Monthly Archives: November 2009

Cisco’s TelePresence translation system delayed

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 16, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation News

Last year a company executive from Cisco had said that real-time translation of Cisco Systems TelePresence virtual meetings would be available by 2009. But going by the latest new, it seems that the company has found it the goal much harder than it had initially anticipated. The technology exhibited at Cisco’s C-Scape conference in December 2008 involved a combination of various technologies including speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion and a translation engine. The company had planned to roll out the product for sale in the second half of 2009 with a 20-language set that included Asian, as well as Western languages. The product would also have allowed the users to select whether they wanted to view subtitles or listen to a digital voice.

However TelePresence translation system was not found in Cisco’s recent collaboration launch in which the company revealed 61 new products that would go on sale over the coming many months. The vice president of TelePresence Systems Business Unit Charles Stucki said that the Cisco did not even have any estimate about when the proposed system would be available for any language. Stucki further revealed that the developers were having a much harder time than anticipated in getting quality results while transcribing speech to text and converting text into speech. Converting written words was another issue where the developers were facing serious challenges. According to Stucki, a fully automated, real-time translation system as envisioned by Cisco will not be available for at least three years.

Portable dictionary and language translation app

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 13, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation Tools

In this age of information explosion flash drives are a boon. For starters they allowed people to carry large volumes of data thus enabling them to work with the same in any PC. Then came portable applications which further liberated one from the requirement of working on the same PC to get the benefit of preferred settings. Nowadays we can get portable versions of most commonly used applications which can be saved to and then used directly from flash drives. In a way, this combination of flash drive and portable applications allows one to carry a personal computer in one’s pocket.

There are many excellent portable applications available out there in the World Wide Web. In this post I am going to discuss the one which can serve professional language translators and writers very well. The application is Lingoes - it’s a free dictionary and multi-language translator that supports more than 60 languages. It comes pre-installed with a number of resources like Google Dictionary, Google Web Definition, WordNet Online, Essential English Dictionary and Spelling Suggestion. The dictionary can function online, as well as offline, and users can download dictionary and thesaurus packs from leaders like Collins, Merriam-Webster, Longman and Macmillan. Furthermore all these dictionaries can be managed from a single interface.

Lingoes features a cursor translator (allows the user to select a sentence or word with the cursor) that can cross-translate between 23 languages. It can also be configured to select a native language to which the program then translates the meanings of foreign words. Lingoes also allows the installation of Natural Voice Packages from Webster and Longman. The program has many other useful features including one touch access to the more 3.5 million articles in Wikipedia. For more details check it out here.

Free content leads to increased profits for language translation company

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 12, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation Discussion, Translation Musings, Translation Reference

Foreign Translations, Inc. is a global language translation services provider that specializes in foreign language translation, website translation and interpreting. It has recently been a part of an interesting experiment in which it provided useful content for free on its website which lead to an increase in its overall profits.

There are a lot of valuable insights to be gained from this experiment and its results. For one thing, today’s internet savvy consumers prefer to take decisions after conducting personal research. Information has become the great leveler, it is available to everybody connected to the Internet, and one only needs to spend time googling around to find satisfactory information on most topics. In a way this has turned the consumer into an expert. So for companies irrespective of whether they are dealing with language translation or not, one of the most effective ways of becoming a force to reckon with is to offer information that a potential customer might be looking for. This move would help the customer become an expert thus making the company, or the web site which offers such information, a reliable and trusted source.

Such a move will specially benefit companies that rely on their websites to connect with customers. High quality instructional articles that directly serve the requirements of a company’s existing or potential customers when offered free help a company gain the reputation of an expert. This would, in a natural progression lead to customers spending more time on its web site and recommending it to others with similar interests. The resulting increase in user base would lead to increasing number of converted customers and improved profits like it happened in the case of Foreign Translation Inc.

WikiReader – The global encyclopedia in your palm

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 11, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation Tools

This review does not directly relate to language translation as other posts on this blog do, but this is something that I just had to share with you dear readers, and moreover, I believe that most of you would really be interested in knowing and then maybe getting for yourself this simple and handy device called WikiReader.

In a nutshell, WikiReader is the frequently relied upon Wikipedia in your palm. The most ironical thing about this device is that although it carries the information present in one of the most popular websites of the world, it does not need to be connected to the Internet. It also comes as a surprise in this age when all our frequently used electronic devices and gadgets have got the ability to connect to the internet. But for me that’s the charm of Openmoko’s WikiReader, a Wikipedia browser, which in its present avatar carries all of the 3 million Wikipedia articles in a memory card.

WikiReader features a simple bare bones interface which can be played upon through its scratch resistant capacitative touchscreen. It has a power button which can fire up the device within a couple of seconds, a button for searching specific articles, one for looking through history and a final one which brings up random articles. Only the text of the articles is displayed, there are no images, links to external web pages, discussions or references. The device also has a feature for blocking mature content, which would be helpful to parents who’d like to gift the WikiReader to their kids but would not want them to access all kinds of articles.

Since the device cannot access the internet, Openmoko would be releasing updates on a quarterly basis which can either be downloaded for free or purchased through new memory cards shipped twice a year for an annual fee of $29. The device itself costs $99. Although its great to have a device which is dedicated to one purpose and delivers well, I felt that an integrated dictionary/thesaurus and automatic language translation abilities would’ve been welcome additions.

Innocent Afghans erroneously labeled militants due to language translators mistakes

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 10, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation News

A former cultural adviser who has worked in Kandahar, Afghanistan has revealed that several innocent Afghans may have been sent to jail after being judged as Taliban militants as a result of mistakes made by Canadian military translators. The situation is quite disturbing as military commanders and troops working on the ground are most of the times completely dependent on their translators.

The aforementioned cultural adviser said that he has personally been witness to two such incidents in which innocent Afghans were labeled terrorists just because their translators made errors in understanding the language. However he intervened in both cases and prevented the prisoners from being given over to Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security which has been accused of torturing prisoners.

The Canadian Press had initiated an investigation that included interviews with intelligence officers, former translators, National Defense and other Afghan officials. It came across this information in the course of the four-month investigation. Community leaders from Afghanistan who were interviewed by the Canadian Press agreed that it was the erroneous translation of incompetent translators which was creating such serious problems. Although the Canadian military is trying its best to avoid such mistakes they are unable to make much headway in this issue as the problem lies with the department that’s in charge of hiring translators.

Translators come mainly through two sources; they are either members of Afghan-Canadian community who travel to the war zone with senior commanders or local residents who have been screened and hired to travel with the troops. Now a majority of the translators that come from Canada can only speak Dari which is the working language of Afghanistan’s governments. On the other hand Pashto which is the dominant language in southern Afghanistan has comparatively very few translators available.

The App Store offers a new bidirectional speech translator

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 9, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation Tools

As a kid I used to be quite fascinated by all those fantastical gadgets that were flaunted in science fiction movies or television shows. One such gadget was the language translator that used to translate speech from one language to another thus allowing people who were not conversant in each other’s languages to have effortless conversations. In the past few decades the world has seen many gadgets of science fiction making their transition to reality, and it was just a matter of time before such a language translator made an entry.

Jibbingo is the name of a new bidirectional speech translator which is now available in Apple’s App Store. It is priced at $24.99 and can be used in the iPhone, as well as the iPod touch. Jibbingo can translate speech between two languages enabling people who do not share the same language to understand each other through conversations (limited ones though). And all this can be achieved without having to fiddle much with the settings or tapping too many onscreen buttons.

At present Jibbingo functions on a vocabulary of 40,000 words, most of which have been selected based on their frequent usage by travelers and doctors. However one requires an iPhone 3Gs to utilize the Jibbingo’s full potential. For other devices one would have to be satisfied with unidirectional translation. Overall it’s just the kind of language translation gadget that many people around the world were waiting for – not only is it simple and intuitive but also does a pretty decent job of recognizing speech and translating it accurately. There is plenty of scope for improvement – a larger vocabulary and list of supported language being foremost but as a starter it’s a great app.

Optimizing content for foreign markets

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 8, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Freelance Translators, Translation News

Ambitious and foresighted marketers who take the initiative of exploring and understanding markets that are beyond their native regions and use search programs that help them get directly in touch with their consumers in their native languages have some great opportunities lying ahead of them. Communication is one of the critical factors that decides the success or failure of any marketing efforts. It assumes an even more significant role when a foreign market is involved in the process. The ability to speak to the consumers in their native languages becomes critical to the success of the product. However there are not many companies that consider even such fundamental principles for successful optimization when they are localizing their web sites for particular markets.

A recent market research report released by Common Sense Advisory & Lionbridge mentioned that 72.4% of worldwide consumers expressed that they would prefer to buy products which contained information in their native language. A similar study by the Localization Industry Standards Association concluded that companies investing in localization could expect to earn value worth $25 for every dollar spent in the process. Such information has led many companies to invest in localization. But the irony of it all is that many of these companies do not care much about optimizing the content of their sites in order to increase their ranks in the search engines used by the targeted consumers. Content translation of “key product terms” according to the demands of the targeted market. Including this into the overall localization/translation strategy would substantially increase, if not guarantee the chances of success for a given product or service in a foreign market, it will also significantly cut-down the expenses related to optimization of content which might crop up post localization.

Language translation success story - Tom Bool

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 6, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation News

This is a true story of how a man’s passion for languages made him successful to an extent that he went on to win a business award. I am talking about Tom Bool, who’s been a student at Anglia Ruskin University having studied European Business there and recently won its 2009 Alumni Success in Business Award.

It was when he was studying for his degree at the university that Tom discovered his passion for languages, as well as a taste for international lifestyle. In the course of two years that he spent in France, studying at the university at Clermont Ferrand and in a number of placements and jobs, he attained nearly native degree of fluency in French. This boosted his confidence and he set his sights on attaining fluency in the Spanish language. He went on to work as an English teacher in Spain where he continued to indulge his passion for languages.

Tom Bool worked in a variety of jobs, absorbing valuable lessons from each, before establishing his own company, Integro Languages at the age of 29. Integro Languages is based in Norwich and provides both language translation and interpretation services to discerning niche-markets. The company has hundreds of professional language translators on its rolls and provides language translation services for over 150 languages. Tom Boon also plans to branch out into telephone interpretation services, Braille transcription and other language translation services.

Apimac introduces translation dictionaries for iPhone and iPod

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 5, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation Tools

iPhone and iPod Touch users who are still looking for a good language translation app might just have a pleasant surprise coming at them. iPhone and iPod touch has got a new line of translation dictionaries from Apimac, the company which has already developed award-winning software for the Mac, including a series of very popular translation dictionaries.

The dictionary apps for iPhone/iPod are available in English - German, English – Italian, and English - Spanish. Each comes with all the tools required for searching words, as well as phrases in an up-to-date dictionary that also includes grammatical notes, as well as a phrase book with thousands of English phrases and their translations.

These language translation dictionaries include other features like a business dictionary that help users while composing business letters, sending e-mails, and even in making professional phone calls. The dictionaries are designed in a very user friendly manner and guide the user to find useful information rather than unhelpful or useless stuff. Most of the information used by the app is stored locally in the iPhone or iPod, hence an internet connection is not required to make it work. An internet connection is only required when the user needs to do online translation or reference/image search.

Apimac’s language translation apps are compatible with the iPhone firmware v2.2.1 or higher and are available for $3 at the App Store.

Coming soon non-Latin internet address

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Posted by Faisal Kalim on November 4, 2009 – 10:00 am
Filed under Translation News

This one took quite a long time coming but ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has finally taken some solid steps to make web-addresses that are not based on the Latin alphabet a reality. In other words, the Internet is going to get a lot more friendlier for a major part of the global population.

A proposal for the use of non-English characters in web addresses is up for consideration. The proposed change is called Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs. At present non-English characters can only be used in a section of a web address. Once IDNs become a reality, native web-users from China, Arabia and Korea and other nations will be able to browse through the net in their own languages. The most obvious result of this development would be a significant leap in internet usage across many parts of the world. ICANN will be reviewing this historic proposal at the 36th International Public Meeting in Seoul and if the body approves it then we could be seeing the use of IDNs by mid of the coming year.

Though they have not been put to use on a global scale, IDNs are not a new concept, on the contrary they been hotly debated for around a decade. There has been a lot of doubt about whether IDNs as a concept could work, however thanks to countries like China and the fact that over half of the 1.6 billion internet users are not familiar with Latin characters, ICANN has been led to consider IDN. The organization has been testing the translation technology that can convert from one character set to another and deliver the correct address for over a couple of years now and is confident about its success.