans les salles de classe. Grâce aux nouvelles technologies, l’enseignement peut désormais être adapté à chaque élève en fonction de ses besoins propres.  A cet égard, le développement des outils de synthèse vocale a joué un rôle clé, avec la création de voix humaines artificielles. Ces innovations technologiques qui permettent (en théorie) aux enfants d’apprendre dans leur langue maternelle, proposent une plateforme d’apprentissage plus riche et plus intuitive que l’approche traditionnelle « papier et crayon ». Les études démontrent que les enfants qui ont appris tel ou tel concept d’une manière « plus intéressante » auront plus de facilité à le mémoriser et l’appliquer par la suite.

Certes, des outils de synthèse vocale existent dans la plupart des langues importantes mais il n’y a que peu de technologies de synthèse de la parole (Text-to-Speech Technologies – TTS) fonctionnant avec le système Android qui soient disponibles pour les langues africaines locales et jusqu’à présent, il n’existe pas de matériel d’éveil  dans des langues minoritaires, telles que la langue shona parlée au Zimbabwe.

C’est sur ce point qu’interviendra Ian Matamiri durant la Conférence eLearning Africa 2013. Ian Matamiri est l’un des rares chercheurs de l’Université du Zimbabwe à travailler sur la mise au point d’une application TTS pour la langue Shona : l’application Native Voice. Grâce à leur travail rigoureux, Matamiri et son équipe ont réussi à créer un outil d’éveil à la lecture disponible sur les tablettes utilisant la technologie Android.

Le projet a d’abord commencé avec pour objectif d’enseigner la lecture à des milliers d’enfants vivant dans des zones rurales, n’ayant que peu d’accès aux outils d’éveil et ne pouvant bénéficier de la présence d’un personnel compétent pour déployer ces outils. L’équipe de l’Université du Zimbabwe a donc proposé d’utiliser une application d’éveil à la lecture en langue locale afin d’aider un grand nombre d’enfants jusque-là marginalisés.

Ian Matamiri remarque que, bien que la technologie de synthèse vocale existe depuis les années 1980, elle n’a jamais été véritablement adoptée pour aider au développement de son pays. « Nous avons dépensé des millions sur du « papier sans vie », pour des résultats très médiocres. Nous pourrions ne dépenser que quelques milliers de dollars sur cette technologie fascinante et presque garantir des résultats positifs ».

Et le projet Native Voice n’est qu’un début.

« Le monde se transforme pas à pas, par de petites inventions qui font toute la différence dans nos manières de vivre, par de petites idées qui viennent à bout des énormes défis auxquels nos sociétés doivent faire face. Mon plus grand espoir est que le projet Native Voice permette de changer la vie, ne serait-ce que d’un seul enfant, dans les zones rurales du Zimbabwe ».

Ian Matamiri est l’un des orateurs invités de la Conférence eLearning Africa 2013 organisée à Windhoek (Namibie). Dans son exposé, il présentera ses travaux et les premiers pas de l’application Native Voice Shona utilisant la technologie TTS.

Haruki Murakami has signed a deal for theEnglish translation of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” which sold over a million copies in just over a week when it was released in Japan last month.

A selection from a collection of rare early printed books and manuscripts will beauctioned at Sotheby’s in June, despite protest from scholars that the collection should remain intact.

Newcastle Productions has launched aKickstarter campaign to fund a documentary on the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, based on his diaries.

 

Sayed Shah Sharifi fought to come to Canada, saying the Taliban threatened to kill him and his family because he was an interpreter for Canadian forces. This month, five of his relatives were killed by a roadside bomb.

Johannesburg - ‘Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”

If these words by US writer Rita Mae Brown are true, what do they mean for the 80 percent of South Africans who have vernacular languages as their mother tongue?

It’s a fact that the usage and potency of the country’s vernacular languages is diminishing.

Research conducted by the Department of Basic Education in 2007 showed close to 80 percent of children were taught in English or Afrikaans.

By law, pupils must be taught in their mother tongue and a first additional language, while a second additional language is optional.

When registering their children, parents must indicate in which language they want them to be taught.

According to the South African Schools Act, it’s the responsibility of the school governing body (SGB) to develop the school’s language policy. Schools are supposed to be multilingual.

The fact that a majority of children are taught in English despite it not being their home language is attributed to the fact that black parents choose it as it’s an international language and they feel it will enable their children to succeed in higher education and in the workplace.

The fact that vernacular languages were previously marginalised and not developed in the academic sector as English and Afrikaans were also played a role in this.

Developments in the basic and higher education sector are intent on changing this. When delivering the basic education budget vote two weeks ago, Minister Angie Motshekga announced that “in 2014, a new policy will come into effect mandating the learning of an African language in all schools”.

Questions to the department’s spokesman, Panyaza Lesufi, and Motshekga’s spokeswoman, Hope Mokgatlhe, on whether the department had enough vernacular language teachers to roll this out on a national scale, among others, were not answered.

SGB associations, however, whose responsibility it is to develop school language policies, didn’t hold back in expressing their views.

It's time for language learners to give up trying to nail the perfect accent. Instead, it's intelligibility that counts.

To truly speak a language fluently, do you need to have the accent too? It’s certainly something that even experiencedinterpreters can struggle with, particularly as there are so many dialects and regional accents for every language.

 

Anne Merritt, an English as a foreign language lecturer based in South Korea, writes in the Telegraph that the key to speaking a second language well lies in pronunciation, rather than accent. In fact, she says that battling to perfect an accent “sets you up for failure”.

She explains that it is notoriously difficult to learn an accent different from your own and speak it flawlessly. As any actor who has attempted a regional accent knows, it will almost always be criticised by the people who grew up speaking with that accent. Just ask Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway, who attempted a Yorkshire accent in the 2011 movie One Day. The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin said at the time that it was “impossible to tell” how good Hathaway’s performance in the film was, as every line of dialogue she speaks in it is “masked by one of the most honkingly rubbish Yorkshire accents you’ve ever heard”.

It’s what you say, not how you say it

Luckily, Ms Merritt says being able to speak another language complete with the authentic accent is not essential, and instead people should focus on pronouncing the words in the correct way. She gives five tips for this:

1) Listen and repeat

2) Learn the language’s stress patterns

3) Use a mirror to watch how your mouth moves

4) Practice words in sentences, as context can alter the pronunciation

5) Record your practice sessions and listen back to identify areas for improvement

Her advice for getting to grips with speaking a language fluently includes listening to songs and watching movies recorded in that language in order to mimic the way people speak. She also suggests listening to podcasts, as they can be played at a slower speed in order to hear in detail how a particular sound is made.

It has long been thought learning to speak in a perfect foreign accent is an impossible goal in adulthood. However, a study by linguistics professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University Murray J Munro and linguist at the University of Alberta Tracy Derwing revealed it is possible to nail the pronunciation. The key is making the goal communicating clearly with people, rather than speaking with an authentic accent.

Time reports that the linguists suggested replacing the “nativeness principle” – the idea of mimicking an accent perfectly – with the “intelligibility principle”, where it’s how understood you are that guides your learning. The authors pointed out that with the correct pronunciation it is possible to understand people speaking a foreign language, even if their native accent is heavy.

At a well-built six feet, Nikesh Arora commands a presence when he walks into a room. Much of it is also because he is the man tasked with bringing in revenues of more than $50 billion - that is more than Punjab's annual income - at Google, the Internet giant.

On a recent unusually hot Thursday evening, the Google Chief Business Officer drags his weary self into a meeting at a New Delhi coffee shop. The six days he's been in the city he was born in have been unforgiving. Breakfast sit-downs, board meetings, sales reviews, client interactions, dinners, and family commitments. Arora is sapped out crisscrossing the capital region of Delhi, the world's largest urban sprawl, in the searing summer heat.

A Versatile actor that he is, also known for the amount of hard work that he chips in any part he is cast. That was quite evident with Bharat Bala�s �Mariyan�...

Lawyers representing Afghan interpreters have welcomed news of a resettlement scheme but expressed concerns that it does not go far enough.

Under the proposals, any interpreters who have put themselves in physical danger working outside British military bases will be offered resettlement in the UK if they have been working for the British forces for more than 12 months at the point of their redundancy. It is estimated that about half the interpreters working for the UK forces – roughly 600 – will qualify.

Rosa Curling, a human rights solicitor with Leigh Day representing three interpreters who began a legal case against the government, said on Wednesday: "Whilst we await the full details of the scheme, we are delighted that the bravery of the Afghan interpreters now seems to have been recognised.

"These men employed by the British authorities in Afghanistan have often been on the frontline with our troops, risking their lives, and now face death threats as a result of their work. The announcement today is a huge step in the right direction, which will come as a great relief to our clients and their families."

But she voiced concerns about some of the roughly 600 interpreters who will not qualify for resettlement, either because they do not have 12 months' continuous service or are deemed not to have faced sufficient physical danger in their daily work.

Seprotec, empresa española especializada en traducción e interpretación y tras un largo proceso de selección, se ha alzado con el contrato para la gestión global de las necesidades de traducción de Pirelli, principalmente de inglés, italiano y...

AccuLing translates websites, documentation, marketing collateral and more to help businesses expand into international markets.

Dhanush will be seen opposite Sonam Kapoor in the movie Raanjhanaa

et ready to retire the term “sober as a judge,” because we’re about to explode your notion of America’s legal system as staid and dignified. The New York Times reports that courts are, increasingly, turning to Urban Dictionary, that Internet cesspool tended by dirty-minded 14-year-olds, as an authoritative source on slang.

The Times says: 

In the last year alone, the Web site was used by courts to define iron (“handgun”); catfishing (“the phenomenon of Internet predators that fabricate online identities”); dap (“the knocking of fists together as a greeting, or form of respect”); and grenade (“the solitary ugly girl always found with a group of hotties”).

Says the creator of Urban Dictionary, Aaron Peckham: “The whole point of Urban Dictionary is we are defining our own language as we speak it.”

However, the senior editor of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (brb, writing a cover letter) has his doubts:

Nothing upsets the folks in the pews as much as changing the liturgy that they’re accustomed to, and that seemed likely to be the case when the Vatican ordered revisions to the familiar prayers and rubrics of the Catholic Mass.

The English language is one tool to establish our viewpoint. American or British English are both dialects that can be chosen when requesting your English translations, or choosing an interpreter.Here you can easily access anonline quote.

The English language was introduced to the Americans through British colonization in the early 17th century and it spread to many parts of the world because of the strength of the British empire. Over the years, English spoken in the United States and in Britain started diverging from each other in various aspects. This led to two dialects in the form of the American English and the British English.

American English is the form of English used in the United States. It includes all English dialects used within the United States of America. British English is the form of English used in the United Kingdom. It includes all English dialects used within the United Kingdom.

As native translators work on these translations, they are specialized in order to denote the differences and ensure that the specific dialect is used. A native American translator will use different grammar structures, tenses, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling and even telling time as opposed to a native British translator.

For instance, let’s take a few common words that are used on a day to day basis, the spelling in American English, will be: flavor, honor, analyze, color, on the other hand in British English it’s spelt as flavour, honour, analyse, colour.

 

The firm that supplies telephone interpreting services to the NHS has been found to route its calls to the Dominican Republic.

The UK’s interpreting industry continues to be the subject of controversy. Following the saga of Capita’s courtroom interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice, it has now been discovered a business supplying telephone interpreters for the NHS is routing calls to the Dominican Republic.

Medical interpreting on the line

Late last month, the Sunday Express discovered Language Line, which is the main provider of telephone interpreting services for the NHS, has routed calls to the country’s capital Santo Domingo. NHS staff have told the newspaper they were not aware of this connection, and that they had been informed all call centres used in the operation were in the UK.

According to the newspaper, after tourism, call centres are the second largest industry in the Dominican Republic. It is thought this is because of the country’s proximity to the United States, the fact it is cheaper to run such an operation there and that the tax regimes are regarded as favourable to businesses. The majority of the thousands of people who work for the various call centres there are bilingual, speaking Spanish and English.

The Language Line service is used by doctors and health advisers working in the UK when they are visited by patients who don’t speak English as their mother tongue. The doctor calls the service and selects the language they require – out of a choice of 140 – and is then put on hold while the call centre operative finds a suitable telephone interpreter on their database. The interpreter, doctor and patient then participate in a three-way conference call.

In addition to the NHS, some UK councils and the health service’s new non-emergency number 111 also use the services of Language Line. The newspaper reveals that 15,331 calls were made by NHS Direct to Language Line in 2010, with the contract funded by the taxpayer.

Language Insight has launched a new translation service that has been tailor-made for the fashion industry. By outsourcing their translations to us, fashion industry insiders can free up their time to focus on the more pressing issue of deciding what the next big look will be.

 

The fashion industry is truly global. Just one collection might feature exotic design ideas from a different continent, fabrics sourced from all over the world and manufacturing skills from overseas. The marketing side of the industry is no less global, as some fashion houses have stores in all the major cities, in addition to numerous factories in multiple countries.

Of the major fashion houses, Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein are all founded by English speakers, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Dior are French and Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada are Italian. It’s easy to see why fashion is one of the most diverse industries in the world.

The recent Costume Institute Gala in New York – more popularly known as the Met Ball – showed just how many cultures and languages are involved in one outfit. Madonna, for instance, wore a creation by Italian designer Riccardo Tisci, which consisted of a Scottish tartan jacket over torn fishnets, and was inspired by British punks Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Talk about a mix of cultures.

Translation can make the whole process of designing, manufacturing and marketing clothing a lot easier. Just a handful of the translations Language Insight can offer include contracts, manufacturing guidelines, websites and advertising. We can also translate dictated notes, saving you the time of transcribing them first.

By sending translations to us, fashion houses and luxury goods brands can ensure they don’t make any embarrassing slip-ups. Mistakes like Clairol’s launch of its Mist Stick curling iron in Germany, where “mist” translates to “manure”.

A far worse fashion mistranslation was that of Mango’s marketing slogan for a gold chain. In March, it was discovered the Spanish fashion house was selling the necklace on its French website with the description: “Collier style esclave.” This translates to “slave collar style” and it wasn’t long before a petition had been set up, under the name: “Slavery is not fashion!” It got 5,000 signatures and Mango issued an apology, although it said that a translation error was the cause. Two bracelets being sold on the French site were also labelled as “slave style”, but the names of all of these products have now been changed.