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Language watchdog insists French labelling requirements apply to all products, including musical instruments.
Xavier Twigg, owner of Twigg Musique Montréal, says instrument companies generally only create one product label in one language, English.(Steve Rukavina/CBC)
The president of a nationwide chain of musical instrument stores says a whole new twist on D-Day is coming to Quebec next June.
That’s when the province has promised to crack down on product labelling, ensuring everything has French wording emblazoned, inscribed or stickered on. The new law, known as Bill 96, requires any label or writing on musical instruments, products or packaging to have a French translation.
“When we get to D-Day, unless there’s some changes, it’s going to be very traumatic for our stores,” said Steve Long, president of Long & McQuade Musical Instruments, which has 100 locations from British Columbia to Newfoundland.
“We won’t be able to operate in Quebec.”
Long & McQuade has 18 stores in the province.
Long is among those raising concerns about the new law’s Article 51. It says every inscription on a product, its container, its wrapping or on any document or object supplied with it — including the directions for use and the warranty certificates — must be drafted in French.
Most of these products are imported, and English is the industry-standard language.
Lilt CEO Spence Green’s observation on SlatorPod that localization has become one of the key use cases to show return on investment in AI is something most people in the industry can agree with. And when some big names like Reddit not only make AI-enabled localization part of their growth strategy, but also make good on their intent, as they announced in September 2024, the skeptics ought to notice, too.
The technology is certainly there for all who wish to open the door to automation of multiple localization tasks.
Transformed content workflows and customization of target outputs via trained/fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) are just two examples of what can now be done. But there is a lot more.
What retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI orchestration can help accomplish, and the ability to process ultra-mega-massive volumes of content using AI, are also great ways to boost that precious ROI… even automating quality assurance to different degrees based on the type of content.
Still, quality assurance remains one of those subjects for experimentation and debate. For that and much more, it is humans who need to get their heads around retooling processes, roles, and the back office so that no new problems are unnecessarily created as AI is implemented.
We asked readers if AI (LLMs included) has changed their day-to-day work in the past 24 months. Over a third of respondents (37.5%) said that has not happened at all (!). A little less than a quarter (23.6%) are on the opposite end of the spectrum saying it has done so radically. The rest, two equal groups (19.4% each respectively), said it has somewhat changed it or just a bit.
NEW YORK (United Nations) — The United Nations celebrates this Monday the International Translation Day, honoring language specialists and highlighting their crucial role in bringing nations together, promoting development and bolstering global peace and security.
Through its resolution 71/288, adopted on 24 May 2017, the General Assembly designated September 30 as International Translation Day, stressing the crucial role of language specialists in bringing nations closer together and promoting peace, understanding and development.
This year’s theme, “Translation, an art worth protecting: Moral and material rights for indigenous languages,” will focus on key ethical issues related to copyright, data collection and the use of translated works.
The event will shed light on the practical challenges our multifaceted global community encounters when collecting data and translating indigenous languages, as well as the strategies employed to tackle these challenges in line with industry best practices.
Professional translation, encompassing written translation, interpretation, and terminology work, involves conveying literary, scientific, or technical concepts across languages. This practice is crucial for ensuring clear communication, fostering a positive atmosphere and driving forward discussions in both international public discourse and personal interactions.
We haven’t been able to test Meta’s live translation, so we can’t say how seamless it will be. But development of these products is coming fast.
Justin Dawes
The Ray-Ban Meta AI-powered glasses are getting a feature for live voice translation.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, demonstrated the new feature and a slew of other updates during the keynote speech of the Meta Connect developer conference, streaming from the company’s main campus in California.
When talking to someone who speaks Spanish, French, or Italian, the user wearing Ray-Bans should be able to hear a real-time English translation through a speaker in the glasses, he said. The user then replies in English, and a mic in the glasses picks up the voice and transfers it to the user’s connected mobile app. The translation from English to the other language is voiced aloud through the app for the other person to hear.
The implications for travel are obvious, and a press release from Meta about the upgrade said as much: “Not only is this great for traveling, it should help break down language barriers and bring people closer together.”
The company did not say when the update is coming but said it would be soon. The company plans to add more languages in the future.
Meta earlier this year said that it was integrating voice-activated AI into the glasses, which meant it could translate menus and answer questions about landmarks seen through the lenses.
Zuckerberg demonstrated the new translation feature with Brandon Moreno, former two-time UFC Flyweight Champion. Moreno spoke in Spanish to Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg responded in English to Moreno.
The demo was brief, but the chatbot was able to translate in real time despite some slang and pauses.
– New research shows that 94% of multilingual event planning professionals said they would consider using AI as part of the live translation services at their events. –
New research announced today has revealed that an overwhelming majority of event planning professionals (94%) said they would consider using AI as part of the live translation services at their events.
However, as it stands for the moment, in-person professional simultaneous interpretation is THE most popular translation service used by 70% of multilingual event planning professionals.
AI-powered speech translation is a close second at 67%, which shows that event planning professionals are already considering which technology is best suited for the event they are organising.
These results are part of an exclusive report published by Interprefy, the multilingual event technology and services partner that surveyed the views of 1000 key decision makers in events, marketing, and project management positions for multinational companies around the world.
The market value of the AI/ machine translation industry is predicted to reach $3 billion by 2026/27. This shift has been fuelled by the adoption of hybrid working and the acceleration of organisations seeking out employees and freelance teams across the world.
Powwows are informal get-togethers of groups of ProZ.com users living in close proximity. The events are organized by local translators, for local translators.This event offers a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas among industry professionals.
Anyone who is registered with ProZ.com may attend, regardless of membership status. In addition, spouses, children and guests of members, as well as translators who are not ProZ.com members, are welcome.
If you’re a linguist, translator, and/or interpreter based in or around the city of La Plata, Argentina you’re invited!
This event is organized by local translators, for local translators.
The powwow is scheduled for September 28th at Green Garden, where we’ll gather over coffee (or beer). Come together with us to share insights and experiences while enjoying the evening.
Looking forward to connecting with you and fostering meaningful connections!
Every time I tell someone that I’m a Chinese and Italian Foreign Languages major, I watch them do a slight double take. It bothers me, I’ll admit, but not for the reasons you’d expect. I’m frustrated that I can’t seem to conjure a response to their unspoken questions.
“Why learn languages you have no personal connection to? Ones spoken by so few people so far away? Why spend hours memorizing conjugation tables when you’ve already met the language requirements?” In short: “Why learn a new language at all?”
I’ve been studying Chinese for practically my whole life, Italian for a little over a year and French and Nepali during high school and my gap year. And still, I find that the more I throw myself into learning languages, the further I am from conjuring any answer to that simple question: Why?
If you have ever sat through lunch with native speakers at Oldenborg, agonized over verb agreements in office hours or even tried to converse with locals or extended family members in a foreign country, then you already know how it feels to exist in a sort of linguistic exile.
On good days, I feel a mix of pride and exhaustion. On bad days, I feel like setting myself to this impossible task is almost comically akin to Sisyphus’ struggle, except that, unlike him, I have a choice.
I’ve learned that however fluent you may think you are, there is no finish line in learning a language: The mountain remains perpetually stretched out before you, and you must continue to push that boulder further and further up.
As in previous years, ProZ.com is hosting a two-day an online event for International Translation Day on September 25-26th, 2024! ITD2024 includes free online streaming webinars and presentations, live Q&A, networking sessions and features sessions from speakers and panels from industry experts and recognized members at ProZ.com.
There are 21 publishers with work represented in the 2024 edition of the American Literary Translators Association awards.
Prose and Poetry Shortlists Are Expected October 10
As the book competitions compete for coverage this autumn, we continue working to catch up with the announcements of longlists, shortlists, and wins.
Today (October 18), we look at he American Literary Translators Association‘s (ALTA) longlist of 24 titles translated into English from a total 17 languages and 21 publishers.
The winning translators in this program’s two categories—for a 10th year, both prose and poetry—are to be named on October 26 at ALTA’s 47th annual conference in Milwaukee, with an intermediary announcement of shortlists on October 10, six days before the opening of Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20).
Each of the two winners is to receive US$4,000 in this competition, which was founded in 1998.
In a comment on the release of these longlists, ALTA’s Racheal Daum is quoted, saying, “With works spanning continents and centuries, this year’s longlists continue the National Translation Award’s commitment to celebrating diverse, exciting works in translation.
“ALTA is also extremely grateful to the prize juries, who considered some of the largest batches of submissions in the history of the National Translation Awards. Without their time, expertise, and tireless effort, these prizes would not be possible.”
The sun shone brightly as industry leaders gathered for a series of presentations and panels at SlatorCon Silicon Valley in Menlo Park on September 5, 2024. Anna Wyndham, Slator Head of Research, moderated the first afternoon panel session, titled “The Language AI Stack.”
In this panel, Phrase’s CEO, Georg Ell, and Uber’s Head of Globalization, Hameed Afssari, engaged in a lively discussion about the practical applications of large language models (LLMs) and their transformative impact on the localization industry, with AI as a tech stack.
The language AI stack, concurred the two leaders, is a concept encompassing the computing power behind LLMs, the applications built on those models, and the services layer that facilitates their use in the enterprise.
The language AI stack addresses various aspects of LLMs in localization, including machine translation (MT), workflow optimization, and linguistic asset management. At Phrase, the infusion of LLM capabilities into its signature platform has been a game-changer, explained Ell.
This SaaS language technology platform has evolved significantly in recent years, and LLMs are being used for automated scoring, routing, and improvement of translations, leading to increased efficiency and quality, added Ell.
The CEO went on to explain how in a typical localization workflow the system automatically selects the most suitable MT engine, either from aggregated third-party options or customer-provided ones, and then leverages existing language assets to perform a translation.
Federal law requires counties with high concentrations of Native speakers to provide translations of the ballot. But what they leave out can be as important as what they put in.
This story was published by Votebeat in partnership with ICT. Votebeat is a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.
The group of Navajo speakers gathered in Flagstaff were deep into translating the pages stacked in front of them when they began deliberating over how to best describe fentanyl.
It wouldn’t be a straight translation — almost nothing is, from English to Navajo. But these county and state election officials, charged with translating Arizona’s long and complex ballot for a key group of voters on the Navajo Nation, would try their best to get it right.
“Not azee’,” someone said. “Azee’ is medicine. It’s to heal.”
They looked down at the English text: “Criminalizes selling fentanyl that causes the death of a person.”
Azee’, they decided, gave the wrong impression. The group would need new wording, and quickly.
This was just a single sentence, a small piece of just one of the 13 propositions set to appear on Arizona’s November ballot. By the end of the day, the group had to finish translating all of them into Navajo. Because Navajo is a historically oral language and many who speak it cannot read it, the goal was to come up with a translation that voters who are not proficient in English could listen to at the polls.
Several of the proposals on the ballot are hotly contested, from abortion rights to open primary elections. While the English language used to describe those propositions has been the subject of debate in the press, public, and courts, the translations into Navajo and other languages receive little attention or public scrutiny, even though they are covered by federal law.
Established in 2018, the US National Book Awards’ newest category, Translated Literature, this year drew 141 submissions.
The Second of Five Categories’ 2024 Longlists
With its rate of submissions in this category running a bit lower than might have been expected, the United States’ National Book Foundation‘s second-released 2024 longlist is for Translated Literature.
This is the most important of the five categories for our international professional readership at Publishing Perspectives. In 2023, this category drew 141 entries from publishers, the lowest number since the 2020 competition and the second-lowest since the 2018 establishment of the Translated Literature award.
Last year’s competition drew 154 submissions, by comparison to this year’s 141. The 2022 competition drew 146. Indeed the largest year for submissions so far in Translated Literature was 2021, when publishers made 164 entries. Even in the opening year, 2018 was slightly higher than this year’s input, at 142. Only one year’s number of entries has been lower than this year’s, and that was the pandemic year of 2020, when there were just 130 submissions.
While the differences in these numbers are not large, the longtime struggle of translated literature among American consumers is a perennially painful and frequently embarrassing point for many in the States’ book community and industry. Perhaps there’s some work to do on the part of the foundation in encouraging more submissions in this still-young category.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have proven their usefulness for streamlining workflows, optimizing linguistic assets, and shortening quality assurance cycles, among many other applications.
Through LLMs, AI is not just automating tasks, but also reshaping how language service providers (LSPs) and localization divisions at the enterprise operate, deliver value, and grow their businesses.
These changes and the overall impact of AI in translation are being felt across the language industry, and the second edition of Slator Pro Guide: Translation AI captures new and updated use cases illustrating this rapid evolution.
The guide examines not only impact, but also value, implementation effort, technology involved, business opportunities, and user perspectives for 20 use cases.
Highlighting the wide-ranging applications of AI in translation, from core machine translation (MT) to sophisticated production and linguistic tasks, a few primary business areas appear to be influenced by AI, though its impact is certainly not limited to these.
Our film editor takes a look at the tangled art of international film titles translated for the German screen.
Hot Fuzz: Zwei abgewichste Profis (2007, d. Edgar Wright). IMAGO / United Archives
Occasionally I search my press emails for an upcoming film, and I’m confused when it doesn’t show up. I search the director and actors’ names, find the poster with their faces. But it turns out the movie is called something else entirely.
This happened to me this month; while writing about the Luis Buñuel retrospective upcoming at filmkunst66. I was confused by the title The Strangling Angel – a Buñuel I had missed during film school? No, it was in fact just the German title for his masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (in the original Spanish, El Ángel Exterminador). The altered name gives off a totally different mood and feeling – more calculating than constraining.
The title of a film bears a lot of weight. Like an elevator pitch, it gives one a sudden burst of understanding, or it plays with you viscerally. Often the title is translated as literally as possible into new languages, but different countries have different film markets and audiences – what works in one area may not land in the same way elsewhere.
Sometimes distributors decide against the original title, renaming it or adding a long sentence that wouldn’t pass for the byline for the picture. In the comparatively verbose German tongue, the straight-up translation method doesn’t work as easily.
WALTHAM, MA, UNITED STATES, September 10, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — Lionbridge, a global leader in translation and localization solutions, has published a new eBook, “AI and Language Strategy in Life Sciences.” This comprehensive guide explores the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on language outcomes within the Life Sciences industry. It provides the latest guidance for safely embracing AI to enhance language capabilities across the drug and medical device lifecycle.
Life Sciences companies are adopting AI, but are understandably cautious about trusting Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI to translate regulated content. Lionbridge’s eBook addresses how to achieve trust and control when deploying AI-powered language services. It also offers guidance on where and how LLMs can be utilized for cost efficiency without compromising language quality and compliance.
“As a leader in life sciences language services, Lionbridge is at the forefront of understanding how new language technologies are transforming the industry.”
— Pia Windelov, VP Life Sciences Strategy and Product Marketing
Authored by industry experts Pia Windelov, Vice President of Life Sciences Strategy and Product Marketing at Lionbridge, and Camilla de Villiers, Managing Director of Life Sciences at Lionbridge, the eBook bridges the trust gap and clarifies potential applications of LLMs to produce reliable language outcomes.
In this age of instantaneous tech, a lack of language skills is still putting global business success on mute. How can marketers avoid getting lost in translation?
Going global is increasingly on a CEO’s and a CMO’s to-do list. In the UK alone, 87% of those businesses who trade internationally are planning on expanding their overseas operations this year, with a further 10% aiming to step outside the UK for the first time.
That’s a lot of cross-market communication campaigns. But, despite emerging technologies helping business bridge borders more easily than ever before, they’re still being held back by language barriers – to the tune of almost £50bn per year in the UK.
When words cost business
We’re living in a turbo-CX age. From hyper-personalization to customer-centric, data-driven campaigns – consumers increasingly expect their needs to be understood and met. And that means that language, more than ever, is not just about words. It’s about making a deep, personal connection with someone based around cultural nuances. But these cultural nuances are often missed in generative AI’s word churn, jeopardizing audience engagement in an era where building trust is everything.
Without this richer understanding of language, marketing messages are misinterpreted. That makes brands seem distant and out of touch. And that makes customers feel dissatisfied and disengaged.
When companies don’t localize the buying experience, they risk losing around 40% of their target market. But when trading partners use similar languages, trade can shoot up by 72%.
In 33 years, the initiative has published Brazilian works in 45 languages
The Brazilian National Library Foundation (FBN) is launching a programme to support the translation and publication of Brazilian authors abroad. This is reported by Toda Palavra, a partner of TV BRICS.
The programme will provide US$1 million to publishers who want to translate and publish books by Brazilian authors in other languages.
Applications will be accepted until 6 October 2024.
For example, the programme, which has been in existence for 33 years, has helped publish more than 1,200 Brazilian books in 45 languages.
Financial support is provided in two stages: the first installment is paid after the contract is signed, and the second after the translated book is published.
The aim of the programme is to increase access to Brazilian literature abroad and to promote the national literary heritage.
The game “Black Myth: Wukong” owes its popularity among gamers around the world to refined graphics, difficult gameplay, storytelling and, perhaps most of all, to the English translations of the texts.
Developed by China-based Game Science, the game doesn’t use the traditional translation of the ancient Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” on which the game is based. Rather, it uses pinyin – the most common Western alphabet transcription of the sound of Chinese words.
For example, the main character, the Monkey King, is translated as Wukong, his Chinese name. The Black Bear Monster is “Black Bear Guai,” with guai the abbreviation of yaoguai, which means “monster.”
The video game “Back Myth Wukong” has become a hit, piquing the interest of gamers around the world about ancient Chinese myths.
It is interesting that while most Western players are helping each other with the texts online, their Chinese counterparts are arguing whether the translation sets the bar too high for foreign players.
“It’s too confusing, and I believe they should at least unify pinyin or English words,” said one user on Weibo.
That raises some interesting questions. What is good translation? How should we pursue translations – by adhering to original meaning as much as possible or compromising a bit to make them more understandable to foreigners?
The answers are complicated.
Hugo Tseng, professor of English and college dean at Sanda University, told Shanghai Daily that there is no “standard, correct translation.”
He explained, “You can translate ‘Black Bear Monster’ as such or by its pronunciation ‘Hei Xiong Guai.’ The latter will definitely be more confusing to foreigners, but it is the more accurate one. ‘Black Bear Guai’ combines the two, and it has both pros and cons.”
The shortlist for the 2024 Medal for Excellence in Translation, administered by the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), has been announced.
The shortlisted translators and their works are:
Stephanie Smee for On the Line: Notes from a Factory (Joseph Ponthus, Black Inc.)
Josh Stenberg for For a Splendid Sunny Apocalypse (Jiang Tao, Zephyr)
Kevin Windle and Elena Govor for Voices in the Wilderness: A Digest of the Russian-language Press in Australia 1912–1919 (Australian Scholarly Publishing).
Established in 2016, the medal ‘recognises outstanding achievement in translation and the vital role of translators and translation in Australian culture and scholarly discourse’, and is awarded biennially for a book-length translation into English of a work of any genre.
The winner of the 2024 medal will be announced on 30 September, which is also International Translation Day.
On August 20, 2024, researchers from Northeastern University, Jinan University, Harbin Engineering University, and NiuTrans Research published a comprehensive overview of the challenges and advancements in the field of simultaneous speech translation (SimulST).
The authors describe SimulST as “especially beneficial in scenarios that require fast and smooth communication,” such as live conversations and voice conferencing.
Given its critical role in real-time communication, the field has received significant attention and made notable progress in recent years. However, it remains a “demanding task,” according to the authors, who identified and outlined four key challenges that complicate SimulST:
SimulST models must effectively handle lengthy and continuous speech inputs while maintaining high translation accuracy and low latency.
These models also face the challenge of “deciding” when to start translating without having access to the complete input, balancing the risk of premature outputs — leading to incomplete translations — against delays that increase latency, as both can negatively impact the user experience.
Achieving the right balance between translation quality and latency is complex, as no single evaluation metric effectively addresses both aspects simultaneously.
SimulST suffers from a lack of annotated training data, making it difficult to train models effectively and achieve optimal performance.
“These factors collectively contribute to the intricate nature of the SimulST task,” the authors noted.
While previous studies have proposed solutions to these challenges, a comprehensive overview summarizing these practices has been missing. With this paper, the authors aim to fill that gap by providing “a more complete and comprehensive introduction to SimulST.
The translation news daily digest is my daily 'signal' to stop work and find out what's going on in the world of translation before heading back into the world at large! It provides a great overview that I could never get on my own.
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United States
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