Category: Content management & strategy (Page 164 of 479)

Congratulations to the new board at CM Pros!

The results were announced last night. The new directors are:

• Joerg Dennis Krueger, Managing Director and vendor-independent consultant and analyst with Cara Europe Ltd in Germany, is committed to expanding the CM Pros community in Europe.
• Tony Pietrocola, President and Co-founder of Tenth Floor Interactive has more than 10 years in the content management industry and will work to market and expand the recognition of CM Pros.
• Paul Trotter, Founder and CEO, Author-it, New Zealand has worked with content management for the past 12 years and plans to use his practical “make it work” experience to champion CM Pros member benefits.
• Andrew Wilcox, president and founder of Everage Consulting, Canada, has served as Technology Manager for CM Pros and plans to follow through with the technology initiative currently in process.
• Barry Schaeffer, president of X.Systems.Inc, focuses on handling the organizational impacts of information technology changes and is dedicated to developing a body of CM Pros knowledge.

The four new Directors replace two outgoing board members, Mary Laplante and Emma Hamer, whose terms expire this month. Directors Linda Burman and Travis Wissnik remain on the Board until January 2009. Barry Schaeffer joined the board in late 2007, filling the remainder of resigning Director Joan Lasselle’s term.
It’s great to see the association continue to grow, and to have generated enough board nominees for a competitve election.

By the way, I believe the Executive Director position is still open.

In 2005, the White House Conference on Aging discussed the barriers to communication for a growing population of “Limited English Proficient (LEP)” adults. Not surprisingly, the creation of, funding for, and distribution of translated information was a predominant theme. To its credit, the WHCOA site now provides up to date information in eight languages (MT-powered.) Despite some progress in the U.S. over the past decade in areas such as prescription drug labels, quality is still a major issue, particularly in the medical and legal industries.

The U.S. is certainly not the only nation facing language barriers that have economic, health, and legal ramifications. Our interview with Karl Lonnroth demonstrated the enormity of work in progress within the European Union to deliver multilingualism as a fundamental right. In 2006, China discussed a lack of translators as a “major obstacle to China’s economic development.” In late 2007, the Daily News Analysis India ran an article that bemoans the lack of translators as well as infrastructure as major barriers to the availability of Indian literature.

Certainly an over-simplification, but…

Solution? More translation services.

Problem? Lack of translators. Demand exists, tracked monthly by TranslatorsCafe.com (also an excellent site for knowledge sharing and information on job opportunities.) Here’s a good start for our “Resources” contribution, with links to opportunities for certification, under and post-graduate degrees, grants, and research endeavors. Expecting the inevitable “you are missing this site, link, etc.,” we invite comments and additions for the list. We’ll republish updates as appropriate.

Industry Certifications

American Translators Association
Excerpt: ATA has established a certification program to enable individual translators to demonstrate that they meet professional standards. Translators who pass a written examination are certified by ATA in a specific language pair and direction (from or into English).

Institute of Localisation Professionals
Excerpt: The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) has the primary aim to develop professional practices in localisation globally; offers the Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) program.

University Programs

California State University, Chico
Excerpt: The mission of the Localization Program is to provide education, training, and outreach in Localization and International E-Business, with the help of strategic partnerships and collaborations, to help students and businesses compete in the new global networked economy. Also offers the The Localization Certification Program with an updated 2008 schedule http://rce.csuchico.edu/localize/

Kent State University
Excerpt: The Institute for Applied Linguistics (IAL) is a research and training unit within the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State. Affiliated with the Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies, the Institute and its faculty coordinate the four-year Bachelor of Science Program in Translation, the 2-year Master of Arts in Translation and the Ph.D. in Translation Studies.

University of Limerick: Localisation Research Centre (LRC)
Excerpt: In 1997, UL established the world’s first dedicated postgraduate programme in Software Localisation and in 2001 the first International Localisation Summer School. The LRC also runs regular Professional Development Courses which are linked to the Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) programme established by The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP).

University of Massachusetts Amherst
Excerpt: The Master of Arts in Translation Studies is a separate track of the M.A. in Comparative Literature. Thirty-three credits are required. Most students take four semesters to complete the degree. Two languages are required (one may be English). Students will explore practical techniques and strategies of translation in addition to theoretical and cultural studies implications of their field.

Wake Forest University, North Carolina
Excerpt: The certificate in Spanish Translation/Localization (STL) teaches strategies of Spanish into English translation and introduces students to various software language applications; includes an internship in a professional translation environment.

Grants

Finnish Literature Society
Excerpt: Foreign publishers may apply for a grant for the translation of Finnish, Finland-Swedish and Sámi literature into other languages. Funding is awarded primarily for the translation of Finnish literature, though a number of grants are awarded for the translation of works of non-fiction dealing with aspects of Finnish culture.

Research

Translation Research Summer School
Excerpt: Each year between twenty and thirty students are admitted to the TRSS. Most are research students in the early stages of their projects, but some are experienced staff who want to go into translation and intercultural studies or who want to refresh their research skills. Two full scholarships (covering fees, travel and accommodation) are available; deadline for application is February 22, 2008.

Decades of experience with XML technologies and content strategies provide unique ability to help organizations make appropriate technology choices and leverage industry best practices. New blog at https://gilbane.com/xml

Cambridge MA, January 29, 2008. Gilbane Group Inc. today announced the launch of a new practice area dedicated to helping organizations of all types utilize XML technologies and best practices. Well-known industry expert and long-time Gilbane associate Bill Trippe will be the practice’s Lead Analyst. Trippe is joined by industry veterans and Gilbane senior analysts Leonor Ciarlone and Mary Laplante.

Gilbane’s XML Technologies and Content Strategies Practice is designed for IT and business managers who need to gain control of critical content, increase collaboration across enterprise applications, improve efficiencies through faster and more flexible information distribution between business partners and customers, and implement new business models that can keep pace with today’s internet-speed competitive requirements. The amount of XML content being generated today is staggering, as large infrastructure providers like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Oracle, and others offer tools and technologies that generate and manage XML information, While many organizations are taking advantage of XML within departmental applications, most companies are not even close to taking advantage of the XML information being created and utilized by popular applications including office software and database repositories. Significantly, many executives are unaware of the XML content and data that are untapped assets within their organizations.

“As most of our customers know, XML (and before that SGML) technologies and applications have always been core to our content and information technology consulting and coverage.” said Frank Gilbane, Gilbane Group CEO. “Our team has deep expertise that comes from roles in enterprise IT organizations, software development, standards bodies and industry associations involved in development and adoption of markup language technologies for key business and government applications. While XML cuts across all our analyst and consulting activity, today’s proliferation of XML content means that many businesses need to consider XML as strategic to their information infrastructure. Our group’s experience and market knowledge uniquely qualify Gilbane to provide that expertise. I am thrilled that Bill Trippe, who is always in demand, will be the lead analyst and consultant for the Group.”

“Project leaders, IT managers, and business executives have always depended on Gilbane Group to help them understand the value of applying standards and technologies to their businesses,” said Bill Trippe, Lead Analyst, XML Technologies and Content Strategies Practice. “With this new practice, we are bringing together research, best practices, and advice and guidance on XML implementation and technology acquisition that they cannot get from any other single source.”

To learn more about Gilbane Group’s XML Consulting and Advisory Practice, visit the group’s new blog launched today at https://gilbane.com/xml/ or send an email to xml@gilbane.com.

Although it is already mid-January, I would still like to wish everyone a very good 2008! It definitely looks to be an interesting year.

Back to blogging, after a very long pause. The reason was my major geographical transition: after 8 very nice years in Boston, we returned to the bi-lingual Finland and the very multi-lingual European union last autumn. The time required for a trans-Atlantic move is not to be underestimated!

Leonor’s interview with Director General Lonnroth about the languages in the EU is an excellent description of the world on this side of the Atlantic. On a very personal note, I love tuning to YLE Mondo radio every time I am driving; a local station broadcasting news from several different countries. I even get the NPR! I listen to German, French, Spanish, and Italian news, and at the same time notice the differences there are not just in the language, but also in the content. Even more fun is to listen to news from Australia and South Africa, which really change the world perspective. A good reminder that from Africa or Australia, many things do look different than from the US or from Europe. How lovely it would be to understand what they say in Chinese, Japanese or Arabic, to name just a few languages!

Anyways, things are finally starting to find their places in their new home, so I am back to blogging. We had a wonderful Gilbane conference in Boston at the end of November; it got so many ideas going in my head, especially about the social aspects of content, search, collaboration – and of course language. The question “Where are languages in social media” was asked in the conference, and the first answer was on the lines of: gee, that is a tough thing to solve. True – and yet I am convinced that we will begin to see very new types of tools and solutions. It was interesting to note that several examples were given on how in corporations social media enabled people find a language speaker inside the organization. “Through our collaboration tool, we found someone who speaks Japanes and can check our translations.” “We realized someone in our German office could translate the materials we needed.” Language skills become yet another skill to be shared in communities.

Another interesting point was that MT and its usefulness came up. With the amount of user-generated information exploding, there is no chance to human-translate everything. Could this be the real coming of age of MT?

I spoke with one multilingual service provider who said that they have started receiving requests for checking user-generated content in corporate community sites. Interesting. I would guess that need for automated checking of “bad words” increases as more content on corporate sites comes not from employees but from anyone in the web. Enterprise searches have to be multilingual, but there is always room to improve.

As Leonor pointed out: collaboration yields knowledge. That knowledge is multilingual.