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MAR 2016
Western Europe
Medley of European localization issues
The refugee crisis
Dubbing localization in Europe
multilingual.com
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Pos t Ed i t i n g
Volume 27 Issue 2 March 2016
Editor-in-Chief, Publisher: Donna Parrish
Managing Editor: Katie Botkin
Proofreaders: Bonnie Hagan, Bernie Nova
News: Kendra Gray
It’s official: we’ve revamped ourselves. We Production: Darlene Dibble, Doug Jones
rebranded our website and our magazine and here Cover Photo: Doug Jones
you are, staring at the final product. So thank you. Technical Analyst: Curtis Booker
Assistants: Shannon Abromeit, Chelsea Nova
Thank you for taking the time to stare; we couldn’t Circulation: Terri Jadick
do it without you. Special Projects: Bernie Nova
I’m happy to be able to say honestly that we’re Marketing Coordinator: Marjolein Groot Nibbelink
starting things on a strong note, with a 76-page Advertising Director: Jennifer Del Carlo
Advertising: Kevin Watson
issue crammed with good stuff. This issue focuses
Finance: Leah Thoreson
on Western Europe, a region long stable as the Editorial Board:
bread-and-butter of localization, which is now Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino, David Filip,
experiencing upheavals due to the refugee crisis. Aki Ito, Nataly Kelly, Ultan Ó Broin, Jost Zetzsche
Thomas Gilmartin writes a well-researched, neutral
overview of how the crisis is affecting various Advertising
countries in Europe, and Lali Foster of Translators advertising@multilingual.com
without Borders provides a sidebar on the multilingual.com/advertising
208-263-8178
immediate and continuing linguistic challenges of
arriving refugees. Subscriptions, back issues, customer service
On the business side of things, we cover a variety subscriptions@multilingual.com
of up-and-coming European localization issues, multilingual.com/subscription-information
including the challenge of app localization into
Submissions, letters
Arabic. We have articles on different Western
editor@multilingual.com
European dubbing practices; choosing a primary Editorial guidelines are available at
non-English language for translation; terminology multilingual.com/editorial-guidelines
in Europe; and more.
We’ve kept our columnists over the course of Reprints
reprints@multilingual.com
our redesign — in this issue, Kate Edwards even
celebrates ten years writing columns for us. We’ve MultiLingual Computing, Inc.
expanded our departments, and for Emerging 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2
Markets, Manuela Noske shares her expertise on Sandpoint, Idaho 83864-1495 USA
localization for Sub-Saharan Africa.
info@multilingual.com
There’s more, of course, but I’ll let you explore some
multilingual.com
of it on your own. It’s often said in our industry that we
© MultiLingual Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission
need to adapt and update to survive the era of tech- is prohibited. For reprints and eprints, please email
reprints@multilingual.com or call 208-263-8178.
heavy global expansion, and that is true — but there’s MultiLingual (ISSN 1523-0309), March 2016, is published monthly except,
Apr-May, Jul-Aug, Oct-Nov for US $58, international $85 per year by
also a current hunger for the classic and the artisan MultiLingual Computing, Inc., 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, ID
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March 2016 3
C o n te n t s
Industry Focus:
Western Europe
28 35 38 45 51
Medley of Standards, The refugee Dubbing Vive la
European terminology crisis localization différence
localization and Europe Thomas Gilmartin in Europe Ben Whittacker-Cook
issues Luigi Muzii & Jacques Barreau
Isabella Massardo
Chris Exton, 44 sidebar 53 sidebar
Saúl Ruiz Calleja, On-the-ground Growth and
Tabea De Wille, challenges compression in
Dorota Pawlak,
Maria Pilar Cabezón, Lali Foster translation
Reinhard Schäler pricing
& Jim Buckley Stephen
Henderson
Emerging
Markets Translation
56 60
Multilingualism Finding a
and language place for SEO
choice in in translation
Sub-Saharan Oleg Semerikov
Africa
Manuela Noske
44
This issue’s cover is from the Amsterdam Museum (formerly
Amsterdam Historisch Museum) showing a printing block
display and official certificates in old Dutch language.
4 March 2016
Con ten t s
51
Resource Directory
Up Front The 2016 Resource Directory &
Index 2015 is online now and
offers:
3 Post Editing • A complete MultiLingual
editorial index with live links to
articles cited
7 multilingual.com • A list of over 600 resources
• A comprehensive glossary
• Editorials for the new year
News Columns Download the new edition at
multilingual.com/resource-directory.
8 Recaps 19 Community Lives Share the link with others!
10 News by Jeannette Stewart
14 Calendar 22 Localization Write for us!
Business School
by Andrew Lawless Like our new magazine design?
Does it inspire you to write for
25 Off the Map MultiLingual? We are always looking
by Kate Edwards for ideas that can be turned into
interesting, company-neutral articles.
73 Takeaway So, if you have an idea, please tell
by Adam Jacot de Boinod us about it: send an email query to
editor@multilingual.com.
8 64 Buyer’s Guide
MultiLingual in digital form
71 Advertiser Index
Beginning with January 2006 all
16 Review issues are available online to current
subscribers. This means 92 issues
Lingo: Around are there waiting for you at
Europe in Sixty dig.multilingual.com! With a year-
Languages end editorial index and the
cross-issue search, information can
by Katie Botkin
be quickly found.
March 2016 5
The world’s #1 Localization Conference & Exhibition Series
Engaging Global Customers
Tokyo
April 13-15, 2016
Keio Plaza Hotel
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Welcome to the redesigned MultiLingual! Our mission is to provide the language
industry with valuable, objective, enlightening information and we want this new design
— and our new logo — to reflect that. We want to show that while we are definitely in the present
moment, we have been around for quite some time. How long? The first issues were software and
services catalogs in 1988.
Our subscribers hail from more than 80 countries.
Here’s MultiLingual Our newly redesigned
by the numbers: website offers:
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Technical how-to top- acronym term list
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The MultiLingual team gets a kick out of looking at the walls of issue • Events
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multilingual Chinese” • Blogos
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such as “Localization in the era of disintermediation.” mobile device. And don’t forget that as a subscriber
Other subjects such as project management have to MultiLingual, you have access to all the digital
endured. archives from January 2006 onward.
March 2016 7
Re cap s
TriKonf focuses on staying competitive
TriKonf 2015 started with quotes could implement straight away upon
gathered by Stefan Gentz for his returning to work.
opening presentation “The transla- On October 9, Marek Pawelec,
tion industry has already lost 99% of Sameh Ragab and John Di Rico gave
their market opportunity to Google workshops on regular expressions,
and Microsoft.” In order to survive productivity tools and Wordfast Pro 4.
and to stay competitive, Gentz stated,
we need to adapt and be more pro-
ductive. This was the purpose of the
conference, which was held from
October 9-11, 2015, in Freiburg im
Breisgau, Germany.
TriKonf 2015 was a small event
with 110 to 120 attendees from 19
countries — mostly freelance trans-
lators, but also a few translation
agencies. It featured three tracks, in
German, in French and in English.
After TriKonf 2013, which focused On October 10 and 11, Paul Filkin, ogy extraction tools, technical tricks,
on professionalism and interoperabil- Michael Farrell, Dominique Pivard, utilities and more. Ralf Lemster
ity, it was time to talk about more con- Anne Murray, Christian Alkemper, shared his experience with machine
crete subjects. This year’s conference Dorota Pawlak and many others translation, while Jerzy Czopik and
motto: was “Tuning the machine” and talked about tools such as IntelliWeb- Renate Dockhorn focused on quality
the aim was to help the participants Search, dtSearch, Sketch Engine or assessment.
become more productive, deliver speech recognition programs. They TriKonf 2015 was also an opportu-
better quality and earn more. How? showcased how to use software, nity for networking, particularly during
By giving them practical, hands-on macros, computer-aided translation the conference dinner at the gorgeous
information, solutions and tips they tools, mobile applications, terminol- Schlossbergrestaurant Dattler.
AILIA is proud to announce its 2016 Conference in Montréal
at the top of the beautiful Montreal “Olympic Park” Tower.
Innovative approaches, trends, challenges, promotional strategies, new technologies, commercialization,
and so much more! Don’t miss the opportunity to network with peers and leading industry experts.
Visit www.ailia.ca/events for more details.
8 March 2016
Recaps
Featured Reader own website, taken online courses
from the MSc in Multilingual
Amlaku B. Eshetie, Computing and Localisation at the
founder and CEO of KHAABBA University of Limerick program
International Training and and grown in experience.
Language Services.
Which languages do you speak?
Where do you live? Amharic: native speaker; English,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. fluent speaker. My French is good
and I have basic reading and listen-
How did you get started in this ing skills in Tigrigna and Geez.
industry?
I was trained as an English lan- Whose industry social feeds (twit-
guage teacher both at undergrad ter, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook) do
and postgrad levels. However, you follow?
after teaching for over a decade, I I do have a large number of con-
started to be gradually attracted nections at LinkedIn and often give my work by scrolling through
to translation after I accomplished it a glance at a minimum of once a my social media pages (Linke-
translation requests from friends day. As a full-time translator, I do dIn and Facebook) as well as
and colleagues. Later I started to not have much time to read long listening to selected TEDtalks
search for translation jobs on the posts and can’t say I follow X or Y and other videos on the inter-
web, created profiles at different specifically. Yet I do appreciate two net, and other times by playing
translation directories such as outstanding women who are in my with my family.
TranslatorsCafé.com, ProZ.com connections in particular: Suzanne
and TranslationDirectory.com. I Deliscar, a lawyer linguist, and Why do you read MultiLingual?
took my first translation test with Dana Paradovschi, who also has a MultiLingual is my main refer-
a translation agency called Af- language teaching background. ence for translation and local-
rolingo and their reviewer found ization information next to the
my translation to be “profes- What do you like to do in your Internet. It also is a good source
sional” level. Now I have become spare time? of news about events and people
available on the web, built my I just take breaks away from in the industry.
First Croatian Translation Forum held
The first Croatian Transla- perspectives of the translation
tion Forum was held in Zagreb on industry in the region on several
November 5, 2015, and was attended different levels, ranging from lin-
by around 100 language industry pro- guistic and strictly professional
fessionals including representatives aspects to its impact on society on
of translation companies, software a wider scale.
developers, translators and linguis- In the context of Croatia and its
tics teachers and other professionals neighboring countries, the forum
involved in the language industry was an icebreaker intended to set the
from Croatia and other countries of standards for similar events to come
Southeast Europe. into the region.
The forum was the first event of The speakers were top industry sentation on the future of the indus-
its kind held in Croatia and it man- professionals from all over Europe try on the top level, concluding that
aged to showcase the development, and keynote speaker Stefan Gentz “the future is now” and that “we are
the current state and the desired gave an entertaining and deep pre- the ones we have been waiting for.”
March 2016 9
N ews
New website for ICD Translation
Business ICD Translation, a provider of language services featur-
ing a cloud-based translation management system, has
Sure Languages launches new website launched a new website.
Sure Languages, a UK-based provider of translation, ICD Translation www.icdtranslation.com
interpreting and voiceover services in over 100 languages,
has launched a new website. Telelingua opens London office
Sure Languages www.sure-languages.com Telelingua International, a provider of language services,
has opened an office in London, UK, led by managing di-
CyraCom opens Tampa center rector Richard Loyer.
CyraCom International, a provider of phone and video Telelingua International www.telelingua.com
language interpretation services, has opened an inter-
preter contact center in Tampa, Florida.
CyraCom International www.cyracom.com
Resources
Exploring the translation data landscape
New website for GALA TAUS, the translation innovation think tank and plat-
The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), form for industry-shared services, has updated its 2013
a trade association for the language industry, has launched “Translation Technology Landscape Report.” The new
its new website. The association’s mission is to support report attempts to describe the current state of affairs in
its members and the language industry by creating com- the way translation data is used and to identify the oppor-
munities, championing standards, sharing knowledge and tunities and challenges for the next several years in terms
advancing technology. of a data marketplace.
Globalization and Localization Association www.gala-global.org TAUS http://taus.net
TransPerfect opens new offices New written corpora available
TransPerfect, a provider of global business services, has The European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
opened two new offices in the US. The opening of a Pitts- has added two new written corpora to its catalogue. The
burgh office is the company’s third location in the state of Arboretum treebank is a morphologically and syntactically
Pennsylvania, and the Sioux Falls office is the company’s annotated repository of Danish sentences, and provides
first in South Dakota. named entity categories for all proper nouns. ROCO is a
TransPerfect www.transperfect.com Romanian journalistic corpus containing proper names,
10 March 2016News
numerals and named entities. market research firm specializing in the language service
European Language Resources Association www.elra.info industry, has added Arle Lommel to its team as a senior
analyst.
People Common Sense Advisory, Inc. www.commonsenseadvisory.com
■■ Telelingua France SAS, a branch office of Telelingua
Recent industry hires International and provider of language services for the
■■ TOIN Corporation, a provider of language services, manufacturing, life science and software industries, has
has restructured and named Atsuhisa Kataoka as chief hired Jean Mandron as managing director.
operating officer. Ken Inoue has been hired as director of Telelingua International www.telelingua.com
global production for translation and localization. ■■ KantanMT, a cloud-based statistical machine trans-
TOIN Corporation www.to-in.com lation solutions provider, has hired Carlos Collantes as
■■ Lexcelera, a provider of language services, has hired machine translation project coordinator.
Denis Martin to manage international business develop- KantanMT http://kantanmt.com
ment from the company’s Paris office. ■■ Asia Online Pte Ltd., a developer of automated trans-
Lexcelera www.lexcelera.com lation technology, has hired Andrew Rufener as its new
■■ Arancho Doc S.r.l., providers of translation of techni- chief executive officer (CEO). Former CEO Dion Wiggins
cal documentation for the manufacturing, life science, IT, has assumed the roll of chief technology officer.
transport and retail sectors, has hired Danilo Monaco as Asia Online Pte Ltd. www.asiaonline.net
chief executive officer. ■■ ZOO Digital Group, a provider of localization and
Arancho Doc S.r.l. www.aranchodoc.com media production services for the entertainment industry,
■■ Common Sense Advisory, Inc., an independent has hired Syed Ahmed as part of its international business
Translations for the Life Sciences,
Medical, IT and Technology Sectors
Translation & Localization
Layout, Graphics & DTP
Software Engineering
Multimedia Localization
Subscribe to
MultiLingual News at
multilingual.com/newsletter
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to more than 6,500 opt-in
subscribers 18 times a year, and Certified under ISO 17100:2015
features the latest news and www.adapt-localization.com
events for the language industry.
Bonn | Barcelona | Stockholm | Copenhagen
March 2016 11N ews
development team. Update to Web Editor,
ZOO Digital Group www.zoodigital.com Memsource Cloud 5.3
Memsource, a developer of cloud translation software,
Products and Services has introduced a layout preview feature for translated
Adobe InDesign files in Memsource Web Editor. The pre-
SDL Web 8 view feature is available from a new menu option in the
SDL, a provider of global customer experience man- web editor.
agement, has updated SDL Web, its digital experience Memsource has also released Memsource Cloud 5.3.
solution. The latest version, built from the roots of the The latest version includes a new business analytics mod-
company’s web content management platform, Tridion, ule and customizable interactive charts.
includes experience optimization, digital media man- Memsource www.memsource.com
agement and localization capabilities in an integrated
platform. Plunet BusinessManager 6.3
SDL www.sdl.com Plunet GmbH, a provider of business management soft-
ware for translation services and agencies, has released
Language Terminal Plunet BusinessManager 6.3. Design updates center
Kilgray Translation Technologies, a developer of trans- around enhanced user experience and a focus on automa-
lation productivity tools, has released an updated version tion and customer collaboration.
of Language Terminal. The new version features a func- Plunet GmbH www.plunet.com
tionality where a translator can track jobs and manage
quotes. KantanMT XLIFF version 2.0 compatible,
Kilgray Translation Technologies www.kilgray.com prebuilt engines for legal domain
KantanMT, a cloud-based statistical machine transla-
Globalyzer 5 tion solutions provider, has announced its compatibility
Lingoport, Inc., a provider of software international- with the XML Localization Interchange File Format
ization tools and services, has delivered Globalyzer 5. (XLIFF) version 2.0 standard.
Updates include new string concatenation-specific detec- KantanMT has also created several rebuilt statisti-
tion and enhancements to reduce false positives and ease cal machine translation engines specializing in the legal
enterprise deployment within developer environments. domain.
Lingoport, Inc. www.lingoport.com KantanMT http://kantanmt.com
12 March 2016News
PASSPORT
ICD Translation, a provider of language services featur-
ing a cloud-based translation management system, has in-
Announcements
troduced PASSPORT, a translation proxy service intended Tradnologies celebrates ten years
to work with any website and content management system. Tradnologies, a provider of technical translation and soft-
ICD Translation www.icdtranslation.com ware localization, is celebrating its tenth year in business.
Tradnologies www.tradnologies.com
Clients and Partners Annual language services
Plunet supports memoQ 2015 and technology market survey
and SDL Trados Studio 2015 Common Sense Advisory, Inc., has issued a call for par-
Plunet GmbH, a provider of business management ticipation in its annual global language services and tech-
software for translation services and agencies, has added nology market survey for language service providers and
support for Kilgray’s memoQ 2015 and SDL Trados Studio technology vendors only. Participation deadline is March
2015 for clients with Plunet version 6.2 or higher. In addi- 31, 2016.
tion, the integration provides the ability to define a CAT Common Sense Advisory, Inc. www.commonsenseadvisory.com
project template as a standard template.
Plunet GmbH, www.plunet.com
Kilgray Translation Technologies www.kilgray.com
Certifications
SDL www.sdl.com ■■ TOIN Corporation, a provider of language services,
has achieved ISO 17100 certification.
Verztec selected by Go Global initiative TOIN Corporation www.to-in.com
Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd., a provider of multilingual ■■ Translavic BV, a translation service provider special-
communication services, has been selected as the transla- izing in Eastern European languages, has achieved ISO
tion partner for the Go Global initiative. Jointly supported 17100 certification.
by government agencies SPRING Singapore and Inter- Translavic BV www.translavic.eu
national Enterprise Singapore, the initiative aims to help ■■ Moravia IT, LLC, a globalization solutions provider
small and medium-sized enterprises expand into overseas focused primarily in the IT and life science industry sec-
markets. tors, has achieved ISO 17100 certification.
Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd. www.verztec.com Moravia IT, LLC www.moravia.com
March 2016 13C al e n d ar
Game Developers Conference
March March 14-18, 2016, San Francisco, California USA
UBM Tech Game Network, www.gdconf.com
Languaging Diversity 2016
March 3-5, 2016, Macerata, Italy LATA 2016
University of Macerata March 14-18, 2016, Prague, Czech Republic
http://studiumanistici.unimc.it/en/research/conferences/languaging-diversity Czech Technical University in Prague, Research Group on
Mathematical Linguistics, http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2016
Intelligent Content Conference 2016
March 7-9, 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada USA TAUS Roundtable
Content Marketing Institute, www.intelligentcontentconference.com March 15, 2016, Vienna, Austria
TAUS, https://events.taus.net/events/
The Translation and Localization Conference conferences/taus-roundtable-2016-vienna
March 11-12, 2016, Warsaw, Poland
Localize.pl, TexteM, www.translation-conference.com Unicode workshop
March 17, 2016, San Jose, California USA
CHIA 16th Annual Education Conference International Multilingual User Group
March 11-12, 2016, Long Beach, California USA www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/events/221901760
California Healthcare Interpreting Association
www.chiaonline.org/2016-Annual-Educational-Conference GALA 2016
March 20-23, 2016, New York, New York USA
Interpreter and Translators Congress GALA, www.gala-global.org/conference
March 11-12, 2016, Hilversum, Netherlands
Joint Initiative, www.tenvcongres.nl/en think! Interpreting
March 20-23, 2016, New York, New York USA
Game Jams, Hackathons and GALA, InterpretAmerica
Game Creation Events www.interpretamerica.com/thinkinterpreting2016-0
March 13, 2016, Berkeley, California USA
Global Game Jam, Inc., www.gameconf.org
www.star-group.net Want more industry-
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14 March 2016Calendar
Seventh Annual International AILIA Annual Conference
Translation Conference April 21-22, 2016, Montreal, Canada
March 28-29, 2016, Doha, Qatar AILIA Language Industry Association, www.ailia.ca/Events
Translation and Interpreting Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University
www.tii.qa/en/seventh-annual-international-translation-conference-2016 2016 Annual CTA Conference
April 22-24, 2016, Boulder, Colorado USA
ATISA VIII Colorado Translators Association
March 31-April 2, 2016, Monterey, California USA https://cta-web.org/2016-annual-cta-conference
American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association
www.atisa.org/conferences TAUS Executive Forum Beijing 2016
April 25-26, 2016, Beijing, China
April TAUS, https://events.taus.net/events/forums/taus-executive-forum-beijing-2016
International Conference on Interpretation Wordfast User Conference
April 3-7, 2016, Wellington, New Zealand April 28-30, 2016, Nice, France
National Association for Interpretation, http://bit.ly/1Ly1HyF Wordfast, http://wordfast.com/conference
MENA Games Conference & Exhibition 2016 International Medical
April 7-8, 2016, Beirut, Lebanon Interpreters Conference
IFP Group, www.menagames.com April 29-May 1, 2016, Boston, Massachusetts USA
International Medical Interpreters Association
MadWorld 2016 www.imiaweb.org/conferences/2016conference.asp
April 10-12, 2016, San Diego, California USA
MadCap Software, Inc., www.madcapsoftware.com/events/madworld
May
LocWorld30 Tokyo Theories & Realities in
April 13-15, 2016, Tokyo, Japan Translation & wRiting Forum
Localization World, Ltd., www.locworld.com May 5-6, 2016, Naples, Italy
Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, www.unisob.na.it/ateneo/d007.htm
bp16: business + practice
April 15-16, 2016, Prague, Czech Republic TAUS Roundtable
Csaba Bán, http://bp16conf.com May 12, 2016, Barcelona, Spain
TAUS, https://events.taus.net/events/conferences/taus-roundtable-2016-barcelona
TAUS Industry Leader’s Forum
April 19-20, 2016, Tokyo, Japan Technical Communication Summit 2016
TAUS, https://events.taus.net/events/forums/ May 15-18, 2016, Anaheim, California USA
taus-executive-forum-tokyo-2016 Society for Technical Communication, http://summit.stc.org
Serge: Open-Source Localization Speech Translation Technology
Platform from Evernote May 19, 2016, San Jose, California USA
April 21, 2016, Mountain View, California USA International Multilingual User Group
International Multilingual User Group www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/events/223987827
www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/events/223877017
Annual SFÖ Conference
ND Focus – May 20-22, 2016, Umeå, Sweden
Elia’s networking days for Executives Swedish Association of Professional Translators
April 21-22, 2016, Mallorca, Spain www.sfoe.se/eng/pages/future_conferences.aspx
Elia (European Language Industry Association), www.elia-ndfocus.org
LREC 2016
11th EUATC International Conference May 23-28, 2016, Portorož, Slovenia
April 21-22, 2016, Budapest, Hungary The European Language Resources Association, http://lrec2016.lrec-conf.org
European Union of Associations of Translation Companies, www.euatc.org/conference
March 2016 15Rev i ew
Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages
Fascinating read for those with the
right level of linguistic interest
Katie Botkin
Katie Botkin is a freelance writer and the managing
editor of MultiLingual. She has a master’s degree in
English with an emphasis on linguistics and has taught
English on three continents.
Polyglot and language journalist Gaston Dorren has created
an anecdotal crash course on European linguistics with his
book Lingo. Covering the idiosyncrasies of 50-plus languages,
from the spelling of Scots Gaelic to the counting conventions
of Breton, Dorren weaves tales of conquest, social mores and
isolating landscapes with remarkable ease.
This current edition of Lingo has been updated from the one pub-
lished in 2014 under a slightly different name — Lingo: A Language-
Info: Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty
Spotter’s Guide to Europe, which critics said was something of a Languages by Gaston Dorren. Grove
misnomer, given that there were only a few instances where Dorren Atlantic, December 2015. Hardcover, $22.50.
explained how to spot linguistic differences by sight. Around Europe
in Sixty Languages seems like a more accurate subtitle. The new
edition, currently out with the UK in mind and with a US edition
planned soon, contains small but important textual changes, accord- fueled phonetic discussion that arises (yes,
ing to the book’s editor Peter Blackstock. these actually exist).
Dorren explains historical context such as the fracturing of Latin One such anecdote, for example: researcher
with the fall of the Roman Empire, and the pasting-together again to Francois Pellegrino and his colleagues discov-
make a unified French, for example. Icelandic is an interesting case — ered in 2011 that “Spaniards utter an average
thanks in large part to its isolated geography, its devotion to literacy of 7.82 syllables per second, as against 6.17
and its limited but social population, Icelandic is the only language for English speakers and 5.97 for Germans;
of the bunch to have preserved itself relatively unchanged since the automatic weapons like Uzis and Kalash-
time of the Icelandic sagas in the twelfth century. Languages such nikovs fire about 10 rounds per second.”
as Yiddish emerged from a different sort of history — one of dis- Linguistic stereotypers everywhere, rejoice.
placement and persecution, Hebrew and Aramaic words mixed with However, there’s a twist: Spanish syllables are
Germanic roots along with Slavic and Romance vocabulary. shorter, on average just over two sounds —
The book is not terribly in-depth, providing snapshots of places or phonemes — long. When you’re looking
and languages instead. For people with the right level of interest in at language speed by the amount of sounds
language, Lingo is fascinating. Serious linguists may find the book pronounced rather than the syllables, “Ger-
too basic, unless, of course, they’ve lost track of 40 or so of the lan- man, English and Spanish speakers alike all
guages they studied briefly in school a decade ago — or if they want pronounce between 16 and 17 phonemes per
some short, semi-amusing anecdotes to regale their friends with second — the Spaniards even a fraction less
at the next orthographically-themed party conversation or booze- than the other two.”
16 March 2016Review
(and farther) as far as linguists can
approximate it. There are ten descen-
dants of Indo-European that cur-
rently exist, and all of these linguistic
subfamilies still exist within Europe:
Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic,
Baltic (Latvian and Lithuanian), Hel-
lenic (or Greek, since Modern Greek
is the only surviving language of this
branch), Thracian (now represented
solely by Armenian), Illyric (now rep-
resented solely by Albanian), Iranian
(Ossetian, a descendant of Ancient
Persian, is found in the Caucasus
mountains) and Indic (Romani is
spoken by Roma people throughout
Europe).
Then there is Basque, the lan-
guage isolate of unknown origins.
“In the last few centuries,” notes
Dorren, the liquid flood of Indo-
European languages “have engulfed
most of the globe, and now half the
world speaks an Indo-European lan-
guage: English, Spanish, Portuguese,
French, the list goes on.” Basque,
however, is “a mountain rising above
the waters, standing all alone in a sea
of Indo-European,” unmoved despite
surrounding conquests and changes
to language. Not, of course, entirely
unmoved, and there is still some
Figure 1: Sami, a minority Finno-Urgic language native to Arctic areas within
minor debate among linguists as
Northern Europe, has a plethora of words for snow, as showcased in this table in to whether or not Basque emerged
the chapter on Sami. from a language family predating
Indo-European. But, again, this is
To get an idea of how this works, By the way, you will not find this not a book meant to cover such top-
compare the spoken sound of the explanation in the book, and, in fact, ics exhaustively — a good approxi-
French loan word ratatouille (ra- if you’ve never heard of a phoneme, mation of generally-accepted theory
ta-tu-e, four syllables, seven pho- you’re going to be a bit lost in the will do.
nemes) to Swedish loan smorgasbord chapter on Spanish. Dorren’s ideal To more fully describe the linguis-
(smorg-hs-bord, three syllables, reader is the kind of person with tic landscape, Dorren covers endan-
eleven phonemes — for lack of more some knowledge of linguistics, but gered languages such as Manx, a dead
exact spelling, the h here represents not so much that they’ve already one (Dalmatian) and an invented one
the schwa, a blurred, unstressed studied up on it exhaustively. (Esperanto). The chapter on English
catch-all vowel common in English). To tie all his subjects together, is called “The global headache,” and
You can say ratatouille in a way that Dorren describes the common roots it lays out the various difficulties of
sounds much faster and more like a of European languages, explain- this language, the foremost being its
machine gun, but obviously, if you’re ing that of all modern languages, plethora of vowels. There are 20 for
counting the phonemes your mouth Lithuanian probably comes closest British speakers of English; this num-
can physically get out in a given time to Proto-Indo-European, the com- ber may dwindle slightly depending
period, smorgasbord is the winner. mon ancestor of an entire continent on exactly where in the world you
March 2016 17Rev i ew
hail from — compare this with some varieties of Spanish, which con-
tains only five vowels.
Partly due to this excess, English “words on the page
reveal little about what they are going to sound like.”
With 20 distinct vowel sounds and only five vowel
letters, a, e, i, o and u, you begin to see the prob-
lem. Additionally, and just to begin with, English
has absorbed the orthography of various loan
words and anglified them. Most English speak-
ers could not begin to tell you why “laugh” is not
pronounced lag, but laf, or why “motion” is not
pronounced motyon, but moshun. Then there is
English grammar — mercifully sparse in terms of
gender, case and inflection, which second-language
learners struggle with, but rife with exceptions
and small peculiarities.
From Yiddish to Romani to English, the book
is entertaining. Now, if only I can remember all
these anecdotes for my next party. [M]
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18 March 2016Colum n
Community Lives
PanLex
A database for extreme localization
Jeannette Stewart
Jeannette Stewart is the former CEO of
CommuniCare, a translation company for
life sciences. An advocate for the language
industry, she founded Translation Commons,
a nonprofit online platform facilitating
community collaboration.
Every translator knows that languages tend to surpass com- the translator of well-documented
plexity and wander into the wilder terrain of the complicated. If languages such as German and
languages conformed to the rules of statement logic, then trans- Spanish, PanLex is yet another
lation would be a snap. Grammar, spelling and meaning would resource documenting semantic
not present the difficulties that all language professionals must equivalence of expressions but does
struggle to master. If such logic exists, it’s very coy about uncov- not document in much detail the
ering itself. Instead, we all must grapple with tasks of rendering conditions qualifying such equiva-
lence. The “extreme localization”
source languages accurately in target languages within cultural
that PanLex supports is extreme in
context. Add the power of intelligent computing along with the how many languages it supports.
multilingual mix of today’s globalized culture and the challenges If we look at the translation
multiply. At the heart of this rich mix of linguistics, technology process through the eyes of a
and applied science, PanLex is rising to these challenges with the database designer, it could be seen as
startling ambition, in their own words, of harnessing the power reducing a one-to-many relationship
of “extreme localization.” to a one-to-one relationship. When
translators work on a text, they
PanLex is undertaking an ambitious project with a vision to enable exercise highly-educated choices
“panlingual globalization” by providing a database of “expressions” in rendering the source into the
in the form of word groups for all the world’s languages. The concur- target. One source lexeme; one
rent availability of an equivalent word or expression in all languages target lexeme. What PanLex offers
subtly shifts the focus of translation from process to a state of parallel is the more dynamic relationship
existence. In the words of PanLex’s vision statement, “any language is of any-to-any, allowing lexemes in
translatable into any other language.” According to their theory, this is different languages to form a sym-
achievable in the globe’s 7,000 languages using “pairs of expressions” of metrical relationship, which cleverly
which their database is already in excess of one billion and growing. accommodates variety. In itself, this
This monumental task clearly requires scrupulous organization and is a powerful translating apparatus.
control. First, existing data, lexemes — words and phrases — are acquired However, this can be taken a step
for each language, using a variety of sources such as dictionaries, glossa- further by allowing inferences to
ries, thesauri and so on. But the origins of this data are kept and acknowl- be made for missing translations, a
edged, and the resulting content is gathered in their database. Essentially necessary facility when organizing
these are collections of vocabulary without syntax. So where does extreme vast amounts of data. As PanLex cal-
localization come in? What is distinctive about PanLex is its coverage. For culates it, 7,000 source languages x
March 2016 19Column
100,000 words in each x 7,000 target
languages = 5 trillion translations.
At the sharp end of the translation
stick, a translator works first and
foremost by processing data. But
what data process should be used?
PanLex uses lemmatization. Thanks
to computational linguistics and the
advent of search engines such as
Google, the process of lemmatization
as opposed to stemming has become
the object of serious and productive
work. Whereas stemming uses
heuristics, rules of thumb, to reduce Figure 1: Minority languages exist in every corner of the globe.
the number of inflectional forms of
words with similar meanings (democ- the assets of his then business Center- The Turing Center, under the
racy, democratic, democratization), plex in the form of land and build- directorship of artificial-intelligence
lemmatization seeks to use the base, ings. Centerplex, established in 1990, pioneer Oren Etzioni, has under-
dictionary or reference form of a word. was an innovative company offering taken many research endeavors,
Lemmatization is a more rigorous its building space for rental to small all of which can be reviewed in
approach to morphological analysis, local businesses and providing them their numerous publications. The
and hence PanLex manages to achieve with all the latest technology and center’s research produced a lexical
broader language coverage than other tenant-friendly terms. When the real database, TransGraph, designed
related database projects. Lemmatic estate industry changed drastically to support panlingual translation
data tends to be available for more to make Centerplex’s model difficult and a more powerful extension,
languages than data on inflectional to sustain, Pool decided to move on PanDictionary, based on intelligent
paradigms, enabling PanLex’s database and put all his energy into material- automated inference. Another
of lemmatic expressions grouped by izing an even more ambitious vision, successful project was PanImages,
meaning to cover the largest possible “universal interactivity.” Pool was now defunct, which allowed users
set of languages. The PanLex project joined in the Foundation by a few to input online search arguments
focuses on procuring and maintaining more like-minded people, namely for images in their native language.
data, a monumental task in itself. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics However, instead of restricting
Access to researchers and developers at the University of Washington, searches to images labeled in that
is live through an API and through as well as Christine Evans and language, PanImages translated
monthly-generated snapshots. William D. Lewis, also affiliated them and returned results for images
The project started in 2004 and with the University of Washington. labeled in other languages too. The
through the years had different houses Together they sought to advance potential power these projects may
and objectives before it morphed to communication and collaboration give users to enjoy the riches of
its current status with the Long Now among diverse human and artificial our vast web-life speaks for itself.
Foundation. Through all the changes agents by means of applied research Utilika Foundation and the Turing
there was always one constant, the on languages. Pool sought various Center determined by 2009 that
man who started it all, Jonathan Pool. partners before entering into a although the research had demon-
A Harvard alumnus with a PhD in support agreement with the Turing strated the value of the project, its
political science from the University Center. The Turing Center is a multi- future was based on enlarging the
of Chicago, Pool is a successful entre- disciplinary center at the University database to cover as many languages
preneur who used his own money to of Washington established in May as possible. This new objective
support his vision of developing an 2005 with a multimillion-dollar diverged from the Turing Center’s
infrastructure for interaction between gift from the Utilika Foundation, primary research goal and Pool
all the languages in the world in order which was augmented by federal decided to search for a new partner.
to break communication barriers. research grants and contracts as Pool soon discovered The
In 2004 Pool established Utilika well as support from corporations Rosetta Project, which has a similar
Foundation and financed it by donating and other private foundations. goal, the global collaboration of
20 March 2016C olum n
language specialists and native be the repetitive but accurate “be
speakers working to build a publicly estranged, be isolated, be at a
accessible digital library of human distance, be isolated, be cut off.” The
languages. Utilika Foundation and PanLex team of editors deals with
The Long Now Foundation agreed these complexities by assigning a
to join forces, and The Long Now quality rating to all content sources
Foundation is currently the fiscal and ensuring that they meet a
sponsor of the PanLex Project. This number of criteria, such as compre-
has relieved the project of some hensiveness, tractability, availability
administrative and compliance and high quality. These criteria can
obligations as well as provided more conflict, so editors must exercise
public exposure. Utilika Foundation their own judgment. For example,
transferred its assets to The Long online sources may be tractable
Now Foundation to support the but of low quality. PanLex has
project and has since dissolved. experimented during the last few
The PanLex Project pursues years in finding the most efficient
its mission with a small team of ways of acquiring and adding new
programmer-linguists in Berkeley, data. Despite the project’s effort to
California, headed by linguist prioritize low-density languages,
David Kamholz, enhanced by select there is a large difference in lan-
volunteers around the world. These guage coverage within the database.
volunteers discover manuscripts Even with all these complexities,
and small-run publications contain- the PanLex Project and its future
ing vocabularies of little-known applications remains a vision worth
languages. When no such docu- pursuing. Pool today believes that
ments exist, volunteers elicit lists “although the available resources
of words from native speakers and may not permit the full realization
make them available to the project. of the project’s objective, a more
The project also employs summer pragmatic version of the goal is
intern students of computational to develop the size and quality of
linguistics who get training in its the database far enough to give
techniques while helping turn it undeniable value for machine
the PanLex vision into reality. translation, search engines and
In principle, the task of putting language revitalization.”
new data into the database is From localization to internation-
simple, but in practice this task is alization to globalization to universal
beset with many complications. translation, the development path that
Sourcing accurate lexical transla- the multilingual community is follow-
tions between thousands of lan- ing is dizzying. The enabling tech-
guages and dialects is a big enough nologies, methodologies and business
challenge. Designing computational applications that manage them form a
methods to make the sources multidisciplinary cluster of practices
accessible and efficient is another. that demand cross-fertilization in
For example, a source entry for the order to be productive. As we rush
Tamil word: பிரிந்துவிடு, which pell-mell into a new, networked web
makes sense to a human reader of intelligent technologies, the chal-
translated as “be estranged, divided, lenges facing us require enterprise,
at a distance, isolated, cut-off ” is zeal and colossal resolve to meet
incomplete for an automated sys- them. PanLex is a stellar example of
tem, which will mistreat the results the initiative and ambition we need
thanks to the ambiguous transla- to survive in a world of seamless,
tion. The translation should instead instant communication. [M]
21Column
Localization Business School
How terminology
makes or breaks sales
Andrew Lawless
Andrew Lawless is the president and
founder of Rockant, which focuses on
localization training and consulting. "His
goal is to inspire and prime localization
professionals for success."
typing a term into a search engine.
A debate over the words should and shall almost derailed the Forrester Research, Inc. reports that
world’s first universal climate deal in Paris in December 2015. The by 2017, 60% of all US retail sales
word shall would have legally obliged countries to cut emissions will involve the internet in some
rather than just having to try to. Should was used instead to denote way, either as a direct eCommerce
a guideline or moral obligation only. The legal mechanisms behind transaction or as part of a shopper’s
these words are significantly different. research. Buyers of both products
and services are online, connecting
If such an error can happen to some of the best paid with other buyers on social media
translators on the planet, chances are that your translated and evaluating options on their
content may pose a risk to your business as well. tablets and smartphones. As a result,
The St. Hedwig Hospital in Berlin, for example, would have modern customers are 65-90% of the
welcomed better management of terms when their surgeons way through the purchase decision
improperly transplanted artificial knees in 47 patients. Instead of process before they contact sales.
using a procedure in which the artificial joints would be cemented That’s different from ten years
with a shank or shaft, they were implanted without any cement. ago when we were dependent on a
When the doctors read the instructions for inserting the artificial sales person to show us what they
knee, the term non-modular cemented was wrongly translated as thought were our best options.
zementfrei, which means “does not need cement” in German. Surgeons Today, we have all information
put in the knees loose, and patients needed a second surgery. upfront — provided we find it
Having access to a proper translation of the term non-modular based on the terms we used in
cemented along with an example of use in an actual context could our hunt for the best product.
have prevented this expensive and painful error. The discipline of A furniture maker, for example,
keeping such information in an orderly fashion is called terminology might offer what they call an
management. It is so powerful that it even drives much of the global olive couch, but a potential buyer
economy today. And where it’s not used, companies can be liable for might be searching for a green
tremendous mistakes like those that happened at St. Hedwig Hospital. sofa instead. Successful digital
marketers, therefore, also manage
Most purchases today start with a term the words customers use in their
Whether it’s for a car, a camera or a couch, buyers do their research research in addition to keeping
first before they engage with sales — and they typically start by simply track of their own terms. They
22 March 2016Colum n
Figure 1: Terminology drives everything from authoring, content management, translation and in-country review. Copyright Rockant.
identify search terms that aren't as
relevant to their business and add
them as negative keywords. They
link terms to traffic and conversions
either in revenue or sign-ups.
Terminology is in fact today’s
most powerful sales tool. It enables
search engine optimization,
internal search within a content
management system, external
search on the content delivery
architecture, web hierarchy, tax-
onomy and keywords. Terminology
management makes content
discoverable so that a buyer can
make a purchase decision. Good
terminology management is gold.
Writers can be wrong
To work, copy text in the source
language has to be correct and
its terminology unified. That’s
surprisingly rare, as product
names often fall victim to creative
writers. Different treatments
in hyphenation, capitalization,
intercapping, spacing and use
of plural or possessive forms are
March 2016 23Column
often just the beginning. Add to The most common confusion Boosting MT
these where and how to place happened with OpenStep and If people do not know what term
company names, model and edition OPENSTEP, which were all the to use, machines are even more in
identifiers, and chaos is imminent. same as one might have guessed. trouble. Translation technology
These variations may weaken your As a result, many people just used depends on terminology more
trademark protection, and may also their personal favorite preference than warm-bodied translators who
confuse customers and sales teams. for whatever the latest release was. can ask questions and do their
The master of brand name In-country reviewers of own research. A machine needs to
confusion was, interestingly, Steve translated documents often halt be told. And while it is true that
Job’s company NeXT. While the or delay marketing campaigns some machine translation engines
company name had always been and product releases for the same learn over time, their effectiveness
spelled with a lowercase e, the reason in almost all international depends on the quality of the source
names of its products changed quite companies. They are confused texts. If your writers and translators
often, such as NextStep, NeXTstep, about the right term for a product, use inconsistent terminology, how
NeXTStep, NeXTSTEP, NEXTSTEP, technology or mechanism and tend much value will your engines have?
OpenStep, OPENSTEP, OpenStep to impose their own preference. A translation memory loses
for Solaris, OPENSTEP for If a term can potentially stop 195 its value when it stores multiple
MachOS/SPARC and OPENSTEP nations from signing a historic segments that differ only in key
for Windows. Sometimes users and document, in-country subject terms. Translation agencies do
engineers referred to "OpenStep/ matter experts can certainly stop not always manage conflicts well,
Solaris" when in fact they meant your new product introduction especially in countries with an
OPENSTEP for MachOS/SPARC. over disagreement on a name. indirect communication style.
They may store multiple ver-
sions of translated segments as
a result, and hence pollute their
database with wrong terms.
Even when they manage their
terminology correctly, who verifies
that the source term was the right
one in the first place? A vast num-
ber of terms are being extracted
and validated in translation, not
ON THE MARKET SINCE 2007 during content development. If
CUSTOMER-ORIENTED APPROACH you really want to know how big
MULTI LANGUAGE VENDOR your terminology problem is, just
WITH FOCUS ON CZECH, SLOVAK compare your translated product
AND OTHER CEE LANGUAGES
names with your international
ONE-STOP TRANSLATION
trademark registrations. Terminol-
& LOCALIZATION SERVICES
ogy management needs to drive
PROOFREADING & IN-COUNTRY
REVIEW authoring, content management,
INDIVIDUAL TERMINOLOGY in-country review and translation
MANAGEMENT either by humans or machines.
POST-EDITING So, when you roll out a
MULTIMEDIA & VOICEOVER marketing strategy for entering a
new geography, make sure your
content can be found, has financial
impact and is legally sound. If
EN 15038 and ISO 9001 CERTIFIED you need to make one investment
in global digital marketing, do
Czech Republic | Slovak Republic
it in terminology first — before
www.lexman.biz | localization@lexman.biz
you dream of savings from using
translation technology. [M]
24 March 2016You can also read
