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In the last two years, the first few examples of crowdsourcing translation have been seen. Collaborative translation is defined as an emerging approach to translation in which companies use the elements of crowdsourcing in a controlled environment for working on large corporate projects in short periods of time. The experience mixes community, crowdsourced and collaborative translation to offer a translation that is quick, of good quality and in tune with users’ experience. It can involve professional translators or not.

Once a functioning and active community is assembled and organized, there are significant benefits for all. We are beginning to see several examples from outside the professional translation industry that are now driving the development of collaborative communities and platforms. It is not improbable that these outside initiatives could eventually bring about fundamental and enduring changes to the professional translation industry as well.

Recently, we have seen success at Facebook and many others, and some uproar at LinkedIn. But this formula of community, open collaboration platform and a common purpose appears to be gaining momentum, and it behooves us to try to learn how to best leverage these emerging models to further our professional objectives.

See: Multilingual

Assembly member Grace Meng is “angered” over translation errors in the Korean version of 2010 census forms and communications trouble on the Census’ language hotline.

Meng is one of several lawmakers who have called on the Asian community to respond to the census forms. Now, constituents have told her that where the English language form asks for “County,” the Korean form asks “Country;” instead of  “State” the Korean form asks “Province.”

See: Queenscourier

Russian aviation laws dictate that, when traveling to a non-international airport, at least one member of a foreign crew should speak Russian. It is unclear whether any of the eight crew members aboard the ill-fated Tupolev-154 spoke the language fluently.

Was it communication error that led to the death of Polish President Lech Kaczyński and many other Polish VIPs in a deadly crash in Smolensk?

See: Translation Guy

The North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) is pleased to announce the Human Language Technologies 2010 conference (NAACL HLT 2010).

The event will take place June 1-6, 2010 in downtown Los Angeles, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

See: Physorg.com

Russian and Polish specialists continue transcribing the plane pilots’ conversations and they have requested the help of highly qualified translators.

See: RIA Novosti

In the past months since Avatar opened, new online communities devoted to the Na’vi language have popped up overnight.

Marshall Professor Paul Frommer is the creator of the language used by the Na’vi alien humanoids. His main concern was to make it sound appealing, and make it a consistent language with complete grammar and a complete sound system.

According to him there are several distinct steps to go through when building a sound system. His involvement on “Avatar” wasn’t merely to develop the language, but to teach it.

Frommer hopes what he’s done reaches the level of a certain iconic language based in the “Star Trek” canon.

See: News4jax

Could there be  a new generation of  Na’vi language translators?

Judy and Dagmar Jenner have just published “The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation”. The

book gives freelance linguists all the tools they need to go from “just” linguists to being Entrepreneurial Linguists.

The first ProZ.com seminar on Translation as a Job will be held in Montevideo, Uruguay on April 24, 2010.

This event has been approved by the ATA for 10 continuing education points.

See: ProZ.com

Under the theme “Festejar con libros 200 años de historias” (Celebrating with books 200 years of stories” the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world and one of the most important cultural events in Latin America opened today. Gathering over one million people each year, the fair will be open until May 10, 2010 in La Rural in Palermo (Argentina).

See: Telam

Twanslate adds a simple button underneath any tweet that’s in another language. You then click it anytime you want to convert it into English.

The technology behind it is Google’s translate service, which means you’ll get a mix of very good, and sometimes comical, results. In any case, it’s a nice site-specific add-on that you won’t see or be bothered by until you need it.

See: News.cnet

Health care studies show that the main reason for medical mistakes is a breakdown in communication. Failure to communicate causes frustration in the patient and the doctor and trust decreases.

When doctors are unable to assess the problem in a conversation with a patient, they are more apt to order unnecessary — and expensive — tests.

Effective interpretation must go beyond translation. One of the fundamentals of doing interpretation correctly is understanding that interpreters are cultural brokers.

See: Stltoday

When litigation, knowing the exact contents of e-mails, faxes, letters, and other documents is crucial, but tough when they’re in a language other than your own.

In an increasingly global economy, a single matter can involve a variety of languages. Unfortunately, it can be costly translating the documents. Many corporations have found that translation technology and e-discovery tools supporting multiple languages are important tools in constraining budgets — and winning cases. But there are also drawbacks. Used incorrectly, the software can fail to save time, increase some translation costs, and even overlook documents in an e-discovery keyword search.

See: Law.com

Lionbridge and IBM  today announced a partnership agreement to accelerate development and commercialization of automated translation technology by leveraging innovative statistical algorithms that instantly translate content and communications such as Web pages, documents, customer support, user generated content, instant messages, blogs and e-mail, so people can communicate in their native languages.

See: PR Newswire

The military and other parts of the government have long sought the technology that can listen to spoken words, translate them if necessary and identify the voice.  That’s the general idea of a system the experimental researchers at the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency want to develop.

See: Networkworld

Lingotek today announced that Adobe Systems Incorporated has chosen Lingotek’s Collaborative Translation Platform(TM) to simplify community and “crowdsourcing” translation projects worldwide.

See: Market Watch

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to explore the power of sexuality.

This new translation pays particular attention to the existentialist terms and French nuances that may have been misconstrued in the first English edition.

See: knopf

Do you read translated versions of books or prefer to read the piece in the original language?

The Polykarp Kusch Lecture Series continues its rich tradition of exploring “concerns of the lively mind” when Dr. Rainer Schulte speaks Friday, April 23, at 1 p.m. in the Eugene McDermott Library Auditorium on The University of Texas at Dallas campus.

Kusch lectures are free and open to the public.

See: utdallas

Rainer Schulte is a professor in the School of Arts  and Humanities at UT Dallas, and the director of the Center for Translation Studies, which he established in 1978 to create and implement a new paradigm for teaching literature and the humanities and to promote cross-cultural communication. Here is what he thinks about the future for translation:

“Translation will have to play a major role in the future development of the humanities to build associative thinking, to build new ways of how to approach the interpretation of artistic texts, and provide audiences with tools to approach the interpretation and the understanding of modern art works.  We have to make sure that our society realizes that translation is the most fundamental way of communicating within the same culture and from one culture to another.” More.

See: utdallas

Do you agree?

English Canada’s six seats on the Supreme Court will be closed to unilingual anglophones if the Senate passes Bill C-232.

This bill makes fluency in French and English mandatory for all future Supreme Court justices. The Bloc Québécois joined the Liberals and the NDP to create majority support for the bill, which passed the House in March.

On a practical level the bill will create two categories of lawyers outside Quebec: a small elite cadre of bilingual anglophone lawyers and judges who will be eligible to be appointed to one of six positions on the Supreme Court; and the overwhelming majority of non-Quebec lawyers and judges who will no longer be eligible to serve on our nation’s highest court regardless of their legal talent and experience.

Competent lawyers and judges who grew up without the opportunity to acquire fluency in French will be automatically excluded. This bill will result in good linguists being chosen over good judges.

See: The Globe and Mail

Would you support this bill?

Jibbigo, the world’s first and leading speech-to-speech translation app, will release its English/Chinese version for the iPhone 3GS and 2nd generation iTouch on April 19.

See: PR Newswire