Jeremy Harpham's Blog

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.

Most large global organizations embraced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like SAP, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft (now both part of Oracle) more than a decade ago to drive efficiencies and scale in their financial, manufacturing and HR processes. This allowed them to grow their business and control their cost base.

But there are other, often overlooked parts of a business that can benefit from driving efficiencies through defined processes and centralization - The Localization department and translation process is often considered to be a cost-centre in organizations rather than a driver of global revenue growth. If you could deliver your product or service efficiently in more languages could you sell, support and service more customers or reach out to new and emerging markets?

Translation Management is the ERP equivalent for the Localization department and their supply chain of translators and reviewers.

Learn more about how this missed opportunity can become a strategic revenue driver:

• Read the white paper CxO Strategy – The Next Big Win: Localization
• Or Join “The Need for Translation Management” webinars for Europe and Asia on 24 March and the USA on 5 April.

A Happy New Year to you all as we start 2011. I thought I'd start this year with a look back at machine translation in 2010! This was undoubtedly the year when interest in machine translation reached new heights. So looking back, what have we learnt or what happened to machine translation in 2010?

1. Consumer Acceptance
Google really brought machine translation to everyone's attention. The inclusion of automatic translation of web pages within the Chrome browser continues to generate significant traffic on Twitter even 12 months after it first appeared. It is also driving increased consumer acceptance of machine translation as a genuinely useful technology for breaking down language barriers across the internet.

2. Technology Change
Statistical machine translation usurped the traditional rules-based machine translation as the technology of choice for many. While rules-based technology is now over 50 years old, statistical is the 10 year old upstart with a bright future and support for many more 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.

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is, "Will machine translation be the end of human translation?"

You will probably recall the historical vision of the "paperless office" where the introduction of personal computers would eliminate paper? Of course, the opposite happened with computer printers consuming more paper than ever before.  I believe this is analogous to machine translation. If today, as a consumer in an increasingly global market, you cannot read some content because it is not in your native language, then having a machine translation is better than no translation at all. The machine translation helps you to get an idea (or “gist”) of the content, and therefore if it is of real interest. If it is of real interest a higher quality translation is needed and you have to source that from somewhere. So like printers created greater demand for paper, machine translation will generate greater demand for human translation.

The internet has created huge opportunity but also creates significant challenges. Internet usage is steadily rising across the globe - we will pass 2 billion users this year.

It is possible to operate a traditional business in selected languages but a website on the internet makes your business truly global. The internet is also responsible for the explosion in content volumes as anyone can become an author. The struggle for businesses is how to manage multilingual communication with customers, suppliers and even employees when content changes rapidly and has a limited life. This combination makes traditional translation processes too expensive and slow for real time communication. This is where SDL BeGlobal comes in, for an introduction view the short video.

More information on SDL BeGlobal

Now in its third year, I have just launched the SDL Automated Translation Survey together with the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) and the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT).

This year’s machine translation survey follows the same format as previous years so we can identify key trends. Last year we included questions on human post-editing of machine translation for the first time so this year will be the first time we can see post-editing trends.

Today SDL has launched SDL BeGlobal™ - machine translation for business users rather than localization professionals.

Communicate!
In global business, employees simply want to communicate with customers in the customer's native language, and understand what their customers are saying – a real challenge if the business person doesn’t speak the customer's language.

Last week, SDL acquired Language Weaver, the pioneer of statistical machine translation for use by commercial and government organizations. Read more about the acquisition.

On 20th July you can enjoy a rare opportunity to hear the two CEOs, Mark Lancaster and Mark Tapling, speak on a live webinar about the acquisition and the SDL vision for the future of Language Weaver.

Jeremy Harpham, Senior Product Marketing Manager writes: We are entering a new era for machine translation. Today SDL announced the acquisition of Language Weaver, the pioneer of statistical machine translation.

Machine translation is a vital part of the corporate and government battle against increasing content volumes and rising customer expectations of being treated and communicated to as an individual. Increasing numbers of organizations are discovering the benefits of machine translation as part of a fully integrated translation process.