In both technology and business, cloud is a hot topic.  At SDL, things are no different and we are expanding cloud offerings to support a more dynamic, versatile translation environment.

As part of the release of SDL Trados Studio 2011 SP1, translators can now take advantage of SDL BeGlobal – the industry’s first cloud platform for trusted, automated translation – with a free SDL BeGlobal Community account.

Vom 18. – 20. Oktober 2011 findet die tekom Jahrestagung in Wiesbaden statt, die SDLs starke Präsenz in den deutschsprachigen Märkten wiederspiegelt.

Sehen Sie die neuesten Lösungen für Textredaktion und Übersetzungstechnologie – abgestimmt auf die Bedürfnisse dieser Märkte – auf den SDL-Messeständen 430 & 437 in Halle 4: 

• Eine Vorschau auf die neue Serverlösung. Diese richtet sich besonders an kleine und mittelgroße Übersetzungsteams in mittelständischen Unternehmen sowie an Übersetzungsagenturen.
• SDL Global Authoring Management System. Die Lösung für Textredaktion und –optimierung berücksichtigt Ihre stilistischen Unternehmensvorgaben, Ihre Corporate Language sowie die deutschen linguistischen Regeln und trägt somit zur Reduzierung der Übersetzungskosten bei.  
• SDL Trados Studio 2011. Die marktführende Translation-Memory-Lösung bietet mit SDL BeGlobal eine sichere, integrierte Lösung für Maschinelle Übersetzung.
• SDL WorldServer 2011. Die Übersetzungsmanagement-Lösung – in deutscher Sprache verfügbar – bietet besonders Übersetzungsteams in globalen Unternehmen sowie großen Sprachdienstleistern die Möglichkeit, den Übersetzungsprozess optimal zu managen. 

Diese und weitere Lösungen präsentiert SDL in verschiedenen Workshops, Konferenzen, Tool- und Standpräsentationen sowie bei Panel-Diskussionen. Eine Übersicht alle SDL-Präsentationen finden Sie unter: http://www.sdl.com/en/language-technology/news-and-events/sdl-events/emea/2011q4/2011-10-18-tekom-annual-conference-2011.asp

SDL bietet mit seinem Produktportfolio Softwarelösungen für Unternehmen, Übersetzungsagenturen, Übersetzer und Textredakteure. Dabei werden alle Bedürfnisse der verschiedenen Zielgruppen abgedeckt; angefangen bei den Übersetzern und Textredakteuren bis hin zu kleinen, mittleren und großen Teams in Unternehmen und bei Sprachdienstleistern.

SDL OpenExchange rundet das Portfolio ab. Diese Plattform ermöglicht Entwicklern, Applikationen zu erstellen und der SDL-Community kostenlos bzw. günstig anzubieten. Nutzer können dank dieser Anwendungen die Leistung ihrer Übersetzungssoftware weiter steigern, sei es durch die Unterstützung bestimmter Prozessschritte oder weiterer Dateiformate.

SDL OpenExchange sehen Sie live auf unseren Messeständen. Alternativ finden Sie weitere Informationen  unter  http://www.sdl.com/en/language-technology/sdl-openexchange/. Hier haben Entwickler auch die Möglichkeit, bei unserem Wettbewerb mitzumachen und einen Teil des Gesamtpreises von 10.000€ zu gewinnen. 

Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch!

This week I'm hosting a guest post from our Jeremy Harpham, Senior Product Marketing Manager at SDL.  Jeremy is on site all week, so if you're in tekom drop by and say hello... he'll be there.

This week the tekom Annual Conference takes place in Wiesbaden, Germany. The strong presence SDL has in German speaking markets is reflected at this key industry event from 18 – 20 October 2011. Come and visit the SDL stands (430 & 437 in Hall 4) to see the latest content optimization and translation technology with the arrival of key new products to address the needs of the German speaking market.

By Keith Laska, Senior VP, SDL Language Technologies

Before taking Microsoft’s new “Cloud” release Office 365 for a test drive, I was excited that the software behemoth had decided to take a strong swing at the online-only, viciously free-to-cheap office productivity applications such as Google Apps and Zoho. To date, these guys have done a wonderful job of creating a ubiquitous environment of office productivity, which in my view has far surpassed the cost associated with upgrading on a somewhat regular basis. Once I passed the “user ID and login” test, I was in and ready to get silly with Microsoft Office 365 – forging my destiny in the Cloud. 

Once Microsoft works out a couple of the kinks in their 1.0 cloud strategy, they will have achieved excellence on par with Google and others, with one catch: they have an enormous, desktop and server ecosystem to slowly transition to the cloud. Some see this as a dependency and a risk. Not me. When it comes to the cloud, I’m a realist. Individuals and small to medium businesses will always be the first to fully adopt new technologies – including cloud – because the immediate cost and accessibility benefits outweigh the excessive infrastructure costs and legacy offline file storage that come along with a requirement for increased security and privacy. So it’s safe to say, in my opinion, that the first to adopt Office 365, and therefore create a lot of new, online-only content, are SMBs and SMEs, with larger businesses and enterprises steadily advancing into the cloud over time.

This is where it starts to get interesting for the language industry.

Apart from cost and compatibility, one of the biggest reasons companies use cloud technologies is that it’s just simply easier to use. For the initial small business and individual user of Office 365, in an increasing world of instant-gratification, submitting themselves to the traditional localization process (offline files, source content review, analysis, preparation, workflow process creation, resourcing, localized content review,  DTP, final layout review, post-mortem meetings) may feel like watching a snail crawl backwards. The individual cloud users of the future (in a forecasted $240bn market  by 2025), will require simplicity of work types, new business models for localization, and most certainly tolerance for “acceptable” levels of quality based on content being translated. While we can’t always predict the future, one thing we do know is that the maturity model for traditional localization processes may soon be subject to a number of stress-tests.

What do you think? Post a reply in Elevation Center!  

By Claude Walton, Director of Product Marketing, SDL Language Technologies

Over the years, we have gotten a lot of requests for an automated translation product for consumers that want to communicate with friends and family, or to help them learn another language.  Today, I am delighted to announce that this product is now available.  SDL EasyTranslator Beta, our new consumer application, is available today for download.  

We have been helping enterprises communicate with customers for a long time, but as it has become easier to communicate with people globally, it was time to give consumers the ability to access the power of real-time automated translation as well - in a very simple desktop application that makes  language barriers a thing of the past.

Here’s a bit more info: SDL Easy Translator is an easy to use, all-in-one desktop companion that enables consumers to translate text instantly from any document or to chat in real-time across languages in a favorite chat app. All of this in over 60 languages! Yes that’s right, in one desktop application, you get the combined power of text translation and real-time chat. But wait...there’s more. SDL EasyTranslator is free. Yes, plain and simple free. I invite you to try out, and be sure to share it with your friends and family so we can gather important feedback about the product. 

This free version is designed for students and others who wish to learn new languages, anyone that has the need to chat in real-time with friends and family across languages, or that simply wants to read foreign language content such as emails, documents or web content.

Interested in learning more?   Simply go to www.easytranslator.com to download the app to your desktop or to learn more about the features included in this release.   After you have had a chance to use the application for a few days, be sure to let us know what you think.  Just click the “send us feedback” button in the lower right corner of the application.  We look forward to hearing from you. 

So in review:

• SDL EasyTranslator is available today, and it is free
• It lets you translate any text, chat across languages, and can help you learn a new language
• To get started using this new consumer app, go to www.easytranslator.com and click the download button.

Like it?  

• Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your family!
• Like us on Facebook
• Send us feedback!

By Keith Laska, Senior VP, SDL Language Technologies

Ignorance is bliss. At least that’s what I thought when I started researching the millions of definitions and variants of Cloud Computing while listening to one of my favorite classics from The Doors. By distilling all of the available information I was able to clear my head for a minute, sit back, meditate and jot down the reasons why cloud computing has become so confusing….

1. Cloud Computing is anything and everything “online.” There, I said it. Technically, one can open up a browser, connect to their web-based email, open up an application on their iPhone, join a webinar, buy a product on Amazon.com, and all of this fits under the literal description of “cloud.” Why? Because the core definition of Cloud Computing is anything, sitting somewhere, online.

2. Confusion with Cloud comes from mixing “back-end” and “front-end” capabilities. People tend to get most confused when words like “SaaS, IaaS, and scalable multi-tenancy” get mixed together with “ease of use, browser-based and pay as you go.” I tend to categorize these separately to make it as simple as possible to understand without risking loss of IQ points. For me, Cloud “back-end” is techie stuff that “front-end” users should never have to worry about. Cloud back-end can be hosted remotely in a public, private, hybrid, compute cloud or any combination of those. It can rely on an architecture that allows the number of users to scale profitably without concern of outage or stalling. It allows companies to “pay as they grow” and scale server and storage capacity as and when they need it. But for the user – all of this techie stuff should be virtually seamless and hidden. Think of Google Search Engine – there is a heck of a lot of technical capability built behind that application – servers, storage, scalability to allow billions of hits per day. But as a user, all you see is that simple search bar.

3. Cloud computing explained. I then created a cheat-sheet that helped me understand the various types of cloud:

• Private Cloud. This can be information stored on your own personal PC, or corporate information held on corporate servers walled off from public access. This is basically information hosted privately, whether you are an individual or corporation.
• Public Cloud. This is information stored in a public environment, outside of your firewall. Your data could be in a server in Northern Alaska or in Southern New Zealand, but you don’t care. Because it’s secure and the most important thing for you is not where it’s held but that it’s instantly accessible and backed up. All the better for you, as you don’t have to worry about storage disks, your house burning down, or the company premises getting broken into.
• Hybrid Cloud. I liken this to the folks who will eventually swim in the lake, but are dipping their toes in to check the water temperature on a regular basis. A good example for a consumer is someone who uploads photos to Flikr for everyone to access (public cloud) however keeps backups of tax returns on a hard disk connected to their home computer (private cloud). For a company, this could mean hosting your customer data with Salesforce.com (public cloud) but hosting the data residing in your SAP implementation down the hall from your office (private cloud).
• Confidential Cloud. This is an environment where customers would like to access applications in the Cloud but would like to outsource the hosting and management to a third-party provider. In this instance, the outsourced provider manages the application, the servers and security. It’s neat for companies because they don’t have the hassle of managing all of this stuff in-house. However, it’s not as cost-efficient as a Public Cloud where you share resources, storage and bandwidth with a wider audience to reduce overall costs.

4. There is a big difference between “traditional cloud” and “future cloud.” This was the pièce de résistance that helped me understand – and effectively segment – the various definitions of Cloud Computing. For me, 90% of the technology we are using today is “traditional cloud.” In other words, our everyday lives sit in this cloud. From accessing Google Search, to our web-based email, this “traditional cloud” has been around for some time. Future or Public Cloud needs a number of trend convergences to really take hold. 

• First convergence: We must enter the World of Web 3.0 – where you no longer concern yourself with on-demand, ubiquitous online internet connectivity, it’s just there as, and when, you need it. At home, in the car, underground, in an airplane. Anywhere. This is the semantic web, where every piece of information online is categorized and accessible immediately (even your own personal profile and levels of expertise – think LinkedIn or Facebook). This may even be a world where you pay for information online. (How much would you pay to search through Google - $1 a day?)  Remember, nothing is free.  You currently pay indirectly for internet search because your information is sold to the highest advertising bidder. 
• Second convergence: The work you do online comes to you based on your skills and levels of expertise. Not so difficult to imagine. You get an interview for a job because you theoretically have skills that match the job requirement. Except in the Future Cloud, you no longer have to go to get that work – it comes to you based on your online profile. Simple, easy, efficient.
• Third convergence: There are a number of obstacles in the way of Public Cloud being adopted by the masses, which has led to a “hybrid” approach to Cloud adoption (some company information in a Public Cloud, some information in a private cloud). In order for Public Cloud to fully succeed, answers to security provisioning, storage management, data movement and bandwidth limitations need to be accounted for and solved.

In any case, clouds are all around us and multiplying quickly. Everyone’s getting on the hype-wagon and joining will probably just be a matter of time…

For more information, check out the presentation “Demisting the Cloud” – now live in Elevation Center, SDL’s virtual briefing center for cloud computing: http://events.unisfair.com/rt/sdl~cloud

Today, SDL has launched Elevation Center - the Localization Industry’s First Briefing Center for Cloud Computing.  Globalization and Localization professionals are invited to participate in an industry-wide conversation to drive innovation and advances in the cloud for our industry.

Elevation Center will expand over the next several months and will include a series of presentations, educational seminars, live chat sessions, forums, product demonstrations and podcasts - all delivered through innovative cloud platforms.  Localization professionals can meet peers, network with others in the center, learn about cloud computing, participate in conversations on topics of interest to the industry and explore ways to work together.

Join today to be part of this industry-wide conversation. Sign up to gain access to Elevation Center

Post by Mark Tapling, CEO, SDL Language Technologies

Eight months ago, I was given the opportunity to lead the Language Technologies Division at SDL, and I have felt fortunate to be in this role at a time when there is so much opportunity for the localization industry. Today, it is easier than ever to connect with people all over the globe, but accelerating the way the world communicates requires great language skills. Language is it is at the center of global business, and with the ease of communication across new channels, language matters to a much wider community within a company. While English may have emerged as the common lingua franca, the introduction, engagement, and evaluation cycles that lead to an English based transaction, are all done in local languages.

Machine translation has been in the headlines consistently over the past 12 months with live experiments, mergers and acquisitions, mobile applications for smartphones, and internet forums buzzing with a definite sense of increasing acceptance from consumers.

Machine, or automatic translation, is old news for government institutions and security services. These organizations have been taking advantage of the technology to understand foreign language materials since its inception in the 1950’s. Also, they have been largely responsible for funding its ongoing development leading to the improved quality available today.

Last month, SDL launched SDL BeGlobal – the industry’s first cloud platform for real-time automated translation.  There are a lot of capabilities that make this a game-changer, and a lot of things that weren’t previously possible are now possible – so much so, that we have referred to the technology as “magical.”