The “Loop” from Italian furniture and fixture makers Idiha looks like an oversized Dyson Air Multiplier. It’s darn good looking, with pretty colors and sleek swooshes that make up the circle you stand in to take your shower. It can be used indoors and outdoors, which sounds pretty sweet. Yeah, I’d use it.

Beyond that, details get a little fuzzy. Aside from the obvious design appeal, the Loop’s is described as being multi-sensory with “many functions.” I have no idea what those functions are, but I hope it involves taking ten pounds off my weight and handing me a clean towel before I step out of it. It does look like something out of Logan’s Run so perhaps it could actually do those things.

In the name of sleuthing I headed over to Idiha’s website armed with Google Translate. Here’s what they had to say about the Loop (in an unedited translation from Italian to English via Google Translate):

“‘Loop’ is not a simple outdoor shower but a complete system designed to stir emotions and giving a multi-sensory, thanks to the many functions available. A piece of design with clean lines and harmonious, inspired to wrap waves, where the circular lines delineates a space-time differently, emotional, full of suggestions.”

This was as good as I could do. There was no discernible information on the extra functions, the emotions or the price. Given the lack of details I suspect this is one of those cases where you have to ask for all those silly things.

Look, as hard as I may try to do it, it’s hard to knock a shower system. As most showers do, it’s likely to feel pretty good with that circle of water coming at you. And there’s nothing wrong with an interesting piece of design.

Idiha Design, via BornRich

Article source: http://dvice.com/archives/2012/05/luxury-loop-spr.php

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Twitter will be available in the Basque language in the near future after the social networking service opened up its translation center for Basque on Wednesday.

Those who want to help Twitter to offer their contents in the Basque language need to sign in on the website of the Twitter translation center and contribute with the translation.

Translators were also required for other five languages that included Afrikaans, Catalan, Czech, Greek and Ukrainian. Today, Twitter is available in 28 languages, thanks in large part to a community of nearly half a million translators around the world.

Twitter has become “a home for minority language communities“. The website Indigenous Tweets, created by computational linguistics professor Kevin Patrick Scannell, features of list of 70 minority languages, ranging from “better-known tongues” such as Haitian Creole and the Basque language Euskera to Australian indigenous language Gamilaraay.

Basque language is the second most tweeted minority language on Twitter. More than 7000 Twitter account holders post their tweets mostly in Basque, second only to the number of Haitian Creole tweeters, more than 14000 in total.

Twitter has over 140 million active users as of 2012, generating over 340 millions tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. It has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.” Twitter has been cited as an important factor in the Arab Spring and other political protests.

Article source: http://www.eitb.com/en/news/technology/detail/887684/twitter--twitter-translation-center-now-open-basque-language/

Yahoo recently fired CEO Scott Thompson for lying on his resume. It was just a small “white” lie and no big deal, but as a public company Yahoo strives to operate on a moral high ground. So Yahoo was forced to terminate their CEO and lose an otherwise fine company leader.

Which leads me to the translation industry. Translation companies like GTS that sell on the Internet receive dozens of job applications a month from freelance translators. Most of the applications are sent with resumes (also referred to as CVs). I personally am glad to get these applications. We file the applications and sometimes contact those people when the need arises for a job with a specific language pair and industry expertise. Of course we rely on the resume as an indication of the qualifications of the freelance translator. The tendency is to believe the CV and not suspect fabrication of any kind. But is this a good practice?

This week I received an email from a colleague which was sent to several hundred agencies:

This is information about a fraud in the translation industry. I would like to inform that applications by Ms. XXX YYYY are part of a fraud. These applications are being made by a person who is sending fake CVs to agencies pretending she is a professional translator.

We identified several messages arriving from different languages pairs on a daily basis for more than 1 year now. After tracking the IP and informing the police here in Brazil we found out that this is being done from [country name deleted]. Basically this person offers the service, and when we hire the service either he disappears or delivers a ‘Google translation’. The lack of professionalism from this person has affected us in the past and now he added all his contacts in the CC field, so I had to inform all of you about this. The Brazilian police is informing the international authorities already, but it is important that all of the agencies are aware of this situation.

My own approach to this issue: resume padding by a freelance translator is not a criminal act and it is arguable if it constitutes a fraud. It is no more criminal than a car salesman telling you that the car he is showing you is in perfect shape (only for you to find out later that the engine has terminal cancer). People tend to distort the truth in business and that is life. As in all business transactions, the buyer must beware and perform due diligence. When hiring translators, my suggestion is to only use translators that can provide a phone number and address. Once you have verified that the phone/address is real then ask for references AND a translation test. Everyone in this business has been burned before by dishonest and/or poor translators. Smart people learn from mistakes, preferably from those made by other people.

I would also like to add two comments I received from colleagues which may help you in your hiring practices:

From Bob Dixon, Dixon Servicios Lingüísticos, S.L.

If I may make a suggestion relative to dubious/unreliable translators, there is a group named “Fake and Bad Translators” on LinkedIn:

From Alex Buran, Translation Cloud.

In my experience, relying on any single translator is not a good thing in a first place. Split the work between people when possible.

Do you have any other suggestions on how not to get burned by unqualified/dishonest freelance translators? Please let me know.

Related articles

• Résumé padding is no joke (cnn.com)
• Yahoo CEO Sidesteps Resignation in Padded Resume Controversy (eweek.com)

Related posts:

1. Is spamming good practice in the translation industry?
2. 10 ways to promote your (#translation) business on Twitter
3. 2010 poised to be a fantastic year for Translation industry
4. 10 Translation Industry Predictions for 2012
5. New website is going to cheat translators

Article source: http://blog.gts-translation.com/2012/05/17/resume-padding-in-the-translation-industry-fraud-or-business-as-usual/

Those seemingly innocuous questions, like “tell me about yourself” and “where do you see yourself in a few years?” aren’t just get-to-know-you conversation starters. They’re one of the key ways an interviewer will seek to uncover whether you’re the right fit for the job.

So, before you start to share your life story—or recite the same answer you gave at the last interview—it’s important to figure out what the interviewer really wants to know. Check out our guide to translating interviewer-speak, and learn how to plot your answers accordingly.

1. Question: Tell me about yourself.

Translation: Tell me why you’re the right fit for this job.

The interviewer already has your resume and cover letter, so she’s not looking for a rundown of your employment history. Nor does she care that you grew up in Boston and love to jog on the weekends. She’s looking for a pitch—one that’s concise, compelling, and keeps her attention, and one that tells her exactly why you’re the right fit for the job.

So, while this is a good time to paint a broad picture of who you are, it’s most important that you include a couple of key facts that will sell you as the right candidate.

Think about the 2-3 specific accomplishments or experiences that you most want the interviewer to know about, and share them here. You can frame your stories or tie them together using a theme or a quote, if appropriate, such as “My first boss told me that fundraising is really building relationships, and that’s the approach I’ve taken throughout my career. For example…”

It’s also a good idea to practice your answer aloud, record it, then listen to your pitch. Are you engaging? Are you rambling? Are you getting your most important points across loud and clear? (This is good advice for any interview question.)

2. Question: How would you explain our organization’s mission?

Translation: Can you be an ambassador for our organization?

Any candidate can read and regurgitate the company’s “About” page. So, when an interviewer asks you this, she isn’t necessarily trying to gauge whether you understand the mission—she wants to know whether you care about it, and she’s looking for who in the applicant pool can most effectively discuss the organization’s work and its impact.

So, in addition to doing your research on the company’s work, think about concrete ways it relates to your passions and experiences, and weave them into your answer.

Start with one line that shows you understand the mission, using a couple key words and phrases from the website, but then go on to make it personal. Say, “I’m personally drawn to this mission because…” or “I really believe in this approach because…” and share a personal example or two. For example, if you’re interviewing at a school that stresses character, share some specific character-building education activities you’ve led for students in your last job, or reference the recently released Bully. If you’re interviewing for a position at a hospital, talk about the 5K you recently ran to raise money for leukemia or your passion for volunteering your time to help children with cancer.

3. Question: Where do you see yourself in five years?

Translation: Do you care about our work?

Hiring someone is an investment, and interviewers believe (as you would expect) that someone genuinely interested in the organization’s work will be the better hire. So, what she really wants to know is whether this particular job and company is part of your career path, or whether you’ll be jumping ship in a year once you land your “real” dream job.

So how should you answer? If the position you’re interviewing for is on the track to your goals, share that, plus give some specifics. For example, if you’re interviewing for an account executive position an advertising firm, and you know your goal is to become an account supervisor, say that. And then add specifics about the sort of clients you hope to work with, which will help your answer sound genuine, not canned—and again show why this particular company will be a good fit.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/05/16/interview-translation-what-4-common-questions-really-mean/

We caught up with Taghreedat co-founder Mina Takla to find out more about the project.

Speaking to The Next Web, he told us that Arabic is one of the first three languages that Storify will be translated into.

Taghreedat, which we first saw last month, taking a look at the organization’s initiative to compile a ‘Web 2.0? dictionary in Arabic, has been firmly focused on producing Arabic online content; translating Wikipedia articles, encouraging native speakers to take to Twitter in their mother tongue and was also involved in the translation of Twitter’s Arabic interface.

With over 2,500 volunteers, and the support of twofour54, an Abu Dhabi based investment group, Taghreedat’s latest initiative is all about making Storify accessible to Arabic speakers.

Takla told us how it all came together:

“Moving forward and building upon the experience it had in building and motivating the Arabic community, Taghreedat reached out to San Francisco-based Storify to translate its interface into Arabic in April. Taghreedat’s interest in Storify stemmed from the online publishing and archiving power that Storify has and the ability of users to save and publish social media content via the site.”

Storify migrated all of its strings to an open source system, giving the Taghreedat volunteer community the chance to translate it all into Arabic – including Storify’s buttons, notifications, and all website sections.

Takla said that Storify welcomed the project. “It’s expected to boost adoption and usage of Storify by Arab users worldwide,” he said.

Taghreedat will also be linking the Storify project directly to one of its original projects, with all translated items ported to its tech dictionary.

This move may, however, come as a blow to Yahki, a Cairo-based alternative to Storify, whose native Arabic interface was one of the its main selling points when we took a look at last October.

A similar attempt to bring an Arabized version of Twitter to an Arabic-speaking audience came to an end last year, before Twitter even introduced its own Arabic interface. Storify’s move to translate its own interface may prove to make it an even bigger threat to Yahki’s existence.

Within 15 hours of the announcement, over 400 translators had already translated 330 strings, with the majority of volunteers coming from Saudi Arabia, closely followed by the UAE and Egypt. Volunteers from Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, France, the UK, US, Algeria, Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine are also involved in the project, which is expected to be finished by mid-June.

Arabic is one of the fastest growing languages on the Web, as the Middle East races to catch up with its global counterparts, on Twitter, Wikipedia, and more. With this latest project, a little bit of that growth is bound to go Storify’s way.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/05/16/storify-working-with-middle-eastern-initiative-taghreedat-to-translate-the-site-into-arabic/

REMEMBER that infamous incident a while back when a local government website went viral because of hilarious Malay-to-English translations of its pages?

Malaysian netizens had a field day with phrases like ‘pakaian menjolok mata’ that were translated to ‘clothes that poke eye’.

Many suspected the snafu happened because someone trying to save time and ran the text through Google Translate.

Google Translate has been a useful tool for many people around the world ever since it was introduced in 2006. Currently it supports over 60 languages, including several dialects, with about 12 alpha languages. And more research is being done every day to perfect the system and add more languages.

Recently, one of Google’s research scientists, Ashish Venugopal, spoke to local media about the programme and how it works. In a video conference from the Google Campus in California, Ashish explained why transation errors happen.

“It all boils down to data,” he said. “Translation errors are easy to solve if we have a lot of data about the language. Some languages have a lot, some have less.

“The mistakes happen when there’s a language with too little data, and then the programme is forced to make a guess based on what it knows, which of course doesn’t necessarily produce the best result.”

Fortunately, the problem is easily solved when more material is produced in that language and published on the internet. With more examples of the language to analyse, the programme will be able to produce better results, including common phrases and idioms, which are often the hardest to translate.

Feedback about language mistakes is also crucial. Today, if you go and check the English translation of ‘pakaian menjolok mata’, you’d get the more acceptable ‘provocative fashion clothing’.

“It’s important to keep in perspective what the role of Google Translate is,” Ashish said. “It’s not to take over the job of professional translators. The programme can never capture emotion or translate speech in a beautiful way, but it can tell you what is being said.

“We find value in helping someone translate pages from one language to another, doing a job that would take too long to do manually.”

Ashish adds that while some people use it to directly translate texts, most use it to read webpages that are not in their native language.

He is also constantly researching and improving languages for the programme.

“Last year, I was able to work on Hindi, which is originally my native tongue, along with five other languages,” he said. “We hope to expand the service to include other countries and regions.

“We want to provide our users more access to Google Translate services, and give confidence to people who are non-speakers trying to read a webpage in another language that what they are reading is an accurate translation.”

But when mistakes do happen, Ashish stresses that user feedback is key to improvement.

“The programme works so well that it doesn’t realise when there is a mistake,” he said. “We try to imbue the system with statistical knowledge of the language, but we can’t do all of it, so there are errors sometimes.

“However, as a system, it can only get better.”

Currently, Google Translate is being used in a variety of ways across different mediums, from live automatic translations of close captions on YouTube, to specialised mobile versions for platforms like Android and iOs.

The programme is constantly evolving to include more words and languages, and the hope is that one day users will reach a point where using Google Translate will be a seamless method of deciphering a foreign language, providing fast access to new information that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

Article source: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/378798