The future of the blog

I always took the word blog at its face meaning - a log of parts of the web you find interesting. No personal agenda to defend. Simply flagging it up is the message. Today this is curating, so I'm switching to scoop.it and hope you like it!

Who owns street art?

Ignoring the advice of the Association for the Defence of Printed Wishes Via the Postal Service, we went ahead as usual this year and sent our sincerest wishes to friends and clients by personal email. Previous greetings cards had featured public street art, and although we credited the photographer when we could, copyright was probably not an issue. This year's card credited the original artists, but some people thought the little © signs were a bit small to read and wondered whether this was "fair use" of copyrighted works. So here's the score: the lips were painted by Man Ray in Paris in 1933, and were used pending the permission of the Man Ray Trust. The mosaic was part of another pair of lips, Geneviève Cadieux's La Voix Lactée, a gift from Montreal now installed in the Paris metro (thanks to Catherine-Alice Palagret at Archéologie du futur for the photo we used). And Canadian poet Anne Hébert wrote the poetry, which is on public view in the corridor between Saint Augustin and Saint Lazare. So I guess that makes it street art, right?

Paper still sets the agenda for newsreaders

According to a recent University of Oregon study, readers of the print edition of the New York Times recall more than readers of the online edition. The paper explores several theories for why print still rules, Jack Shafer reports in Slate:

Online newspapers tend to give few cues about a story's importance, and the "agenda-setting function" of newspapers gets lost in the process. "Online readers are apt to acquire less information about national, international and political events than print newsreaders because of the lack of salience cues; they generally are not being told what to read via story placement and prominence—an enduring feature of the print product," the researchers write. The paper finds no evidence that the "dynamic online story forms" (you know, multimedia stuff) have made stories more memorable.

English as she is spoke

I thought I was being terribly clever when I used that headline many years ago in an article to promote business English courses at a corporate university. I thought our Dutch readers were humourless or ignorant when they denounced our howling error. I've changed my tune a little since then. I try to respect our global audience by avoiding expressions that are too tribal or too idiomatic. I do damage control on the CEO's statement instead of editing his broken English into pitch-perfect prose. Most of the time, I think I find a good balance between local colour and readability. But is it authentic English?

BBC Online's recent series of rants about Americanisms, reported this week by The Economist, suggests that plenty of people have a tribal attachment to their own particular flavour of English. The suddenly popular www.samosapedia.com is a light-hearted clarion call to 1.5 billion South Asian users of the language formerly known as English. And Microsoft offers me no fewer than 18 standard variants to choose from – concerned, no doubt, that South African English would alienate my Zimbabwean readership.

Lingua franca

Authenticity is a thorny issue in our line of business. And if broken English is the lingua franca of the global economy, what is the added value of a business writer whose native language is British?

As a consumer, a basic command of the language is probably all you need to stay informed, place an order and use the customer support forum. But as a producer, settling for unwieldy English in your marketing and corporate communications more than likely erodes the credibility of your brand, and it's a missed opportunity to differentiate yourself.

Even if your readers are non-natives, chances are they're educated enough to recognise standard English when they see it. They'll probably understand your message better if it's crafted by a communicator with a full mastery of the tools of the trade. And when they compare your home-grown efforts with your native-English competitors, I bet their perception of your company – your eye for detail, your project management skills, your quality control – will be downgraded a notch.

The ROI of standard spelling

Online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half because of consumer concerns about a website's credibility.

"You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website," says Mr Duncombe. And in that short space of time, apparently, you can send potential consumers rushing for the door.

Just imagine how much damage you could do in six seconds with a B2B website in a language other than your own! When you're fighting for attention and trust, 'good enough' could be counterproductive.

Google shuts down its translation API

Asia Online CEO Dion Wiggins gives an excellent informed analysis of Google's decision to shut down its translation API and improve its control over content quality. He says Google in reality has been "polluting its own drinking water by crawling and processing local language web content that has been published without any human proof reading after being translated using the Google Translate API."

Part II of the analysis, including the impact of the decision on the professional translation industry, can be found here.

Growth is overrated

Where have I been all these months? Spending too much time following language industry trends, which can make it sound as if we're all out to machine-translate as much low-grade content into as many languages as possible.

"Now that it's so beneficial to offer a service to just a few, with focus and attention,"says Seth Godin, "perhaps we need to rethink the very goal of scale." Time to focus on what we do, which is pamper a few important documents for a few clients in a few languages at a time.

Corporate intranets are social media too

Despite the risks of mismanaging a crowdsourced translation project, enthusiastic user communities are in an excellent position to propose authentic turns of phrase for social media tools in their own languages. The HootSuite translation project is a good example. I challenge any professional translation agency with a top-down process to get it right first time or do a better job than a well managed crowd of passionate users.

And it doesn't only apply to social media tools in the conventional sense. Corporate intranets are social media too. If our clients would only crowdsource the translation of their run-of-the-mill intranet content, their readers may feel more engaged and part of a group. Corporate should only have to moderate the process to ensure the key messages are getting across. Our role as professional linguists needs to change - we (and corporate) have to stop alienating the readers by second-guessing how they communicate as a group!

Go forth and xl8

During the Internet boom of the 1990s, writes Jost Zetzche in the ATA Chronicle this month, the term "translation" no longer seemed adequate to the movers and shakers of the translation industry. So new terms were coined—localization, globalization, and internationalization (aka l10n, g13n, and i18n). Now times have changed again, and the term transcreation is gaining traction as translators try to look "aware" rather than just technically savvy.

Translation has always come in different flavours, and inventing euphemisms probably doesn't help translation users in choosing the right combination of skills that different parts of our industry have to offer. "Let's embrace who we are!" Jost concludes. "I am proud to say that I'm a translator."

Machine translation in the news

Machine translation rocks. Really. Google Translate is the holy grail, the key to browsing the world outside and understanding 90% of life, the universe and everything. It's good news for world peace, human understanding and Google fans. And it's good news for the human translation industry too.

Rather than simply highlighting the silly mistakes that machine translation makes, some translation and localisation providers are embracing its ability to cope with exponential growth in demand -- and basking in reflected glory as the PR machines of Google and Asia Online thunder on.

If you ever need to explain the difference between these systems and what bio-translators do for a living, Fire Ant & Worker Bee recommend the chain saw analogy. It's hilarious. "Translation software is like a chain saw," ATA's media spokesman Kevin Hendzel is quoted as saying in a letter to President Obama. "It's an invaluable tool when you have to chop a lot of wood in a hurry, but you need skill to use it safely -- and it's not recommended for surgery."

Nor will a chain saw get you far if you want to cut boards, paper, textiles, a roast turkey, your fingernails, or a steak at a business lunch, says Fire Ant. At the same time, why use human translators to gist huge quantities of random content? "Surgeons could also saw logs with their scalpels, but it would be an absurd waste of their talent and capabilities."

Google's guide to the galaxy

Don't bother to learn foreign languages, advises the Daily Mail. Google says it plans to launch smartphones that will translate for you in real time. Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, admits that speech will be an even tougher challenge than text, and linguistics guru David Crystal agrees the problems of dealing with speed of speech and range of accents could prove insurmountable. So don't hold your breath. It's just a case of iPad envy.

Unfortunately for professional translators (or in this case interpreters), Google's latest gambit adds to the popular perception that effective communication is a question of terabytes and algorithms.

Don't forget the Babel Fish in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - a small yellow creature capable of translating any language when placed in a person's ear - sparked a bloody war because everyone became able to understand what other people were saying.

Buzz off Google. Get over yourselves.

Ericsson France's award-winning blog

We're proud to be translating content for Ericsson France's award-winning corporate blog, which started life in June 2009 and has been extensively covered in the French trade press ever since. In December, the worldwide Ericsson marketing and communications community selected the blog for the annual Best Media Relations award. The bloggers at Ericsson France also presented at the recent Media Aces conference in France and wrote a guest piece including "10 golden rules for a social networker" at PR Conversations.

Is Jeromobot a hobgoblin?

Lifelong terminology evangelist Steve Dyson concedes that terminological consistency – one of the major selling points of translation environment tools – may be overrated after all. “For sizeable chunks of the translation industry, including translators of technical journalism and marketing materials, terminological consistency (TermCon) is culturally alien and stylistically unacceptable,” he says.

“TermCon receives little more than lip service from journalists writing in English and is often seen as a failing by journalists writing in other languages,” says Steve. In French journalism, for example, the quest for ‘elegant variation’ often takes precedence over the kind of ‘foolish consistency’ that translation memory tools tend to promote. “It’s another example of how technology can unleash powerful tools on people who simply don’t have the training, experience or cultural sensitivity to use them professionally.”

Steve will be running a workshop on translating technical journalism at the Tradulínguas conference in Lisbon in May. His 2007 paper on the same topic can be acccessed here.

2010: Year of the Purge

Jost Zetzsche, a leading proponent of translation environment tools (TeNTs), wrote an enlightening piece about his experience in Accurapid's Translation Journal last month.

As his personal translation memory grew and grew, Jost found its usefulness "seemed to decline rather than improve. Too much time had passed between the earlier projects and the current ones (...), language had changed and my skill levels had, too." Gradually, he found he was spending "a lot of time deleting or wading through useless suggestions from the TM." With the newer TeNTs offering subsegment as well as segment matching, the problems were getting even worse.

His conclusion? Gigantic vaults of bilingual data are fantastic as reference materials, "but I am just not sure about their value as translation memory data in the classic sense." My conclusion: this is the year to purge the dross building up in our own bilingual resources, such as wobbly source texts and translations the client didn't like (yes, this happens!). Our resources may be carefully vetted, but they're never vetted carefully enough!

And hats off to Jost Zetzsche for his realistic analysis in a world obsessed by the power of the crowd and the value of the terabyte.

You align it!

Terminotix, makers of the LogiTerm TM tool and (more to the point) the excellent alignment engine AlignFactory, launched this free web service a few months ago. It uses the same algorithms as AlignFactory, which will also be included with the 2010 update of LogiTerm.

There's probably no better alignment tool on the market. In the free version you can't edit the bitexts, but for rough-and-ready alignment it can't be beat.

And what happens to the files you just aligned on the Terminotix servers? Back in August when the service launched, the Canadian company's (excellent) customer service said "All files are deleted as soon as you close YouAlign. We will soon be indicating that procedure on the Web site so that our clients know what happens to the files." Sure enough, tucked away in the sign-up page, the privacy policy now says this in black and white, so there's every reason to trust them not to feed our confidential data into the mother of all translation memories... or sell it to Google!

That sinking feeling

French shipbuilder DCNS launched a spiffy new website last year, sourcing everything - from graphic design to translation - from the same full-service agency. It seems they have noticed some oddities in the English text (you know, that grey stuff in between the rich content). Better late than never. Rumour has it they're in the process of getting the copy fixed. But before they do, this photo caption for the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the jewel in the crown of the French fleet, needs to go on the record. I wonder how their Russian is?

A game-changing warship

A cutting-edge French warship sailed into St. Petersburg in November to show off its capabilities to potential buyers in the Russian Navy. Bruno Daffix, a spokesman for the French Defense Ministry's export and sales agency, described the ship as a "Swiss Army knife" of military ships - able to carry helicopters, land forces, hospitals or refugees, among other things, the Wall Street Journal reported. But critics of the potential deal in nations neighbouring Russia - such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states - say it would dramatically increase the military threat from Russia, increasing tensions in some already difficult relations.

LOL: Naval defence can be fun too!

New-generation marketers for a new generation of procurement officers? This animated video was on show at DSEi to promote integrated topside design from Thales.

Israeli missile maker goes Bollywood

Engaging its customers with references to local culture, Rafael is making a break with some of the defence industry’s old-school paradigms, deemed overly serious by a new generation of marketing executives.

Punctuation makes a comeback

Lucy Kellaway's column in the FT suggests that speaking to people in a culturally appropriate way may have its merits after all...

Meanwhile the out-of-work French business school graduate who put himself on eBay got pretty well flamed for his presentation skills and trying to get a job with a CV full of grammatical errors.

Back in the blogosphere

This blog has existed off and on for seven years in blissful oblivion. The experiment continues! Here's one about Obama's oath of office and the trouble being a die-hard pedant can get you into. Maybe someone else would like to post some stuff here too. Let me know and I'll add you to the authors list.

Lottery buzz

This is where I stopped posting to the translation blog and started a teaser blog for the World Lottery Association, who loved it... and then fired me.

Acrobat document review just got easier

Anyone with the free Acrobat 7.0 Reader can add comments to pdf documents created with Acrobat 7.0 Professional. Replace text, correct typos, add notes, etc. and send it back! There's even a collaborative review function (a bit harder to set up) where several people can add comments to the same document... Agencies take note - it's time for a (paid) upgrade!

Will our world ever be safe?

Thales publishes a 32-page magazine twice a year for customers, industrial and commercial partners, the financial community, opinion formers, academics and the scientific community. "It's a magazine of real stature that communicates where technology and innovation is driving the business world," says Caspian, the London-based publishing company that produces it in English . And it's translated into French by us.

Scholarly searches

Also lurking behind the Google home page is Google Scholar, another chance to avoid the toxic wasteland by limiting searches to scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research.

Read them the Patriot Act

Now available in pdf format online, the World Lottery Association's quarterly journal offers an inside view of the state lottery industry and how it is "rallying its forces around the world to rise to global challenges", i.e., protect state gaming monopolies from free market forces. As the US prepares its stand-off with offshore casinos at the WTO, the Patriot Act could provide a compelling argument for protection...

Let the library wars commence!

Google has struck a deal with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web, The New York Times reports. Now all we need is collective bargaining with copyright owners, something The Register doesn't think the privatised information scavengers of the web are in a position to do.

Avoiding the toxic wasteland

Barely a minute on the Wired website unearthed the little-known US government specific version of Google. Depending on your perspective, this could limit your search to just what the government wants you to read - or save time by avoiding what The Register (who are these guys?) calls a toxic wasteland of real-time noise.

United States to appeal WTO gambling report

The World Trade Organization has ruled against the United States in a cross-border gambling dispute brought by Antigua & Barbuda. The U.S. Trade Representative spokesman immediately issued a statement announcing the United States' intention to refer the "deeply flawed" decision to the WTO's Appellate Body.

The law of unintended consequences

Wired magazine on the world's biggest desalination plant, built to treat more than 35 billion gallons of cruddy, high-saline agricultural runoff per year. But the first step was to placate the Mexican farmers, whose crops were being poisoned by Colorado River water contaminated with runoff from Arizona farms. The fix: Keep the offending runoff out of the river, diverting it from the US side through a 53-mile canal into the Mexican desert. This took care of Mexico's complaints and ended up giving the country a free nature preserve - a wetland habitat now championed by environmental activists.

Technology doesn't make you less stupid...

...it just makes you stupid faster. In How Technology Failed in Iraq, the November issue of MIT's Technology Review recounts how even against a conventional enemy, the info wasn't getting to the people on the ground.

Google your desktop

Hot on the heels of Copernic Desktop Search, Google has launched its free Google Desktop Search beta.

Let's run this up the flagpole and see who salutes

A classic (old) piece about jargon with a translation of Chapter One of Genesis that'll bring tears to your eyes.

Translators and national security

An article in the New York Times suggests the FBI is still underperforming in its translation project management... And there's worse! See fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds denouncing incompetence and corruption at the agency on CBS's 60 minutes. Then compare and contrast with the case of Katherine Gun, the GCHQ whistleblower whose anti-war leanings got the better of her non-disclosure obligations.

Are the terrorists failing?

Looking at the gruesome images of beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq, it's easy to think that the Islamic holy warriors are winning. But a new book by a distinguished French Arabist named Gilles Kepel argues the opposite case.

In praise of attrition

Tired of trite analysis of war in an election cycle? Ralph Peters' study in intellectual machoism from the illustrious US Army War College Quarterly is a refreshingly good read. Even includes a dig at defence contractors and their "endless blather about network-centric warfare..."

Jargon and why we outsiders love to hate it

Here's a discussion published in the ITI Bulletin about business jargon and how to deal with it in translation. I was actually looking for Chris Durban's Onionskin, but ITI and ATA seem to be keeping tabs on their copyright. If memory serves, NY agency Accurapid used to publish Onionskin in their Translation Journal, but no more... Check out the journal anyway, it's full of good stuff. Including a new experimental blog that has the potential to grow into (yet another) translator forum...

Detect. Decide. Shoot. Survive.

The online version of the Journal of Electronic Defense was replaced in June 2004 by eDefense. Membership seems to be free. Short article about French naval NCW quotes Valéry Rousset of Thales on the dangers of the OODA loop becoming Observe, Overreact, Destroy, Apologise...

dtSearch meets its match?

The free version of Copernic Desktop Search will be joined later by paid versions with extra features. Thanks to Woody's Office Watch for this latest nugget! It constantly updates the index when your PC is idle, but the output window is less usable than the excellent and more customisable dtSearch, especially with pdfs.

Lots happening in Google's space too, with new stuff from Amazon, Ask Jeeves and others, according to the BBC.

Don't rely on translators!

A nice piece about cross-cultural marketing foul-ups. Probably worth subscribing to Business 2.0 to read the whole article - only $6.99 for a whole year!

Capitalising the internet

Do you put an initial capital letter on Internet? Wired magazine has changed its policy on what may seem a fussy, not to say pedantic, question. Update from worldwidewords

State lottery monopolies fight back

Welcome to the World Lottery Association

The making of an X Box warrior

Video games and new recruits to the military. Dual-use technology enters a new age.

Translation - getting it right

For non-linguists, buying in translation is often a source of frustration. The suggestions in this guide to buying translations are aimed at reducing stress. Disponible également en français.

Sad but true

Sept. 11 has triggered a wave of increasingly interesting articles on language skills. Paris-based Claire Berlinski wrote this in The Weekly Standard.