Metaglossia: The Translation World

Oracle is stretching the definition of cloud computing in a world where the cloud is going to be hybrid for the foreseeable future.

LYNN NEARY, HOST:

The Oxford English Dictionary needs your help. Do you know where words like disco, baked Alaska or email come from? For years the widely regarded authority in the English language has asked the public for help tracking down the history of words and phrases. Yet as our lexicon evolves, the mission grows even tougher. A new initiative called OED Appeals hopes to solve that problem by using that same crowdsourcing approach online.

What word or phrase would you want them to investigate? Or if you've already done the legwork, what word did you track back to its origin? 800-989-8255 is our number. Our email address is talk@npr.org. And you can join the conversation at our website. Go to npr.org and click on TALK OF THE NATION. Katherine Martin joins us from our bureau in New York. She is head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford University Press. Welcome to the program, Ms. Martin.

KATHERINE MARTIN: Thanks for having me, Lynn.

NEARY: All right. Let's start out by talking about some of the phrases that you're investigating, come in from the cold, for example. What is known at this moment about that phrase?

MARTIN: Well, the first example that we have of that phrase is in the title of the John le Carre novel, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." And after the publication of that novel, the word has come to be used in a wide variety of context to refer to someone coming in from some sort of metaphorical isolation. However, the implication in le Carre's book is that perhaps it was used in spy craft. We don't have any evidence of that, though, so we're hoping that someone will be able to come forward with documentation of how the word may have been used in the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage before le Carre published this book in 1963.

People expect translations to happen at the speed and accuracy of a Star Trek Universal Translator. Unfortunately, that time is not here yet, but we are approaching it quickly. .

A recent press release announced that an online crowdsourcing company offered “an abundance of experienced translators from around the world to provide businesses with easy access to professional translation services”, with “over 100,000 highly skilled native translators”.
The catch, however, lies in the following two statements: employers “request multiple translation samples from any of the 100,000 on-staff translators in less than 24 hours and choose the best translator based on the quality of the sample translation”.
The customer may receive a range of translations, no doubt free of charge, but then has to choose between them. On what criteria one may ask. If they are sufficiently skilled to assess the quality of the translations, then they do not need a translator.
The second statement is that “pricing is set by the employer and includes a flexible rate starting at an entry-level price of 0.029 per word”.
No professional translator anywhere in the western world works for 0.029 per word, unless they are really hard up, in which case either they are so incompetent that they cannot charge any higher, or if their market rates are that low, prefer to do something more profitable (like street cleaning, with no insult meant to people who work on the streets).
The blurb goes on: “For translation needs under 300 words, employers receive multiple final translation works from willing translators in 24 hours, choose the best translation work and pay only for that result. For translation needs over 300 words, employers can request multiple translation samples from their large pool of providers, get results within a 24-hour period, and choose only the most ideal translator to work with for their project.”
This means the “professional” translators are potentially working for nothing, and have nothing better to do than reply to translation requests from clowns who believe that what they are getting is professional. It is in one respect. It is a professional scam.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/where-translation-is-concerned-crowdsourcing-is-clownsourcing-0273367#qszUfSdZwJF24iCf.99

Crowdsourcing has its appeal, but without professional lexicographers these reference works will lose the authority we want them for...

A small thing in the larger world perhaps but Collins, the dictionary publisher, may have set a revolution going. If so it's because they just announced the first instance of a dictionary allowing input not only from the usual suspects – staff lexicographers – but from the public, or to use the pertinent language: the crowd.

Crowdsourcing, at least partially inspired by James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few, is first recorded in 2004. The philosophy of the more the merrier. And more creative. Now that task could include lexicography.

Everyone, we know, and thanks to self-publishing can now see, seems to have a novel in them. Maybe there's a dictionary too. For the last couple of months Collins has thrown open their files to all-comers. Suggest a word that qualifies for their dictionary and win a prize! Examples include Twittersphere, sexting, cyberstalking and captcha. Other contenders include mantyhose and photobombing. And amazeballs, an expression of enthusiasm.

Such shout-outs are the antithesis of traditional lexicography. "The dictionary" represents authority. "Is it in the dictionary?", "I'll look it up in the dictionary", and so on. If the dictionary-maker is a humble archivist while the lexicon is being created, they become a deity – or at least a cut-rate Moses – once it appears and becomes a source of supposedly trustworthy information.

Scott Yancey, Cloudwords CTO and Co-founder, will speak on how Cloudwords designed translation management workflows to streamline the process. He will address how translation customers can use technology to manage multiple projects and vendors simultaneously, while making the process faster and less expensive. He will describe the importance of customer’s centralizing their translation assets such as translation memory and glossaries, and how doing so via the cloud will deliver these capabilities at a price point never before possible. He will discuss how a standardized translation project bidding platform can make selection of translation vendors more transparent and understandable. Finally, Scott will also discuss how to leverage APIs throughout the process to improve integration with multiple tools and vendors.

Online education powerhouses, Coursera and Khan Academy, become the latest adopters of Amara's enterprise-model subtitling software, dramatically expanding their global reach.

In collaboration with the Rackham Graduate School, the Sweetland Center for Writing coordinates several student-led writing groups for graduate students writing their dissertations. These interdisciplinary writing groups provide structured support in a facilitated peer-based setting to aid dissertators working through long-term projects. Dissertation Writing Groups typically consist of four members including a group leader. Participants must be in the writing phase of their dissertations and available to meet eight times per semester to workshop group members’ writing on a rotating basis. Each group will determine meeting schedules and expectations.

A publisher turns to the masses for new words.

To “crowdsource,” according to the UK-based Collins English Dictionary, is “to outsource work to an unspecified group of people, typically by making an appeal to the general public on the internet.” As this definition suggests, it’s a fairly new word; Collins added it to the dictionary three years ago.

As of last month, however, Collins has gone even further, adopting crowdsourcing not just as an entry in the dictionary but as a methodology affecting its future. Taking a page from its own book, Collins is now crowdsourcing the hunt for new words and phrases, calling on the public to submit suggestions at its website (collinsdictionary.com). The response so far has been robust: In the first two weeks of the initiative, there were 2,637 suggestions from more than 2,000 different users, according to Alex Brown, head of digital at HarperCollins.

On its face, this looks like a brave new world for dictionaries—evidence, perhaps, of the shaky status of lexicographical authority in the age of Urban Dictionary and Wiktionary. But in fact, the practice of crowdsourcing goes way back in the history of dictionaries, many decades before there was even a word for it. And this latest project, despite relying on the wisdom of crowds, still employs experts as gatekeepers.

Igloo Software is a social business software company that builds online communities for businesses of any size. A powerful suite of content management, collaboration and knowledge sharing tools within one secure social networking platform.

July 31, 2012 - Igloo Software, the leading provider of social business software in the cloud, today announced the next-gen version of their web-based collaboration suite, highlighted by full support for multilingual translation.
Latest Social Business Software Update Breaks through Language Barriers to Improve Collaboration.

July 31, 2012 (Kitchener, ON) - - Igloo Software, the leading provider of social business software in the cloud, today announced the next-generation version of their web-based collaboration suite, highlighted by full support for multilingual translation. The move breaks the language barrier by enabling teams to communicate and collaborate in the language of their choice.

"The prospect of global expansion used to be a daunting process for small and midsized companies," said Dan Latendre, CEO of Igloo Software. "The web has changed that, not just from a marketing perspective, but also operationally. With our latest release, we've eliminated one of the most significant barriers to collaboration, making it easier to work together regardless of location, time zone and now language."

Spotlight covers the intersections of technology and education, going behind the research to show how digital media is used in and out of classrooms to expand learning.

La traducción voluntaria puede ser muy satisfactoria pero hay que tener capacidad analítica para poder elegir lo que hacer con nuestro tiempo.

Go4Funding.com is an online platform that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and business experts from around the world.

Saviez-vous que Twitter était traduit dans des dizaines de langues par des internautes bénévoles ?

As much as we appreciate the existence of this free, online encyclopaedia, errors – and even outright falsehoods – can sometimes creep in, reminding us that good old Wiki is often worth taking with a pinch of salt.

Global Organizations Leverage Cloud-based Platform to Improve Flexibility, Accountability, Communication and Efficiency

San Francisco, CA – July 18, 2012 – Today, Cloudwords, the first cloud-based translation management platform, launched its first set of solutions to better serve global organizations. Each Cloudwords solution addresses the unique needs of a specific industry or department: High Tech, Life Sciences/Pharma, Marketing, Product and Training.

Each of these groups uses Cloudwords to make managing their translation projects streamlined, transparent, cost-effective and more likely to generate revenue. Depending on the user group’s specific needs, they may also use the Cloudwords platform to gain additional benefits such as: entering a new market faster; regaining hours or days previously spent managing translation projects; leveraging Cloudwords’ open API for integrating with existing systems; or to develop new product offerings.

Cloud-based translation management firm Cloudwords has introduced new vertical market-focused solutions to address specific industry and departmental needs.    The five target markets to date are high tech, life sciences/pharma,...

Life would be a little richer, a little sweeter, if we never had to hear the word staycation again.

'China in the Clouds' and other translation possibilities...

Global Organizations Leverage Cloud-based Platform to Improve Flexibility, Accountability, Communication and Efficiency | Virtual Strategy Magazine is an online publication devoted entirely to virtualization technologies.

A new crowdsourced platform for free and more accurate translations. Instead of relying on machines, Ackuna uses people to share translations between one another.

The Russian version of Wikipedia becomes inaccessible for 24 hours in protest at a proposed law to blacklist some websites.

Advanced Language Translation’s Account Executive, Elena Dunne, offers an excellent overview of the possible impact of a single-source authoring strategy on translation efforts.

The most significant change in the field of technical communication in the recent decade has been the shift from authoring documents to authoring content. This shift is the response to the challenges and changes to product development, new technology and business environment. Single-sourcing is an approach that is the result of this shift to authoring content. It allows technical communicators to resolve problems such as reusability of content, maximizing consistency within the content, centralizing authoring process and content management, and decreasing format dependence through separation of form and content.

There are many implications for translation and localization of content created in structured and single-sourcing frameworks. The first set of issues is more political than anything else. Translation and localization teams are typically not involved in strategic planning of product development, so, when a development methodology such as agile or lean is adopted, the risks that it introduces to the content authoring and localization stages are not necessarily considered. For example, the frequent changes are considered a normal part of agile software development, but budget and schedule adjustments are not made to accommodate these changes to the content in one or more languages. Or, proper procedures are not used to communicate these changes to technical communication and/or localization teams; thereby increasing the risk that the resulting documentation will be inconsistent with the final product or service in one or more languages involved.

Twitter has long been a proponent of crowd-sourced translation, offering a home base for polyglots who care to devote their efforts towards making the service available in other ...