2ND INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY

KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Faculty of Arts – Campus Sint-Andries, Antwerp

4-8 September 2017

 

From the 4th until the 8th of September 2017, University of Leuven (KU Leuven) organises the 2nd International Translation Technology Summer School for language professionals who are looking for a practice-oriented and state-of-the-art introduction to translation and localisation processes, issues and tools.

In the last decades, technology has become an absolute necessity in meeting the global translation and communication needs. To increase their employability, the professionals selling translation services need to become tech-savvy and digital literate. The market offers a myriad of tools and resources that can be used in every step of the translation process: from the moment of quoting until the delivery step. But how can one know which tools and resources to include in their toolbox to optimise their translation/localisation workflow? During this one-week event, experienced trainers and experts from both the academic and the commercial world will answer this question through presentations, hands-on workshops, and use case scenarios.

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ABRATES 8th International Translation and Interpretation Conference

“To Infinity” – We are pleased to announce the ABRATES 8th International Translation and Interpretation Conference.
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Google Assistant now speaks Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese in Allo messaging app

Google is expanding the linguistic capabilities of the virtual assistant that powers its Allo messaging app with the news that it’s now conversant in Hindi and Brazilian Poruguese.

Google first announced the Google Assistant back in May, serving up a direct competitor to the likes of Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa. Google’s incarnation is currently available to anyone via the Allo messaging app, which launched in September, though it is also integrated into the company’s Pixel smartphones and the Google Home wireless speaker. Read more

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5 Reasons Why Having A Multilingual Store Can Be a Competitive Advantage

What’s in a language? There’s much, to say the least. The growth of ecommerce has brought about a drastic change in people’s buying habits. People today are hardly concerned about availability of local retail stores. The focus has now changed to the product. People want what they want, not worrying about the distance.

As the world has become a smaller place, ecommerce market is now spreading all over the globe. The only constraint in global expansion apart from logistics is the language barrier. How do you communicate with the customers who don’t speak in your language and yet you want to sell products to them? By using a multilingual store. Having a multilingual store can surely be a competitive advantage for your ecommerce business. Let’s see how.

It expands your customer base

Most websites on the web are in English. But what about the non-English speaking people throughout the world? And it’s not a just a few. A majority of the world population still relies on languages other than English. So, having a multilingual store can help you gain customers who cannot or do not prefer English as a standard means of communication.

It’s cost effective

Yes, having a multilingual site doesn’t cost you much more than having a unilingual ecommerce site. If you have a magento ecommerce site, it could be as easy as just adding a language translator extension. For a slightly higher cost, you are earning more customers and hence more sales. As there’s no need to create separate websites or incur extra maintenance costs for your multilingual site, it is definitely a cost effective way to increase your revenues.

A step ahead of the competition

Your competitors are probably offering the same products as you. The prices can’t vary to high levels as well. To survive amidst the tough competition is difficult in that case. You always have to be a step ahead. Having a multilingual site can be the step you had been looking for. In spite of selling the same products at near about same costs, you get more customers, helping your business to emerge as one of the most popular in your industry.

Search Engine Optimization

Maybe your business is based in a country or place where English is the language followed by search engines to show up results to people. But it’s not so everywhere. Many places don’t use the leading search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. as their default search engines. Their search engines support only their native languages. In that case, your business will only be visible if it has content in their language. So, having a multilingual site helps you with search engine optimization at such places.

Trust Building

Yes, it helps in trust building for your ecommerce as well. You can blame it to customer psychology. When they are reading or referring to something in the language they are proficient in, they are bound to trust it more than a language they are barely just familiar with.

With the ever increasing competition in the market, limiting your ecommerce to a confined geographical location is never a smart idea and to reach to people worldwide, you need language to be the tool. A multilingual store is definitely something you should consider if you want your revenue graph to soar higher than it ever was!

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Quick Facts: Interpreters and Translators

Summary Interpreters and translators convert information from one language into another. Quick Facts: Interpreters and Translators 2015 Median Pay $44,190 per year $21.24 per hour Typical Entry-Level Education Bachelor’s degree Work Experience in a Related Occupation None On-the-job Training Short-term on-the-job training Number of Jobs, 2014 61,000 Job Outlook, 2014-24 29% (Much faster than average) […]

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The translation industry. Say what?

Technology may not replace human translators, but it will help them work better

TALK into your phone in any of the big European languages and a Google app can now turn your words into a foreign language, either in text form or as an electronic voice. Skype, an internet-telephony service, said recently that it would offer much the same (in English and Spanish only). But claims that such technological marvels will spell the end of old-fashioned translation businesses are premature.

Software can give the gist of a foreign tongue, but for business use (if executives are sensible), rough is not enough. And polyglot programs are a pinprick in a vast industry. The business of translation, interpreting and software localisation (revising websites, apps and the like for use in a foreign language) generates revenues of $37 billion a year, reckons Common Sense Advisory (CSA), a consulting firm.

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History of machine translation

Machine translation is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.

In the 1950s Machine translation became a reality in research, although references to subject can be found as early as the 17th century[citation needed]. The Georgetown experiment, which involved successful fully automatic translation of more than sixty Russian sentences into English in 1954, was one of the earliest recorded projects. Researchers of the Georgetown experiment asserted their belief that machine translation would be a solved problem within three to five years.[1] In the Soviet Union, similar experiments were performed shortly after.[2] Consequently, the success of the experiment ushered in an era of significant funding for machine translation research in the United States. The achieved progress was much slower than expected; in 1966, the ALPAC report found that ten years of research had not fulfilled the expectations of the Georgetown experiment and resulted in dramatically reduced funding[citation needed].

Interest grew in statistical models for machine translation, which became more common and also less expensive in the 1980s as available computational power increased.

Although there exists no autonomous system of “fully automatic high quality translation of unrestricted text,”[3][4][5] there are many programs now available that are capable of providing useful output within strict constraints. Several of these programs are available online, such as Google Translate and the SYSTRAN system that powers AltaVista’s BabelFish (now Yahoo’s Babelfish as of 9 May 2008).

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