Events & announcements

bab.la and Lexiophiles would like to warmly welcome each and every one of you to this year’s TLL competition. The game is on – the competition has officially started! It’s once again time to find and nominate your favourite blogs/Facebook pages/Twitter accounts and YouTube channels. Last year’s participants will be automatically nominated.

See more and make a nomination >>

A new online magazine called Connections has released its first issue. Connections collects interviews, articles and other contributions from translation professionals, and is a product of the members of the Standing Out Mastermind group.

This first issue of Connections contains contributions from, among others, the following ProZ.com members:

Noura Tawil

Pharmacist &Writer,Naturally Translated!

Carolina Garrido

16 years´ experience, MA in education

Anzhelika Kuznetsova

Psychology, Finance and Law

Rea Gutzwiller

Rafa Lombardino

A network of professional translators

You can read the full magazine by clicking on the link or image below:

Read online >>

The European Language Industry Association (Elia) has launched a new membership initiative for language service companies and independent professionals to connect and join forces with the ultimate goal of better serving end clients, strengthening the language industry in the process.

Companies and individuals who believe in the power of positive working practices are invited to sign up as Founding Members before 31 May 2017 and help shape the development of Elia Engage and its activities.

Building on the aims of Elia’s annual Together conference, which provides the venue for both parties to come together in person for open discussion and constructive dialogue, Elia Engage is the interactive forum for companies to meet and develop connections with skilled independent language professionals and, together, establish best practices for enduring, long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships.

Elia Engage will be led by committee, with independent professionals and language service companies equally represented. Founding Members will have numerous opportunities to influence the initiative and will be able to join various working groups that will focus on developing key aspects to help both parties achieve success and fulfilment in their businesses. This is an unheard of opportunity to be part of something from the ground up and to contribute directly to creating a legacy for the language industry built on respect and positivity.

All Elia Engage members will get a profile on the Elia Engage website to promote their services, the opportunity to communicate across borders, access to resources and services, and more. In addition, individuals will receive a 10% discount to attend future Together events.

Elia Full Member companies receive access to Elia Engage as part of their Elia membership and simply need to sign up and commit to the aims of Elia Engage and actively support positive working relationships. The membership fee for independent professionals such as translators, interpreters, localisers, consultants and project managers is €110 for 12 months. Register as a Founding Member by 31 May 2017 and receive the prestige of being an early adopter and the chance to influence the industry; independent language professionals who sign up as Founding Members will benefit from extended membership until 31 December 2018 for a special rate of €90.

See more >>

From the website:

The global languages industry is evolving apace and there’s huge opportunity for candidates aiming to build a career in this space. But the question arises… with whom?

Adaptive Globalization engages with hundreds of applicants working within the localization and translation industry every week and provides them with advice and information on prospective employers.

We manage a global job-seeker community of over 30,000 translation, localization and language technology professionals, together with a constant influx of new ‘out-of-industry’ talent and entry-level professionals. Our candidates are always keen to learn which employers may offer them the most progression and fulfilment in their careers, as well as the best employee benefits, compensation and rewards.

Why not enter your company for a BELA 2017 − an opportunity to gain widespread industry recognition as a leading employer and attract the best talent for your business?

To select the BELA 2017 winners we will analyze information provided by every LSP that submits data to us, choosing one winner in each of five categories:

• Best Language Service Provider for Employee Well-being
• Best Language Service Provider for Employee Retention
• Best Language Service Provider for Career Progression
• Best Language Service Provider for Employee Benefits
• Best Client-side Localization Employer

See more and enter >>

Every year since 2013, the ProZ.com community choice awards have been held to recognize language professionals who are active, influential or otherwise outstanding in various media throughout the industry. Nominees and winners are decided entirely by the ProZ.com community.

Nominations are now open for the 2017 edition of the awards. You can see how the awards work and submit your nominations here >>

The National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC) is proud to announce the results of its 2017 Board of Director elections. The newly elected Board Members are as follows:

Director-at-Large
Kevin Cunningham
Ginevra Deianni

They will join current members:
Enrica J. Ardemagni, PhD, President
Lisa Morris, Treasurer
Directors-at-Large:
Sharon Brauer
Joy Connell
Jaime Fatás-Cabeza
Gaye Gentes
Carlos Garcia
Maria Schwieter
Allison Squires, Ph.D.

NCIHC is a multidisciplinary organization whose mission is to promote and enhance language access in health care in the United States. The newly elected Board Directors will join the other directors to round out a national group of experts in the language services industry.

Stepes has announced it will present Mobile Translation for the Digital Economy at the TAUS Executive Forum in Tokyo Japan on April 25-26, 2017.

The digital era has led to the rapid spread of information, fundamentally altering basic customer expectations about translation speed. Fast delivery no longer refers to a few weeks or days, it now means minutes and seconds. In addition to speed, two of the biggest trends impacting the translation and localization industry are the continued development of mobile technology and artificial intelligence (AI).

“In today’s mobile-connected world, everyone is creating and accessing information, including translated content, on mobile devices. This is why mobile will play an increasingly important role in the translation ecosystem,” commented Carl Yao, Stepes Visionary. “Today’s digital content is becoming smaller, more fragmented, distributed on multiple channels, and in need of on-deand, around the clock translation.”

The TAUS forum will feature Macduff Hughes (News – Alert), Director of Google Translate, and Chris Wendt, Program Manager of Machine Translation at Microsoft, to talk about neural machine translation (NMT) and the other translation technology innovations that are impacting the localization industry. Stepes mobile translation solutions, powered by professional human translators, provide a perfect complement to today’s NMT in terms of both quality and scale.

“Legacy localization services are no longer sufficient in meeting the always-on, agile, and fast translation requirements of the digital age,” noted Marisa Bowers, Director of Worldwide Business Development at CSOFT International. “Mobile translation services like Stepes deliver unrivaled speed and scalability and are perfectly suited for the digital economy.”

See more >>

Edna O’Brien has won the second annual Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award for Les petites chaises rouges, the French translation of her novel The Little Red Chairs. She will receive her prize of €1,500 at a ceremony in the Swiss embassy in Dublin in May. Her translators Aude de Saint-Loup and Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat will receive three weeks’ translation training with Literature Ireland, co-sponsors of the prize with Dublin’s 25 Francophone ambassadors. The other shortlisted works were Tanglewood by Dermot Bolger, Ghost Moth by Michèle Forbes, The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray, The Thrill of it All by Joseph O’Connor and Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín. John Banville was the inaugural winner for for his novel La lumière des étoiles mortes (Ancient Lights).

The annual Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize is awarded each spring to honor an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the USA the previous year. The translator of the winning translation will receive US $10,000. The prize was established in 1996 and was administered by the Goethe-Institut Chicago until 2014. Funded by the German government, the Prize has been administered by the Goethe-Institut New York since 2015.

CHARLOTTE COLLINS

For her translation of
Robert Seethaler’s Ein ganzes Leben

A Whole Life
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016

TONY CRAWFORD

For his translation of
Navid Kermani’s Zwischen Koran und Kafka

Between Quran & Kafka
Polity Books, 2016

MICHAEL HOFMANN

For his translation of
Jakob Wassermann’s Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz

My Marriage
New York Review Books, 2016

The Albertine Prize recognizes American readers’ favorite contemporary Francophone literature while encouraging the discovery of new literary voices, translated and published in the US in the past year. The selection presents a range of stories from many diverse locations and perspectives, reminding us of the importance of looking beyond one’s own borders.

You don’t have to read them all to participate! Read one novel or more from the list below, and vote for as many as you want!

EN

Couple Mechanics

NELLY ALARD

Translated by Adriana Hunter (Other Press). At once sexy and feminist, ‘Couple Mechanics’ tells the story of a woman who decides to fight for her marriage after her husband confesses to an affair with a noted politician. With intelligence, honesty, and humor, the novel examines the forces at work in a marriage, the effects of the inevitable ebb and flow of desire, and the difficulty of being a man today.

EN

Constellation

ADRIEN BOSC

Translated by Willard Wood (Other Press). This best-selling debut novel from one of France’s most exciting young writers is based on the true story of the 1949 disappearance of Air France’s Constellation, a new plane launched by Howard Hughes, and its famous passengers. Tying together the destinies of boxer – and fiancé of Edith Piaf – Marcel Cerdan, a musical prodigy, and others, the novel gives these thirty-eight men and women a new life by imagining their long-forgotten story.

EN

Eve Out Of Her Ruins

ANANDA DEVI

Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Deep Vellum). With brutal honesty and poetic urgency, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country’s endless cycle of fear and violence: Eve, whose body is her only source of power; Savita, Eve’s best friend; Saadiq, a gifted would-be poet in love with Eve; and Clélio, a belligerent rebel waiting for his brother to send for him from France.

EN

The Heart

MAYLIS DE KERANGAL

Translated by Sam Taylor (FSG). ‘The Heart’ takes place over the 24 hours surrounding a fatal car crash and the subsequent heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a dying woman. As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, the book examines the deepest emotions of everyone involved – grieving parents, doctors and nurses – as they navigate decisions of life and death. The book won the 2014 Grand Prix RTL-Lire.

EN

The Little Communist Who Never Smiled

LOLA LAFON

Translated by Nick Caistor (Seven Stories Press). Lola Lafon’s award-winning novel offers a fictionalized account of iconic gymnast Nadia Comaneci’s life, from her rural Romanian childhood to her unprecedented perfect score in the 1976 Olympics and to her 1989 defection to the U.S. The book re-imagines a childhood in the spotlight of history, a woman adored by young girls in the West and appropriated as a political emblem in Communist Romania.

EN

Suite For Barbara Loden

NATHALIE LEGER

Translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon, (Dorothy, a publishing project). Moving between fact and speculation, film criticism and anecdote, Suite for Barbara Loden came out of Nathalie Léger’s obsessive investigation into the mysteries of Wanda, the only film American actress Barbara Loden ever wrote and directed.

EN

Ladivine

MARIE NDIAYE

Translated by Jordan Stump (Knopf). Malinka’s pale beauty helped her rise above her dark-skinned mother’s life of servitude. The book follows her through years of living a lie, leading up to a shockingly violent act that leaves her own daughter yearning to understand who her mother really was.

EN

Infidels: A Novel

ABDELLAH TAIA

Translated by Alison L. Strayer (Seven Stories Press). Set in Morocco, Infidels follows the life of Jallal, the son of a prostitute witch doctor, fresh out of boyhood and on the path to Jihad. Filled with a cast of supporting characters whose dreams unravel, the book is structured as a series of monologues, an emotionally relentless mix of confession, shouting match, and secret longing.

EN

Naked

JEAN-PHILIPPE TOUSSAINT

Translated by Edward Gauvin (Dalkey Archive). ‘Naked’ is Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s fourth and final novel about one of the most fully realized female characters of contemporary fiction, the haute couturière Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte. With his customary nuanced reflection and nimble wit, Toussaint continues to follow Marie’s relationship with his unnamed narrator, navigating through jealousy and comedy, irony and tenderness.

EN

Bardo Or Not Bardo

ANTOINE VOLODINE

Translated by J. T. Mahany (Three Percent). One of the funniest installments in Antoine Volodine’s acclaimed post-apocalyptic series, ‘Bardo or Not Bardo’ consists of seven vignettes set in a universe of failed revolutions, radical shamanism, and off-kilter nomenclature. In each one, a newly dead character bungles his way through the Tibetan afterlife, or Bardo, failing to achieve enlightenment, while the living make a similar mess of things.

See how to vote and read more about the Albertine Prize >>

ABRATES 8th International Translation and Interpretation Conference is coming up, and you should definitely attend it!

ABRATES is the Brazilian Association of Translators and Interpreters, a non-profit association managed by volunteer translators and interpreters. It promotes courses and events and encourages the exchange of knowledge and networking among the industry’s professionals, institutions, and agencies.

Going beyond the obvious of any good industry event, attending ABRATES can give you a fantastic first-hand view of how big and important Brazil’s (and Latin America’s) market is. The networking opportunities are endless, and if you live in North America, Europe or Oceania, the exchange rate is your friend.

This post lists all the good reasons why you should attend it. Check it out here:

https://translationtidbits.com/2017/03/18/abrates-8th-international-translation-and-interpretation-conference-is-coming-up-and-you-should-definitely-attend-it/

Mornings will be spent working on a piece of fiction on a continuous basis and the afternoons will be dedicated to translating short pieces in a variety of genres. There will be plenty of opportunities for networking with publishers,  City staff and one another, particularly at our lunchtime and evening events, which include:

• A French Translation Slam, with Ros Schwarz and Frank Wynne, chaired by Professor Amanda Hopkinson
• A Keynote Lecture, Who Dares Wins, by Professor Gabriel Josipovici
• Author and translator Daniel Hahn speaking on Translation and Children’s Books
• Buffet supper at a local gastro pub sponsored by the European Commission following a talk from Paul Kaye, Language Officer at Europe House, London
• The launch of a literary translation competition, open to all participants, sponsored by prize-winning Comma Press
• Short lunchtime talks on topics related to developing your skills and getting published as a literary translator.

For more information, see http://www.city.ac.uk/courses/short-courses/translate-summer

The Man Booker Internation Prize, which recognizes works of fiction translated into English and published in the UK, announced its longlist of contenders for the prize on March 15th. Novels and collections of short stories are eligible for the International, as long as they have been translated into English and are published in the UK. The prize is £50,000, to be split equally between the winning author and translator, and all shortlisted authors and translators will receive £1,000 each. As of 2016, the Man Booker International Prize will be awarded annually. This year’s longlist is:

Author (nationality), Translator, Title (imprint)​

• Mathias Enard (France), Charlotte Mandell, Compass (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Wioletta Greg (Poland), Eliza Marciniak, Swallowing Mercury (Portobello Books)
• David Grossman (Israel), Jessica Cohen, A Horse Walks Into a Bar (Jonathan Cape)
• Stefan Hertmans (Belgium), David McKay, War and Turpentine (Harvill Secker)
• Roy Jacobsen (Norway), Don Bartlett, Don Shaw, The Unseen (Maclehose)
• Ismail Kadare (Albania), John Hodgson, The Traitor’s Niche (Harvill Secker)
• Jon Kalman Stefansson (Iceland), Phil Roughton, Fish Have No Feet (Maclehose)
• Yan Lianke (China), Carlos Rojas, The Explosion Chronicles (Chatto & Windus)
• Alain Mabanckou (France), Helen Stevenson, Black Moses (Serpent’s Tail)
• Clemens Meyer (Germany), Katy Derbyshire, Bricks and Mortar (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Dorthe Nors (Denmark), Misha Hoekstra, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Pushkin Press)
• Amos Oz (Israel), Nicholas de Lange, Judas (Chatto & Windus)
• Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), Megan McDowell, Fever Dream (Oneworld)

The shortlist is scheduled to be announced on April 20th, and the winner will be announced on June 14th.

See more >>

Net-Translators, a leading provider of website translation services, announced today that it has partnered with WPML, the leading multilingual plugin to create a website in more than one language.

The recent partnership with WPML, a product of OnTheGoSystems, allows users of WordPress, the most downloaded website and blog content management system (CMS) available, to author content and easily translate it into different languages without any coding. Once the plugin is installed, anyone on WordPress can connect directly with Net-Translators to start a website translation project. With thousands of professional translators, proofreaders and editors from around the globe, Net-Translators offers translation services into more than 60 languages. The plugin also includes advanced features for translation management and an interface for our translators.

“We decided to team up with WPML because we want to provide the millions of WordPress users with an easy, seamless way to get their websites translated,” notes Shy Avni, CEO and co-founder of Net-Translators. He continues: “The plugin can be installed by anyone in order to turn their website into a multilingual version. This revolutionary new way of translating websites is in line with our ongoing commitment to develop and offer the most efficient localization tools and technologies to our customers.”

“We are excited to work with Net-Translators and offer their service to WPML clients,” said Amir Helzer, OnTheGoSystems’ Founder and CEO. “Net-Translators offers expertise and quality that our clients need. This partnership allows each of us to focus on our expertise and provide complete value to clients.”

Additional information including step-by-step instructions on how to get started with WPML and Net-Translators is available by visiting: https://wpml.org/translation-service/net-translators.

On 1 March 2017, at LocWorld Shenzhen, TAUS organized their Game Changers Innovation Contest with the help of host Henri Broekmate from Lionbridge. Ten presenters were asked to spend six minutes on the stage to showcase their innovative idea, perspective or technology. About 100 people gathered in the room to witness this event. The more than 250 attendees of LocWorld all received a link to vote for their favorite.

Henri Broekmate, General Manager for the Asian Region at Lionbridge, opened the contest, introducing the topics that were going to be discussed in the contest and which are on everybody’s mind these days. Quality, data, machine translation and machine learning, interoperability. Topics that TAUS focuses on in the next five years as well.

“It’s clear to me that the pace of innovation is accelerating in our industry,” says Henri Broekmate. “It was very encouraging to learn about advancements in automation across multiple fields, ranging from rapid quoting, translation education and evaluation, real-time mobile-based human translation and language quality evaluation, to name but a few. In addition, domestic China enterprises are getting into the mix and they’re starting to put pressure on more established players in the language technology and services space.”

On 2 March 2017, at the Closing Ceremony of LocWorld, the winner was announced. More than 100 votes came in and it was a tight race. There can, of course, be only one winner and the winner of the Game Changers Innovation Contest – Shenzhen is Claudia Di Lorenzo from Translated/MateCat, presenting MateCAT IQ.

“It’s great winning the Innovation Contest for the second time! MateCat continues bringing innovation to the translation industry. We’re glad that the great audience at LocWorld recognized how simple it is to start selling translations online with the MateCat Instant Quote widget (IQ),” says Claudia Di Lorenzo.

See more >>

KantanMT announced that users will now be able to build and deploy their own Custom Neural Machine Translation (NMT) engines to translate entire documents in any of the 260 language pairs supported by KantanMT. Clients can create the KantanNeural™ engines directly on the KantanMT platform using their own training data simply by selecting Neural MT as the ‘engine type.’

KantanNeural engines are set up to incorporate some of the most powerful KantanMT features, including the seamless combination of Translation Memory (KantanTotalRecall™) and Machine Translation output, automatic post-editing (PEX) and tokenization exceptions.

This new development follows the news of the launch of NMT stock engines in Legal and Automotive domains, which are available within the extensive KantanFleet™ Library. KantanMT clients however, can now use their own training data from any domain to create the NMT engines.

Read more >>

SDL has announced that Huawei, a leading ICT (information and communications technology) solutions provider, has chosen SDL Marketing Solutions to power its global digital marketing strategy.

Huawei’s corporate division, Enterprise BG, offers ICT products and solutions to corporate and industry customers, including government and public sectors, finance, energy, transportation and manufacturing. As a global brand in pursuit of locally relevant digital content and messaging, it needed to create digital marketing experiences that combine global management and control with regionally nuanced understanding.

“SDL leveraged its superior network of local resources to provide us with content management and localization services to operate our website and optimize content for 14 countries,” says Qian Jinsong, senior manager, Huawei EBG Sales and Marketing. “They’ve become an integral part of Huawei’s global marketing strategy. With SDL, we have significantly increased responsiveness to the needs of frontline sales and marketing managers. We’ve also seen this solution foster an increase in traffic and conversion rates in all markets.”

Since 2015 SDL has deployed senior multilingual marketing specialists to 14 countries that Huawei Enterprise BG operates in, helping them in three core areas:

1) Synchronized global publication of site content: Review all site content for local relevance, submit and track a list of issues, and supervise the content update process to complete the online publication of multilingual content on time and to a high standard of quality.

2) Unified management and control of traffic and conversion rates: Optimize search engine keywords for local markets, implement traffic monitoring and analyze the resulting data to increase traffic and conversion rates.

3) Local optimization of marketing content: Rewrite marketing case studies, and produce mini-sites, electronic direct mail (EDM) and multimedia content to ensure marketing content respects local culture, practices, traditional concepts and any other considerations.

In less than one year, the number of visits, retention time and conversion rates for the Huawei Enterprise BG global site increased by more than 10 percent, and in some countries increased by as much as 20 percent.

“Huawei is a great example of a Chinese-headquartered company that’s growing rapidly on the global stage,” said Adolfo Hernandez, CEO, SDL. “With that success comes the complex challenge of managing and delivering relevant marketing content to each individual market. Understanding the nuances and cultural differences in each country is not easy, but our team has worked relentlessly to help Huawei accomplish just that.”

Read the Huawei case study >>

From March 10 to 12, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, will host the best and brightest Canadian translation students for the 2017 Jeux de la traduction.

Hundreds of undergraduates from 12 teams representing universities across the country will put their language-swapping prowess to the test. The gruelling weekend will challenge their speed, rigor and imagination.

Participants will deal with materials that only human translators can adequately interpret. For example, teams will have to translate excerpts from songs and audiovisual material that uses “plays on words” and colloquial expressions. They will also be asked to translate materials that have constraints — such as 140-character tweets.

All events will be timed and judged on additional criteria such as creativity, spelling and grammar.

“Quick turnaround of material is a constant reality in the world of translation, so speed is important,” explains Christine York, lecturer in translation with the Département d’études françaises.

“But a translator has the responsibility to the authors and characters they are interpreting to do justice to their work, so this is also heavily weighed.”

Translations are judged anonymously by a committee made up of professors from each university represented at the games. The 12 competing schools are hosts to Canada’s only undergraduate-level translation programs.

See more >>