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In this one-hour online event, presenters from Lingoport, Sajan and Cisco reviewed and discussed some of the challenges faced in internationalizing and localizing TelePresence, including several technologies used in its various components. The presenters also discussed how i18n development, localization and testing were tightly integrated into Cisco’s development and QA process, producing better engineering and linguistic results. Here is  the recording of the  live webinar.

See: i18nBlog

The word – Facebooker- is the newest vocabulary invention of the Bulgarians. The word refers to a person who uses the social network Facebook and it will enter the next edition of the dictionary for new words. The words – bultras – Bulgarian football fans and permarexy meaning addiction to keeping different diets will also be included in the dictionary for new words.

“The Bulgarians have invented a total of 4,300 new words in the last 20 years,” says Diana Blagoeva from the Bulgarian Language Institute with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The biggest number of new words are derived from the work with computers and Internet. Only for the word ALPHABET the Bulgarians who use Internet have made up 8 synonyms. One forth of the new words are Bulgarian versions of English words.

See: Standart News

Common Sense Advisory, Inc., an independent market research firm specializing in the language services industry, has released two new reports. “Content Strategy for the Global Enterprise” helps organizations understand the content they create, how they manage and transform it, and where these operations fit into an enterprise content strategy.

“Translation Vendor Management” reveals that buyers have very clear criteria for making decisions about vendors – and buyers are getting even more savvy with time. Organizations are improving their procurement processes, reducing their vendor pools, centralizing their operations, and in general getting smarter about how to make the most efficient use of their language service providers. Technology is also starting to fill some of the automation voids that made vendor management so difficult for clients in the past.

See: Multilingual

Intertainment Media Inc. announced that its social media, real time, language translation platform, Ortsbo.com (www.ortsbo.com), with over 16.1 Million Unique Monthly Users, month over month, established a Guinness World Record on Friday, May 20, 2011 for the Most Nationalities In An Online Chat – with 92 countries officially being recorded as participating at KISS Live & Global, hosted by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. The event also marked the official launch of Ortsbo’s plug-in email translation platform for Microsoft Outlook, the world’s largest email platform.

Broadcast around the world from the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA, participants were able to watch a live video stream on their computers, iPhone, iPad, Android devices as well as submitting questions in 53 languages for KISS co-founders to answer. Thousands of questions were in the queue throughout the broadcast, allowing participants from over 92 countries, representing every geographic region globally to ask questions of the legendary rock stars. Read more.

See: Marketwire

Babel Media, a provider of outsourced services for the games industry, has hired Heidi Newell, formerly of EA and Big Fish Games, as its new audio director.

Newell joins Babel’s audio team as it records English audio for an undisclosed title due for release later this year. She will also be working on localised audio for “one of the year’s most anticipated sequels” — again, the name of which has not yet been given.

The industry veteran has spent 16 years working on audio for top game companies, including jobs as localization manager at EA Canada and lead project manager at Big Fish’s Vancouver studio. She will be situated at Babel’s Montreal studio.

See: Gamasutra

Process documentation is essentially “quantified” documentation that overlooks an entire process or set of procedures. Process documentation is very important because it is a common and definitive communication point-of-reference and basis upon which discussions, policy changes, procedure changes and observations can be made. For a company to have good process documentation, it takes much more than just a Technical Writer hammering out such a document. It takes willing and supportive people in all departments who believe in the company and its future profitability and ability to compete in its market. The more people that contribute to quality process documentation, the better. Process documentation ultimately becomes the written word of a company – helping to define its products, direction, policies, procedures, and best practices that enable it to compete in the marketplace.

See: Great Documents

The 2011 edition of the Associated Press Stylebook debuted last week online and in print. Every addition made to the online version since the last printing has been included in the 2011 printing, including an expanded social media section and a new food section.

the AP Stylebook have changed from e-mail to email. They’ve expanded the social media guidelines section with other terms as well, including smartphone (one word), check in (v.) and check-in (n. and adj.), and WAP (forwireless interface protocol) to the section.

But the big story is the new food section. Why create an entire section devoted to food? According to J. M. Hirsch, AP food editor, food journalism has grown greatly in the last 5 to 10 years. In 2010, 800 magazines were launched in the US; 100 of them were food magazines. And let’s not even try to count food blogs. Hirsch himself has two (J.M. Hirsch and Lunch Box Blues). The food audience is huge now and they take food seriously, says Hirsch. “When you are writing about food, you are being judged on the quality and clarity of what you’re saying.” So you need a way to ensure those things.

See: Copy Editing

In this article Christian Arno discusses the importance of multilingual marketing and specially the importance of Hispanic Localization for U.S business wanting to expand their reach on the domestic foreign-language market. Here are some excerpts:

The 2009 U.S. Census found that a fifth of the U.S. population speak a language other than English at home, with the majority of those (34.5 million) being Spanish speakers. Does your domestic marketing strategy reflect the cultural diversity inland? Are you really catering for the needs of the U.S. consumers whose first language is not English?

The Growing Hispanic Community

Promoting your business only in English may seem like the right approach. But, in fact, it fails to reflect the U.S. non-English cultural landscape, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Latin-American community — a powerful and fast-growing yet largely untapped online consumer market.

The natural step to striking a chord with Spanish speakers and boosting your e-sales at home would be to create a Spanish version of your website. Still, you’ll be surprised to learn that websites localized for Latin-Americans in the U.S. are, in fact, hard to come by.

Importance of Hispanic Localization

The good news is that, since you’re addressing a consumer group within the domestic market, you won’t need to change your shipping, payment or logistics arrangements. But there’s a major caveat — simply translating your website into Spanish doesn’t guarantee your e-business a boost overnight. You’ll be in a much better position to localize your web presence by tuning it for the growing Latino web community.

This isn’t exactly rocket science. All you need to localize your website is a native professional translator who will be aware of the culture specifics of this consumer group, and use keywords and colloquialisms that you may not otherwise be aware of. Read the full article.

See: Practical ecommerce

In an article on BLOOMBERG, Maury Peiperl discusses why English should remain the lingua franca for doing business. Here are some excerpts:

International companies and international commerce generally imply a fundamental need for people to communicate across the globe, at least at a basic verbal and written level. Translation and multilingual communication are important, but unless there is one common language that everyone doing global business can speak, the complexity makes it unwieldy for cross-border businesses to function. Multilingual companies, as well those that use something other than the de facto global language, will always find it difficult to compete with—and will incur higher transactions costs than—those that use a single cross-border language.

We can argue about the merits of the situation, but English already is the language of international commerce. This is not likely to change any time soon. The situation may not be optimal, especially if English is not your strongest language. I admit to having been astonishingly lucky in my choice of birthplace, but using English makes sense. (…)

Although it may be as painful at times to native speakers as it is challenging to nonspeakers, the simple international version of English (usually) works. It has no apostrophes, limited punctuation, interchangeable homophone spellings, an extremely limited vocabulary that’s often misused, little color, and less feeling. It’s serviceable and essential.

Even as a kind of lowest common denominator, the English of international business marks a further step forward in a global cultural evolution that has been picking up pace along with cross-border flows of goods, money, and information over the last few decades. For nearly all global enterprises, wherever they are based—and even for tourists, wherever they go—English is the language of international contact. It may be a crude way to bring the business world together, but it’s a start. Read full article.

In his blog, Dave Grunwald makes this statement “translation prices are dropping” and provides some reasons why this may be so. Here are some excerpts:

General use of Machine translation. Google is decimating translation prices. Every Internet user knows about Google Translate. So lots of text that was sent to translation agencies but a few years ago is handled internally now. This has created an overall drop in the demand for translation services.

Professional use of machine translation. In the last few years, as machine translation systems have improved, professional translators have started to use MT extensively. SDL Trados Studio, one of the leading CAT tools, has integrated MT into its workflow. Google Translator Toolkit (GTT) also provides an effective solution for professional translators. Thanks to these and other tools, translators are becoming much more efficient in their work and can translate a lot more in a lot less time. This enables translators to become more competitive in their pricing.

Pressure by translation companies. Most of the world’s translation services are ordered by translation companies. These companies are under constant pressure by their customers to streamline operations and cut costs. As a result, and coupled with the widespread proliferation of MT use, they are not paying their freelance translators as much as they used to for translations. Read more.

See: GTS Blog

Hamburg – The online translation platform Tolingo has completed a further funding round. Munich growth investor Acton Capital Partners is acquiring a stake in the company by contributing to a capital increase. Besides lead investor Acton, the Hamburg venture capital firm Neuhaus Partners and KfW are participating in this second institutional funding round. KfW is using the “ERP Startfonds”, a scheme conducted in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Both Neuhaus Partners and KfW have been holding a stake in Tolingo since October 2009. The remaining shares are held by the founders and members of the management of the Hamburg-based company as well as several Business Angels. The parties agreed to keep the conditions of the investments confidential.

See: Your story

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, an application for organizing the display of tweets, for more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock, according to sources close to the deal.

TweetDeck has been the subject of speculation about deals for months. TechCrunch surfaced reports, citing a $40 million-$50 million acquisition. The deal has yet to be announced, but papers finalizing the deal were signed Monday.

Although Twitter reps weren’t available for comment, the company’s PR account tweeted, “For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors.” Betaworks, a key investor in TweetDeck, was not immediately available for comment.

Twitter has been known to either downplay third-party apps or acquire them. In the past, Twitter has scooped up popular Twitter iPhone app Tweetie, and partnered with photo add-on TwitPic as it launched its new interface.

After a management shakeup, with co-founder Ev Williams out and Jack Dorsey back as head of product, the company is focusing on building and owning Twitter’s most compelling features and interfaces.

One of the obstacles for European entrepreneurs in doing business in Europe is language. The latest EuroBarometer survey from the European Union, suggests that localizing content is key for success, although at a push, having an English version of the site may—just—be enough to scrape by.

Not surprisingly 90% of European users when given a choice of languages, always visited a website in their own language. However a slim majority (53%) would accept using an English version of a website if it was not available in their own language.

But don’t expect users to be happy. More than 4 in 10 (44%) EU Internet users thought they missed interesting information because websites were not available in a language they understood. In Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain and Greece, this figure rose to between 51%-60%.

In 23 of the 27 EU Member States, at least half of Internet users used a language other than their own to read and watch content on the Internet; this proportion ranged from 50% in Hungary to 90%-93% in Greece, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus.

In Italy, the Czech Republic, Ireland and the U.K., a majority of users said that they only used their own language to read and watch content on the Internet (between 52% and 85%).

When looking at what people did on line in a foreign language, news and tourism dominated the findings. In almost all E.U. states, a majority of respondents said that they used a language other than their own when searching for or buying products (e.g. online shopping) and services (e.g. tourism). Romania, Belgium and Bulgaria were the only countries where less than half of the respondents said they conducted these online activities in a foreign language (41%-48%), while respondents in Malta and Cyprus were the most likely to say so (80% and 85%, respectively).

Poor, or no, translation represents a wasted business opportunity. Across the 27 states, fewer than one in five (18 per cent) of users say they would frequently or always buy products in a foreign language.

See: The Wall Street Journal

Dirae is a dictionary based on the Diccionario de la lengua española (Spanish language dictionary) of the  Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy). This online tool works in a different way from that of  other traditional dictionaries in that it finds words by searching their definitions.

If the search terms are chosen appropriately, Dirae can also be used as a thesaurus,  a synonym finder, grammar category finder and more. Read more.

See: Dirae

This article posted on the Daily Writing Tips is mainly for writers but many translators can find it suitable for their work. Here are some excerpts:

1. Visual Dictionaries

The four books listed here are all superior guides to the names of physical objects and their components. Does a scene in your novel require you to distinguish the parts of a plane? Do you need to know the difference in home construction between a rafter and a joist? What is the base of a horse’s neck called? A visual dictionary knows all:

• The Macmillan Visual Dictionary, Jean-Claude Corbeil
• Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary, Merriam-Webster
• What’s What: A Visual Glossary of the Physical World, Reginald Bragonier Jr.
• Ultimate Visual Dictionary, DK Publishing

2. Guides to Symbolism

These five volumes, and others, will enlighten you about the religious, mythological, and folkloric significance of symbols. Perhaps you want to strew visual metaphors throughout your novel. Or you want to avoid cliched occult symbols in your supernatural thriller, and want to find something unusual. Or you want to make sure your medieval mystery accurately describes a cross without anachronistic errors. Follow the signs to these sources about symbology:

• An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, by J. C. Cooper
• Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them, Hans Biedermann
• 1,001 Symbols: An Illustrated Guide to Imagery and Its Meaning, Jack Tresidder
• The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier
• Reverse Symbolism Dictionary: Symbols Listed by Subject, Steven Olderr

3. Guides to Hierarchies

Do you know the order of succession among Cabinet officials in the United States in case the president, vice president, and Speaker of the House are all incapacitated? Is a battalion bigger, or smaller, than a regiment? What’s higher up the taxonomic scale — a phylum, or a family? The Order of Things: How Everything in the World Is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders, Barbara Ann Kipfer, will set you straight.

4. Reverse Dictionaries

Flip Dictionary, Barbara Ann Kipfer, is the best of the class of reference books known as reverse dictionaries, for when you know how to describe something but can’t think of the word. One of the qualities that set it apart is the numerous charts and tables that group things by subject. The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations, David Grambs, is a similar work that’ll help you transfer a word from the tip of your tongue to paper or the computer screen.

See: Daily Writing Tips

SDL today announced the death of technical documentation (as we know it). You can read more about that here. Of course, people will be using technical documentation for quite some time to come. SDL just believes that it’s transforming into intelligent product content.  Here are some excerpts from longer interviews Andrew Thomas, Director of Product Marketing at SDL Structured Content Technologies Division, had with his co-workers about what they believe the future holds for product content:

Kevin Duffy:

“Agile practices are bringing the tech doc function into the new, collaborative engineering  and product development best practices. This more integrated approach makes the content development process less serial and allows a level of parallel content development that was not possible with serial, waterfall development methodologies.” (…)

Howard Schwartz:

“In the near future, people will no longer think about “technical documentation.” The technical document is a thing of the past. People don’t want a “doc” in answer to their question. They want a just-in-time “topic” that is talking precisely about their question.” (…)

Chip Gettinger:

“The future of product content will be a full collaboration among many knowledge centers – both internal and external sources will contribute. Convergence is the future where the lines between being a technical writer, producer and user blur.” (…)

Read full article.

See: SDL Blog

SDL has announced the availability of SDL LiveContent 2011, an intelligent and interactive content delivery platform that ensures your customers get up-to-date, “just right” information from any device, at any time. Designed for both global corporations that sell products as well as publishing companies that sell information, SDL LiveContent brings technical information to life and heralds the death of the traditional technical manual.

SDL LiveContent makes product content interactive, context-aware and more compelling – and available for use on multiple devices and via multiple channels.  It is the missing link between the authorized repositories of structured content and online and mobile customers.

See: SDL.com

Who is your website or web application designed for? Is it your local area, or a worldwide market? Likely, the answer to this question for most online real estate is the second. One major benefit to operating any business online is that, while there may be more competition, there is a greater international market at our fingertips. Yet, your website may not be reaching the international market you believe it is.

When designing a web application, many businesses simply create it in English and don’t think of it any more. However, doing so could exclude a lot of people and even discourage potential customers from using the application.

This article discusses the trend in the localization of websites, and how we can make our websites and web applications better suited for an online international reach.

Much More than Language

When localizing an application for different markets, there is a lot more to consider than language alone.  Even when countries share a tongue, the application will still need to be tailored to the specific market.

Consider England and America, for example. Both speak the same language, but there are major differences in spelling (color/colour) and vocabulary (jumper/sweater). Discrepancies can be found not just in the vocabulary, however.

Americans and Brits write the date differently – the UK format is day/month/year, whereas the recognized US standard is month/day/year. As you can imagine, if an application is not properly localized, you risk confusing quite a few people.

Tips for Internationalization of Web Applications

There are a number of different ways to make an app technically suitable for use in different countries without altering the platform. While your application developer should discuss the latter in detail with you, there are some general things to keep in mind.

Internationalization comes before localization, therefore developing a multilingual application from the start will give you a broad scope for localization further down the line.

• Create a monolingual base
• Mind the space gap
• Localize with care
• Do your research

Internationalizing and localizing a web application can be tricky but it is well worth the effort and you should reap significant benefits as long as you research and plan carefully at the crucial early stages.

See: Freelance Mingle

When organizing a conference or a meeting that requires simultaneous interpreters, you may need to make sure you have an interpreting booth (or several) available for them to work from.

But interpreting booths come in varying sizes and specifications, and you’ll need to know which type suits your needs — or your interpreter could be left out in the cold.

By keeping in mind the needs of your audience, the size of your venue and your available resources, your conference’s interpreting should proceed smoothly, from setup to disassembly.

How different soundproof booths work

There are basically two different types of interpreting booths you can use for your conference: Tabletop interpreting booths and full-size interpreting booths.

Tabletop booths, as their name suggests, sit atop a table — any reasonably sturdy table will do. The interpreter sits at the table, with the upper body and interpreting equipment inside the booth. However, the booth is not completely enclosed — it’s open in the back. This means that although it blocks most sound from escaping, it is not completely soundproof. On the upside, this also means it is small and easily transportable, and it can be set up and operated by a single person.

Full-size interpreting booths are standalone enclosures that come with the works: four walls, a floor, a ceiling, its own door and even its own ventilation system. The interpreter(s) sit within the soundproof booth at a table (you’ll need to keep a spare at the venue available) with their equipment and work there throughout the conference. It’s usually recommended to have an audio technician available outside the booth to assist with any technical issues that may arise.

At a minimum, full-size booths are big enough to fit a pair of interpreters, but larger booths can accommodate as many as four if need be. Because of their size, they come in many parts, are harder to transport than tabletop booths and require more than one person to assemble and operate them.

Whichever type of interpreting booth is employed, the same audio equipment will be used by the interpreter. So be sure to consider the differences between booths when deciding which one will best serve the needs of your conference. Read more.

See: Accredited Language