eWorld Translations

As reported by the Khaleej Times, the Federal National Council (FNC), (Arabic: المجلس الوطني الإتحادي‎, al-Majlis al-Watani al-Ittihadi), the federal authority of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formed to represent the general emirati people, in early February approved a draft law regulating the profession of translation and interpretation.

Under the new bill, only qualified professional and licensed translators who are medically certified that they are mentally sound will be permitted to accept such jobs. Practicing without a license or without being able to pass the prescribed tests may result in three months to one year in jail. Licensed translators who make mistakes are subject to penalties that include financial fines and jail terms of six months to two years.

Members of the FNC suggested the laws regulating the jobs of translators be tightened, though, since a minor mistake on the job could ruin the life of an individual or a corporate organization.

Here in the United States, no such rules apply. As such, any translation buyer would be well advised to stick with a reputable company, such as eWorld Translations, that vets its translators and has elaborate quality control mechanisms in place.

To make sure that all your concerns are addressed and to receive world-class service at a reasonable price, give us a call toll-free at +1-888-398-4968, or use the free quote form in the sidebar to the right, or email us at info@eworldtranslations.com or provide more detailed information on our contact form. You can also fax your documents to us at +1-312-803-2208.

As reported by The Daily Mail, two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’

After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

Leigh was also quizzed about another tweet which quoted hit US comedy Family Guy which read: ‘3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!

Federal agents even searched his suitcase looking for spades and shovels, claiming Emily was planning to act as Leigh’s ‘look out’ while he raided Marilyn’s tomb.

‘I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show.

To make sure that your communications don’t run into similar language barriers, give us a call toll-free at +1-888-398-4968, or use the free quote form in the sidebar to the right, or email us at info@eworldtranslations.com or provide more detailed information on our contact form. You can also fax your documents to us at +1-312-803-2208.

As the JakartaGlobe reports, Malaysia’s Defense Ministry is blaming Google Translate for embarrassing mistranslations on its website that sparked online ridicule.

As some bloggers pointed out with respect to the dress code recommendations for staff, the translation from the Malay language into English should not have been talking about “clothes that poke (the) eye” but rather indicated that women wear “appropriate clothing and worn neatly and politely in line with the practice of noble character”.

In another section of the ministry’s website, the English translation misinformed that after the 1957 independence from Britain, the new Malaysian government took “drastic measures to increase the level of any national security threat”.

A couple of days ago, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told The Star daily “We have corrected the mistakes and translations are no longer done that way. It is now done manually.”

However, when the uppercaise blog in early January, before the ministry took the English pages down, fed some of the respective Malay strings into Google Translate, the translations did not match what had been up on the government website. In the test, for example, the site’s “ethical clothing” (probably, appropriate attire) became “garment of ethics”. This led to speculation whether some other type of machine translation might have been used instead or in addition.

To avoid similar pitfalls, rely on our highly skilled translators and editors and contact us today.

Even though the beta version of SDL OpenExchange was announced in March of this year, 2010, there wasn’t much going on with it at the time, given the rather limited number of applications offered through it.

While this project has built a framework of functionality around SDL Trados Studio, thereby enhancing said product with functionality it does not natively provide.

Anybody wanting to develop for the OpenExchange must own SDL Trados Studio Professional and has to shell out a one-time “security and functionality review” fee in the amount of EUR 250. Starting in July 2011, there will also be an annual EUR 100 listing fee plus a 30% royalty fee that have to be paid, unless only a free application is offered.

Among the more interesting items found there are

• SubRip File Type which allows for the processing of subtitle files
• SDL XLIFF Converter for MS Office allowing for proofing Trados Studio files in MS Word or Excel and reimporting them back into Trados Studio

To make the most out of  your investment in translation environment tools, rely on our highly skilled specialists and contact us today.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which had asked the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year to launch a probe into this, welcomed that Google is under investigation by the FCC to determine whether it violated federal eavesdropping laws by inadvertently harvesting data from unencrypted wireless networks it was gathering images for its Street View service.

In a May 18, 2010 letter to the commission, EPIC’s executive director, Marc Rotenberg, expressed concern that Google’s actions may have violated the federal Wiretap Act as well as Section 705 of the Communications Act, which forbids the interception of radio communications without authorization.

Time will have to tell if this investigation will result in more than a mere slap on the wrist for Google, which is what the Federal Trade Commission FTC was ultimately satisfied with when requiring Google to promise to delete the data it had collected and to improve its privacy training.

For capturing location information of wireless networks, no matter whether they are encrypted or not, it would have been sufficient to simply record the SSID (service set identifier). Given massive difference in data storage space requirements of storing an SSID of up to 32 Bytes length vs. storing a multitude of payload data that may include user names and passwords transmitted while the Google Street View car was within reach of any given wireless network, it stands to reason that this should have raised an internal red flag sooner rather than later.

For assistance in reviewing and updating your current privacy policies and procedures, contact us today.

A blog post at security vendor Websense indicates that Amnesty International’ Hong Kong website apparently has been compromised and was laced with malware that includes an exploit of a still unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) as well as exploits for holes in Flash, QuickTime and Shockwave.

According to The H Security, these new attacks confirm observations of the exploit in commercial packages sold to criminals – which means attacks will probably soon become more frequent.

For IE, the exploit can be curbed by enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in Internet Explorer on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. DEP is enabled by default in IE8. To activate DPE in IE7, run Microsoft’s Fix-It tool, available here.

We’ll gladly help you to review and update your applications to alleviate the potential for exploits resulting from application versions that have known vulnerabilities. Contact us today.

When InformationWeek reported that more than a million cell phones in China have been infected by attackers with malware that automatically sends text messages, Stephen Northcutt, president of the SANS Technology Institute, remarked in an editor’s note, posted in the SANS NewsBites:

Cell phone OSs, processors and available memory are just too small for countermeasures like DEP. And in the rush to be number one in features neither Apple, Google, nor Nokia is likely to strongly police apps *before* they become available. Before you load an app ask yourself, do I really need it and how long has it been available.

According to Shanghai Daily, “the ‘zombie’ virus, hidden in a bogus antivirus application, can send the phone user’s SIM card information to hackers, who then remotely control the phone to send URL links.”

In its Top 10 security trends for 2011, security vendor Imperva asserts “We expect exponential growth in the number of incidents related to mobile devices in the next few years. From theft or compromise of information in these devices, through massive infection campaigns, and up to frequent exploit of the vulnerabilities introduced into the server side.”

We’ll gladly help you to review and update your policies and applications to alleviate the potential for exploits resulting from insufficient policies and applications or application versions that have known vulnerabilities. Contact us today.

As promised, Adobe today released the previously announced update for Flash Player, originally scheduled for November 9th, fixing 18 security holes with this update. For additional details, take a look at their corresponding security bulletin.

However, as The H Security reports, Adobe has confirmed another unpatched hole in Adobe Reader due to a flaw in the Doc.printSeps JavaScript function. At present, an exploit that is already in circulation only crashes the application.

This new Adobe Reader vulnerability is affecting all versions from 9.2 or 8.1 onwards for Windows, Unix and Mac OS X. According to Adobe, an update for both Reader and Acrobat will be released the week of November 15th, though it is not clear, yet, if said update will fix this new problem that was identified right on the heels of the authplay.dll hole we recently alerted our readers to.

The latest version of Adobe Flash Player is always available at this link. Please note that you will have to visit this link separately in Internet Explorer (which installs the Flash Active X plugin for IE) and other browsers (which install and use the non-IE version).

We’ll gladly help you to review and update your applications to alleviate the potential for exploits resulting from application versions that have known vulnerabilities. Contact us today.

Today, Google patched 12 vulnerabilities in its Chrome web browser. All of them were considered threats of the severity level high by the company’s security team.

Also included in the patched version of Chrome is an updated version of the Adobe Flash Player, providing Chrome users with an early fix ahead of the official patch release by Adobe later today.

Among the dozen flaws that were fixed in Chrome 7.0.517.44 were one in its JavaScript engine, three in aspects of its text handling and a couple related to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).

According to Computerworld, Google paid $7,500 in bounties to eight researchers who reported 11 of the 12 bugs.

Just a few days ago, Google expanded this program that pays security researchers who report software flaws in the company’s products discreetly from merely covering its Chrome open source browser project to also include bugs fort its web properties, including Gmail, YouTube and Blogger. Google’s client applications (e.g. Android, Picasa and Google Desktop) are, however, not included in the expanded bounty program.

Given the cap of $3,133.7 (leet speak for “elite”), the focus remains on public recognition combined with a financial reward and is not likely to attract anybody interested in a get rich quick scheme selling security vulnerabilities.

We’ll gladly help you to review and update your applications to alleviate the potential for exploits resulting from application versions that have known vulnerabilities. Contact us today.

Two days after learning of the problem, Mozilla has updated Firefox to fix a flaw in the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux versions of its browser that was actively exploited by malware secretly planted on the Nobel Peace Prize website.

The new versions of Firefox, 3.6.12 and 3.5.15 are not vulnerable to this exploit, but users who visited the site before installing the updated version might have been infected with a Trojan horse program.

According to Firefox security engineer Daniel Veditz “Firefox 4 beta users appear safe for the moment.”

Norwegian security vendor Telenor SOC reported the bug on, detailing that the Nobel site redirected to a Taiwanese attack server which then launched a JavaScript-based exploit that, if successful, placed a Trojan horse on the victim’s computer.

To download the new version of Firefox, visit http://www.mozilla.com/.

Also affected are Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. A fixed version of the Thunderbird news and email client is available here and a fixed version of the SeaMonkey “all-in-one internet application suite” here.

We’ll gladly help you to review and update your applications to alleviate the potential for exploits resulting from application versions that have known vulnerabilities. Contact us today.