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Excerpt from an article published on lemonde.fr (23.02.10)

“Au fil des ans, nous avons appris à ajouter rapidement de nouveaux langages à Google Traduction. Pour nous, c’est devenu facile ; cette année, nous avons décidé de nous concentrer sur un plus grand défi et d’améliorer la qualité de notre service de traduction automatique.” Alfred Spector, le vice-président chargé de la recherche et des projets chez Google, est sûr de lui : les subtiles difficultés de la traduction automatisée peuvent être résolues à brève échéance. “Notre approche, c’est ‘l’intelligence hybride’, la combinaison de l’informatique et des apports humains, grâce aux suggestions de nos utilisateurs.”

One of the current debates in the MT community is stated in the title of this entry. While I do have a clear bias that favors SMT I have tried to be fair and have written many times on this subject. I agree that it cannot be said that one approach is definitely ALWAYS better than the other. There are many successful uses of both. In fact, at this point in time there may be more examples of RbMT successes since it has been around longer.

However, there is clear evidence that SMT continues to gain momentum and is increasingly the preferred approach. RbMT has been around for 50 years and the MT engines we see around are in many cases the result of decades of investment and research. SMT is barely 5+ years old in terms of being commercially available since Kevin Knight began his research at USC in 2000 and is only just beginning to become available in the market.

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I’ve just participated in the Which Engine Translates Best? survey, designed to test which among three leading free translation engines is best (for more details, see this post of mine, from a few days ago).

At least for gisting, both Bing Translator and Google Translate can prove surprisingly useful. I had expected Google to be the best of three engines, and, in my opinion, so it proved in this test, but Bing came a close second. A nice thing about Bing is that, unlike Google, it warns of its limitations: “Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator” is prominently displayed in the Bing page, while Google Translate says nothing of the sort.

Babelfish made a complete mess of all translation samples (at least for English into Italian: I’ll probably test again the engines using different language pairs), and also turned everything to all uppercase.

Pity that Babelfish is so clearly outmatched by the other engines: with a name that directly refers to Douglas Adams’ stroke of genius, the science-fiction fan in me would love to see it shine brighter.

Excerpt from an article at Bild.de

Essen, Spielen, Nuckel? Viele Jungeltern fragen sich beim Weinen und Schreien ihrer kleinen Wonneproppen: Was will mein Kind bloß? Japanische Forscher haben jetzt vielleicht die Lösung gefunden: einen Babysprachen-Übersetzer. Das Computerprogramm soll an den Lauten von Babys erkennen, was sie brauchen.

er Schreie und das Klangspektrum der Laute – und findet so heraus, ob das Kind Hunger oder Schmerzen hat oder vielleicht einfach nur müde ist.

Die Wissenschaftlicher der Universität Hiroshima: „Unglücklicherweise bieten Eltern-Ratgeber keinen Leitfaden, um festzustellen, was das Schreien bedeutet. Zukünftige Babyphone könnten das Schreien zuverlässig übersetzen.“

Auch iPhone-Nutzer haben bereits Zugang zu einem Schrei-Übersetzer, der von einem spanischen Kinderarzt entwickelt wurde. Die Trefferquote liegt angeblich bei 96 Prozent, aber die Bewertungen der Nutzer sind unterschiedlich.

Excerpt from an Radio Netherlands Worldwide:

Berbice Dutch, a Dutch creole spoken in part of Guyana, has been declared officially extinct, according to an article in the March issue of the Dutch edition of National Geographic.

Berbice Dutch was spoken in plantations along the River Berbice, part of Guyana which was once a private colony founded by a Dutch planter from Zeeland. It is a mixture of the Zeeland dialect of Dutch, the local Arawak Indian language and Ijo, spoken by slaves from Nigeria.

Excerpt from an article at New York Times:

In Washington, legal residents with limited or no English proficiency are able to get health-care coverage through the Medicaid program. With that coverage comes interpreter services for the patient. However, if the current version of the governor’s budget passes, interpreter services will be cut, having a devastating impact on the care of Medicaid patients, not to mention an increased cost to taxpayers.

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U.S. translator Paul Sprachman will travel to Iran once again in May in order to visit the narrator of “Da”, a Persian novel on the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Sprachman, who has been invited by the Center for Creation of Literary Works of the Art Bureau, is also scheduled to report on the progress he has made in translation of the novel so far during his two-week sojourn in Tehran.

See: Tehran Times

MADRID—Spain will help the Philippines reintroduce Spanish language instruction at public schools in the southeastern Asian country under an agreement signed Tuesday between the two nations.

The study of the language is currently voluntary at public high schools in the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, but the government plans to make its availability widespread from 2012.

Under the agreement signed Tuesday, Madrid will help train Spanish language teachers in the Philippines, help develop the curriculum and provide electronic teaching aids as well as technical advice, the Spanish foreign ministry said.

Read more at: Inquirer Global Nation

The Organizing Committee of the First UV International Conference on Interpreting and Translation: Education, Theory and Practice is pleased and honored to invite you to take part in the conference to be held at University of Vlora, Albania, on December 10-12, 2010.

The main goal of this international conference is to bring together scholars from all around the world to exchange ideas, share experiences and address current theories, issues and techniques that focus on interpreter and translator education and training, interpretation and translation theory and professional practice.

Abstracts for papers that deal with the following three areas are welcome:

• interpreter and translator education and training
• theory of interpretation and translation
• practical aspects of the translator and interpreter profession

Academic activities will consist of:

• presentations, given by academics and professionals able to make significant contributions to any of the three areas defined;
• 20-minute talks selected from all the abstracts submitted to the conference;
• posters, previously selected by the Programme Committee.
  Furthermore, there may be a round table panel (to be announced) on more specific aspects of interpreting and translation.

For more information or submission of abstracts, please contact:

Erida Prifti

[email protected]

Conference website: http://univlora.edu.al/personel/eprifti/conf_icit/

The adventures of Harry Potter now have a worldwide audience, but just how easy is translating words like ‘quidditch’ and ‘Slytherin’ into languages like Mongolian, Urdu, and Ancient Greek?
U of C professor Nick Zekulin stands by his large Harry Potter collection.
U of C professor Nick Zekulin stands by his large Harry Potter collection.

Nick Zekulin, a professor of Russian at the University of Calgary, has collected 67 translated volumes of the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The collection includes volumes from around the world in Faroese, Icelandic, Latin and Occitan and helps illustrate the challenges of translating the world of Harry Potter.

“The huge number of Harry Potter books sold in other languages draws attention to the role of translators as cultural mediators and facilitators,” says Florentine Strzelczyk, director of the U of C’s Language Research Centre, a hub for researchers investigating language. “A translator’s role is to not only translate, but also to adapt the tone, humour and suspense of the narrative to the cultures and languages in which the story is going to be received.”

See: PR Web: “How Do You Say ‘Muggle’ in Ancient Greek?”

…
Until recently, however, there has been no national standard by which to evaluate medical interpreters. Even national requirements on the part of hospital accreditors were lax. In January 2010, however, The Joint Commission released new standards concerning patient-provider communication, that will be implemented no sooner than January 1, 2011. One standard specifically will address qualifications for language interpreters and translators.

Certification opportunities are opening up as well. In October 2009, the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters (NBCMI) launched the National Medical Interpreter Certification and hopes to have the first 500 interpreters certified by June. The certification helps define a qualified, proficient medical interpreter.

See: HealthLeaders Media (US)

MONTEREY, Calif., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ — The weak economy has not stalled the demand for language services that help businesses and organizations communicate with their limited-English speaking customers, according to a recent report by Language Line Services. 2009 year-end results from Language Line(R) LanguageTrak, the company’s proprietary service which provides real-time demographic information on language trends, revealed triple-digit spikes in language interpreter requests for 20 major U.S. cities, and a thousand percent year-to-year increase in demand for emerging languages such as Nepali, Kirundi and Cantonese.

GEOGRAPHY MATTERS

While New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston continue to lead the country in overall demand for interpretation services, according to LanguageTrak, Baltimore experienced the greatest increase (3,025 percent) in demand for foreign language interpretation in 2009 over the previous year.  Other American cities that showed substantial increases in demand over the same period were Fort Worth, Memphis, Detroit, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Austin and Indianapolis (http://www.languageline.com/top20).

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On ne leur donne pas souvent la parole, aux traducteurs, on les snobe : c’est tellement facile… Alors, quand on a la chance de rencontrer Brice Matthieussent, traducteur de référence en matière de littérature américaine, on tente de se racheter en l’écoutant attentivement. Histoire de vérifier ce qu’on pressentait : le traducteur est peut-être dans l’ombre, mais il est essentiel.

Pour les passionnés de littérature américaine, Brice Matthieussent n’est pas un inconnu. Forcément. A force de lire son nom (« Traduit de l’américain par Brice Matthieussent ») écrit en petit sur la page de garde de nos livres de chevet, d’un l’œil négligent, on a fini par l’enregistrer dans notre mémoire. Vaguement. Sans trop y prêter attention. Ne niez pas, on fonctionne tous comme ça : on se rue sur l’auteur, on en oublie le reste. Read more

The Interpreter Services Program provides technical assistance, training, and learning opportunities for the courts, interpreters, and other important stakeholders on the proper role and use of interpreters in legal proceedings. The Interpreter Services Program also assists courts in the state of Ohio in developing policies, procedures, standards, and mechanisms to provide linguistic minorities and deaf and hard of hearing communities equal access to the courts.

Common Sense Advisory, une société d’étude et de conseil américaine spécialisée dans le secteur de la traduction et de la localisation, qui suit le marché avec beaucoup de précision depuis plusieurs années, estime que le marché mondial de la traduction représente en 2009 un poids global de 15 milliards de dollars (soit, par exemple, l’équivalent du marché de la musique en ligne), et qu’il est en croissance régulière de 15% par an. En 2005, la croissance annuelle était estimée à seulement 12% par la société d’étude IDC. L’Europe constitue la zone la plus importante de ce marché, avec 43%. Elle est suivie des Etats-Unis (40%), de l’Asie (12%), et du reste du monde (5%).

A Toyota source said it not yet been decided whether Toyoda, the highest-profile Japanese executive to face a such a grilling from Congress, would speak in Japanese or English. But the company has already contacted some translation companies, the source said, while PR consultants said he should speak only in Japanese.

“His use of English has been his way of showing sincerity, of communicating directly with the (international) audience, but this is a crisis situation,” said Masato Takahashi, a public relations consultant who advises companies on crisis management.

“He should have just spoken Japanese and he should stick to Japanese from now on too. It’ll be safer and leave less room for mistakes.”

See: Ottawa Citizen: “Toyota boss gears up for grilling”

HILLSBORO, Ore. and RIVER FALLS, Wis., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ — MathStar, Inc. (Pink Sheets: MATH) (“MathStar”) and Sajan, Inc. (“Sajan”), a Minnesota corporation and a provider of language translation services and technology, today announced the completion of the merger of Sajan with Garuda Acquisition, LLC (the “Sub”), a Delaware limited liability company and wholly-owned subsidiary of MathStar.
…
“This transaction is a significant milestone for Sajan, and we believe that it is also an important milestone for the market at large,” said Zimmerman. “The localization industry is in the midst of a much needed change – the nexus of new market dynamics, unprecedented technological innovation and a new breed of service providers that understand what it means to do business in the 21st century.”

See: PR Newswire

Does a Russian-speaking man know enough English to have understood his rights when he talked to police about his alleged of abuse of a corpse and evidence tampering?

In a hearing Tuesday, a Hamilton Township detective testified that Ermek Abdildaev, 40, seemed to understand English just fine when he talked with him. But Abdildaev’s wife raised questions about whether he understands the difference between one’s “rights” under the law and the word “right” as an indicator of direction.

Judge James Flannery must decide whether prosecutors can use against Abdildaev videotaped statements he made to police…

See: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100223/NEWS01/2240328/Clear+answers++or+lost+in+translation