Dixon Blog

The Federal Chancellery of the Swiss Confederation has officially released the online public version of their terminology database TERMDAT. The Federal Chancellery provides services to the Swiss government and the Federal Administration, as well as to the general public.

Online access to the Swiss Confederation’s terminology records was previously only available via the intranet to the federal administration and public sector institutions, and to other selected partners with certificate access.

According to Franco Fomasi, Head of the Federal Chancellery’s Terminology Section, “The initiative will help expand the information offered by the federal language services and create new opportunities for collaboration with existing partners. It will also enhance the ability of the Terminology Section to share approved multilingual terminology in the official Swiss languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh, as well as in English.”

TERMDAT on the Internet contains only verified entries and is intended for persons who do not have access to the full TERMDAT database on the Intranet

The terms, abbreviations, titles of legislation, the names of Swiss and international authorities, institutions and organisations as well as other information held in the database originate primarily from federal legislation and pertain to a wide variety of fields (education, energy, finance, commerce, industry, culture, agriculture, defence, environment, transport, economics, etc).

TERMDAT on the Internet is optimised for use with Internet Explorer 7.0 and its terminological database is updated regularly.

For further information, visit the following website: TERMDAT

According to recent data published by comScore, Inc., the total Spanish Internet audience in February 2009 was 18.3 million people, of which 8.4 million (46 percent) visited an online newspaper site. Elmundo.es was the most popular newspaper site, registering some 3.5 million visitors in February, followed by ElPais.com (3.3 million visitors), 20Minutos.es (1.9 million visitors) and ABC.es (1.2 million visitors). During the month, some 402 million pages of newspaper content were viewed online, with Elmundo.es and ElPais.com accounting for more than a quarter of total page views.

Other notable findings from the report include:

* Of the 8.4 million Spanish Internet users who visited a newspaper site in February, 60 percent were male, and 69 percent were under the age of 45.
* Heavy online newspaper site users (defined as the top 20 percent of visitors by time spent in the category) spent an average of 3 hours per visitor on newspaper sites during the month, more than 4 times longer than the average Internet user.
* Of the 34.5 million mobile phone subscribers in Spain in January, 2.9 million accessed news and information via browser or download.
* In total, 7.6 million people around the world visited Elmundo.es in February, with 3.4 million of these visitors (45 percent) coming from the Latin American region.

For further ionformation, please consult the following website: comScore, Inc.

ELIA invites Professionals from language service companies to attend the Association’s upcoming Networking Days in Amsterdam between 24 – 25 April 2009.

The programme for the event, which includes intensive workshops with around 20 attendees, is as follows:

Growth and Innovation: Finding Creative Ways to Differentiate Your Business
Thursday 23 April, 1-day workshop
Presented by Renato Beninatto (Common Sense Advisory).

Strategic Planning: How to lead your company into the future
Friday 24 April, 1-day workshop
Presented by Michele Hecken (Alpha Translations Canada)

LTC Worx: Increasing your productivity
14:15-14:45 Friday 24 April, FREE to Networking Days attendees

Surviving and Thriving in Uncertain Times
Saturday 25 April, 3/4-day workshop, paired with Speed Networking
Directed by Renato Beninatto (Common Sense Advisory), with panelists Bogi Emilsson (Skjal) and Frank ter Reehorst (Scriptware)

Speed Networking
Saturday 25 April, afternoon activity, paired with Surviving and Thriving in Uncertain Times
This event provides members with a fun and structured opportunity to become acquainted in short, concise meetings. Every three minutes during the activity, a bell sounds, and participants from one side of the networking table rotate to the next seat, where the process begins all over again. Bring lots of business cards!

For further details, please consult the following website: ELIA (European Language Industry Association)

In its efforts to better serve the needs of its members and the language service industry in general, ELIA (European Language Industry Association) has changed the format of its Networking Days by cutting out the technical workshops and leaving the workshops designed for owners and upper management of the companies.
The Association’s technical workshops, designed for Project Managers, translators and reviewers, will now form part of a travelling road-show, titled School for LSPs (S4LSP), with the aim of helping companies reduce their costs by bringing the informative and educational workshops closer to their place of business, helping to reduce and/or eliminate travel and lodging costs.
Spring 2009 sees regional events being held in Aachen, Germany, (“Translation Memories” - Monday, 20 April, “Integrating QA into your workflow” - Tuesday, 21 April) and Bologna, Italy, (“Translation Memories” - Tuesday, 5 May, “Integrating QA into your workflow” - Wednesday, 6 May), with two further events to be scheduled for later in the year.

For further information, consult the following website: S4LSP

The next edition of the Localization World Conference is to be held in Berlin between 7-10 June 2009.
Aimed at professionals seeking to learn about new tools, methods and business practices in the areas of localization and internationalization, the Localization World Conference offers “a variety of high-caliber presentations and panel discussions strong on content and short on sales pitches. Organized by a strong committee, the program is a worthwhile assortment of sessions with valuable takeaways for the attendees.”
For further information, consult the following website: Localization World

Translation Memory
Quality Assurance
Preview Function
System Connection
Spell Check
Glossary and Terminology

The ontram online translation management framework enables browser-based translation and editing of texts independently of the data format of the source documents. The translation memory, preview function, integrated change management and other productivity functions support the user, document the editing status and ensure a seamless co-operation of the project participants.

According to the onram website, the web-based suite is extremely simple to operate and manage (users require a training session of less than 1 hour), offers a fully-integrated Workflow System and facilitates translation, review and proofing processes in one application for all formats.

By virtue of being web-based, no installation process is necessary and users are provided with real-time access to latest status of data and Translation Memory

For further information about onram, consult the following website: Andrä AG

The GlobalSight project is a “collaborative, open source initiative to develop a flexible and sustainable that leverages the best ideas and addresses the true needs of the industry. Composed of translators, LSPs, independent software vendors and enterprise buyers, the GlobalSight community employs collective experience, talent for innovation and history of best practices to build a next-generation, industrial-strength Translation Management System (TMS).”
The GlobalSight open source Translation Management System (TMS) is now available for free download and installation from the following website: GlobalSight.

IMTT, which has been organizing and hosting language industry events (conferences, workshops, and international seminars) since 1999, is to hold its 6th IMTT Language & Technology Conference in Cordoba, Argentina between April 16-18 2009.

According to the IMMT website, the Conference has become the most innovative training event in Latin America, offering the opportunity to network with industry-related people, learn about the new developments in software, tools and management in an environment of collaboration to share knowledge and promote services.

The event is specifically orientated towards freelance translators, translation and localization companies in general, in-house staff, business owners, language professionals and software developers.

For further information, visit the IMMT website: http://www.imtt.com.ar/conferences.php

Microsoft has replaced the glossary content that was previously posted to the Microsoft ftp site with a more concise, easier to use CSV file containing over 12,000 English terms, plus the translations of the terms for up to 59 different languages. This collection of terminology data has been updated to contain terms from Windows Vista and Office 2007.

The Microsoft terminology spreadsheet can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft Global Development and Computing Portal.

As of November 2007, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Translation (DGT) multilingual Translation Memory for the Acquis Communautaire – the entire body of European legislation, including all the treaties, regulations, and directives adopted by the European Union (EU) and the rulings of the European Court of Justice - has been available for download…..for free. The Memory is available in 22 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, German, Greek, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.

The distribution consists of 12 zip files (@100 MB each) containing thousands of TMX 1.1 and TMX 1.4b compatible files. The texts contained in the files are encoded in UTF-16 Little Endian. In order to cut down the size of the files, the extraction takes English as the source language.

According to the DGT site, the total number of translation units available for each language is as follows:

Language Number of units
English 2 187 504
Bulgarian 708 658
Czech 890 025
Danish 433 871
German 532 668
Greek 371 039
Spanish 509 054
Estonian 1 047 503
Finnish 514 868
French 1 106 442
Hungarian 1 159 975
Italian 542 873
Lithuanian 1 126 255
Latvian 1 120 835
Maltese 1 021 855
Dutch 502 557
Polish 1 052 136
Portuguese 945 203
Romanian 650 735
Slovakian 1 065 399
Slovene 1 026 668
Swedish 555 362

The DGT Translation Memory can be downloaded from http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html, together with a TMX extraction tool.

Of course, we could have titled this article “Free TMX Translation Memory Download”…….

March 13-16, 2008
Novotel Paris Les Halles - 8, place Marguerite de Navarre, 75001 Paris, France
www.novotel.com

Program

13-15 March, 2008 Networking Days 4

Thursday, 13 March
• Executive Sales Management Workshop – Day 1
• Project Management – Day 1

Friday, 14 March
• Executive Sales Management Workshop – Day 2
• Project Management – Day 2

Saturday, 15 March
• How-to Guide “Crossing the Atlantic: Selling and buying sevices on both sides of the Pond”
Sunday, 16 March
• Workshop by Renato Beninatto – To Be Announced
• EN 15038 Certification

16 March, 2008 Board Meeting

For further Registration and Sponsor information, please visit the European Language Industry Association website.

Leading language associations, covering both Europe and North America, agree to closer ties.

The European Language Industry Association (ELIA) and the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) have announced a cooperation agreement to collaborate on events and marketing activities that will provide increased benefit to each association’s members. The agreement will commence in 2008 with three European Networking Days, the first of which will be in Paris, March 13 - 16.

The drive behind the cooperation agreement stems from the existing synergy in the two organizations’ missions and the reciprocal interest to create quality regional events for European members. ELIA has a rapidly growing membership most of whom are based in Europe; GALA’s more global representation has more than 265 members of which 50 percent are in the European region. This agreement is designed to increase the associations’ coverage and enhance communications of their respective activities.

GALA and ELIA’s partnership plan includes the joint production of the Networking Days, collaborating on program definition, communications, logistics, marketing and member discounts.

XARXA DE TRADUCTORS I INTÈRPRETS DE LA COMUNITAT VALENCIANA has had the excellent idea of organising a course on “Translation Memory Management and Creation”, to be held at The Holiday Inn (Paseo de la Alameda Nº 38 - 46023 Valencia, Spain) on Saturday 24th November 2007.

The course, to be given by Miguel Ángel Candel, is to cover the following:

- The main uses of translation memories
- Where to find the main sources of bilingual documentation
- The conversion of documents to common formats
- Text processing
- Text alignment
- The importation and management of texts with CAT tools
- Exporting and sharing translation memories
- Advanced usage of bilingual databases

Location of course: HOLIDAY INN VALENCIA - Paseo de la Alameda Nº 38 - 46023 VALENCIA
Date: Saturday 24th November 2007
Timetable: 10.00 to 14.00
Fees: XARXA members: 30€ Non-members: 60€ (includes course material, coffee break and lunch at the hotel following the course)

For further information, please contact: cursos.xarxa@gmail.com

It certainly does seem like a long time since we translators limited ourselves to discussions on linguistics, but times have indeed changed and the “geeks”, in all their varieties, are here to stay. Not only are they here to stay, but it would seem that their condition is in fact contagious, for there can be no other explanation behind our considering attending this year’s tekom in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Running from 7th to 9th November, the event’s conference includes the following forums:

* Integrated Information Management forum
* Localisation forum (in cooperation with GALA)
* User Assistance forum
* OASIS Open Standards Day

The Trade Fair itself would seem like a fine opportunity to get more information about software applicable to the translation industry without the need for quite so much staying up late at night clicking away. Whether or not it actually get’s us out of reading the manuals is another question…..

For further information about tekom, visit: www.tekom.de

I can thoroughly recommend the About Translation blog to anyone with an interest in the translation industry. Run by Riccardo Schiaffino, the blog contains a heartening amount of information about many topics - quality assurance, tecnology, training, etc.- related to the industry and is well worth a visit.

About Translation: http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/