Back to Byte Level
After more than a year at Microsoft, I have decided to return to Byte Level Research. It was a tough decision to make. I enjoyed working with the many people …
Companies
Google may leave China, but don’t expect it to leave Chinese
Long before Google launched Google.cn, it launched the Chinese localized version of Google.com. And this site is alive and well and hosted outside of China’s great firewall. Just change your …
Mac Snow Leopard International Bug
I recently got around to upgrading to Snow Leopard. Along the way, I discovered a rather interesting bug. It’s not a huge deal, but a bug nonetheless. And one likely …
The most popular posts of 2009
With a few hours to spare, here are the most popular blog posts of 2009, based on number of visitors: The rise of “international” English — otherwise known as American …
Take the Lionbridge Social Media Survey
It’s not every day I come across a survey localized into 18 languages. But I guess I should expect nothing less from one of the world’s largest translation agencies. Lionbridge …
Google goes to Greenland to shorten your URL
Just what the world needs — two more URL shorteners. Google now has goo.gl. And Facebook has FB.me. But Google’s URL jumps out at me because it marks the first …
Google Korea: Before and After
For a Westerner like myself, the most-popular Korean portals Naver and Daum are a maze of text and images. The pages are too busy, too distracting. But I’m not the …
Translation crowdsourcing is the new black — and you can tweet me on that
Was there any doubt that Twitter would not try to crowdsource its translations? After Facebook proved that it could use volunteers to go from 1 to 100 languages in two …
There is no such thing as a global slogan
Here’s an article that confirms what consumers apparently know but many companies have yet to figure out — that English-language slogans don’t make much sense to people who don’t speak …
Kindle goes international, but not multilingual
The Kindle has gone international, sort of. That is, Amazon is launching a new Kindle outfitted with a radio chip that works in most of the world’s cellular markets (100+) …
Chinese IME, aka Etch A Sketch
I’m fairly certain that I’m not using the iPhone Chinese IME in the way it was intended.
Chinese IME: From iPhone to laptop
Via Blogos, I was fascinated to read that the new Mac Snow Leopard OS features a Chinese input method editor (IME) that allows users to input characters via track pad. …
Google Translate: Now in 51 languages
In February of this year, Google Translate surpassed 40 languages. Six months later, Google added ten more languages, a two-year growth trajectory illustrated below: Google went from 13 languages to …
Unicode (used creatively) makes your Tweets go further
I’m not exactly a power-Tweeter, so I can’t say I have the need for a tool that stretches Twitter’s 140-character limit. Still, I get a kick out of Maxitweet. To …
Decyphering Google Translate on your web logs
Whenever I read this site’s web logs, I’m always fascinated by the number of referrals via Google Translate. Every month there seems to be more of them, which could mean …