Language Technology Division

From the Admin Desk: Denver anyone?

The other weekend I attended the ATA Board Meeting as they were in town. And one thing led to another. That is the question what we want to do this year at the LTD General Meeting, part of the annual ATA Conference? For those who attended last year in New York you will remember that we took a good part of the GM to listen to an excellent panel on the hot topics of 2009. And for this year I would want to entertain the idea to ask our membership. What would you like to talk about, listen to, know more about? Join us on our LTD mailing list or drop me a note and let me know what you think we should put on the Agenda of the General Meeting

From the Admin Desk: AMTA 2010 conference: Call for MT User Presentations

Call for MT User Presentations: Commercial Users and Translators

The AMTA is seeking case studies and user stories for the AMTA 2010 conference – October 31-November 5, Denver, Colorado, immediately following ATA conference.

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Op-Ed Contributor: I, Translator

OPINION | March 21, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor: I, Translator
By DAVID BELLOS
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21bellos.html?emc=eta1
Why Google Translate won’t put me out of a job.

Will we soon have speech-to-speech translation, a la “Star Trek’s” universal translator?

Well, Franz Josef Och, over at Google, things we will!

See an interview with him by the Los Angeles Times here.

A snippit:

Is it just short step from here to real time, speech-to-speech translation, a la “Star Trek’s” universal translator?

To really do the integrated speech-to-speech translation, where you can have a phone call with someone and it would interpreted live? I believe that based on the technology that we have, and the improvement rate we have in the core quality of MT and speech recognition, that it should be possible to do that in the not-too-distant future.

Naomi de Moraes

Missed the Language Tech Sessions in NY?

I got my DVD set from the ATA 2009 conference in New York and I must say it is excellent way of obtaining the content for those missing out on the event or having session schedule conflicts while there. A treasure chest of recorded conference sessions (almost all LT tagged sessions) can be found on the DVDs next to seminars given during the pre-conference day. For more info check out https://www.atanet.org/conf/2009/dvdrom.htm .

How social can we be?

We are currently discussing the use of our several media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, LTD News blog, the LTD newsletter and the LTD mailing list. Given we have only so much time a day we need to streamline our activities and ask members to participate in our monitored and maintained services unless we see momentum to keep other outlets open. So our current thinking is to keep posting here in the LTD News blog, the Yahoo group mailing list and on Twitter. For the time being we will use Facebook and LinkedIn locations only as the group’s Virtual Business Cards. Expect updates in both locations soon.

NCTA to run with the Crowd…

NCTA General Meeting Presentation: “New Trends in Crowdsourcing: The Kiva / Idem Case Study”. This free event by the Northern California Translators Association (NCTA) is open for everyone.

Date?
Sat, Dec 12, 2009

Location?
The Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Agenda?
1:00 p.m: Orientation for New Members + Networking
1:30 p.m: Association Business and ATA Conference Report
2:00 p.m: New Trends in Crowdsourcing: The Kiva / Idem Case Study by Naomi Baer and Monica Moreno

The term “crowdsourcing” was created just three years ago and is already causing much discussion and experimentation in the translation industry. What does crowdsourcing mean in the context of translation, and what does this new wave of translation crowdsourcing projects look like? How do community translation projects that predate the invention of this term relate to the trends today?

As a rapidly growing international nonprofit organization, Kiva faces the challenge of how to efficiently handle translations and has developed a unique translation crowdsourcing methodology. Kiva’s approach integrates volunteer resources, a mentoring program, and a professional translation agency, Idem Translations.

Monica Moreno, of Idem Translations, and Naomi Baer, of Kiva, will discuss emerging translation crowdsourcing projects at both not-for-profit and for-profit organizations, provide insights into why organizations are interested in this approach, and what can be gained.

They will also discuss Kiva’s work in international microlending, the language barrier at Kiva, and the structure of Kiva’s translation program. The role and value of Idem’s partnership with Kiva as a professional translation agency, and the role of professional translators in crowdsourcing programs, will also be addressed.

3:15 p.m.: Networking

Interview with Christophe Declercq on JoSTrans

Hello!

JoSTrans is the Journal of Specialised Translation. It’s January Issue has an interview with Christophe Declercq about translation tools. You can watch the entire interview (video) or just the parts that interest you at JoSTrans.

This interview outlines the current state of translation tools, their providers, and their implications, with an overview of machine translation, translation memory tools and localisation.

Naomi de Moraes