eWorld Translations

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.

SDL Passolo 2011 has been released. This latest version of the software localization tool can be used both stand-alone or integrated with SDL Trados and SDL MultiTerm.

Among the new features in SDL Passolo 2011 are

• support for Microsoft .NET 4.0 (as well as older frameworks, all the way back to .NET 1.0)
• the ability to run diagnostic reports to quickly analyze problems
• SDL Passolo Collaboration Edition
• support for Google Translate, Microsoft Translator and SDL Language Weaver machine translation
• inclusion of machine translation in pre-translation process
• immediate checking of changed text entries
• “store and restore”, to continue working where you left the project
• additional and enhanced support for the latest file filters
  • Microsoft .NET 4.0
  • direct localization of Adobe RoboHelp source and project files
  • enhanced Microsoft WPF support
  • Delphi 2009
  • enhanced Java support
  • Oracle 11 databases

Even though SDL Passolo 2011 is a Unicode application and can therefore only be used on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, it can also localize software for Windows 9x.

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

SDL Trados recently released Service Pack 3 for its SDL Trados Studio 2009 line of products.  Freelance upgrades are available here and Professional upgrades here.

Among its key updates are:

• Access to 3 different automated translation systems (SDL Automated translation, SDL Language Weaver and Google Translate) to help you translate new content more quickly, in virtually any language combination
• Hundreds of time-saving features, such as AutoSuggest, QuickPlace and Context Match, to help you translate faster than before.
• Save desktop publishing time by being able to preview your final document as you translate! Currently available for Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, HTML and XML files
• Support for the latest file formats so that you can accept any project, including Microsoft Office 2010, Adobe InDesign Markup Language (IDML) and InCopy Markup Language (ICML)
• Support for enterprise translation package formats
• First release of key APIs via the SDL OpenExchange, designed to open up SDL technology to everyone and increase software functionality
• Improved integration with SDL MultiTerm and SDL Global Authoring Management System
• Plus, over 180 customer suggestions have been included in SDL Trados Studio 2009 SP3 via ideas.sdl.com. Please continue to help shape future product releases by suggesting and voting for ideas at ideas.sdl.com!

There’s one caveat, though, with respect to the product’s PDF support via a third-party PDF-to-DOC conversion tool that was integrated as a filter: More often than not, it gets confused by improperly maintained formats, unnecessarily placed inline tags and incorrectly placed line breaks (based on some crazy PDF logic).

When installing the upgrade, set aside enough time for the downloads of the updated versions of both Trados Studio and MultiTerm, consisting f approx. 600 MB. And don’t get too annoyed when being forced to reselect your respective languages for the Freelance edition; for some odd reason, SDL does not automatically import them from the old version. To add insult to injury, some users encountered an update to the update and were therefore forced to jump through this hoop twice.

Also, please note that there is a known compatibility problem between SDL Trados Studio 2009 Freelance (without SP3) and SDL Trados Studio 2009 Professional SP3.

If a so-called Package is created in the later, the former ends up with an error message indicating: Your Trados version is too old and incompatible with this Package version.

The solution: either upgrade the Freelance version to SP3, or ask the customer to provide you with source files.

After installing SP3, some users also have encountered receiving an error 80040111 for components with CLDSID {1562E773-38AF-444A-8B83-8A79B4D1A0EF} when trying to open a termbase in MultiTerm.

This error is indicative of a MultiTerm SP3 installation that went wrong. Once MultiTerm SP3 is reinstalled, it works again.

SP3 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 SP3 and SDL MultiTerm 2009 SP3, 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.

As Michael Cunnigham recently reported in a New York Times opinion piece:

As the author of “Las Horas,” “Die Stunden” and “De Uren” — ostensibly the Spanish, German and Dutch translations of my book “The Hours,” but actually unique works in their own right — I’ve come to understand that all literature is a product of translation. That is, translation is not merely a job assigned to a translator expert in a foreign language, but a long, complex and even profound series of transformations that involve the writer and reader as well. “Translation” as a human act is, like so many human acts, a far more complicated proposition than it may initially seem to be.

The author then goes on to take the first three words of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” – “Call me Ishmael” – as a perfect example of the challenges faced both by writers and subsequently translators to reel in the reader, e.g. through authority, forcefulness and confidence.

Quite obviously, it is not an easy undertaking to replicate a similar, if not the same effect in another language which may follow a different grammatical structure and likely features different phonetics.

For a more detailed analysis and description, take a few minutes to read the article.

To avoid the pitfalls resulting from a less than expert translation, rely on our highly skilled specialists and contact us today.

Slowly but surely, translation technology seems to be moving away from the local desktop towards server-based applications and data storage as well as online access.

Depending on the type of implementation this can be beneficial or cause major headaches, e.g. due to latency issues.

Among the contenders are (in alphabetical order):

• Boltran
• Crowdin.net
• GlobalSight
• Google Translator Toolkit
• Lingotek
• Translation Workspace (Lionbridge)
• Wordbee
• Wordfast Anywhere
• XTM Cloud

One advantage of working in the “cloud” is that even if your work laptop is confiscated at the airport for whatever obscure reason, your livelihood won’t be at risk for the time it takes to get your computer back (which can easily amount to a month or more).

Rather, you can pick up on another computer without having to deal with restoring all your apps and data from a backup which then would not even include any of the new files, emails and other data you received while you were gone.

While this might otherwise be remedied to some extent by also using an online backup solution, said solution would depend on the availability of sufficient volume and bandwidth while traveling.

But then again, a purely server-based translation solution would depend on online access, too, in order to be able to work.

Nevertheless, food for thought.

If you would to discuss your translation tool needs in more detail or if you would like to receive one-on-one remote training from one of our highly skilled specialists, contact us today.

As reported by DW-World.de, a mistranslated statement by United States General David Petraeus, commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, from a new set of guidelines for troops in Afghanistan, led some German government officials to believe that troops would be intensifying their involvement.

The online edition of the intellectual weekly paper Die Zeit headlined its story with the particularly vicious extract “Rip your teeth into the flesh of the insurgents.”

Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel by the same publisher concluded “targeted killings are apparently central to [Petraeus'] strategy.”

The respective dramatic headlines wouldn’t have been out of place in a tabloid, but were perceived as an oddity when they were posed by those two publications which are generally seen as a quality news source.

As it turns out, one sentence out of Petraus’ three-and-a-half page statement was not properly translated. In its original, it reads “Get your teeth into the insurgents and don’t let go.”

As you can see, this is simply a note of encouragement for troops to stay the course and not give up, rather than a call to violence.

While it is not clear whether a human translator was used who simply lacked the cultural background to properly understand this typical Amercan style statement and thereby was not able to properly translate it, or whether machine translation was used, with all its culprits, the incident serves as a powerful reminder to not cut corners but rather use a quality translation service, such as ours.

To discuss your translation needs, 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.

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.