20 years of experience on business, industrial, academic and government-sponsored projects in natural language processing, technical writing, controlled language authoring software, machine translation and Translation memory software development and implementation, documentation workflow tools, business intelligence performance management tools, datawarehousing, telecommunications software, speech technologies, Optical Character Recognition and localization.

Expert in Haitian Creole and several other French Creole languages for past 20 years

Expert in Automated translation, speech technologies, and translation memory systems for 15 years

See the video of my invited open public talk at Microsoft Research Headquarters in August 2010. "The successes and challenges of making low-data languages available in online automatic translation portals and software" at this link


Professional Experience:

since 2008: Senior Architect, Engineering Tools & Methodologies (since 2011), Engineering Tools/Processes Expert (2010-2011), ISO9001 certification Coach and internal auditor (since 2009), ISO9001 Quality Management Representative at SAP Labs Levallois campus (since 2010), Engineering Cross-Functional Validation Project Lead (2009-2010), Validation Project Lead (2008-2009) at SAP Business Objects Division

2010-2011: Volunteer Language Technology Expert for Haiti/Haitian Creole Disaster Relief projects (SAP/Microsoft/Google/CrisisCamps/etc). Click on link to watch video of the story

2007-2008: Director of Business Development at Translations.com / TransPerfect

2006-2007: EMEA Director of Professional Services and Corporate Technical Account Management at SYSTRAN Software

2001-2006: ISO9001 Quality Management Manager (2005-2006), Software Program Manager (2002-2004), Software Training Manager (2004-2005), Quality Assurance/Testing Manager (2002-2003), Technical/Marketing Documentation Manager (2001-2002)) at Mycom France / Mycom International

2001: Project Director at Softissimo (PROMT-based Reverso Machine Translation software)

1998-2000: Technical Director at European / Evaluations & Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)

1995-1998: Carnegie Mellon Univ - 2 successive roles:
1997-1998: 2 years as Researcher and Lab Supervisor onsite at Language Technologies Institute/Center for Machine Translation/Carnegie Mellon University
1995-1996: 2 years as Onsite Software/systems Trainer and linguist of Controlled Language Authoring, Translation Systems, Authoring/Translation Workflow, SGML at Caterpillar Inc - customer site of Center for Machine Translation/Carnegie Mellon University

1988-1994: lecturer and professor positions in language and linguistics / Professional Translator

Full-time positions:

• 1994: Associate Instructor/Lecturer in French at Indiana University, Dept of French and Italian (short-term fellowship)


• 1993-1994: Course Coordinator, Business Language Professor, and Translator Executive Language Services


• 1991-1993: Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Université Lyon 2, in collaboration with the Oregon University System


• 1991-1992: Graduate Teaching Assistant (Assistant to Director) + Translator at the Centre Oregon d'Etudes Françaises Student Exchange Program run by the Oregon University System


• 1990-1992: Lecturer in French and Applied Linguistics at Portland State University (PSU) , Dept of Foreign Languages & Dept of Applied Linguistics of the Oregon University System


• 1989-1990: English teacher at the Lycee La Martiniere, Lyon, France, (1 year fellowship through the Oregon University System)


• 1988-1989: French Teaching Assistant at Portland State University (PSU) , Dept of Foreign Languages & Dept of Applied Linguistics of the Oregon University System

Note: the Oregon University System (OUS) is composed of Portland State Univ (PSU), Univ of Oregon (UO), Oregon State Univ (OSU), Southern Oregon Univ (SOU), Western Oregon Univ (WOU), Eastern Oregon Univ (EOU), Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT)

Guest positions:

• Summer 1992: Guest Dept Head & Professor of Linguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics European Training Programme (ETP): taught seminars on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics


• Summer 1992: Guest Professor of French Language at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lyon (Graduate Business School of Lyon)

Advisory roles:

2001 to present: Advisory Board member for MultiLingual Computing & Technology magazine
March 2005 to present: Advisory Board member for the LINGUIST List

Professional Certifications:

December 2004: obtained official certification as trainer of all of the following courses for the Mycom NIMS-PrOptima Telecom Business Intelligence solution suite for software versions: 1.9, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30, 1.40:

• Standard User course (user course, Call Trace, Geographic Information System, NE Profiling)


• System Administration


• Importation Control Manager and Importation Engine

June 2005: obtained official certification as a PROMT Dictionary Developer - (covers versions for PROMT XT v6, v6.5, v7, and PROMT/Reverso 4 & 5)

September 2005: obtained official certification as a Quality Internal Auditor based on the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Standard by AFAQ/AFNOR Standards organization in France

Education:
1987 & 1988: Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Languages & Literature/Theology (+ minors in World History & Music)
1989: Bachelor of Arts in French Linguistics
1992: Maîtrise des Sciences du Langage (MA in Linguistics)
1994: Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies (DEA) de Sciences du Language (1st level doctorate in Linguistics)
1998: Master of Science in Information Systems
2001: PhD in Linguistics
2004: Master of Science in Telecommunications

Machine Translation expertise:
LinkedIn profile

Software Reviews:
See my Language Technology Evaluation (LangTechEval) web page

LangTechEval also downloadable at: Go to "files" section > Software Reviews subsection

Publications (Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Translation Software, Technical writing, Translation, Authoring/Translation workflows)

List of Creole languages and technologies at:
Creole technology publications list

List of all technology-related talks and publications at:
Full list of technology publications

All articles and case studies downloadable at the Files section of my LinkedIn profile at:
LinkedIn profile - go to Files section


My input on debates on MT from the Language Service Provider and Freelance translator perspective on LinkedIn:

How-MT-affects-rate-schemes-translators-Automated-Translation-LinkedInGroup-23March2010.doc

MT-PE-practices-rates-LocalizationProfessional-LinkedInGroup-23March2010.doc

JeffAllen-MT-allies-and-enemies-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-2009.doc

JeffAllen-translation-quality-from-LSP-translator-perspective-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-6March2010.doc

JeffAllen-translation-quality-items-QA-QE-QM-process-product-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-12March2010.doc

JeffAllen-MT-PE-practices-rates-LocalizationProfessional-LinkedInGroup-2March2010.doc

JeffAllen-Is-MT-dict-worth-effort-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-Oct-Dec2009.doc

JeffAllen-MT-PE-stat-no-MT-dict-2005.doc
(some statistics from and MT postediting without MT dictionary building; this one is not in the other LinkedIn group thread)


JeffAllen-26Feb2010-MTengines-put-to-test-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-news.doc

JeffAllen-project-size-stats-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-2009.doc


Experience on over 20 European Commission and USA Government-funded Human Language Technology (IST, MLIS, LE4, etc) and Telecommunications projects as well as corporate-funded projects