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.

Crowdsourcing and Translation

Crowdsourcing has been a topic of hype for a number of years in the translation industry, but the reality of it will shape the future of the translation industry. So, does crowdsourcing translation really work? and how does one guarantee quality and consistency? The main concern for companies is entrusting their strong corporate brands and style to unknown volunteers, but the bigger issue is that people are less likely to offer translations for corporate materials in which they hold no stake, and have no emotional investment. For instance, it's unlikely that companies could crowdsource the translation of packaging and labeling information.

The benefits of crowdsourcing lie in in the world of social networking. Facebook's experience with crowdsourcing has shown that they can break down language barriers with the help of their users. Thus making it a stepping stone showing that for-Profit companies can leverage the enthusiasm and language skills of their user base to achieve their business goals. Start-up small businesses are increasingly venturing into social networking by creating communities that are passionate about the product, and willing to translate ads and promotional material. Thus, providing the companies with a wider audience, where they would have a real interest in feeding into the translation process.

The viability of crowdsourcing is giving rise to translation companies like myGengo that are structured to offer clients the best of both worlds: low rates by taking advantage of crowdsourced translations, and some level of quality by reviewing the translations. There are no guarantees on intellectual property protection and consistency, but it's a cheap/fast way of getting translations done. So, is crowdsourcing translations the future of our industry? Probably not. Will crowdsourcing play a role in some sectors of the translation industry? Probably.

Droid

Well, the Iphone and AT&T are going to get a run for their money in a couple of weeks. Motorola, Google, and Verizon will debut a phone with a open source platform. Yes, you can now customize how your phone operates. Another big feature is the ability to run background processes like a computer. Now, you can run multiple apps, thus allowing you to work more efficiently. Now, what does that mean for translation and localization. Well, since it has an open source platform and has a 1GHz processor, it might be able to run a translation software. If SDL, and that's a big if decides to offer a scaled down version of it's new Studio 2009, it's quite possible that translators and translation companies could run it on their phones. Mobility at it's best. If SDL decides not too, and you have a really good programmer handy, then you could create a 3rd party app that is compaltible with Studio 2009 and have an editing tool. You could still perform the translations and apply the memory on the go. Google of course has it's own translation tool (machine, but they wil be coming out with a version that allows you to upload existing memory files and useNow we'll have to wait and see if this will work.

A Tough Sell

Jeff Jorgensen, National Accounts Manager at ICD wrote an article for the August '09 issue of World Trade Magazine. The article titled: "Talk About a Tough Sell," emphasizes the important need to consider quality translations in today's marketplace. Most companies are looking at their bottom line in the economic downturn, but it's also important to consider liability issue when it comes to poorly translated material, and cost shouldn't out way quality. This article is a must read for anyone considering translations or debating the cost versus quality issue. You can download a PDF version of the article here

Trados Limitations and Textboxes

This week I've learned that I hate embedded and grouped text boxes in Word. Why do I hate them? Well, Trados apparently does not pick up text that are embedded in text boxes when you attempt to translate the file in a tagged word format. If you use Tag Editor it hides the text between formatting tags, and the text in the boxes are not editable. Solution, SDLX actually picks up the text for text boxes that are grouped, but it ignores embedded boxes. By the way, text in embedded boxes show up as live text, they don't get picked by SDLX, and there is no option to have it pick up or extract the text. Therefore, the best was is to try and copy and paste the text into a word file, ignoring the boxes and hoping you copied and pasted all the text correctly. So, if you must use Trados, be careful of the grouped and embedded text boxes, you'll be missing a few words if you don't.

Google and Iphone: Proofing and Editing on the GO!

Recently, I discovered Google Docs. Yes, Google has created a web based document creation tool. Essentially, you can create text documents (ie MS Word Style), Spreadsheets with formulas and charts, and presentations (ie Power Point). Google has created a web based version of Microsoft Office Home Basic. You also have the ability to open up PDFs in Gmail without having a Reader. These features may not make a whole of difference to people with desktops or laptops, but with an Iphone, it changes the whole ball game. Now you can open up a PDF, (copy and paste text, if you have the new 3GS), and edit the text in Google Docs. You can view/proof PDFs, make comments in the text editor, create a spread sheet of terms and send it to your Desktop Publisher for corrections. If you need to create a presentation or add a new slide, simple create one.

Oh, and with the wireless printer app, you can print the PDF. You can upload a word, ppt, excel file from your computer, save it on your google account, edit it on your Iphone, and make the world go round. You can save the files as .doc, .xls, .ppt, or aPDF and open them up on computer later on, or send it to someone with a computer and they can open it up as well. Here's a video about Google Docs: