Language Technology Division

Tell Your Story at AMTA 2012

The 10th Biennial Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas will take place in San Diego from October 28 to November 1, 2012, right after the ATA conference.

The deadline for program submissions is just around the corner – May 21. The technology showcase, where you can demonstrate research or commercial systems that incorporate MT for FREE, accepts submissions well into June. There are program tracks for commercial and government users of MT. The submission requirements for user studies are quite modest. If you are an active MT user, please consider telling your story at AMTA! You can find details under Call for Papers and User Presentations on the AMTA conference website.

Two keynote speakers have been confirmed: Bonnie Dorr, DARPA Language Technology Program Manager, and Luis von Ahn, founder and inventor or reCAPTCHA and Duolingo and a notable TED speaker (see our January post).

AMTA is sponsored by Microsoft, SDL International, Systran, and Multilingual.

Online Questionnaire

Have language technologies put language professionals in the driver’s seat? Or do they feel as if they’re just along for the ride? How do today’s language professionals really feel about how language technologies affect their working life? We want to know!

Language technologies such as translation environment tools, terminology management systems, term extractors and machine translation systems play a growing role in the language industry today. They can allow us to achieve things we would never have believed possible or practical, but they can also bring equally unanticipated challenges. In either case, they can affect the ways that we as language professionals perceive our role and our work. To better understand how the effects of language technologies are perceived in a wide range of working environments, we need to encourage a wide variety of language professionals to share their views.

This means that if you are a language professional, we need your help! If you currently use or have ever used language technologies in your work, you are invited to participate in the study Powering the language industry and empowering language professionals: A dual role for language technologies? conducted by Elizabeth Marshman, Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Translation and Interpretation (elizabeth.marshman@uottawa.ca).

To participate, any time until April 15, 2012, simply fill out the anonymous, online questionnaire at http://app.fluidsurveys.com/s/em-powering-translation/langeng/ and tell us about your personal observations and perceptions. By investing a few minutes of your time in sharing your opinions about technologies’ influence, you can help language professionals, clients and employers, professional associations, technology developers and educators to better understand how technologies affect how “in control” you as a language professional feel in various aspects of your work, and some of the main benefits and drawbacks of technology use.

Elizabeth Marshman has been teaching terminology and translation technologies at the School of Translation and Interpretation since 2007. She is currently the Director of the Collection of Electronic Resources in Translation Technologies (CERTT) team. CERTT includes a range of translation technology training resources that are available to the public through the Language Technologies Research Centre’s LinguisTech site.

Language Technology At European Institutions

Last year’s META-FORUM 2011 in Budapest was an international conference on technologies for the multilingual European information society and an official event of the Hungarian EU Presidency. Below you can watch the presentation by Conrad Toft of the European Economic and Social Committee. He talks about language technology and the European institutions. Please add your comments.

Language Technology at European Institutions
author: Conrad Toft, European Economic and Social Committee
published: Jan. 9, 2012, recorded: June 2011 ▼

Link to the presentation slides.

Copyright VideoLectures.Net
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Stay Current – Upgrade Your Skills

The Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council has just launched a new website dedicated to providing access to ongoing educational programs for language professionals. There are currently four courses available: Introduction to CAT Tools, Introduction to Globalization and International Trade, Introduction to Finding Translation Clients, and The Justice System in Canada.

You can find the website at www.cttic-edu.ca, and there should be at least one face familiar to LTD members.

reCAPTCHA

After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn explains how his ambitious new project, Duolingo, will help millions learn a new language while translating the Web quickly and accurately. Interesting use of ubiquitos CAPTCHA – implications for our profession that may be disquieting. Watch the video.

(via A Walk in the Words)

Take This Survey

Don’t miss out on taking the ATA Standards survey. The survey is meant to gauge the awareness, interest, concerns, and support among ATA members for language standards. It will help to identify areas where ATA members would love to see more activity, have greater influence over directions taken, and give a clearer mandate to those that represent their interests.

This is a straight-forward, short survey; it will not take much of your time and it will not solicit any information you would not want to share with anyone.