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In-person conferences have all but disappeared. LocWorldWide and other virtual events are filling in the gaps, and now MultiLingual is adding free events to its company-neutral offerings.

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How many languages does it take for global businesses to stay competitive online? Websites must be available in dozens of languages, with English, Japanese, and German leading the pack of most valuable online languages.

According to independent market research firm Common Sense Advisory’s 2013 findings, it takes a minimum of 14 languages, which include Indonesian and Turkish, to get access to just over 80% of the total online population. To reach 80% of the economic opportunity, the research shows that online marketers need no less than nine languages, including Portuguese and Arabic. Global brands looking to appeal to 95% of the world’s online wallet will need 20 online languages.

“If companies want to achieve higher levels of international revenue, their web presences must be multilingual. The addressable economic potential using online communication now amounts to US$45 trillion, but English now only gives you access to a third of that total,” explains Common Sense Advisory senior analyst Ben Sargent. More.

See: The Sacramento Bee

See also The 116 Most Economically Active Languages Online

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Translators without Borders, a not-for-profit focused on spreading knowledge through humanitarian translations, has issued a call for assistance from doctors who, on their own time and wherever they are based, can validate simplified medical terms used to prepare Wikipedia medical articles for translation into 100 languages for consumption by doctors, nurses, health workers and laypersons around the world. The doctors must have English as their first language.

See: Multilingual

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Lara Lewington goes behind the scenes of translation technology to discover the joie de vivre that can be encountered from being able to understand the language, whatever that language may be.

Watch more clips on the Click homepage. If you are in the UK you can watch the whole programme on BBC iPlayer.

The programme was first broadcast on Saturday 10 August 2013.

See: BBC

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In Spring 2013, TermCoord cooperated with the University of Luxembourg and taught a course focused on terminology in the European Union for a Master programme called “Learning and Communication under Multilingual & Multicultural Contexts” (“Multi-learn” in short).

The Multi-learn programme examines multilingual and multicultural issues in dynamic social contexts, increasingly characterised by super-diversity in global migration, mobility and the use of new information technologies. Particularly, it focuses on linguistic and cultural diversity in education, communication and professional contexts.

The comprehensive courses, seminars and workshops are available in four modules: research approaches, language and education, organisational discourse and business communication, and media discourse and digital communication. This programme offers a linguistic module providing us with wider concepts that are fundamental in the understanding of the world structure through linguistic lenses. The education and communication modules considerably deal with observation researches on normal phenomenon and practices.  Continue reading

See: TermCoord

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Baidu, China’s leading search engine, launched a censored version of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The website Baike.Baidu.com is also referred to as “Baidupedia”. Late last year China blocked all access to Wikipedia.

Registered users can contribute but Baidu also hires “experts” to “ensure the quality of entries and keep the site free of advertisements and junk information”, the Shanghai Daily newspaper quoted a Baidu official as saying. “This is necessary in order to enhance the experience of our users,” Baidu marketing director Bian Jiang was quoted as saying. More.

See: Multilingual Search

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Criminal justice services are increasingly turning to videoconference technology as a means of increasing efficiency in both national and cross-border proceedings. Video links exist between courts, police stations and prisons, and are used at different stages of proceedings. Given the current scale of migration and multilingualism in Europe, this development also concerns multilingual proceedings, meaning that there is a need to integrate interpreters into such video links. This trend is being reinforced by the recent European Directives 2012/13/EU on the right to information and 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings, and Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, which will increase the demand for qualified legal interpreters in Europe in many language combinations.

As a follow-up to the successful symposium in 2011, this symposium, organised by the EU project AVIDICUS 2 (led by the Centre for Translation Studies, University of Surrey, 2011-13), will provide an update on current practice and research. The aims are to raise awareness of the potential uses and the limitations of multilingual videoconferencing in legal proceedings and to stimulate further discussion about

•    how the combination of videoconferencing and interpreting affects
the specific goals of legal communication,

•    how problems can be overcome or mitigated,

•    the role that system design, training and familiarisation can play in this process, and

•    the questions arising for a future research agenda.

The symposium will include the views of international organisations on videoconference-based interpreting as well as research conducted in relation to its use in national and cross-border proceedings and will introduce an enhanced set of guidelines for multilingual videoconferencing in legal proceedings.

See: University of Surrey

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Four linguists tell Kate Hilpern how their skills have created amazing opportunities

Alex Rawlings, 21, won a 2012 competition to find the UK’s most multilingual student. The Oxford University student works as a language ambassador for Collins Language.

“I couldn’t believe it when I won Harper Collins’ competition. There was this crazy week when I was doing lots of interviews. I hadn’t realised my abilities were unusual. I speak 11 languages – English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian. As my mother is half-Greek, that became my second language from a young age. Then my dad moved to Japan for work when I was four and that introduced me to other languages. I met people from other places and wanted to be able to talk to them. I can remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to talk to anyone anywhere?’

I got A*s for the languages I took at GCSE and A-level and I’m now at Oxford University, studying German and Russian. I chose Russian because I wanted the challenge of a new language. I chose German because I’d like to do a Masters there and in the current economy, Germany is one of the only countries with jobs. More.

See: The Independent

Nearly half the executives at global companies believe language barriers have spoiled cross-border deals and caused financial losses for companies, says a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, a business research unit of Economist Group, the Economist magazine’s parent.

The report, sponsored by language-training company EF Education First, was based on a poll of 572 senior executives world-wide.

Executives at companies based in Brazil and China said they were most affected by misunderstandings, with 74% and 61%, respectively, reporting financial losses as a result of failed international deals.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that misfires in their internal cross-border communications resulted in lost productivity. Among Brazilian managers, the figure jumped to 77%.

To improve communications, many global companies are trying to adopt English as an official language. A multilingual approach “is inefficient and can prevent important interactions from taking place and get in the way of achieving key goals,” Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley wrote in this month’s Harvard Business Review.

But English-only policies can build other communication obstacles, she wrote, because non-native speakers may withdraw from group projects, lose self-confidence or ignore the rules entirely.

Communication difficulties are becoming increasingly costly as companies seek to expand their operations globally. More than three-quarters of the companies surveyed said they expect to have an operational presence in more countries in the next three years, and nine in 10 said they expect their overseas client base to grow; but 89% also said language and custom challenges are stifling their international plans. More.

See: The Wall Srteet Journal

Last Monday, Google announced that they had released “new markup for multilingual content”, see the webmaster tools blog post here. Even for those of us that work in the field of looking after global websites, this produced relatively unexciting headlines along the lines of “Google Launches New Multilingual Markup — Wow”. Big yawn.

In fact, digging deeper into the announcement produces new worries and potential new solutions for international SEOs.

For instance, whilst it may not have been Google’s intention, they’re presenting this as a “stronger signal than canonicals”, and give scenarios for its use which many did not even know existed as potential danger areas — including me. Read more.

See: Search Engine Land

Common Sense Advisory, Inc., an independent market research firm specializing in the language services industry, has issued a call for participation in its survey on enterprise translation management system users. The survey will be open until November 30, 2011.

See: Multilingual

The social network  Godudu has launched its Arabic platform in Dubai.

Launched in April 2011, the company has already more than 1.2 million registered users with around 20,000 daily new registrations and is celebrating in English, Russian and now Arabic from Sunday.

Currently three language-enabled, Godudu plans on launching other languages soon such as: Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Mandarin, and Italian among many others, Issaev added. Read more.

See: Khaleej Times

South Korean courts are failing in their duty to provide open access to all individuals. This failure stems from the lack of adequate translation services for foreigners.

As Korea becomes more multinational and multilingual this need grows. Between 2005 and 2009 international marriages averaged between 10 and 14 percent of all marriages and since 2009 over 40 percent of marriages in the southern countryside have been international marriages. Inevitably some of these marriages will end in acrimonious divorce. The Korean government also works tirelessly to attract foreign investment and has established multiple free enterprise zones to further this goal. Yet not all of these businesses will succeed and some will fail ignominiously, dissolving into bitter disputes among the investors. These factors will result in an ever greater number of foreigners with limited or no knowledge of the Korean language petitioning the Korean courts for redress of their grievances.

How Korean courts react to these cases will impact Korea’s future ability to transition to a truly international power. America, Australia and many European countries long ago adopted systems guaranteed to provide competent certified translators to individuals who are not fluent in the language the court uses. This openness provides foreigners with the assurance to move to and invest in those countries. Coincidentally those same countries have led the world in science, technology and industry, arguably because so many talented foreigners choose to live there.

In 2008 the Korean Supreme Court began discussing the need for a competent translation certification service; however, as of 2011 nothing concrete has been done to address the inconsistent abilities among court translators. Currently the law continues to allow anyone, Korean or foreign, who is approved by the judge to act as an interpreter.  Read more.

See: The Korea Herald

This comes from a recent article in MultiLingual.Terminology survey results reviews a 2010 survey organized by TermNet and was written by expert and industry veteran Barbara Inge Karsch.

Though the survey focused on the automotive, mechatronic, and IT/communication sectors, it is still highly relevant to medical device and biopharma companies.

While the sample size was small (145 respondents) and U.S.-centric, it still includes interesting take-aways. Some highlights:

• Terminology is closely tied to translation and localization (at least in the U.S.)
• A substantial majority of people working for companies that translate materials said that “their companies did terminology management”
• Terminology is a “target-language affair” – coming late in the game, i.e., during translation and localization
• Translators may not be able to manage terminology but should proactively build and share glossaries

Especially when practiced on a larger scale and in corporate environments, terminology management is still often seen as “hocus pocus”. It’s great that organizations like TermNet and professionals like Barbara Inge Karsch work to demystify this black art.

See: Medical Translation Insight

LionBridge, a provider of chat translation software GeoFluent, will be holding a webinar, in conjunction with IBM  called, “Increasing Social Communications Across Borders with Multilingual Unified Communications.”

The webinar is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Aug. 23, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET. Read more.

See: TMCnet

New York City-based start-up focused on enabling websites and apps to go multilingual, has raised $10 million to ramp up its localization tools. Previous investors U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock and First Round Capital have all chipped in for the series B funding round and are joined by IDG Ventures.

See: Gigaom

WPML, the WordPress Multilingual Plugin, has added an XLIFF interface allowing translation agencies and freelance translators to use existing computer-aided translation tools for translating WordPress websites. WPML was created by ICanLocalize, a web-based translation service and part of OnTheGoSystems, Inc.

See: Multilingual

Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. announced general availability of GeoFluent, the industry’s only on-demand, customized, SaaS-based automated translation technology that allows enterprises to improve engagement with global customers by providing  real-time, comprehensive translation of content and communications.  Following successful beta engagements with several large enterprises, GeoFluent is now generally available to support growing demand for cost-effective, instantaneous translation of enterprise communications such as sales and support chat sessions, online customer care forums, user reviews and other dynamic Web content.

The GeoFluent platform is based on a partnership between Lionbridge, the world leader in translation, and IBM.  The two companies have partnered to develop and commercialize a powerful on-demand translation platform that integrates Lionbridge’s cloud-based language customization solutions with a statistical machine translation engine developed in IBM’s Watson Research Center.

See: PR Newswire

Also see: Multilingual and Common Sense Advisory

Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., a provider of translation, development and testing solutions, has introduced a solution aimed at improving the performance of multilingual paid search campaigns. The pay-per-click (PPC) campaign localization service supports advertising agencies in the development of international campaigns.

See: Multilingual

Also see: SFGate

No matter how well-prepared a country is, and no matter how advanced its infrastructure and technology, no nation could have anticipated the devastation wrought by the recent tsunami and series of earthquakes in Japan. In the race to respond to urgent needs in the aftermath of a disaster, communication across languages is critical.

When disaster strikes, there is always a need to communicate across languages both for internal and external purposes. Within a country’s borders, relief workers must make sure that critical safety instructions can be understood by members of linguistically diverse populations. Like many economic powerhouses, Japan is a “pull country” for immigrants. More than two million foreigners – hailing from countries like Brazil, China, Korea, Peru, the Philippines, the United States, and Venezuela – live and work on Japanese soil. Whenever a disaster takes place, individuals in other countries begin trying to reach their loved ones in the affected location, generating an influx of communications in other languages.

Given the need for language services support, the Japan Association of Translators (JAT) is serving as a central point of contact for requests for interpreters and translators.  The JAT is also welcoming volunteer interpreters to contact them.  Even if you don’t speak Japanese, if you speak one of the languages of the countries listed above, you might be able to help.  In times of emergency, “relay interpreting” is quite common.  In this type of interpreting, a Spanish<>English interpreter renders the words of a Venezuelan worker in Japan into English, whereupon an English<>Japanese interpreter transfers the information into Japanese. In some cases, the second interpretation might not even be needed – for example, if a Japanese doctor speaks English and has a Korean-speaking patient, a Korean<>English interpreter might be sufficient to assist with critical and potential life-saving language support. Read more.

See: Common Sense Advisory

Also see: Japan Association of Translators (JAT) assembles list of volunteer interpreters to help in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami disaster