ToolkitSmall

A computer newsletter for translation professionals

Issue 8-10-125
(the one hundred twenty-fifth edition)
Contents
1. The Update Craze
2. SDL Goes MT (Premium Content)
3. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
4. Going the Way of the Dow Jones
5. Wanna Be a Manager?
The Last Word on the Tool Kit
Powerful Testimonies

I can't imagine a more powerful testimony to the necessity of using technology adequately than this priceless story (thanks to Becky Blackley):

Between 1980 and 1993, I was the editor and publisher of an international magazine for autoharp players. One of the best autoharp players at that time was a gentleman whose last name was Penix. (I'll be you already see where this is going, don't you?). Since his name frequently appeared in the magazine and since I am not the best typist in the world (and since the letters x and s are typed with the same finger), I lived in mortal fear that I would inadvertently turn his last name into a word that would embarrass him and reflect badly on my literary reputation. And, of course, Word's spell checker would not catch this mistake. So I phoned Microsoft support and asked if I could remove a word from the spell check dictionary. The technician wanted to know why I would want to do such a thing, so I explained the situation to him in terms that my shy and modest nature would allow. Well, once he stopped laughing (which took awhile), he walked me through the process of removing the possibly offending word (with further outbursts of laughter interspersed). I'm sure that he won the "best support story" award around the office water cooler that week! And I no longer worried about making a most unfortunate typo. I don't remember exactly how the word was removed, but the process probably wouldn't work for current versions of Word anyway. The current process sounds a bit more complicated, but at least you don't have to embarrass yourself with a call to a support technician. Thanks for the information.
1. The Update Craze
One of the things that I often do in this newsletter is talk about new versions of software tools, especially when they concern translators. And it is important for us as translators to watch the market and see what new features are being introduced in existing -- or new -- tools, especially when it comes to TEnTs (Translation Environment Tools). A good example is the upcoming version of Trados that I discuss below, as well as the upcoming tool AnyMem (more on that in a later version of this newsletter). But as I watched my email inbox fill up this week with all kinds of announcements of new versions of a plethora of tools -- text editors, desktop publishing programs, graphic and screenshot applications, etc. -- I realized that, especially in the present economy, we need to be really wise about what to upgrade and what not to upgrade.

Here are some guidelines that might prove helpful:

Client demands: If a client requires you to work in an updated version of, say, MS Office, which as in the case of Office 2007 does not offer direct backwards compatibility, you'll need to ask yourself whether your relationship with the client allows you to ask him to downsave the files (if that is possible) and/or whether the client is worth the upgrade to the new tool.

Compatibilities with other tools: So you see a new version of a tool, rush out to buy it because it has all these cool new features, install it . . . and quickly find out that a number of other tools don't work with it. For translators, the interdependence of MS Word and some Word-based TEnTs comes to mind, or the lack of TEnT support for new DTP formats, or of course new operating systems and the lack of support for so many applications that are supposed to run on it. A long time ago I mentioned that "Windows" is a well-chosen term for the operating system that most of us use because it reminds us of how fragile its environment is. That's a good thing to keep in mind before rushing out to update this or that.

Major features that you really need: This is sort of a no-brainer, but one that I think we often overlook. Here is a good example: I got an announcement this week from the makers of my favorite every-day-in-use text editor -- UltraEdit -- saying that a new version has been published. The version that I currently run is at least three or four versions behind, so every time a new version is released I look through the new features to find out whether there is a major change. And, lo and behold, the new version did indeed have a bunch of major changes. The problem: I didn't even understand what they were about. They were exclusively geared toward software developers, and they could have been written in Hindi for all that they meant to me. There's no way that I'll be investing in that upgrade. The functions that I need as a translator are pretty basic text management and code page features that were as good four versions ago as they are today.

Security issues: These are usually fairly valid arguments for an upgrade -- and they refer particularly to security-specific tools (such as virus scanners) and operating systems. If Microsoft is officially not supporting an operating system with security patches anymore (this would include Windows 98, ME, and other early crimes), I would take that as a good hint to upgrade.

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2. SDL Goes MT (Premium Content)

At Localization World in Madison this week SDL unveiled two important things: squishy, colorful new friends and the SDL Automated Translation Solutions. Both can be inspected at the same website, but let's focus on our squishy, colorful new friends first (I don't think they have an actual name yet). Jeromobot naturally felt challenged and has worked on strategies to fight back -- you can see one of his early and successful (!) attempts right here. Truthfully, though, I was a little puzzled at first by these squishy, colorful new friends (maybe the abbreviation SCNF would actually be a good name!). However, they are rather cleverly introduced in the flash video you can also view at the same website -- and the world of languages is truly colorful, after all!

All this said, the SDL Automated Translation Solutions may still end up having a larger impact than SCNFs on our industry. A long time ago -- in 2001 to be exact -- SDL bought the TranscendRT machine translation engine from Transparent Language. They first re-introduced it in some packages of SDLX -- without much success -- and have since concentrated on using it as part of a service offering. TranscendRT, now called SDL KbTS (Knowledge-based Translation System -- they do like strange abbreviations!), is a rules-based machine translation engine that, like any of its kind, needs rather intensive finagling with rules and dictionaries to adjust the engine to a specific client, industry, and writing style. SDL has successfully offered these reprogramming services in connection with translation services for some of its large clients for the past few years.

Now they are re-releasing that technology in a larger fashion again. This time it's geared toward all levels of the market, including the larger translation buyers who can (and will) still rework the engine, but also the smaller translation buyer and even the translator. All these consumers can access the unrefined engine for "gisting" purposes -- on a smaller enterprise level for day-to-day operations, including email and chat translation, and to post-edit machine translation. In fact, the new version of Trados, which should be released in the next couple of weeks, will have the integrated option to use machine translation output if there is no translation memory match to be found. The languages that are available are FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish), plus Portuguese and Dutch to and from English, and the one-directional English into Chinese, Norwegian, and Swedish. The access is web-based so you will need an Internet connection to access the machine translation engine.

Oh, I can just see many of you translators cringing, but I would love to see the system in action before making up my mind. And while this is a new feature for Trados, it is not a new concept per se. Tools like Across and Idiom have existing partnerships with machine translation vendor Language Weaver, Lingotek offers Google Translate as a first gisting option (something that the Google Translation Center most certainly will also do), and I mentioned that SDLX also offered this feature in earlier incarnations.
 
This is a totally anecdotal story, but here it is: Last week I took part in the very interesting Warsaw Pact discussion. While logging in, I got this message:

BŁĄD - Za długa nazwa uzytkownika lub zbyt długie hasło

This really didn't do much for me, but this machine translation

ERROR - The long user name or password too long

was better. Yes, I felt very sheepish actually going to google.translate.com and performing a machine translation for my benefit (rather than to make fun of it) but, I hate to say, it helped.

Oh, and since we are talking about the Warsaw Pact -- this was the interesting last session of the TM (as in Translation Management) Europe 2008 conference that brought together freelance translators, agencies, and translation buyers to discuss better ways of working together. The content of the discussions was good and worthwhile to listen to, but what was also great was that it was available as a live audio stream with the additional opportunity to participate remotely via chat. What a great way of reducing our carbon imprint by avoiding traveling! Hopefully we'll see more of that in the near future.

3. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Aka the Indian National Volunteer Corps, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is one of the many meanings of "RSS" -- though admittedly not one that I use very often. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that, in the newsfeed sense, RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary." SDL's Paul Filkin prefers "Really Simple Syndication" -- sounds good to me. (I just can't get the "weally, weally, widiculously good-looking male models" of Ben Stiller's Zoolander out of my head!)

Be that as it may, we do have a new feature on TranslatorsTraining.com -- a language blog of the week. This week we have chosen John Yunker's Global by Design blog, a super-interesting source of information for all things concerning web globalization.

We are also putting the last touches on new videos by Heartsome and Alchemy Publisher, which should be up and running next week.

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4. Going the Way of the Dow Jones

The cleverly named IntelliComplete has gone the way of the stock market these days: down. Some of you will still remember from earlier newsletters that it was an application designed to auto-complete words that you start to type in most Western languages -- a bit like what we know from a browser's address field or from OpenOffice.org, only a little smarter since it came with existing dictionaries. The company that used to develop and sell this product has officially abandoned it, but you can still download it from some sites like this one.

Tibor Kornyei, the developer of one of the first TEnTs -- WordFisher -- a tool that has also been abandoned (but can still be downloaded for free), recently brought a new and possibly improved auto-complete tool to my attention: Typing Assistant. It has a slightly better compatibility with existing tools -- Tibor points out that this one works in Star Transit, which was not the case for IntelliComplete. It also offers a wide range of additional functions, such as storing of clipboard format (stuff you previously copied), beeping on misspelled words -- though this particular function would drive me nuts -- and of course learning what you have typed in the past and suggesting those terms as first choices. It's presently available with German, Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese, English, and Italian dictionaries.

Here is another crazy -- but interesting -- way to alter the way you input data into your computer: a "Half keyboard." This piece of hardware can be used by those guys who like to pick their noses with one hand and type with the other -- or possibly do more productive things alongside typing. It is literally half a keyboard: you access the actual left side of the keyboard as you would any other keyboard, and you access the invisible right side by pressing a key combination of the space bar plus another key. This must be great for people who are super-multi-taskers, but it makes me nervous just looking at it. This was also suggested by Becky Blackley.

5. Wanna Be a Manager?
Now, this really is not the place for advertising jobs, but here is one that may be interesting: TILP -- The Institute of Localization Professionals -- is looking for a "TILP Manager" who will continue to develop TILP's Certified Localisation (CLP) program (I have talked about this certification in previous newsletters). Here is the job description:

As the TILP Manger, you will be responsible for all administrative aspects of TILP and, especially, for the development and implementation of the CLP Programme. You will report directly to the TILP Council and will interface with Training providers, educational institutions, and TILP Council members in a professional, global working environment. To achieve this, you will interface in a positive, proactive way with the various stakeholders. You will provide a positive, open relationship with TILP members and CLP Partners, assisting them to achieve the necessary certification standard. Daily tasks will involve: management of the TILP membership, management of the CLP Partnership Programme, implementation and development of the CLP programme, development and implementation of an adequate communication strategy (web-site, newsletters, press releases, conferences/exhibitions), and reporting to Council.

More information can be had from CEO@tilponline.org. Good luck!
The Last Word on the Tool Kit

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© 2008 International Writers' Group