In the future of translation, seamless and real-time is the brass ring. Many a sci-fi fantasy has presented a universe in which some small tech miracle allows us to instantly communicate with people from any country, culture, or planet.
But much like the jet pack, flying car, and invisibility cloak of our much-imagined future, the dream of perfect, automatic translation is still far from reality. This doesn’t mean people aren’t working on it, though.
In this post, we’ll take a look at two recent efforts to disrupt, democratize, and scale-up translation.
Nothing generates global buzz like an Apple product upgrade. The hype leading up to the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and announcement of the Apple Watch came with the usual wave of “leaks,” and speculation as to what the new devices would mean for the smartphone and mobile tech landscape.
In this post we’ll talk a bit about the changes the iPhone 6 will bring to the global smartphone market and touch briefly on how it might impact your localization plans.
For over 15 years, Acclaro West Coast Operations Manager Lydia Clarke has helped leading international companies localize their corporate websites. In this blog post, Lydia shares four of the top considerations for an international-bound website, touching on coding languages, content management, language navigation and currency.
In this Q&A session with head of technology at Acclaro Ian Barrow, we'll get a glimpse of how technology powers modern translation solutions and what the near future holds in terms of new developments in client-agency connectivity.
Have banks embraced the digital revolution? Not sufficiently, according to a recent article by McKinsey. While we may be wowed by the way our smartphone cameras can be used to make digital deposits, the future of the global, digital bank will depend on far more than front-end magic.
Disruption comes to all, and the global financial services sector is at a turning point. Where will massive cost-savings be realized? Will banks make moves to protect traditional annuity streams from third-party start-ups? How are mobile solutions in emerging economies making inroads over traditional banking? What lessons can banks learn from the localization and translation moves made by major new media giants in the past five years?
In this article, we’ll take a look at McKinsey’s findings and explore the answers to these questions.
One popular misconception about the world of translation is the degree to which machine translation (MT) will one day transform linguists into the next class of panhandlers disrupted by the miracles of modern technology. While automated translation tools online have made significant gains in the arena of basic communication, they remain impractical for the gold standard messages business rely on to build brand, differentiate their voice, and connect with customers.
There are, however, situations where MT can offer significant time and cost savings over pure human translation. If your translation agency has recommended you consider MT, you’ve probably brought them a sizable project that meets specific criteria. How sizable? Try more than a million words.
So what can you do to further smooth the way for your big translation project? In this post we’ll talk about some simple preparations you can make to feed the machine.
Technology has completely transformed the face of international travel. Whether it's booking a flight, finding a stellar ramen house near the hotel or fitting in some easy sightseeing between meetings, there's now an app for our every travel need. In this blog post, we'll share a few of our favorites.
The big story in eCommerce in 2014 is the increase in mobile shopping. From Black Friday and CyberMonday around the globe to sweetheart spending in Asia, a significant shift from desktop and laptop eCommerce to tablet and smartphone is well underway.
This move has big implications for eCommerce design and localization, and if your company has global commerce in mind, you’ll want to consider these trends for your next redesign or pending launch. In this article we’ll look at seven eCommerce design trends originally featured by Armondo Roggio at PracticaleCommerce.com and how they could impact your eCommerce localization strategy.
Global scalability and speed-to-market have never been as crucial as they are today. In our hyper-connected global marketplace, copycats are replicating proven concepts and taking them to emerging markets at record speed. So how can your startup edge out the competition in the race to global?
The global mobile app scene is exciting, especially for publishers who are tapping into lucrative international markets through successful localization strategies. This summary of 2013 mobile app data and trends can help you get a vision for marketing your app to users around the world this year.
Explosive app growth has become a worldwide phenomenon, with countries from Brazil to China, Japan to the UK experiencing surges in mobile app revenues and downloads. Want to make sure your app doesn't get lost in the shuffle? It's time for app store optimization (ASO), a rapidly evolving practice that allows your app to stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Read on for our ASO localization tips and leverage your mobile app across global markets.
A quick look at any café will show that technology has radically changed over the last decade. Smartphones are seemingly ubiquitous with people checking their email as they wait for their coffee. Others sit in front of slim portable computers lightyears faster than the clunky laptops of 2003, using wifi to turn a table into a mobile office. And then there are tablets, large and small, changing how people read, bank, connect, and play.
What will a café look like in ten or twenty more years? Will your business be able to stay competitive as new technologies grow and change the marketplace even further? Read on for our recap of global technology trends that promise to create new business models and new marketplaces.
There’s plenty of buzz about BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries when strategizing about emerging mobile markets. But even as South America and Asia grab headlines, there’s another continent worth consideration: Africa. With 650 million mobile phone subscribers (that’s more than in either the European Union or the United States), African markets are set only to grow even more. Mobile phones are becoming the PCs of Africa, adapting to local needs and wants along the way. Read on for the top African countries on our radar as well as the special considerations needed for tapping into this booming mobile market.
Sometimes when I tell people my company helps companies increase their global reach through language translation services, I’m met with a skeptical grin.
“Is that going to be around much longer?” they say. “I thought Google Translate and other automated translation tools were making that kind of thing obsolete.”
And here’s one of the reasons Machine Translation (MT) is such a complex and contentious topic. Yes, it is can be a powerful tool for businesses rapidly looking to adapt to foreign markets. Yes, it can drive down costs and speed projects along. But applied to the wrong projects in the wrong way, it can have just the opposite effect.
The only thing that evolves as fast as the technology we use every day is the jargon used to describe it. The phrases “cloud computing” and “in the cloud” are employed on a daily basis by CEOs, CIOs, project managers, and advertising execs to describe a variety of technology and productivity situations in our network-obsessed culture. Like many others, you may have a general sense what “the cloud” is, but what, exactly, do these phrases really describe? And how does the cloud operate for international businesses?
Even if you haven’t invested in a cloud computing solution for your own business, global or otherwise, you’re probably already accustomed to cloud-based services. Whether synchronizing your eBook reading or streaming your music collection through Spotify or Rdio, you’re already relying on the tenets of cloud computing. In this post we’ll define that nebulous nimbus phrase, take a look at some of the pros and cons of building a business dependent upon it, and shed a little light on cloud computing in other countries.
Here’s one for the hardcore language nerds out there (like us!). We couldn’t resist sharing this article we discovered recently about a computer program developed by UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia to reconstruct the vocabularies of ancient languages.
While you certainly won’t need to have your brand translated into proto-Austronesian anytime soon, the implications of the technology and its relationship to human linguists is fascinating to consider. Read on for a brief look into how computer scientists and language historians join forces to take us on a tour of major mother tongues.
The imminent arrival of the New Year provides a perfect opportunity to analyze the technological innovations that wowed us in 2012 and take a peek at the shiny new ideas that will change our lives in 2013. Six trends caught our attention in 2012: gaming, eCommerce, search engine optimization and marketing, eLearning and training, applications, and multimedia. Looking ahead, these trends will continue to fascinate us as deeply interconnected innovations transform how we interact with each other close to home and globally.
Machine translation, or MT as we call it around here, has changed the way translation agencies do business. Far from the error-prone technology it once was, MT has recently become a viable way to produce workable translations — though, not without some risk.
Mashable recently published an article about a newly launched translation tool that marries MT technology with speech-recognition technology. Our take on the article follows, and we'd love to hear what you have to say. Read on and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Have you ever noticed how serious gamers have their own language and jargon? If you're one of them, you're probably fluent in the languages of your favorite games, understanding their codes, acronyms and special terms.
Games, on the other hand, can't learn other languages on their own. And if you want to publish a new title in international markets, you’ll need to translate and localize your game just as you might any major software release.
In this post, let's take an abbreviated look at seven crucial aspects of going global with your game. There are millions of new, international gamers out there waiting to buy...and play!
As Acclaro gets ready to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we're taking a look back at some trends that have changed the way we do business today.
Throughout the history of the translation industry, human translation has always been the best way to get the best quality. Over the past ten years, however, machine translation has matured into a viable solution for more and more industries. Translation is not just cryptography. Language is often a fluid and illogical medium and good translation requires fluent knowledge and careful attention to detail and nuance, something that computers just don't do very well. However, that doesn't mean they aren't trying...or at least, getting better.
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