Metaglossia: The Translation World

In the not-too-distant future, consumers may no longer need to view Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) password support page, which explains the various ways that users can adjust their login settings.

On-page optimization is a crucial step in your multilingual SEO campaign. Here’s how spending a little extra time optimizing your keywords, organizing your domain and URL, titles and meta tags will help give your site an edge over the competition.

China has shut down a local Internet search engine blacklisted by the US for its notoriety to carry pirate content.

The week's most significant tech meeting may in fact have taken place in Brussels, where regulators met to discuss "the Google problem."...

In a stop-press post last week announcing Macmillan’s decision to stop printing dictionaries, Michael Rundell pointed out that an online dictionary can...

Suneet Tuli, the 44-year-old CEO of UK/Canadian/Indian startup Datawind, is having a taxing day. "I'm underwater," he says as he struggles to find a cell signal outside a restaurant in Mumbai. Two days from then, on Sunday Nov.

This article is a great little tool to use, to judge whether your blog is scaring readers away. Each numbered item contains a number of criticisms that a person reading your blog may make.
Read each paragraph and pay attention to each comment made in each sentence, and ask yourself, “Could someone make this comment about my blog?” Some paragraphs may only have one comment/sentence that you think applies to your blog, where other paragraphs may be stuffed with criticisms that may apply to your blog.

DE JACQUES HUBERT-RODIER
L'Afrique, un explosif eldorado du XXI e siècle
Par Jacques Hubert-Rodier | 22/10 | 07:00
Télécharger le PDF
L'Afrique est la jeunesse du monde. Une terre d'avenir pour l'économie mondiale », a dit François Hollande à Dakar, le 12 octobre devant l'Assemblée nationale sénégalaise. Certains, comme Lionel Zinsou, un ancien de chez Rothschild, qui a exposé sa vision au président de la République avant sa tournée au Sénégal et en RD Congo, font même un parallèle entre l'Afrique de demain et la Chine d'aujourd'hui. Avec 2 milliards d'habitants à l'horizon 2050, le quart de la population active comme en Chine aujourd'hui, disait-il récemment à « Jeune Afrique », « la région deviendra forcément l'atelier et le grenier du monde ». Face à une Europe en panne, une Chine en plein freinage économique comme l'Inde ou encore le Brésil, les prévisions pour l'Afrique sont, sur le papier, impressionnantes. Non seulement le continent a plutôt bien résisté pendant la crise financière mondiale - à l'exception notable de l'Afrique du Sud -, mais il devrait poursuivre sur sa lancée avec un taux de croissance pour l'Afrique subsaharienne, selon le Fonds monétaire international, de 5,3 % en 2013 après 5 % en 2012. Au Maghreb (Algérie, Libye, Maroc, Mauritanie et Tunisie), après le redressement spectaculaire de 19 % cette année au lendemain de la récession qui avait suivi les « printemps arabes », une croissance de 6 % est attendue en 2013. D'autres signes ne trompent pas. L'Afrique est le marché dans le monde affichant la plus forte progression des téléphones mobiles. A la fin 2012, six Africains sur dix avaient un appareil contre quatre sur 10 il y a trois ans. Un autre signal positif : le volume des investissements directs étrangers a très fortement progressé au cours des dernières années et reste élevé en dépit du ralentissement des derniers mois.
Et l'on peut poursuivre la liste des exemples, comme l'apparition de nouveaux dirigeants politiques décidés à lutter contre la corruption et prêts à respecter le verdict des urnes, ou l'émergence d'une nouvelle classe d'entrepreneurs. Comme en Europe de l'Est et centrale, en Amérique latine, la démocratisation est aussi en marche dans nombre de pays africains. Après la dépression post-indépendance des années 1960, après la « renaissance africaine » du milieu des années 1990, l'Afrique est-elle en train de devenir une « nouvelle frontière » pour l'économie mondiale ? Vraisemblablement pas. Le continent ressemble plus à un « Eldorado » où rivalisent les grands du XXI e siècle, Chine, Etats-Unis, Inde. Un nouveau « grand jeu » qui relègue peu à peu les anciennes puissances coloniales comme la France à un rôle économique plus secondaire. Mais à la différence de ce pays mythique d'Amérique du Sud du XVI e siècle qui aurait regorgé d'or, attirant les conquistadors, l'Afrique est - déjà -assise sur une poudrière.
En premier lieu, la croissance économique a été insuffisante pour créer des emplois, surtout pour les jeunes qui, même si les niveaux d'éducation ont progressé partout, restent souvent à l'écart de la croissance et de la mondialisation. La bombe à retardement est bien là : aujourd'hui, près de 200 millions d'Africains sont âgés de 15 à 24 ans et ce nombre aura doublé d'ici à 2045. L'Afrique deviendra bien le continent le plus jeune au monde. Ce qui, comme le soulignait récemment l'ancien président du Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, lors du 12 e Forum international sur l'Afrique à l'OCDE, est « à la fois un bien et un mal ». Un bien pour la croissance, un mal si rien n'est fait pour leur assurer des emplois et une éducation professionnelle. Car aujourd'hui, 60 % de ces jeunes sont au chômage, selon les estimations de l'Organisation internationale du travail (OIT). « Les jeunes peuvent aussi se révolter », prévenait Obasanjo.

THE biennial conference of Africa Broadcasters tagged Africast will open tomorrow in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Being the ninth edition in the series, the conference, which was instituted in 1996 by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), will run till Thursday, October 25, at the Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers.

With Content Rules as theme, the three-day assembly is expected to reinvigorate Nigeria’s digital migration plan, which stakeholders in broadcasting industry believe, has been dormant since June 29, 2009.

At the pre-event briefing in Abuja, last Tuesday, the Director-General of NBC, Mr. Yomi Bolarinwa underscored the correlation between the theme of the conference and digitization, which he stressed, “throws up the need for more quality content; we all know that in broadcasting Content is King.“

He explained further, “This year’s edition is the ninth since 1996 when it debuted and it is coming at a time when the country is working assiduously towards the final switch over from analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting, which informed the theme for Africast 2012, Content Rules.“

As a global phenomenon, the resolution on digitization was reached in Geneva, Switzerland on June 16, 2006 at an international conference organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

WITH less than three years for television broadcasting worldwide to transit from analogue to digital, the perceived cosmetic approach to this global phenomenon by most countries in Africa generated hot debate two weeks ago in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has set June 17, 2015 as switch-over date for digital terrestrial television operation worldwide.

The occasion was the Digital Dialogue Conference facilitated by MultiChoice Africa with a view to provide broader knowledge for African journalists on the transition, dictated by the advancement in new media technology.

The concern of experts who addressed the two-day conference stemmed from the absence of strategic plan of action that can guarantee seamless transition in most African countries. And the verdict is that the continent may not meet the deadline.

Enumerating conditions that must be fulfilled to achieve digital migration, M-NET Technical Director, Digital Terrestrial TV (DTTV), Mr. David Hagen, mentioned content, cost, coverage, cooperation, communications and consumer support as some of major issues to be addressed.

Hagen canvassed that stakeholders must work in partnership with government in order to drive the process to a logical end. According to him, digitization will not only enhance transmission of quality signals (audio and video), the freeing up of spectrum as a minimum of 18 channels could be transmitted simultaneously from a single bandwidth, poses a big challenge to broadcasters as regards relevant content to fill these channels.

“Broadcasters must ensure that relevant contents that will appeal to members of the public are available, while the essence of the whole process will be for viewers to watch what they like anytime, anywhere, with clear picture and sound,” Hagen said.

Noting further, he stressed that, “consumers will only migrate if they are sure of better and attractive content on DTT, which is not available on analogue. Hagen however singled out costing as major challenge confronting developing markets as far as digital migration is concerned.

He explained: “Through policy framework, government is supposed to drive this process; and take decision on the standard of Set up Box, as well as terms on subsidy in order for people to have access to the box, otherwise they will not be able to receive the signals when

The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet.

Headlines like “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?” quite clearly show that people are concerned about what the Internet is doing to our cognition. Some have speculated that the Internet has become a kind of external hard drive for our brains, eliminating our need to really learn or process information. Others point to the obvious advantages of having more information available to more people than at any other time in history. As our lives become increasingly wired, we are now stepping back to see just how deep down the connections go.

In the late 1980s, communication researchers began shifting to a view of human communication that was more cognitively based. Out of this shift came a few now very successful theories that sought to describe how we seek and process information. One of the most widely applicable theories to come out of this “cognitive revolution,” developed by researchers Alice Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, was dubbed the “Heuristic Systematic Model” (or HSM). Like the highly popularized theory of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking advanced by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, the HSM separates our information processing strategies into two distinct modes. Our heuristic thinking is characterized as a rough and ready approximator relying on basic cues. Being that this style of thought is cognitively less costly, it is our default, applying stereotypes, models, and gut-reactions to the processing of information. Conversely, our systematic thinking is an in-depth look at the evidence where we internalize information and connect it to other ideas. The organizing concept of the HSM is that people are cognitive misers. It takes real mental effort to process information deeply, and as such we rarely do so, or only do so when properly motivated.

The trigger to transition between styles in this dual-process cognition is partially dependent on the sufficiency principle. Generally, when making a decision, we weigh how much we know against how much we need to know to make a confident judgment about a topic. If this gap between what we know and what we need to know is small, heuristic-style thinking is more likely. Conversely, if there is a large gap, we need to expend more mental resources to close it, thus encouraging systematic thinking. This Scrooge-like mental calculus determines how much we process the information we are inundated with everyday. And we readily recognize this game of cognitive economy, especially when browsing the web. For example, going through a stuffed RSS feed can be a fairly disengaged experience, with only the topics that are interesting, confusing, or contentious garnering real attention. This “surf or stay” mentality is easily grafted onto the HSM.

A list of the top 100 people on Twitter that tweet about translation and/or being a translator.

Looking for tweets on translation or by translation people? Look no further. We've got 100 of the best to get you on your way...

Note that this list is not a league table, i.e. no. 1 isn't the best and no. 100 isn't the worst. They are all good and well worth checking out. Oh and dont forget our translation tweets at @_translation

Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) -- For years, China has been pumping billions of dollars across Africa to build large-scale infrastructure projects and grant cheap loans in exchange for access to the continent's natural resources and growing markets.
And lately, along with its economic and political engagements, Beijing has also been making significant strides in expanding its media engagements in Africa. In January, the Chinese Central Television (CCTV), a state-owned news behemoth with bureaus all over the world, chose the Kenyan capital of Nairobi as the location of its first broadcast hub outside its Beijing headquarters.
Analysts say it's all part of efforts to win the hearts and minds of people in the continent and create a more fertile business environment.
"CCTV's expansion in Africa is mainly one step of this whole national engine into Africa," says analyst Jinghoa Lu of Frontier Advisory. "China's investment in Africa has increased several folds in the last several years and the trade between China and the whole continent has reached $166 billion, so China really has a very significant show up at this continent."

Kenya will host a two-day global telecommunication conference to discuss ways of increasing Africa's role on internet freedom, organizers said on Tuesday.

A Portuguese - English Platform of Anthologies of Literature in Translation visa a criação de uma plataforma online de apoio pedagógico ao ensino da tradução literária, oferecendo textos literários para prática de tradução, pensados como corpora de antologias traduzidas colaborativamente, que contribuam para uma abertura do sistema literário de chegada e possam despertar o interesse de editores generalistas, proporcionando aos alunos um primeiro contacto com o mundo profissional da tradução literária.
Numa primeira fase, o grupo de trabalho, aliando problemáticas contemporâneas das literaturas de diáspora com as de tradução, dará especial enfoque aos trânsitos dessas literaturas implicando contactos entre as línguas inglesa e portuguesa, propondo-se apresentar como resultado uma antologia de literatura luso-norte-americana, bem como acções pontuais de disseminação dessa literatura em publicações académicas e literárias nacionais.

Quelles langues utilisent les internautes européens pour surfer sur Internet ? Une étude 2011 publiée par la Commission Européenne et l’institution Gallup traite de la préférence linguistique des utilisateurs d’Internet dans toute l’Europe.

Quelles langues utilisent les internautes européens pour surfer sur Internet ?
Une étude 2011 publiée par la Commission Européenne et l’institution Gallup traite de la préférence linguistique des utilisateurs d’Internet dans toute l’Europe. Sorte de baromètre Flash et menée au téléphone, l’étude vise à recueillir les pratiques des internautes lors de leur navigation sur Internet.

Je suis sûr que tout responsable du développement, responsable international ou internationalisation ou encore, fondateur d’une e-entreprise ou créateur de start-up sera intéressé par les résultats de cette enquête.

Vous pouvez télécharger l’enquête en cliquant ici « Préférences linguistiques des internautes » ou sur le site de la Commission Européenne.

Quelques informations glanées dans ce document :

55 % des internautes européens ayant répondu disent avoir utilisé une autre langue que leur langue maternelle pour lire ou visionner du contenu sur Internet et 35 % ont utilisé une autre langue pour écrire, envoyer ou poster du contenu sur Internet. Dans certains pays, cette proportion peut atteindre 90 % (comme la Grèce, et la Slovénie par exemple).
L’anglais sans surprise est mentionné par plus d’un internaute européen sur 2 pour lire ou visionner du contenu et un peu moins d’un internaute sur trois en ce qui concerne l’écrit.
Autre activité principale des internautes, la recherche d’informations. Plus de 80% des répondants disent utiliser parfois une autre langue dans cette recherche d’informations. Environ 4 sur 10 pensent que de nombreuses informations leur échappent du fait de leur non-disponibilité dans une langue qu’ils maîtrisent.
Pourtant, 90% des internautes privilégient leur langue maternelle pour parcourir un site Internet. Ils sont aussi nombreux à penser qu’un site Internet local doit être proposé dans la langue locale.

Au-delà de ces quelques chiffres, l’enquête informe sur les préférences des internautes pays par pays mais aussi sur leurs pratiques. Il peut être intéressant pour un responsable internationalisation d’un site internet (de e-commerce ou pas) de prendre connaissance des langues maîtrisées dans un pays, celles utilisées pour lire ou pour écrire/diffuser du contenu, etc. Le choix d’une traduction voire d’une localisation peut en dépendre. Le niveau de maîtrise de l’anglais par les internautes locaux est un autre critère qui peut avoir son importance (pour limiter l’investissement financier par exemple…). Un autre résultat que l’on peut trouver : la fréquence d’utilisation d’une langue autre que la langue maternelle pour acheter des produits ou services sur Internet. Et en fonction des pays, les pratiques varient grandement…

With more than 644 million estimated active websites on the internet today and growing, businesses need to work harder to get noticed online. For small businesses that don’t already have an established market presence this means finding ways to do more with less – and that’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play.

SEO is about making a company’s website as visible as possible when related information is requested through different search methods such as engines like Google or Bing. Most large, well-established and tech savvy companies have the advantage of prominence and often more budget to put into creating brand recognition.

If smaller businesses are looking for budget-friendly ways to maximize their chances of being found through search and attracting more traffic to their website, there are a few SEO-related tactics they can employ themselves with their website to help with that.

Whether a business is in the process of building a website in-house or working with an external developer and wanting to understand or speak their language here are seven tips for businesses to improve their site’s search rankings:

Secure Links – For SEO this means reaching out to industry associations, loyal clients and other complimentary businesses to encourage them to link to your site from areas like their blogs and resource pages. This is a signal that search engines, such as Google use in their rankings algorithms and will help to improve a website’s rankings.

Update content regularly – Ensuring content is unique, compelling and fresh is key to keeping the attention of website visitors. Consider blog posts, videos, images, webinars, eBooks, widgets, infographics, and primary research as ways to renew content on a regular basis.

Variety in content – A Forrester study found that pages containing a mixture of text and video are 50 times more likely to rank higher in search results. Make sure to include more than one type of content sharing per web page.

Ensure the site is “social media optimized” – With the growing influence that social media has on a company’s relationship with potential and existing customers, it’s vital to ensure all website pages have the company’s social profile icons (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest). These icons encourage and make it easy to share the information and increase the chance of it being found in a search.

Internet Online Searching Website Links.

The pre-Internet era is now a thing of the past but it has changed the translation activity so much that being a translator in the eighties and before has nothing to do with today’s business.

This is the continuation of Using the Internet in the translation activity – Part 1.

Most translators said that reliability was quite problematic when using online sources because a lot of them have not been peer-reviewed and anybody can publish on the Internet. An article written by an expert is obviously more reliable than an article posted by a layperson. Most translators (50/75; 66.6%) think that online sources are not as reliable as paper sources and assessing their reliability was more difficult. We may suggest that an equivalent should be more reliable if the number of occurrences is significant. For example, an equivalent with 1,000 occurrences may be more reliable than an equivalent with 500 occurrences. This strategy is ‘tricky’ because reliability does not depend on quantitative criteria. Also, the number of occurrences may depend on the research strategy (see the number of results when typing ‘rosace+nucléaire’ and ‘rosace’).

Translators whose languages are rarely spoken and read in their working environment[1] were also asked if they had taken advantage of the web’s potential. The online translation strategies of 52 translators matching this profile were investigated.[2] It was first noticed that these translators did not share the same opinion about the Internet as those working with more ‘common’ working languages (e.g. English, French, German and Spanish). Most of them (40/52; 76.9%) reported that they did take advantage of the Web’s potential but there were still too few online sources written in their ‘rare’ languages. Therefore, they use a lot more paper sources than translators working in ‘common’ working languages. 47.9% (23/48) of the respondents with a ‘rare’ working language said they first used paper sources and most of them (29/45; 64.4%) answered that online sources were not specialized enough. Different answers were given by some translators. Most Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian translators (10/14; 71.4%) said they were able find enough online sources in their language. The same cannot be said for most Russian and Polish translators; according to them (12/13; 92.3%), the Internet does not provide enough specialized sources in their languages.

The Internet has also deeply impacted other elements of the translation activity. Respondents with a 10-year experience and more in translation said that before the Internet era, purchasing paper sources accounted for a huge part of their investments (23 translators) because specialized sources were more difficult to find than today and having technical books, journals, dictionaries and glossaries was a means to save time. They also added that the Internet had dramatically cut their investments in paper sources. Thirteen ‘young’ translators (in the business for less than 10 years) reported that they did not want to buy and/or keep paper sources because they were able to find everything on the Web.

Blogging is an important consideration for businesses and entrepreneurs today. Without a blog, you lack a key tool for generating more interest in your company or your offerings. Of course, a blog isn’t quite the same as a website. You’ll find that using Wordpress themes is part of the equation here, but it goes far beyond that. You need more than excellent functionality and a good aesthetic if you want to ramp up interest and garner more interaction through your blog.

Why Does Interaction Matter?
First, let’s address a concern that some people hold. That is, there’s a misconception that the blog has outlived its usefulness. With the rise of social media, it’s easy to see how that misunderstanding arose, but it’s not the case. In fact, having a blog is more vital today than ever before. Why is this?
Your website should be your business hub – it’s where your customers come to find your products, make a purchase and learn more about your company as a whole. Your blog also needs to act as a hub, but of a different sort. Your blog should be the hub for all of your social marketing activities, and it needs to garner interaction in order to provide better traction in the online world.

Is it better to market by e-mail or on paper?
August 15, 2012 by Corinne McKay
Over the past six months or so, I’ve been experimenting (sometimes with my translation partner and sometimes on my own) with cold-marketing to potential direct clients. Because a great deal of our work is in a very targeted subject area (international development), it’s not hard to find potential clients but it’s often hard to know how to contact them. Here are some thoughts on whether you’re better off making the initial contact by e-mail or on paper; I’m not even going to touch cold-calling because I am the worst phone salesperson ever. Ever. Really. But if you’re interested in low-stress cold calling, The Freelancery has some excellent scripts that you can work from.

The great thing about e-mail marketing is that:

It’s fast. If you’re reading a business news article and see a tidbit that shouts “potential client” to you, you can fire off the e-mail right there.
It’s less formal. You can get away with “Just wanted to tell you that I loved staying at your inn this summer; if you’re ever inclined to translate your website/marketing brochure/menu into English, I’d love to talk,” whereas it would seem a little weird (at least to me) to print out a paper letter with that sentence and pop it in the mail.
The recipient can easily forward the message. I’d say that at least half the time I cold-contact, I don’t hit the right person on the first try. Especially with larger entities, it can be hard to tell who hires freelancers for the kind of work we do. But your prospect can quickly forward your message to the right person.
It’s cheap. If you’re looking at a paper marketing campaign to a few hundred prospects, the paper, envelopes, business cards, stamps, etc. add up over time.

Why Online Education Won't Replace College—Yet
By David Youngberg
When I decided to become a professor, I was comforted by its employment projections. Professors hired to teach the baby boomers are retiring: It'll be a seller's market. Now I'm told Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOC's, threaten that rosy future. One person can teach the whole world with a cheap Webcam and an Internet connection. Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford University research professor and co-founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, told Wired that in 50 years there will be only 10 institutions in the whole world that deliver higher education.

I was scared. So in early 2012 I joined 90,000 other students who enrolled in one or both of Udacity's first two courses. I selected CS101: Building a Search Engine. What with video lectures, online discussion boards, and learning from the field's top minds, it was easy to believe that online education was the beginning of the end for the ivory tower. But I came to realize that MOOC's have five fundamental problems.

1. It's too easy to cheat. While Udacity encouraged students to help one another on the discussion boards, we weren't allowed to post answers. The honor code worked, but only because we couldn't get college credit. The incentive to cheat was very weak.

Make the class count for credit, or serve as the first step to a good job, and phantom forums and answer keys will follow. Despite our best efforts, the proliferation of cheating is higher education's dirty little secret. Take away the classroom and you've made a bad situation much worse.

The following five basic principles are intended to spark a broader, global conversation about how to support innovation and free speech on the Internet between people and between societies. Click the link to read more.

So do you use Opera? (Probably yes because you are viewing this instructable)
You know the "g *search term*" to search *search term* on Google, and same for Wikipedia etc.?

I use them all the time, and I have added a couple of my own, and decided to share a little tutorial on how to get started on making them yourself.