The Translation E-Buzz
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| February 2001 | ||
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The Translation E-Buzz | Subscribe Unsubscribe | |
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HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
International Valentine's Day Anecdotes: In Germany women planted onions in pots on St. Valentine's Day. Each onion was given a man's name. The first pot to sprout would be the intended. In France the first young man seen by a girl on the morning of St.
Valentine's day became her boyfriend. At the end of the year an engagement
followed. In England halfway through the second month of the year birds began to
pair. For this reason the day was looked upon as especially charmed for
the sending of love letters. At RMTC in Austin, Texas we think of our association with you and your
organization with warmth and appreciation. Machine Translation
Update "Some Students Are Derailed as They Go Online in Search of Easy
Translations" Taking shortcuts in language classes is a time-honored tradition. Lazy
students have long relied on comic book or abridged Cliffs Notes versions
to avoid reading books in their own or other languages. In the old days,
students assigned to translate Caesar's Gallic Wars and other Latin
classics used to buy literal English translations known as ponies. Like
today's Internet sites, a pony was less than foolproof, and teachers were
on guard for telltale discrepancies between text and translation.
Lack of Finesse
Today, cheating is often detected because the software powering the
sites has among its faults a tin ear for idioms. Something is always lost
in the translation. And no machine can adjust for carelessness.
Rachel Becker, a French teacher at Cranford High School in Cranford,
N.J., says one of her students turned in a paragraph beginning with the
word poing meaning "fist," followed by a comma at the beginning of a
sentence. Mrs. Becker was mystified until she realized that the student
intended to type in the word "first" but had omitted the "r." "That's a
mistake you don't make when you go to the dictionary," Mrs. Becker
says. Personnel Update
Congratulations to Evan Norman on his recent title and job description
change to Web Specialist. In addition to performing word processing and
paste up functions, Evan will also maintain, update, and document the RMTC
web site, assist with localization of the site to Spanish and Japanese,
work or consult on web site localization projects for clients, keep up
with changing web technology and concepts, and train others. WHEW! |
Excerpted from the December 2000 Issue of "MultiLingual Computing & Technology" "Building a Curriculum for Localization" by Tim Altanero Finding qualified people to work in a localization capacity has never been easy, but as the field continues to grow at a breakneck pace, the task has become increasingly difficult. In a study of the state of the availability of localization education around the world by the Localization Initiative Taskforce, it quickly became apparent that very few academic institutions are offering such a curriculum, and only one school - the University of Limerick in Ireland - was offering anything approaching a comprehensive education in the subject area. Single-subject courses in localization topics were also sorely lacking, with no more than a handful of colleges addressing them. This article discusses the partnerships formed between Austin Community College (ACC) and local industry in support of a new globalization certificate program to be offered through ACC's Continuing Education division. Our findings indicated that ACC had a history of innovation with programs such as the nationally recognized Webmaster certificate and with strong administrative support at the Dean's level. In the area of faculty and money, ACC was limited, but we felt that we could address these issues through industry cooperation, offering our courses as an alternative to expensive internal training programs that might be largely duplicated across different companies. Armed with our self-assessment, we began to court industry partners.... The response was overwhelming. Austin is a high-tech city, so, in retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. Within a short time we were talking to the globalization managers, internationalization managers, localization coordinators, and more from companies such as IBM, Dell, BMC Software, National Instruments, Pervasive, Lionsbridge and Tivoli, among others. In the process, we further identified four distinct "tracks," or career paths, that were common in the industry - project management, technical publications, software engineering, and software quality assurance. We have participated in joint promotion with the local university, special interest groups, and professional societies. Industry, such as Ralph McElroy Translation, has assisted us by proving money for advertising. RMTC, National Instruments and Vignette supported us by sending representatives to speak at various locations. Our model assumes that the knowledge, research and skills required to teach our courses reside within industry and that we, as academicians, are essentially transferring this knowledge into the classroom. We do not underestimate what industry brings to the table; in fact, we know that without industry input, we would not have a program. It has been less than a year since we began planning this program, yet we already have industry asking us to provide interns from among our future graduates. Once that level of cooperation is achieved, we will have reached the fullest potential of our partnerships, and we look forward to that day. Tim Altanero, Associate Professor of Technical Communications at Austin Community College, can be reached at dr_tim@altanero.com |
by Mark Ritter This article was distributed in last month's newsletter. Look for the full text again in the April issue of Intellectual Property Today(tm).
Employee of the Month: Jennifer Cardenas Senior Production Coordinator Jennifer Cardenas has been at RMTC since January 1998. Jennifer was at the helm of the creation of an extraordinarily useful and user friendly procedures manual for her department last year. Outside RMTC her writing takes a more creative flair. She has been writing poetry for 13 years, and is widely published with credits that include "Feeding the Crow" (an anthology of Austin poets), and "ñ" (a New York Latino literary magazine). At the University of Texas, Jennifer was the first person to receive the Vice President's Undergraduate Research Grant in the English department which allowed her to conduct archival research on Mexican women in California during the 1800s. She is presently doing archival research concerning land grants in the San Antonio area. Texas born, Jennifer has been in Austin for the last 8 years. She is fluent in Spanish and knows some Tagalog from time she spent living in the Philippines.
Reach RMTC at 910 West Avenue |
