| 1. Ramblings on the Present and Future of the Language Industry (Premium Content) |
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In between my move back to the U.S. (try that without a green card, U.S. driver's license, and birth certificate, all of which were stolen back in Germany!) and conferences, I have been working on a number of projects that have made me realize once again how much our profession is changing.
One project illustrated that in particular. It was a project with 15,000 or so words -- or maybe I should say it was a project with 15,000 or so words or so, since I really did not translate many "words" at all. Instead, it was really just managing language chunks that were all in the translation memory and termbase. All I needed to do -- for the whole project -- was to rearrange and newly arrange. I'm not really complaining -- it was a well-paid project -- and it certainly wasn't the first project of its kind that I've worked on. But more than ever before it got me thinking: Where is the line between translation and "language management?" And while "language management" still sounds fairly nice, activities like this should probably more appropriately be termed "language chunk management" (or LCM for the acronym lovers).
Obviously I don't mean to complain about the rise of language technology and how it has changed our profession. There's no doubt that it has. What I really wonder is this: Are we caught between a technology that allows us to work much more proficiently by taking away so much of the repetitiveness and brainlessness that we used to get frustrated with, but on the other hand is not good enough to automate the last missing repetitive pieces?
I know that some of your neck hair already is slightly raised at this point -- but I really think that language technology needs to take the next jump in the commercial applications that most of us are working in. It's a shame that some advanced technology exists but is not yet readily available for most of us. For instance, I'm talking about better confluences of machine translation and translation memory, maybe through Google Translate as presently included in Lingotek, or maybe through some of the partnerships between TM and MT vendors such as the one between Across and Language Weaver. We need more advanced "chunk replacement techniques" and paths of communication between TMs and termbases as they are used in Déjà Vu's (slightly misnamed) EBMT feature or Heartsome's Quick Translation and Swordfish's Auto-Translation. What we also need is better sub-segmentation processes. For those features, Multitrans has an advantage over other tools. We need ready-made access to online TMs, and not just for corporate tools -- sort of what Wordfast offers with its VLTM technology. And the list could go on and on.
The other day, I was introducing someone to translation technology, and they asked me why no one has ever come up with the idea of taking all these good things and combining them into one tool. I did not want to look really stupid so I said, well, that's because it's not easy to quickly implement technology that someone else spent years developing. But as I was saying that I felt even more stupid because that's really not what it is. I certainly don't have the complete answer, but I think part of it is that often developers live in a slightly different world than the practitioners, i.e., the translators. And if they have come up with a couple of good features -- as they all have -- they tend to get stuck with them instead of going on a truly never-ending quest for the ever-more-sharpened tool.
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| 2. A Glorious Day for Jeromobot |
And not just for him. For us all! All right, all right, I might be over exaggerating just a little, but the truth is that we are quite proud of our new site at www.translatorstraining.com. We've abandoned the rather matter-of-fact look and gone to a much more interactive site, one that now not only contains the comparative intro videos of Across, Cafetran, Déjà Vu, Heartsome, Lingotek, MemoQ, Metatexis, MultiTrans, OmegaT, SDLX, Similis, Swordfish, Trados, Transit, and Wordfast, but also two new batches of videos. This time we asked all the vendors, "How does a translator use your tool if he is presented with a file that has been prepped in Trados and a translation memory exchange TMX file?" Those tool vendors whose tool could handle the challenge once again recorded the process for us. We then edited and narrated the presentation, and now it's your turn to watch the videos and see how it's done.
Those among you who have already paid for access naturally have free access to the new content along with all the other features. And, courtesy of Jeromobot, those who have not yet paid can purchase access for 30 euro for a whole year. That's 5 euro off the regular price and is valid only until the end of July (even Jeromobot's generosity has its limits!).
A number of universities have already recognized that this is the best way to introduce their students to the different TEnTs that are on the market. I can't help but think that this would work great for you, too. You no longer have to register to see the sample clips, and you are always welcome to play with our cool carousel of tools. See you there.
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| 3. Humming About |
After my last newsletter I was chided by the CEO of Beetext for failing to mention his company as the first to issue a "Statement of Independence" after the "Day That Must Not Be Named," aka the Idiom acquisition by SDL. My bad. But at least this gives me a good reason to talk about the new "Beetext Gets SaaSy" program.
Introduced at last weekend's ATA Translation Company Division's conference in Denver (by the way, I just heard that there are still some more seats open at the Translation Tools Seminar in Boston this weekend), this might be an interesting workflow tool for small translation vendors. The idea is that it's completely web-based, hosted by Beetext, and is available for a $99 fee per project manager per month (I am not sure whether this is Canadian or U.S., but who cares these days . . .). It's got an attractive user interface, not as much customizability as one would hope (for that you'll have to buy the full edition), existing plugins to tools like Quickbooks, as many vendor and client logins per project manager as you want, and a quick setup (since it is not hosted by you).
The price sounds great at first, but of course you as an LSP need to figure out how many seats you really need, how much money that really would cost in the end, and whether you are interested in a slightly more customizable solution. Still it's an interesting deal, especially because it is forward looking in its support as a software as a service model.
A tool that offers only part of the functionality of a full-fledged workflow tool like Beetext but may be relevant to some is the open-source tool Simple Invoices, particularly for freelance translators and very small agencies that have a server setup on which they can install this tool. It tracks payments of individual invoices, monitors how much each client owes, and generates numerous profitability reports.
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| 4. Useless Crap! |
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In the last newsletter I mentioned a quick and dirty way to regularly empty your temporary directory. Per Tangerud wrote to say that his favorite tool for tasks like this is the adorably named CrapCleaner, which not only cleans out the temp directory but also the browser cache directories for the various browsers, registry, etc. I checked it out and it works great. The reason, however, why I uninstalled it again is because for years I have been using EasyCleaner, a similar tool that pretty much does the same thing but is just not as cleverly named.
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| 5. Lingotek Where Art Thou? |
When I stumbled on Lingotek's website a couple of weeks back and saw it was dark I though to myself, That's it! They're gone. I hurriedly sent out emails and left messages on their voicemails, and was relieved to hear once they got to the office and called me back that all is well in Lingotek-land. In fact, they just announced a second round of financing through an "independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community." No wonder we couldn't see as much of Lingotek lately if they're running with those guys!
Seriously, Lingotek has been focused primarily on the government sector after it didn't achieve the success in the freelance and agency market it had originally hoped for. However, Robert, their current CEO, assured me that though this still is not a priority for them, they are continuing to offer their platform for free to those communities.
Still, if you use their tool, it might not be a bad idea to every once in a while request a local backup of your data. And if you have never looked at Lingotek, it's worth a look.
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| 6. Do You Regret Purchasing Your CAT Tool? |
| . . . is the question that is asked on Translationdirectory.com. It's an interesting question, and I'm eager to see what the results are once more folks answer.
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| 7. Some Cooling Relief in the Summer |
If that were only needed for the cold Oregon coast these days -- but it's sure good to be back breathing some of the fresh ocean air. Anyway, since most of the Northern hemisphere is probably in need of some cooling relief, here it is (at least as far as the name goes): Snowball!
Feels cool, huh?
Snowball actually does something besides sounding cool. It's a new kind of translation memory tool (and I am actually not sure that it is a true TEnT since most of the translation environment it provides is indeed the translation memory -- they use the phrase Integrated Translation Environment). It's the second of its kind from Denmark (alongside WebWordSystem) and it's got an interesting proposition: it wants to be as quiet and unobtrusive and easy as it possibly can be. The 2 MB installation allows you to create bilingual TMs that you can use while translating Word documents. It does not have a separate terminology database, but you are encouraged to enter term pairs alongside complete sentence pairs when you use the "word for word" rather than the "whole sentence" mode. I had to wait awhile for the activation of the tool, but I read through the manual (which, by the way, is well-written) and my impression is that it's an inexpensive tool (it's something like 50 euro -- but it's hard to find pricing anywhere on the site) for the very occasional translator, someone who is not willing to learn anything more than a few shortcuts (which truly is all you need to operate it) and who has tons of perfect matches -- there is no fuzzy matching yet. Other obvious problems, of course, are that it only does Word files and does not deal with formatting. But the website is very clear that this is a beta version, so this may be a tool to continue to watch.
And it's cool! (Can you just sense that snowbally winter breeze?)
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| 8. The UnAnnouncement |
This is an event that has already taken place -- thus the UnAnnouncement -- but the heading is appropriately chosen either way because it deals with the first Localization UnConference that took place in March 2008 in San Mateo. I didn't know about it and was only made aware by Ultan Ó Broin's Takeaway article in the latest MultiLingual:
Was the first Localization UnConference a success? Sure, though we'd always considered it an experiment along the lines of "Ready, Shoot. Aim" with an eye to the next one. Nobody asked for his or her money back (it was free), there was a free lunch, and it was Friday off from work. A firm foundation. But, more importantly, good ideas were exposed, new faces appeared, there was an openness of spirit, and frank discussion was heard without the need of a bar. Not one PowerPoint presentation was shown. Instead, things like P.E.N.S and P.A.P.E.R (and whiteboards) were used. (. . .) We hoped to open up the next UnConference to those who never get to go to conferences, to try and expose their concerns and harness ideas, and to listen to the views of like-minded people. Being free of charge was a major part of that. The lack of formal agenda and free-form discussion was also designed to elicit insights that we never hear aired in the polite glass-tinkling atmosphere of thousands of dollars a head "just to get there and attend" conference. Were there things we'd do differently next time? Sure. I think a follow-up wiki would be good. And maybe I facilitate the "SDL" session through the medium of interpretive dance. Other than that, not much. I'd urge people to get together and organize their own UnConferences. One for Europe is in the pipeline.
Sounds very refreshing to me (and I'm looking forward to the interpretive dance).
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| The Last Word on the Tool Kit |
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Here are two folks who loaded the code last week:
© 2008 International Writers' Group
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