We moved into our new office this week:International Communication by Design, Inc.
13040 West Lisbon Road, Suite 600
Brookfield, WI 53005
Ph# 262-781-1644
Fax# 262-781-1654
We are excited to begin a new chapter in our company's history.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
ICD has Moved
We moved into our new office this week:International Communication by Design, Inc.
13040 West Lisbon Road, Suite 600
Brookfield, WI 53005
Ph# 262-781-1644
Fax# 262-781-1654
We are excited to begin a new chapter in our company's history.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
ICD's New Home
International Communication by Design, Inc (ICD) is excited to announce that we are moving! For the past 19 years, ICD has been located in the “Fortress Building” in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Due to sustained growth, ICD will relocate to a larger more advanced facility in Brookfield, Wisconsin by October 15, 2010. Here’s our new contact information:
International Communication By Design, Inc.
13040 West Lisbon Road, Suite 600
Brookfield, Wisconsin 53005
Phone: 262-781-1644
Fax: 262 -781-1654
We are delighted to move into a larger space, adding more staff, and implementing new technologies to better serve you and improve your presence in the Global Market Place. We’d love to show you our new facility the next time you’re in the Milwaukee area.
Together we can Translate To EvolveSM.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
ICD is Moving Soon
ICD will be moving its headquarters from Milwaukee to Brookfield, WI. We'll be moving to a larger more advanced facility in an effort to expand our presence in the industry. Our new address will be posted soon. I'll also post some pictures of our new facility once it's ready.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
ICD in the Milwaukee Business Journal
Recently, Catherine Deschamps-Potter, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and one of the founders of ICD, was profiled in the Milwaukee Business Journal.She talked about how trade agreements, international politics and the worldwide economic recession have wrought huge changes to the global marketplace in the last 20 years, and how one thing has remained clear throughout: The U.S. economy will grow increasingly dependent on the global economy in years to come. This outlines the basic importance of Translation Service Providers.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Photos form Recent Shows in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Las Vegas
Here are recent photos from Trade Shows where ICD was an exhibitor.
MWTA Trade Days: Milwaukee
ASTD: Chicago
AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting: Las Vegas
ICD's Experience at the AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting
AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting, May 18th-19th, 2010
Danielle and Catherine attended this meeting as ICD sponsored the AEM vendors meeting, and is the chosen vendor for CONEXPO translations. Here is Danielle's insights on the meeting:
The CONEXPO Trade Show can appear quite daunting at first glance: In March 2011, over 2,000 exhibitors from countries all over the world will come together for a five day trade show in Las Vegas. During the 2008 CONEXPO show, over 144,600 industry professionals representing 28,000 companies attended the show. Come to think of it, even after a second or third glance, the CONEXPO is still an imposing figure. How does a company prepare to exhibit at a show of this magnitude?
This is exactly the question that The AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting sought to answer for its attendees. Over the course of two days, industry professionals and trade show analysts provided seminars on a diverse range of topics, such as marketing, booth design and how to create the best return on investment. However, two topics seemed to be the underlying message of the show: the importance of branding your company, and the need to create a goal or objective for your company experience at CONEXPO.
Branding your company into a unique entity within your industry is essential to stand out in a tradeshow of 2,000+ exhibitors. Creating a Branding Proposition for your company means promoting your company not just as “the best of the best,” but instead as the only company that does what you do. How will we stand apart as different than our top 3 competitors at the show? To do this, we will need to create a brand that goes deeper than great quality, low prices and excellent customer service, and instead look at what makes us unique and memorable within the industry.
It is also important to have an explicit goal or objective for exhibiting at CONEXPO. Without a clear objective, it becomes too easy to be swept up into the enormity of the CONEXPO show. Before the show, staff will need to be trained on how to accomplish our goals, the booth will need to be designed to best reflect our objective, and marketing materials will need to be sent out that will aid our goals. During the show, every action the company takes should be working towards our final goal. After the show, a thorough analysis and reflection will need to be taken to make sure all of our efforts were used to accomplish our goals for CONEXPO. March 2011 may seem like a long way off, but every moment of planning will be essential to create a positive experience for International Communication by Design at CONEXPO.
Danielle and Catherine attended this meeting as ICD sponsored the AEM vendors meeting, and is the chosen vendor for CONEXPO translations. Here is Danielle's insights on the meeting:
The CONEXPO Trade Show can appear quite daunting at first glance: In March 2011, over 2,000 exhibitors from countries all over the world will come together for a five day trade show in Las Vegas. During the 2008 CONEXPO show, over 144,600 industry professionals representing 28,000 companies attended the show. Come to think of it, even after a second or third glance, the CONEXPO is still an imposing figure. How does a company prepare to exhibit at a show of this magnitude?
This is exactly the question that The AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting sought to answer for its attendees. Over the course of two days, industry professionals and trade show analysts provided seminars on a diverse range of topics, such as marketing, booth design and how to create the best return on investment. However, two topics seemed to be the underlying message of the show: the importance of branding your company, and the need to create a goal or objective for your company experience at CONEXPO.
Branding your company into a unique entity within your industry is essential to stand out in a tradeshow of 2,000+ exhibitors. Creating a Branding Proposition for your company means promoting your company not just as “the best of the best,” but instead as the only company that does what you do. How will we stand apart as different than our top 3 competitors at the show? To do this, we will need to create a brand that goes deeper than great quality, low prices and excellent customer service, and instead look at what makes us unique and memorable within the industry.
It is also important to have an explicit goal or objective for exhibiting at CONEXPO. Without a clear objective, it becomes too easy to be swept up into the enormity of the CONEXPO show. Before the show, staff will need to be trained on how to accomplish our goals, the booth will need to be designed to best reflect our objective, and marketing materials will need to be sent out that will aid our goals. During the show, every action the company takes should be working towards our final goal. After the show, a thorough analysis and reflection will need to be taken to make sure all of our efforts were used to accomplish our goals for CONEXPO. March 2011 may seem like a long way off, but every moment of planning will be essential to create a positive experience for International Communication by Design at CONEXPO.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
It's Official! ICD is a certified Woman-Owned Business
PRESS RELEASE
CERTIFIED WOMAN-OWNED BUSINESS
DATE: April 14th, 2010
CONTACT: Catherine Deschamps-Potter
TITLE: Vice-President
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION BY DESIGN, INC.
State Certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise
International Communication by Design, Inc. has received certification as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) through the State of Wisconsin Department of Commerce. The designation is pursuant to the state administrative rule requirements of Comm 104 which provides validation that International Communication by Design, Inc. meets the requirements of being at least 51 percent woman-owned, controlled and managed. It qualifies International Communication by Design, Inc. to be considered for contracts with corporations and government entities that seek vendor relationships with businesses owned and operated by women.
International Communication by Design, Inc. was established in 1991 and specializes in Language Translation and Localization. To better promote state certified WBE’s and to make it easy for buyers to find them, the Department of Commerce maintains an on-line WBE Directory at http://commerce.wi.gov/BD/BD-WBECertification.html).
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Changing the Game
The recession has forced many translation companies to re-think their sales and service approach. The price for translation is a never ending bottom line battle, and companies have to choose to either make less money while providing the same level of quality, or come up with added services at no-cost to justify their prices.
No doubt new technologies have been developed to help the industry move forward as a whole. Machine Translation and Editing by human translators is one service that many translation companies have chosen to offer. It's sort of a budget version translation. A compromise in cost. The quality is probably a B, and that's enough for most instructional manual. The problem here is finding a good translator to edit a machine translation.
Other translation companies have started offering services like 24 hr instant translation. Naturally, they probably use a machine because it's going to be pretty hard to have a translator work on-call for them. There's one company that goes as far as offering a hotline for "translation emergencies". This is a great idea on paper, but when is translation really an emergency. Even if it is, I doubt that a 100 pages can be done in less than 1 day. The hotline does work as a tool for client's to find out the progress of their projects, or to inquire about the completion date.
Overall, we have to adapt to the changing economic climate to satisfy our clients needs. We may have to streamline the process, and offer more competitive prices, or justify the current prices with added services. There is a value attached to every dollar, and we must remember that there is a value attached to a good translation.
No doubt new technologies have been developed to help the industry move forward as a whole. Machine Translation and Editing by human translators is one service that many translation companies have chosen to offer. It's sort of a budget version translation. A compromise in cost. The quality is probably a B, and that's enough for most instructional manual. The problem here is finding a good translator to edit a machine translation.
Other translation companies have started offering services like 24 hr instant translation. Naturally, they probably use a machine because it's going to be pretty hard to have a translator work on-call for them. There's one company that goes as far as offering a hotline for "translation emergencies". This is a great idea on paper, but when is translation really an emergency. Even if it is, I doubt that a 100 pages can be done in less than 1 day. The hotline does work as a tool for client's to find out the progress of their projects, or to inquire about the completion date.
Overall, we have to adapt to the changing economic climate to satisfy our clients needs. We may have to streamline the process, and offer more competitive prices, or justify the current prices with added services. There is a value attached to every dollar, and we must remember that there is a value attached to a good translation.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Getting Started with Translation Style Guides
Creating a style guide for translation is essential for translators, editors, and desktop publishers. It keeps everyone on the same page through the translation and localization process. Translation tools are able to preserve most formatting and keep the punctuation intact. However it fails to account for spacngs before punctuations (in French), measurement conversions, decimal points to commas, and units of conversions.
One simple rule to start your style guide is to record every choice that can not be recorded in a translation tool glossary or a translation memory. You can find instructions and choices that you should included in your translation style guides here: Annex D of European Standard 15038 for translation services (see page 15). Here are some of the criteria listed:
Microsoft’s Language Style Guides: guides for 90+ languages, each of varying length
Other international organizations and governments with respectable translation teams have also made their translation style guides available online for download:
The World Bank Translation Style Guide: English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Russian
The European Commission Translation Style Guides: English, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages
One simple rule to start your style guide is to record every choice that can not be recorded in a translation tool glossary or a translation memory. You can find instructions and choices that you should included in your translation style guides here: Annex D of European Standard 15038 for translation services (see page 15). Here are some of the criteria listed:
- Punctuation
- Spelling
- Formatting
- Adaptations
- Language-specific and client preferences
- Common errors to be avoided
- Other miscellaneous elements
Microsoft’s Language Style Guides: guides for 90+ languages, each of varying length
Other international organizations and governments with respectable translation teams have also made their translation style guides available online for download:
The World Bank Translation Style Guide: English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Russian
The European Commission Translation Style Guides: English, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Google Translator Toolkit
Google has added a toolkit to their machine translation software: "Google Translate"
How does it work?
* Choose a language to translate your document into
* Upload a document, webpage or a Wikipedia article
* Google translator automatically uploads, converts and translates the content
* You can now review and improve the translation
* You can view translations that were earlier translated by other users
* You can share your translation with your friends and invite them to view or help edit your translation
* When finished, you can download the translation to your desktop
* For Wikipedia articles, you can even publish it back to the source
Now, the system works well as a crowdsourcing effort where revisions are constantly made to the translations. Thus, improving quality over time. The intellectual prowess of the translator is another questions.
The Toolkit represents another step in the advancement of machine translation. However, it still does not replace a qualified human translator with industry specialization.
Google Translator Toolkit is ideal for fast simple, non-conforming translations. If you want a 50 page manual, then you're better off sending it to your translation vendor.
How does it work?
* Choose a language to translate your document into
* Upload a document, webpage or a Wikipedia article
* Google translator automatically uploads, converts and translates the content
* You can now review and improve the translation
* You can view translations that were earlier translated by other users
* You can share your translation with your friends and invite them to view or help edit your translation
* When finished, you can download the translation to your desktop
* For Wikipedia articles, you can even publish it back to the source
Now, the system works well as a crowdsourcing effort where revisions are constantly made to the translations. Thus, improving quality over time. The intellectual prowess of the translator is another questions.
The Toolkit represents another step in the advancement of machine translation. However, it still does not replace a qualified human translator with industry specialization.
Google Translator Toolkit is ideal for fast simple, non-conforming translations. If you want a 50 page manual, then you're better off sending it to your translation vendor.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Fanlation
I just read a post from Joel Zetzsche's newsletter, and he coined a new term:
Fanlation
Translation done by enthused users ready to donate their time for a product.
Translation done by enthused users ready to donate their time for a product.
Joel uses the term: Fanlation to describe crowdsouring of sites like Facebook and Twitter. I have written a few posts on crowdsouring, and Fanlation seems to sum up crowdsouring translation efforts for social media sites pretty well, as most of the users of these sites are not only fans of the site, but they contribute translations for the sites crowdsourcing efforts. I also feel that fanlation can be expanded for technical translation.
I know translators get paid to translate technical documentation, but sometimes if they are truly immersed in the subject or are "fans" of a particular technical field, they could contribute some translations towards a crowdsourcing effort. The translator's would have to get the consent of their client before contributing their translation, or they could simply contribute terms towards a glossary.
So, Fanlation is a neat term, and I think it could be extended beyond social media sites. After all a fan is fan is a fan. A fan of what is the question?
Monday, January 11, 2010
Facebook's Human Translation
Facebook introduced non-English languages for the first time in January 2008. Now about 70 percent of Facebook's 300 million users are outside of the United States. Many bloggers and tech writers think Facebook's method of human translation seems promising as it combines real people behind the scenes as opposed to machine translation.
Basically, users suggest translated phrases and vote on translations that others have submitted. These crowd-sourced edits, which work sort of like Wikipedia make Facebook's translation service smarter over time. Go to Facebook's translation page to check it out or to participate.
More than 65 languages function on Facebook now, according to Facebook's statistics. At least another 30 languages are in the works, meaning Facebook needs help working out the kinks on those languages before they're put to use.
What's new? Facebook announced in a blog post on September 30 that the social network has made its crowd-sourced translation technology available to other sites on the Web. The update allows sites to install a translation gadget on their sites through Facebook Connect, a service that lets Facebook users sign in on other Web pages.
Facebook also added some new languages, including Latin and "Pirate," which translates the Facebooky word "share" as "blabber t'yer mates!"
People are good at knowing idioms and slang, so Facebook tends to get these right, but there are limited numbers of multi-lingual volunteers who want to spend time helping Facebook translate things. Also, Facebook's site is available in many languages, but its human translators don't touch wall posts, photo comments and other user-submitted items, which is a big con if you want to have friends who don't share a common language with you.
Source: CNN.com
Trados Fun
A few tips on how to manipulate tags in Trados:
When dealing with files that have a lot of formatting tags, there are two possible ways to deal with it in Trados Tag Editor:
1. The simpler more time consuming step:
Copy the source everytime, and then translate in between the tags (overwriting the English source text). Doing this will eliminate the need to copy all the tags all the time.
2. The more technical less time consuming step:
Tags can be protected and unprotected in TagEditor. When dealing with so many tags it might be handy to "unprotect" the internal tags (Tools>Options>Protection>Protect External Tags only). Now you can simply copy and paste tags, delete them etc..
Try it out and let me know.
When dealing with files that have a lot of formatting tags, there are two possible ways to deal with it in Trados Tag Editor:
1. The simpler more time consuming step:
Copy the source everytime, and then translate in between the tags (overwriting the English source text). Doing this will eliminate the need to copy all the tags all the time.
2. The more technical less time consuming step:
Tags can be protected and unprotected in TagEditor. When dealing with so many tags it might be handy to "unprotect" the internal tags (Tools>Options>Protection>Protect External Tags only). Now you can simply copy and paste tags, delete them etc..
Try it out and let me know.
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