As part of our work in supporting healthcare providers with non-English speaking patients, we also support county and city governments and their 911 call centers. We have a fantastic response time in normal circumstances with a guaranteed connection time to an interpreter in 30 seconds or less (18 seconds on average). But we also have the ability to provide our 911 call center clients with priority queuing. In other words, calls coming in from 911 call centers are automatically bumped to the top of the call queue.  We also work with our account team to set up very short scripting for the incoming calls.

Part of our rapid response comes from proper training of operators to quickly identify the language of the caller and route them to the appropriate interpreter as quickly as possible.

It is really great to know that our service can help save lives or minimize injury by helping local authorities respond quickly to emergency situations.

We should first mention that most language service providers use translation memory technology to store human translations in a database to create consistency and savings on future projects where the same content is repeated. This is especially important for clients that update their documentation frequently.

So what is the difference between a 100% match and a context match? A 100% match is a sentence in a document that is identical to a previously translated sentence that is stored in the database.  A context match is a 100% match that also has the same exact preceding sentence and subsequent sentence. This gives us a little more certainty of the pedigree of the 100% match.

The reasoning behind this confidence is that a 100% match in context is far better than a plain 100% match. I believe this is especially true for short segments.

Most translation memory management systems now differentiate between the two levels of 100% match.

Many of our customers have begun using the folder as a collaboration tool for their translation projects. We thought we would add a few short videos to assist our customers in completing the following tasks in Box:

• How to add a user
• How to assign a task
• How to run a review

You can see the videos here (these videos are best viewed in full screen mode):

How to add a user to your Box project folder

How to assign a task in box

How to run a review project in Box

The study observed both adults and children. The study observed English speakers who also spoke French, Chinese or Spanish.  The study showed that the bilingual participants were better at multitasking, paying attention and organizing their thoughts as compared to the monolingual subjects in the study.

A subsequent study looked at the records of elderly patients with dementia. The research showed that the bilingual patients developed their condition an average of three to four years later than their peers in the study.

This is another great reason to learn a second language. The best results for language comprehension come early in life. If possible get your kids started early by getting them in classes offered by organizations like Language Stars.

A large number of new clients come to us with PDFs or a hyperlink in search of an estimate. We can certainly come up with a budget from that type of information but the odds of getting the estimate correct are slim when you aren’t using the actual source files. Here are four important reasons for always providing source files for your translation estimates.

1. Establish a true word count

Having the source files allows the language service provider to accurately establish the true word count of the files. This will help create an accurate estimate and timeline for the assignment. This is especially true for web projects. Often times a client will send a hyperlink and ask for a quotation on that site. Is the entire site going to be translated? How about forms? If forms are translated how will you respond if the incoming text is in a foreign language? How many levels of your site will be translated? What about linked PDFs? How about any embedded text in graphics or animation?

By providing source files you create a specific boundary around your project which will allow you to get multiple quotes with confidence. If you just provide a hyperlink to three vendors for quotation you will get three completely different scopes in the quotations.

2. Establish a true idea of repetitions and translation memory matches

By providing source files the language service provider can analyze the files against translation memory and come up with a breakdown on cost for new words, repetitions, 100% matches and fuzzy matches. Even if you are a new customer you may realize significant discounts due to internal repetitions in your project. You can learn more about how translation memory works in this past blog post.

3. Uncover any hidden issues in the project

Having the source files allows for a clear picture of any issues that can come up during production. For web projects, project managers can get a clear picture of the resources included in the project including text embedded in images and animations. Important topics related to workflow can be covered like how the content will come out of the website and how it will flow back into the site. We would also encourage a discussion on how the site will be updated going forward.

Print or documentation projects bring up questions related to any text embedded in images, replacement of screen captures with translated or localized versions, use of different fonts for languages with extended character sets (which Simplified Chinese font would you like?), etc.

These conversations can’t take place unless the project manager can understand the starting point – the source files!

4. Get a quick start to your project

The good news is that putting this extra effort in on the front end will allow for a quick start after approval of the estimate. All production related questions will have been resolved at this point!

Argo Translation, Inc. is proud to unveil a new user interface for their machine translation service, ArgoMT. ArgoMT was released in December of 2011. Early customer feedback called for easier navigation. Argo’s development team created a more visually appealing design and easier to use flow for projects through the system. Development plans include support of more files types including XML, HTML, Adobe InDesign, and mobile platform files (iPhone, Blackberry, Android).

The service was created to help customers with low-risk documents who need an inexpensive translation option with a fast turnaround. ArgoMT is a simple service. All the client needs to do is upload a document, select the languages, approve the cost, and within minutes the final files are delivered.

Peter Argondizzo, Managing Director of Argo Translation, says, “The redesign of ArgoMT was crucial to expanding our clientele. We monitored our customer’s behaviors and we realized quickly how effective an attractive and user-friendly web design can be for success.” Argondizzo continues, “We are very excited about ArgoMT and we think the new design and user-friendly interface gives us a strong position in this fast-growing niche within the translation industry. We think the service is incredibly easy to use and we hope the rest of the world will love it too!”

To view the ArgoMT solution, please visit the website http://www.argomt.com or see a video about the service on the ArgoMT website, http://www.argomt.com/2012/04/04/new-demo-of-argomt-machine-translation-platform/.

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One product press release proudly touted three strengths:

• ability to provide discounts for matches to translation memory

Argo has been doing this since 1998. We even report those savings by language on every estimate and in quarterly reports

• ability to deduplicate or handle project revisions or product updates efficiently

Again, Argo has been doing this 1998 using technologies like SDLX, RCWintrans, MadCap and Across. The technologies have improved significantly over the years and the idea of handling incremental updates with translation memory technology has been around for a long time.

• ability to handle translation projects efficiently

The release contends that translation work is done inefficiently. I beg to differ. I am sure that there are a host of language service providers working somewhere in the byzantine era but most of my colleagues have very efficient operations. We all offer efficiencies that help our specific customers. We have recently come up with innovations in file handling, machine translation technology and telephonic interpretation. Those initiatives were all completed last year. We tackle at least three major efficiency projects each year.

One last point, the article assumes that it would be quite easy for clients to simply upload XML. Translation projects come in all shapes, sizes and file formats and as much as I would like to receive every project in XML that just isn’t realistic. Most clients provide MS Office documents, InDesign, FrameMaker, Illustrator and flat text.

I like the basic idea behind this new product but I just think attacking an industry as whole by saying we are all inefficient is irresponsible.

Our perspective of Flare is geared toward the ability to help our customers translate and publish their content in multiple languages as easily as possible. So for this review I am going to take a test project and convert it to Flare v8 from Flare v7 and explore some of the new features and also test if there are any issues in building a MadCap Lingo v5 project.

I chose a large project for testing (254 topics) and the conversion from v7 to v8 went perfectly.

Enhanced User Interface

The first thing that struck me when I opened the project was the enhanced user interface. I like the new ribbon style appearance. Here is a view of the options in v7 vs v8.

MadCap has also added a quick access toolbar for personalized buttons, keyboard shortcuts for any of the menu functions and they have also improved floating and docking functions so you can arrange your screen a little easier for multiple documents and windows. One of the options we use most frequently is the Project Analysis feature under the view menu. I like having that option more easily accessible via the ribbons. The interface is a lot more visual so I think it is much easier to find the functions.

Data Structure Changes – Flexibility

I noticed two changes which must have come from improvements in the structure of the data behind the scenes. In Flare v8 you can now add subfolders to TOCs, Targets, and File Tag Sets via the Project Organizer.  You can do this on the fly by just right clicking where you would like to make the addition.

You can also rename and update variables, conditions and file tags via a newly added workflow without breaking any existing associations.

Newly Improved Import Wizard

I also tested the import wizard for MS Word (you can also import FrameMaker and DITA content). While this isn’t an option we would typically use since clients normally send us their final Flare projects,  I wanted to learn about this improved feature so we can better understand the process that our clients might use to create new Flare projects from legacy projects.

I accessed the wizard by choosing a new project and choosing the MS Word Import option. When you first create the project you have the option to choose your output type and there are some new options on this release like ePub and HTML5.

The wizard takes you through the process step by step and allows you to import all topic styles from the existing MS Word document into the topic styles for your new Flare project.

You can also choose some specific options on the behavior of the content as it is introduced into distinct topics in your Flare project including filename length, size of the topics, behavior of tables and how to handle “topic continued” links on longer topics.

Overall the process was quite easy to manage though my sample project would have benefited from spending some more time in properly mapping topic styles in the new Flare project. But in terms of spending very little time on this effort the resulting content in Flare was quite good.

Flare v8 project in Lingo v5

The Flare v7 project I converted to v8 built exactly as expected in Lingo v5. There were no surprises. Of course the converted project didn’t really use any of the new features in v8 so I will look forward to receiving our first v8 project that uses some of the new features so I can properly test a round trip between Flare v8 and Lingo v5.

I recently read about this development on wines-info.com. China has become an increasingly important market for wine producers form all over the world. This effort by Christie’s and the Bordeaux wine makers is noteworthy in that the group has cooperated to come up with posters and marketing collateral to distribute to the Chinese media and wine buyers. According to the article, wine producers from Sauternes and Burgundy will go through a similar effort soon.

I think this type of initiative can be emulated by other industries with more than just names of their respective “companies”. Wouldn’t it be great if entire industries made a concerted effort to standardize important terminology in their markets? Trade organizations would be an excellent resource to tackle an initiative like this. We work with multiple companies in the same industry and it is incredible how different standard terminology can be from company to company within the same industry.