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Dr. Mark Harman, professor of English and Modern Languages at Elizabethtown College, presents “Letters to a Young Poet: Rilke in Translation,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in Bowers Writers House. Harman will read from and discuss his translation of these letters, which will be released by Harvard University Press, with a revealing introduction by the translator, on April 4.

Internationally known for his translations of Franz Kafka and other German-language authors, Harman has written extensively about modern German and Irish literature with particular emphasis on Joyce, Kafka, Beckett and Robert Walser. Harman’s translation of Franz Kafka’s novel, “The Castle,” won the Modern Language Association’s Lois Roth Award, and his rendering of Kafka’s first novel “Amerika: The Missing Person” (2008) also was critically well-received. A new deluxe illustrated edition of his “Castle” translation has just been released in London by The Folio Society.

See: Read Media

SDL announced the release of SDL WorldServer™ 2011, a scalable translation management system designed for companies with global communication requirements.

See: Marketwire

Lionbridge announced GeoWorkz.com as a comprehensive, cloud-based engagement platform for multilingual professionals.

See: PR Newswire

The Language Industry Standards Association (LISA), the language industry’s oldest association, announced today that it was shutting down operations effective 28 February 2011 in order to limit further financial commitments. Nonetheless, the Standards Summit scheduled for Boston commenced as scheduled. Director Michael Anobile notified LISA members in an e-mail earlier today.

What does this mean for LISA and its members? For the past year, LISA’s management has been reaching out to other associations and companies for partnering, joint ventures, and even the transfer or sale of assets.

What does LISA’s shutdown mean? If LISA and some of the associations with which it has been communicating can come to terms, the merger of its activities with others could lead to a stronger industry with better, more heavily attended conferences and more activity on the essential tasks of setting industry standards to support the interoperability that many other technology sectors already have.

See: Global Watchtower

For those not already familiar with it, Translators Without Borders (TWB) is an independent non-profit association established in 1993, dedicated to helping NGOs extend their humanitarian work by providing free, professional translations.

The funds saved through the use of volunteer translations can then be used by the NGOs in the field, enabling them to extend the scope and reach of their humanitarian work. Some of the supported NGOs include Médecins Sans Frontières, Zafèn, Médecins du Monde, Acting for Life, Aide et Action, the Association ASMAE, ATD Fourth World, ATD Fourth World and GoodPlanet.

The core of TWB are the about 300 volunteer translators who donate their time, efforts and knowledge to help make the world a better place, together with doctors, nurses and other volunteers working in NGO and humanitarian associations.

Since translations related to humanitarian emergencies leave no time for review (and even less room for error), Translators Without Borders looks exclusively for experienced and solid translators able to do produce strong, professional translations.

Translators willing to volunteer with TWB can complete an application and if the application is approved they are required to perform at least a translation test as part of the screening process.

The job interface

ProZ.com has been supporting TWB both in the screening of their volunteer translators via the ProZ.com screening center and in the posting of translation jobs.

The current TWB jobs interface is extremely efficient. When a job is posted, the system will identify the pool of translators who are approved for the assignment (approved into the system and with the proper language pair and, eventually, field of expertise).

This pool will then be sorted. In the case of Translators Without Borders this sorting is random in nature, because the idea is to balance the load among the volunteers, but in a commercial application other criteria would be followed, according to the preferences of the company acting as platform manager.

The system will then proceed to notify the translators in batches separated by fixed delays. In the case of TWB, these are batches of 5 translators each, and there is a 15 minute delay between a batch of notifications and the next but both of these numbers can be controlled.

These notifications include a link to a page dedicated to the job, with optional descriptions of the client, the project and the job, plus the file to be translated and any special instructions provided when posting the job. The translator can review the offered file and all the information and decide to accept it or not.

When one of the notified translators accepts the job, it immediately becomes unavailable to all other translators and no further notifications are sent out.

This interface includes a communications feature for the exchange of messages (with notifications) between the translator and the job poster, and also a feature to deliver the translated file once the job is completed.

A case study: localization of GoodPlanet’s web page

On February 17th, Translators Without Borders (TWB) was contacted by the NGO GoodPlanet, who requested help in translating their new website into as many languages as possible beyond English, French and Spanish (which were already available).

Since the languages where TWB is stronger were not required, a decision was made to contact members of ProZ.com’s Certified PRO Network and to ask them for help, offering to add any volunteer directly to the list of approved TWB translators (the Certified PRO Network has a screening process similar to that used by TWB).

The results were amazing; 38 translators volunteered and the GoodPlanet website is currently being localized into the following 15 languages: Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, German, Dutch, Romanian, Russian, Indonesian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish, Hungarian, Greek, Slovak and Japanese.

There is room for translation into additional languages. Any Certified PRO members who are willing to collaborate with Translations Without Borders in general, and with GoodPlanet in particular, are welcome to contact TWB via their ProZ.com profile.

See: Translator T.O.

There are only a handful of translators in Armenia of Armenian-American literature into Armenian. Aram Arsenyan is one of the most prolific of them. He has translated a wide range of works, primarily novels and short stories. He also has translated a number of non- Armenian classic authors from English into Armenian, and has published a number of his own literary creations. Yet he does all this as an avocation, while earning his living at other jobs.

Born in 1952 in the village of Talin, Armenia, Arsenyan as a child studied in a Yerevan school focusing on English during the Soviet period. This meant that he had classes in the English language in elementary school, and beginning in sixth grade took some other classes (e.g. geography, history, chemistry and English literature) in English. However, he pointed out, “it was not too efficient, because we did not have good English-speaking teachers then.” He already had some literary interests in school. In sixth grade, he became a member of the editorial staff of children of Shavigh [path or trail], which was a part of the newspaper Pioner kanch [Call of the Pioneer]. He wrote short articles and reviews and even then did translations, including literary ones.

Arsenyan was granted the Kantegh (Lamp) Award of Holy Echmiadzin and the Writers Union of Armenia in 2009. This is the only award for translators in Armenia. The same year he won a prize from the literary magazine Nartsis (Narcissus) for translations from English. In 2010, he won the William Saroyan Medal from Armenia’s Diaspora Ministry. This medal is granted for contributing to the dissemination of Armenian culture in the diaspora and strengthening relations between Armenia and the diaspora. In 2000, he won a prize for the best translation of the year (appearing in the magazine Garun) from the British Embassy in Armenia.

See: The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

An increase in immigrant populations is driving up the need for foreign-language interpreters in the justice system — one of the first places different waves of immigration make themselves felt.

“Depending on the week, there could be anywhere from 10 to 20 defendants that need interpreters, and some of those could have more than one case,” Cowlitz County District Court Administrator Dee Wirkkala said recently.

During several recent court hearings in different languages, interpretation rarely slowed the flow of court proceedings.

Interpreters are freelance contractors, paid by the hour if appearing in person or by the minute if by phone. Wirkkala and Millward said the county pays most live certified interpreters around $50 an hour. Some charge a two-hour minimum. The interpreters’ services are paid out of the county’s professional services fund.

See: The Daily News Online

The Daily News Online The Daily News Online

Brunei’s Language and Literature Bureau (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka or DBP) is in need of more translators to assist them in international co-publications in addition to overcoming translation issues, as almost 95 per cent of books published by the bureau are written in Malay.

The bureau develops the Malay language through the publishing of books, magazines and journals, which are controlled and conducted by the Publication and Marketing Section.

In 2010, they invited experts from Malaysia to carry out translation works that were done for general and literary books. The Brunei Translation Association was formed in an effort to provide some assistance, and staff members were sent to Australia and Malaysia to develop their translation skills.

The Acting Director came up with further solutions that included monitoring the progress of the co-published or translated books, as well as introducing a new regulation, whereby each member country should have a minimum of one co-published book release, in addition to pledging further efforts to promote cooperation in publication activities between APPA member countries.

The BBC has ended its radio broadcasts in Spanish for Latin America, 73 years after they first went on air. The service has been closed as a result of cuts to the World Service budget.

The BBC Latin American service was launched on 14 March 1938 to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on the eve of World War II.  It faced its greatest challenge during the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1983, when its journalists were determined to maintain objectivity in the face of pressure from the British government.

The BBC will still be available in Spanish on the internet.

See: BBC News

Also see BBC News and this article

Interesting article on what the future might hold for the English language. Here are some excerpts:

Will English wax or wane in its global influence during his lifetime? Will the country’s demographic shifts demand a greater acceptance of multilingualism, and will there be a freer commingling of different speech varieties through what sociolinguists call “code-switching” and “code-mixing”? It may be an affront to those who uphold the sanctity of English as the national language, but heterogeneity looks as if it will increasingly be the name of the game.

One thing is clear: language will become more technologically mediated. The ever-expanding power and flexibility of our personal gadgets, combined with the computing prowess of servers we connect to in “the cloud,” makes it a dead certainty that tech will rule the language of even the most reluctant neo-Luddite.

When it comes to the field of natural-language processing (N.L.P. for short), we’re entering a new age of technoidealism, after a few fallow decades when the early promises of artificial intelligence fell far short of the mark. Weren’t we supposed to have computers that could converse with us in fluent English by the dawn of the 21st century, like HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s film of “2001: A Space Odyssey”? (Never mind that HAL ended up going on a human-killing spree before being lobotomized.)

The 2011 “face” of new strides in N.L.P. is Watson, the supercomputer built by I.B.M. specifically for the publicity stunt of facing off against humans on the game show “Jeopardy!” earlier this month. Watson still lives in the shadow of HAL, and not just because “I-B-M” is one letter-shift away from “H-A-L.”

Watson’s trouncing of the “Jeopardy!” champs Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings doesn’t mean that language processing has advanced to the point of language comprehension. The best-guess techniques Watson used never approached any deep understanding of the semantic content in the “Jeopardy!” clues. Instead, Watson crunched terabytes of data to figure out statistically likely responses to clues based in part on which words appear most often with other words in the texts it has stored. Read full article.

See: The New York Times

West End retailers are hoping to lure more high-spending foreign shoppers by financing a interpreting booth on Oxford Street, offering directions and shopping advice from Mandarin, Arabic and Russian speakers.

A planning application for the Shopper Pavilion is to be submitted to Westminster City Council today. Scheduled to open in early 2012, London’s Olympic year, the £2.1m structure will be located between John Lewis and House of Fraser, the department stores.

Retailers have become increasingly attentive to the needs of Chinese, Middle Eastern and Russian visitors, who are forecast to spend nearly £1bn in the capital’s shops in 2011.

“We want to improve the welcome for our international shoppers and ensure they’re looked after, given the right information, and talked to in the right way, in the right language,” said Richard Dickinson, chief executive of the New West End Company. The not-for-profit organisation is funded by 600 retailers and businesses to promote shopping in the capital.

Foreign tourists from outside the EU are an increasingly important part of the UK’s retail economy, and are forecast to spend £2.7bn in 2011, up from £2.4bn last year. About 80 per cent of this is expected to ring through the tills of shops in the capital, with luxury and designer brands the target, according to financial services group Global Blue.

See: The Financial Times

WhiteSmoke has announced their new “hybrid” product, WhiteSmoke 2011, one interface which includes the WhiteSmoke Translator, Writer, Dictionary and Templates to allow for maximum efficiency and ease of use.

See: PR Newswire

Thirty-seven percent of the 111 respondents to TAUS/LISA’s survey think that the lack of interoperability costs their business more than 10% of their total translation budget (or revenue in case of the service providers). Twenty-five percent say it costs them more than 20%. Only nine percent think it costs them less than 5% of their translation budgets. Forty-three percent of the respondents don’t know exactly how much it costs them. It is clear though that the lack of interoperability costs the industry a fortune. We are talking about the industry’s failure to exchange translation memories and terminology in a standard format, and to integrate translation software with content and document management systems.

There is a huge opportunity for efficiency improvement. Most importantly, as the survey points out, we could

1. standardize and simplify the translation business process
2. reduce translation management and overhead cost and
3. improve translation quality.

If only we could achieve true interoperability among vendors, buyers and translators. So, what holds us from achieving this?

The respondents to the survey quoted the lack of compliance to interchange format standards as the primary barrier, blaming the fact that a few suppliers dominate the translation technology sector as a secondary issue. Thirdly, they say, the industry is missing an organizing body or umbrella organization capable of leading the effort and monitoring the compliance. The problem is not really the lack of standards or the maturity of standards. We already have standards: TMX and XLIFF are flagged as the two standards that everyone finds essential.

Yet 64% of the respondents agree that translation standards may require an upgrade so that we can overcome the disconnects between on the one hand content management systems and social media platforms and on the other hand the translation platforms. Read full article.

See: TAUS

A new site area was started this week, to allow translators to share and discuss short translation texts. The idea is to share translations to get opinions and feedback from colleagues, and of course to have fun.

This feature is open to ProZ.com members. To see more about how it works, check out the scope and submission guidelines.

See: Translator T.O.

Thanks to Neil Payne at Kwintessential for bringing this next case out, in which both translators and agency are affected when the scammer poses as a legitimate, existing company.  I reproduce here a version of the post originally made on Kwintessential’s blog (scroll down for the link to the original posting):

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By very good fortune a translation scam using Kwintessential’s name and brand has been exposed by an eagle-eyed translator.

The email was sent to the translator, who shall be called Mr X, requesting information for a large project.

Dear Mr. X

As translation office on the west coast of the US, we are looking for freelance translators in languages: German, French and Spanish.
Our research for translators in the German language has brought up your name again and again. You have been highly recommended by some of our valued customers and colleagues.

We need to request information on your current rates, your fields of expertise (law, merchandising and advertisement needed), words per day translated also a time schedule of your availability for the months of March, April and May 2011.

The project we will be working on, enfolds a value of 80.000 words, was commissioned by a notable US American company.

We will need your documentation not later than March 01.2011.

Best regards,

[Contact information removed from this post]

Emails went back and forth between [the sender] and Mr X with the former potentially placing a large amount of work. It was by good fortune that Mr X was suspicious of the email due to 1) the email being a non-company address ([email protected]) and 2) the misspelling of Kwintessential. Out of prudency Mr X decided to reply and CC’d our USA office whose address was used in the signature. Our Manager in the USA immediately drew our attention to the matter.

It appears the scam works in the following manner: a translation agency wins a contract to carry out a translation job. In order to increase their profit margins they send emails to freelance translators requesting they take on the assignment. The poor translator naturally feels they are in good hands but will eventually come to realize they will never be paid. The scamming agency therefore makes a 100% mark-up. All the translator can do is come to the real Kwintessential who will obviously have no idea of what has happened.
It is extremely unfortunate that people feel they have to carry out their business without principles and ethics. It is these scammers that give us reputable agencies a bad name. On top of this they are taking advantage of the good will of translators who work extremely hard, are true professionals and do not deserve such treatment.

Thankfully Mr X was clever enough to work out the bad intentions of [the scammer]. We have written to [the scammer] but surprise surprise no reply.

Message of the story for translators is always check the credentials of the agency and ensure 100% they are the real deal.

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See the original post at Intercultural Communication and Translation News

See: Translator T.O.

Apparently, it is possible to blog directly from Office 2010. From MS Word 2010 you just need to go File > New, and select “Blog Post” from the available templates.

This new feature of Word may prove useful for other bloggers.

See: About Translation

The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA)  has announced that Kara Warburton has accepted the post of director of standards and will be assuming her formal duties in April 2011.

See: Multilingual

GlobalSight Corporation, a collaborative, open-source initiative, has released version 8.0 of its open-source translation management system. Updates include support for and integration into several localization industry formats and systems.

See: Multilingual

Experts from Oxford Dictionaries Online said the web’s influence on the English language was increasing. New entries include the words “scareware”, which means malicious computer programmes, “trackpad” (touchpad) and “buttload” (a large amount).

Other new words or phrases in the past nine months include “bloggable”, defined as a suitable topic for blogging, and an “onliner” (an internet user). More commonly used internet words,“cyberbullying” and “cybersecurity”, also appear for the first time.

The sinister practice of “clickjacking” (manipulating a user’s activity by concealing hyperlinks) is another net-based newcomer.

See: The Telegraph

Interesting post about one’s intuition when dealing with  job offers.

If your gut is telling you something isn’t right, chances are the job offer is fishy or you simply aren’t up to the job. That e-mail from the Prince of Ghana is most likely not from the Prince of Ghana. The other subtle warning signs in the mail like typos and bad grammar are causing your gut to clench and say “don’t even bother responding.” That check you received in the mail from that client in Nigeria is probably a fake, just ask your gut.

If your gut tells you something isn’t right or that you really shouldn’t try to translate that technical specification because you don’t recognize one-third of the words and would have to look them up, try listening to it. Ignore all the voices in your head telling you “well, I need the work” and tell the client no. Because if you listen to those voices you could really end up regretting taking the job. Read full article.

See: Musings from an overworked translator