eWorld Translations

As reported by various news sources, RR Donnelley & Sons Co. has agreed to acquire Bowne & Co. Inc., for $481 million in an all-cash deal expanding RR Donnelley’s product portfolio and adding Bowne’s customers to the fold.

Analysts consider this step by Chicago-based printing services firm RR Donnelley a catalyst for further consolidation in the printing industry, including its ancillary services.

New York-based Bowne helps businesses produce and manage their shareholder, investor, marketing and business communications.

According to RR Donnelley Chief Executive Thomas Quinlan, “Bowne is an exceptional fit with RR Donnelley. This combination satisfies all of the strategic imperatives that we evaluate as we consider acquisitions.”

In related news, RR Donnelley had offered in May 2009 to buy the assets and properties of Quebecor World for about $1.5 billion but was rebuffed by the Canadian company. Last month, privately held U.S. commercial printing company Quad/Graphics Inc. acquired Quebecor World, which is now known as World Color Press after emerging from bankruptcy protection in mid-2009.

In what Jost Zetzsche deemed a “weird (and unknowledgeable) missive” in his computer newsletter for translators, The Tool Kit, the Executive Office of the President and the National Economic Council announced “automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world — greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.”

He also expressed disappointment that the administration had not learned from Secretary of State Clinton’s “Reset” button gaffe and taken that as a hint that machine translation might not quite be where they thought it was.

Furthermore he was struck by the similarity to IBM’s announcement of its first public machine translation test in 1054:

“The potential value of this experiment for the national interest in defense or in peace is readily seen,” Prof. Leon Dostert, Georgetown language scholar who originated the practical approach to the idea of electronic translation, declared to a group of scientists and United States government officials who witnessed the demonstration at IBM World Headquarters, 57th Street and Madison Avenue.

“Those in charge of this experiment now consider it to be definitely established that meaning conversion through electronic language translation is feasible.”

Although he emphasized that it is not yet possible “to insert a Russian book at one end and come out with an English book at the other,” Doctor Dostert predicted that “five, perhaps three years hence, interlingual meaning conversion by electronic process in important functional areas of several languages may well be an accomplished fact.”

The above might serve as a reminder of the overeager enthusiasm some technological pundits may experience when faced with he latest developments and discoveries as well as computational advances. But ATA president Jiri Stejskal put things into perspective in a public letter to President Obama, crafted in response:

… computational linguists have been working for over 50 years to achieve “fully automatic high-quality computer translation,” and despite all the changes wrought in our lives by technological advances, no computer can match the language skills of a five-year-old child.

The reason is simple: Computers cannot translate effectively – that is, they cannot entirely convey meaning from one language to another – because computers are logical and real human languages are not. Using a language well requires knowledge of how the world is understood in that language. And while computers can analyze, compile and compare, they cannot understand.

This is not to say that translation technology is not very useful within certain limits. Computers can process enormous volumes of text at incredible speeds, and provide the gist of a foreign-language document quickly and cheaply. Translation software is therefore the perfect tool for producing a “good enough” translation.

But in many human interactions – most critically in diplomacy, commerce, and national security, the very areas cited in your report – accuracy, nuance and cultural sensitivity are paramount, and “good enough” is… not good enough. Errors in translation and interpreting can waste enormous amounts of time and money, and they can generate literally incalculable costs in terms of misunderstanding and loss of prestige.

In short, both translation software and qualified human translators are vital to your goal of achieving language security. Today all the leading proponents of computer translation recognize that human beings will always be essential, no matter how sophisticated translation programs become.

The long-awaited and often cited Service Pack 1 for SDL Trados Studio 2009 finally has been published.

Among its key updates are:

• Over 100 quality improvements to address reliability issues and legacy file format support
• Numerous enhancements for faster operation, including handling of larger files and memory usage
• Feature updates incorporating user feedback, new display filters and new overwrite mode
• Support for Windows XP, Windows Vista 32-bit & 64-bit, and Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit
• SDL Passolo Essential 2009 can now be launched from within SDL Trados Studio 2009 SP1

SP1 is free for existing SDL Trados Studio 2009 and SDL MultiTerm 2009 customers! Just login to your account and retrieve it from the My Downloads section.

Please note that you have to run the executable update files one at a time while following the wizard-driven process, which will automatically remove your old version and replace it with SDL Trados Studio 2009 SP1 and SDL MultiTerm 2009 SP1, respectively.

If you would to receive one-on-one remote training from one of our highly skilled specialists in SDL Trados Studio or a variety of other applications, contact us today.

Today is International Translation Day, which the International Federation of Translators took as an opportunity to proclaim that “The days of the fiercely solitary translator working in splendid isolation are numbered, say many industry observers”, while adding that “in this language-sensitive profession — or, more accurately, set of professions — a large share of added value remains intensely personal.”

On this occasion, we would like wish you a Happy International Translation Day and thank you for your services as translators, proofreaders, editors and linguists in other capacities.

Please take this opportunity to ponder the changes in our industry for a moment:

• Personal interaction between translation providers and buyers leads to better understanding of a text’s purpose. Clients who get involved in the translation process make for better quality texts.
  Question: How can translation users be brought into the process?
• New translation standards emphasize the importance of revision.
  Question: Are too many cooks spoiling the soup?
• Multilingual projects are on the rise; a solution found in one language pair may provide insight for partners around the globe.
  Question: How can translation providers adopt, adapt or create methods for working together quickly and efficiently?
• Practice meets theory meets information management.
  Question: How can insights of this multitude of players, who once worked in relative isolation, be harnessed to best effect?

These are just excerpts from a few of the questions posed by the International Federation of Translators in celebration of the 2009 International Translation Day.

For ourselves, we have already contemplated them and have found that we are well-positioned and properly organized to provide our clients with the quality service they need and deserve.

To get a free quote, contact us today.

The aforementioned memo is a PDF document. If do not have Adobe Reader on your computer, you can download it here.

As a result of a massive outcry among SDL Trados users when SDL Trados Studio 2009 was initially just shipped with a time-limited license of SLD Trados 2007 Suite in addition to the permanent license of SDL Trados Studio 2009, SDL Trados a couple of days ago changed its licensing policy for this product.

Here is an excerpt from a recent forum post:

As you know, as part of the upgrade process, we asked you to return your old license first. After the licenses were returned you should have received your SDL Trados Studio 2009 license and a time-limited license of SDL Trados 2007 Suite. This policy has now been changed. Once you have returned your licenses we will now add to your account a permanent and unlimited license of SDL Trados 2007 Suite as well as a permanent license of SDL Trados Studio 2009.

a. Anyone making a new purchase, and anyone who has not yet activated or returned their license, will find a permanent SDL Trados 2007 Suite license available to them as soon as they complete the upgrade process.

b. People who have already activated their new Studio license will also be able to replace the temporary license of SDL Trados 2007 Suite, with a permanent one.

It is already possible to deactivate / reactivate licenses and on reactivation they will become permanent. More detailed instructions will follow from our support team in due course.

Paul Filkin
on behalf of
SDL Trados Technologies

For those users who do not see their SDL 2009 license posted in their account instantaneously upon returning their old 2007 license, Paul advises, independent of whether you have  a support account or not:

Go to http://talisma.sdl.com/ and select the “Solution Finder” Tab. I have had another option added to this today to make this easy so all you do is;

Select “Licensing Problems” and then check “SDL Trados Studio 2009: I have returned my 2007 license but my new 2009 license is still not in my account”. This will give you a form to complete with details that allow us to identify you and the issue should be resolved quickly thereafter.

One of the reasons SDL Trados keeps shipping the 2007 Suite together with Studio 2009 is that it will take some time for the market to predominantly transition from the older product to the new one. Furthermore there are backward compatibility issues as far as exchanging older file formats is concerned.

In addition, SDL Support’s Paul provides the following reasons to keep SDL Trados 2007 Suite around in addition to Studio:

• It allows you to work entirely with legacy workflows (source to ttx, word bak files) that Studio would handle another way.
• It is necessary with this release to facilitate the TM conversion process as Studio uses some of the 2007 components to take a .tmw TM, convert to .tmx and then into .sdltm. I did see a few posts on one of the forums where users could not convert their TM and the reason was that they had uninstalled the 2007 version altogether.
• You can use MT 2009 with SDL Trados 2007 so you do not lose this ability to use MultiTerm.
• You may have a client sending you old file formats such as FM7 which we no longer support in SDL Trados Studio 2009.

For Multiterm 2009 users who experience problems in its interaction with Word, Paul explains:

If you have not uninstalled MultiTerm 2007 before installing Studio and MultiTerm 2009 then you can be left with two sets of word templates and this causes a failure. But if you have removed MultiTerm 2007 first then there should be no problem.

Virtually coinciding with our own website relaunch, TranslatorsTraining.com also took this sensible step and debuted its completely revamped site design.

If you are a translator and would like to get a better idea of the majority of the Translation Environment Tools (TEnTs), as Jost Zetzsche – author of the e-book “The Translator’s Tool Box – A Computer Primer for Translators” and the “The Tool Kit – A computer newsletter for translators” newsletter as well as co-founder of TranslatorsTraining.com – likes to call them, head straight over to the site.

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SDL Trados Studio 2009 is the latest version of the SDL Trados product family. It combines the best features of both Trados and SDLX in one integrated environment for all your translation, review and project management needs. With innovative features and a new open platform, it enhances translation speed, is easy to use and maximizes efficiency throughout the translation supply chain.
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