The Obama White House has put its force behind machine translation (MT) as it could be judged last week from the “Strategy for American Innovation” issued by the National Economic Council and the Executive Office of the President. Among other recommendations it included the call for greatly improved machine translation technology that would enable automatic, real time and highly accurate language translation between the major languages used around the world. Such development, the document went on to say, would greatly facilitate international commerce and collaboration.
This goes on to show the importance that the current administration places on advanced language technology. But it’s important to take stock of the current state of machine translation, though it has come a long way, it still suffers from a lot of limitations and cannot be depended upon entirely, especially when one is translating critical information whether for immediate use or for the records. It would be great if someone in the White House gave a thought to making the best of existing strengths (human translation providers) along with working on a promising potential opportunity (machine translation).
ProZ.com, the popular online translators’ community is going to organize the language translation industry’s first virtual conference. According to Prox.com, 5,000 translators have already registered for the conference slated to be held on September 30, 2009 which is celebrated as the International Translation Day. With this event ProZ.com will also be marking its tenth anniversary.
The virtual conference is going to offer a plethora of opportunities. Apart from thousands of translators, numerous sponsors and exhibitors will be participating in the event. There will be useful web presentations and networking opportunities, and also exhibitor booths where one will be able to chat with live representatives.
The conference would run for 12 hours starting September 30, 2009 at 10:00 GMT and it’s free! It’s a great opportunity which is going to benefit all participants. If you are interested and why shouldn’t you be? Register here - http://events.unisfair.com/index.jsp?eid=398&seid=25
Smartphones are becoming better, packing in more utilities and selling more with every passing day. They are being increasingly relied upon by business travelers for a variety of purposes. Business travelers frequently travel to foreign countries where they face communication problems due to lack of understanding of the local language. Based upon this knowledge mobile phone manufacturers are developing increasingly sophisticated mobile phone applications that provide instant language translation. These applications are poised to replace translation guides used by travelers.
Nokia and RIM have developed a number of language translation apps which are available through their respective application stores. These language translation tools facilitate multi-lingual translation through text, speech, instant messaging, SMS, email and also in chat environments. Thus they provide business travelers with a comprehensive set of language translation solutions. Moreover unlike the traditional translation guides, these apps are much more efficient and easier to carry, and many of them also keep updating and “learning” according to usage.
The latest development in this area is a translation application that reads and translates text provided in pictures, for example the image of a food menu or road sign. What the application does is extract the text from the picture with the help of optical character recognition technology and then translates it to the targeted language. Both Nokia and RIM’s Blackberry have come up with such applications. While the Nokia product is called Wee and Blackberry’s is named Interlecta Translator.
We are all fond of formulas and shortcuts, simple steps or methods that would get us what we want. This is because laying out a process in a simple step-by-step process makes it clearer and easier to manage. It also saves a lot of energy and time that would have been spent trying to figure things out midway.
In the same lines, language translation quality can also be assured if one conscientiously follows these 2 steps –
The Process of Translation
Get an experienced and professional language translation provider, whether it’s an agency or an individual. Experience combined with a good track record is a sign that the translation provider is aware of the various elements that can affect a language apart from its script, vocabulary and grammar. Always get your work done from translators who specialize in the area for which your source document has been prepared.
Editing & Proofreading
If you have carried out the first step perfectly then you might not require to bother with this step, but depending upon the value of your original document and its complexity, you might just want to get it edited and proofread by a translator other than the one who originally worked on your document. This process would include revising the translation and comparing it with the original document to make sure that it has been translated accurately, it does not have any errors, and the style and use of terminology (especially in the case of a technical document) is consistent.
It has been observed that people from countries like Finland, Sweden and Denmark have almost native fluency in the English language. Though apparently it’s a good sign, if you look a little critically into this matter and accompanying figures you can’t help but conclude that such a proficiency may also lead to the slow extinction of the native languages of these countries.
According to Leonard Orban, the Commissioner for Multilingualism for the European Union, although proficiency in multiple languages is quite advantageous for individuals as well as organizations, it does not come without a few shortcomings. He pointed towards the fact that commissioners from Italy, France, Romania and Spain generally make speeches in their mother tongue. In contrast, commissioners coming from the Nordic countries mostly use English. Now the clincher is that though one may have an excellent command over a foreign language, it has been seen that such people are not able to negotiate as effectively while using a foreign language as they could with their native language. This is probably because when people speak in their native language they can convey what they have in their mind but while using a foreign language they are limited by what they can put into words.
The other issue is that as people become proficient in more popular foreign languages, they use their own language less frequently. This limits the development and propagation of such native languages For example, new terminology is developed for new inventions, discoveries and concepts, if a specific language is not used by its mother tongue speakers for official purposes then the language is less likely to be updated with new terminology; this would make it outdated and lead to its decline and maybe extinction. So make it a point to use your native language as much as possible.
Word processing software have bought about remarkable changes in our lives. They have completely transformed the process of proofreading. In the past a proofreader armed with a red pen would go about his/her marking out the text and scribbling comments on the margin.
That seems so ‘long ago’ as now we have the ubiquitous MS-Word document with the red lines or track changes filling a proofread document. It has been a massive shift… this technological method of proofreading is quite efficient and takes significantly less time. But I still remember the good old days when I would work on a “physical” document. It had its own charm and I still believe benefits, which are not offered through the process of proofreading on a word processing application. For example, in the old method the existing text as well as recommended changes can be easily differentiated, the document is neater to look. But anyway, life evolves and I think I am going to keep using track changes, at least it saves a considerable amount of time and of course paper.
An Independent language translation professionals group in Israel is under fire from Israel’s Anti piracy organization ALIS which has demanded that they stop their activities, issue a public apology, as well as pay NIS 1 million in damages. The group in question is Qsubs which creates and distributes subtitles for movies and TV shows through P2P programs. The Qsubs website already has thousands of subtitles files which were created without legal permission from concerned studios. Apart from subtitles, the site also contains visual materials, including video stills from movie and TV shows, posters and DVD jackets, all of which are protected by copyright.
ALIS has initiated this move on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America and a number of Israeli studios. It has named three translators in its warning letter who were the administrators at Qsubs. This type of legal action is a first for exile and has come about as studios are facing huge losses due to continued copyright violation.
At Tomedes we have always maintained that a good translation involves accurately conveying ideas portrayed in the source language, into the target language. This process goes beyond the simple replacement of words in the original language with their equivalents in the target language or even rendering the target document grammatically correct. Good to great language translation is about conveying the essence of the words contained in the original document to its translated version.
This is probably what the folks at UBS Continuing Studies had in mind when they planned a new translation and interpretation course for English-Mandarin language pair. The course which begins on the 24th of September, 2009 will train students on both way Mandarin-English translation and interpretation with business environment as its focus. Cultural understanding will be an integral part of this course which will be taught by Jennifer Hsu who is a highly experienced translator and has worked on many high profile projects.
According to Hsu, both translation and interpretation require a mastery of cultural references, for example jokes are very tough to translate and the translation is more often than not lost upon the targeted audience. This happens because jokes are usually rooted in popular culture and one cannot appreciate a joke without having any idea of its context. Moreover, if a translator/interpreter does not have a deep understanding of culture he or she is likely to make errors. This is more so in the case of the Chinese language which is steeped in history and culture.
The European Commission is in the process of establishing a network of university programs that would provide high quality master’s level education and training to translators. The programs would be in line with the standards of EMT expert group. EMT network aims to endorse a quality brand of qualifications that would encourage exchanges across the various participating programs.
The project comes at the right time as the requirement for substantially qualified translators is growing rapidly, spurred by the multilingual communication requirements of the EU and other employers. The standard of translators’ training need to be raised in order to ensure that the competencies of graduates match with the requirements of employers.
A group of prominent European experts have drawn up the EMT translator competence profile. It mentions in detail the competences required by translators for getting translation jobs in the institutions of EU and for working in the growing field of multilingual communication. This project would help raise the training standards of translators in the EU and also encourage cooperation, as well as exchanges across institutions of higher-education that offer translation courses.
The government of Britain has expressed regret at the recent death of the Afghan translator who was assisting a New York times reporter Stephen Farrell. The reporter and his translator Sultan Munadi had been taken hostage in Afghanistan. Munadi was killed during the rescue mission.
The office of Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the raid had been carried out to rescue both Stephen Farrell and Sultan Munadi. However, the troops were attacked by rocket propelled grenade fire and small arms. Sultan Munadi and a British commando were killed during this fire fight.
