Global by Design turns 1,000
In 2002, I launched this blog. It was the first blog devoted to web globalization. In fact, I don’t believe there were any blogs devoted to translation either at that …
Translation
Think your translator is cutting corners? Try the machine translation detector…
Lior Libman of One Hour Translation has released a web tool that you can use to quickly determine if text was translated by one of the three major machine translation …
The Top 25 Global Web Sites of 2011
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card. This year, we reviewed 250 web sites across 25 industries. The web sites represent nearly half of …
Previewing the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card
I’ve begun work on the 7th edition of the Report Card. To produce this report I individually review more than 200 global web sites across more than 20 industries. Needless …
Translation Sharing is Caring
The TAUS Data Association (TDA) was founded about two years ago with the goal of creating a widely used and trusted platform for companies to share their translation memories. The …
Translation in the next century
Jaap van der Meer of TAUS wrote a great article on translation in the next century. A few choice quotes: In this new regime, translation is multidirectional, from any language …
Inside Google’s language detection tool
One of the highlights of attending the 2010 Unicode Conference was listening to Richard Sites explain how he developed Google’s statistical language detection algorithm. You may have already used this …
The next Internet revolution will not be in English
This visual depicts about half of the currently approved internationalized domain names (IDNs), positioned over their respective regions. Notice the wide range of scripts over India and the wide range …
The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies
I’m pleased to announce the newest edition of The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies. This is the book I wish I had many years ago when I first went …
Keeping translation simple (and fast): A Q&A with One Hour Translation
For those who are new to purchasing translation services, the process can be confusing. There are new terms to learn, new technologies, and the pricing can vary greatly between vendors. …
Translation memory goes open source: An interview with Smith Yewell of Welocalize
Translation memory helps companies re-use previously translated text, improving consistency and potentially saving money. But translation memory requires using translation memory software, which has for years largely meant using SDL …
TAUS drops membership fees, finally
The Translation Automation User Society has always been an organization that I’ve admired more in theory than in practice. That is, I admire the organization’s goal of broadly sharing translation …
For the love of Chinglish
As Shanghai cleans up its more humorous Chinese to English mistranslations, some folks are feeling wistful. Check out the NYT slideshow. Also, I was just told that the Telegraph has …
When machine translation and volunteer translators collide: A YouTube/TED case study
Google recently announced a rather nifty feature in YouTube: Auto-translation of auto-generated video captions. So not only is Google automatically transcribing the text of its videos, it’s also providing translations …
Signs of a translation rebound in Latin America
Idea Factory Languages, with 85 full-time employees and production centers in Brazil and Argentina, specializes in translation and localization for the Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese language markets. CEO Teddy Bengtsson …