SDL, one of the big three in the language biz, paid $42.5 M for Language Weaver a few weeks ago.
Language Weaver, a statistical machine translation provider, is funded with spook money and is a creature of big defense spending on language automation. It is a money loser. As a business plan, this seems to work fine when funded by US taxpayers, but even the patience of defense spenders wears thin, and these guys have been losing money for a long time.
“Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results,” said Dr. Ray Stantz of Ghostbusters fame.
The guys at Language Weaver [...]

“If you’re not a monkey, stop working for peanuts!” say the guys at No Peanuts! for Translators, which provides “support and resources to professional translators and interpreters in demanding and receiving a living wage for their work.”
“No Peanuts! means refusing to believe that translators are powerless. No Peanuts! means rejecting the notion that translators must kowtow to so-called ‘market demand’ as if we had no ability to create our own markets. No Peanuts! means insisting that we need not live in fear or accept exploitation in exchange for the right to earn a living in our chosen field.”
Translators of the world unite!  Standing up against the machines, against the mega-agencies like TransPerfect, who “have helped turn the client-provider relationship inside out.  Many clients have followed their lead and now assume they have the [...]

A few weeks ago, Lionbridge, the biggest LSP in the business, signed a multi-year software technology exclusive to offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based, text-to-text language automation  solutions to commercial clients based on IBM’s Real Time Translation Service (RTTS) technology.
The press is that it’s a game-changer. “The strategic agreement is expected to produce a real-time multilingual communication solution that can increase the efficiency of global business operations, and help organizations become more interconnected by enabling rapid exchange and understanding of critical information.  The offering also will enable clients to access and take action on data and information that presently is unavailable due to language barriers.  Unlike free-ware translation applications, the combined solution can be customized using each client organization’s existing content and configured for specific business processes to increase translation quality and availability.”
That smells like [...]

“Read it and Weep, Translators” should be the subtitle for the most recent “Hispanic Cyberstudy,” but AOL settled for “Marketing to the web’s most rapidly growing population” instead.
“For years marketers have struggled with the complexities of the Hispanic market,” and translators have been busily following their lead to service this market. This is big business, too, with a US Census forecast of 50 million Hispanics in the US this year, nearly one in six US residents.”
The survey defined three translation-relevant market segments based on language fluency. Twenty-three percent of this audience is labeled ‘Hispanic Dominant:’ These people speak Spanish at home, watch and read in Spanish, are foreign-born, have a mean age of 40, and have lived in the US for seven years or so.
Biculturals account for 31% of the [...]

Medtronic is the world’s largest medical device manufacturer, and it also does a lot of its own translations. So it’s no surprise that the company has become a leader in the translation industry as well, enjoying a reputation for careful attention to ROI and best practice.
Medtronic’s internal translation groups (Technical Literature department in Europe, Global Translation Solutions department in the U.S.) provide translation and localization services to internal customers all over the world. A very diverse and international team of translation specialists, project managers and technical staff work with high-tech localization tools to ensure best-in-class translation services.
I recently had the chance to talk with Micah Bly, Localization Manager at Medtronic Global Translation Solutions, in Minneapolis.
He described a translation strategy that in many ways is unique in the medical device industry. Medtronic uses both internal translation teams and [...]

Written for the encouragement and instruction of all that have taken up the profession of translation, especially the common translator.  Second in a series.
The ancient and honorable profession of translation is changing as never before. With the rise of the machine translators, and the technology that enables swarms of hobby translators (aka “community translators”), the profession is beset by opportunity and challenge.
As the field of translation expands exponentially, growth is fastest at the bottom of the market. Why should people pay for translation if they can get it instantly for free, or by persuading others to contribute their translation labors for nothing? Sometimes it seems as if the profession of translation is beset on all sides, and a new translation model is required if professional translators are to create the value [...]