TechGist05

I saw some interesting comments to a blog post by Kevin Lossner that I thought would be good to share with the community that reads this blog, as it raised some cogent points I thought. The comments basically talk about a larger more complex translation market than many of us might believe exists based on market research available. I do not claim to have real insight or knowledge of this larger translation market, but I am definitely aware that the largest translation initiatives in the world are generally overlooked by traditional market research e.g the many branches of the US government (DoD, NSA, CIA, FBI, DIA, State and even Commerce), the EU and I expect many of the clandestine “intelligence” operations around the world, especially amongst the G20 governments. I would also bet that the really big, almost nation-like, Fortune 100 corporates also have captive and hidden translation operations that are buried and invisible within PR, Marketing and Investor Relations somewhere to tr...

My view of a conference is usually determined by the quality of the sessions related to MT and translation automation, or sometimes other sessions  that may trigger new thoughts on innovation and business process evolution. The ELIA conferences I have attended, stand out for me because I think they have better content in general than most, and one actually learns new things. To me it is clear that business translation is evolving beyond a focus on software and documentation localization (“the SDL mindset”) and I look for content that recognizes and addresses these emerging issues and market imperatives. One of the most interesting sessions and perhaps the only one by a translation buyer was entitled “ How Cloud TMSs are Changing the Relationship Between a Translation Buyer and LSPs ” by Elina Lagoudaki of Turner Broadcasting. She described how cloud-based technology is used to manage a growing stream of digital media localization projects. Turner is a good example of a translation...

As the year comes to a close, it is sometimes useful to review and look ahead on where things may be going, and even though many of these type of ruminations can be self-indulgent and self-serving, I have decided to throw in my two cents anyway. These are personal opinions on other opinions, and like much of what I do in this blog, this is also a collection of information that I consider most worthwhile to share on this subject of trends. The translation industry remains a highly fragmented industry with relatively inefficient production and business models. In 2012 we still have over 25,000 language service providers (agencies) of varying quality and professionalism doing the work of business translation across the globe. Efforts to define the final product or service produced by these firms are unsuccessful despite valiant efforts from industry associations.   However, many have been talking about change and disintermediation and many of us are aware that something is afoot....

The phenomena of a crowd (or community) stepping forward and doing real translation work, often for no direct financial compensation is something that troubles many in the professional translation world. Mostly because they see this activity, as work being taken away from legitimate professionals or they see it as a ploy to reduce prices. While in some cases their fears may actually be justified, in the most successful uses of this approach I think it is clear that this is not true. As I have said before, the growing momentum in the volume of content demands new production models . This momentum which exists both in the corporate world and also the general world out there simply cannot be addressed by ONLY using traditional professional translation production models. New needs require new approaches. For those who insist that the data deluge is a fiction, the rest of this post is probably irrelevant. Another key driving force behind new crowdsourcing initiatives is the ...

This is a continuation of this posting . 2.                    Is Google Right For The Professional Language Services Industry? For more than 40 years, machine translation has promised much but consistently failed to deliver. MT promises had come to be seen more as “empty promises”. In recent years, for enterprises and language service providers who want control of the translation, Google’s machine translation has been an eye-opener for many but still not a real solution to their requirements. Before Google launched its own SMT translation technology in October 2007, Google used Systran, as Yahoo Babelfish still does today. The measure of machine translation in the public eye was Systran technology, even if the public did not know the name of the technology behind the free translation services. Today that measure has moved to Google, with a common perception that Google is the state-of-the-art in machi...