Vol. 85 January, 2008
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A Message from the President…
This year McElroy celebrates forty years. In this industry that is quite a track record; to survive and thrive has been a remarkable feat. In an article this month I analyze this accomplishment. Thank you to all who have supported McElroy's success and growth. Happy New Year!
Shelly Priebe, President
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McElroy at 40 Years–A Historical Perspective
“Translation is the second oldest profession.” That quip is oft cited by those in the business of translation. In any event, the need to communicate across cultural and national barriers has indeed long existed. Even in this context, McElroy’s celebration of 40 years in business is remarkable. Why?
As an “old timer” with 20 years at McElroy Translation Company I can tell you firsthand that the industry as it exists today looks nothing like the world I entered two decades ago. In fact, there is not a single competitor that exists in its original form from my early days with the company. That “staying power” makes McElroy unique as the only company that I am aware of that has been able to sustain and thrive based on a strategy of organic growth.
McElroy has remained focused on core competencies while developing healthy client diversification. Founded by Ralph McElroy in 1968, the company started translating for the chemical industry with flagship clients that included Celanese and Monsanto. In the 1980s a medical focus was added and the 1990s was an era of patent and litigation client acquisition. Software localization followed as the next emerging market when international product launches became status quo for the high tech world. Many translation and localization companies were founded in the mid to late 1990s to address this vertical niche and to help high-flying dot com tech companies spend their money. When the tech bubble burst, colossal translation industry fallout followed. But with its diversified base, McElroy continued to thrive.
Market diversification is one ingredient of McElroy’s success. Management structure is another contributing factor. There is a distinct difference in the outlook between Language Service Providers who are owned and controlled by a founding individual or small group of partners versus one that has transitioned to outside professional management. While McElroy remains tightly held by family, professional outside management has been in place since 1980. McElroy successfully matured from the “Owner Operator/Translation Agency” stage as a professionally–run language services company. We were on the leading edge of technology when we first invested in ELJOTS™, our proprietary workflow system. McElroy’s focus on process and project management principles was ahead of the rest of the industry. Currently we are ahead of the curve as thought leaders in viewing Machine Translation not as a threat or just a way to do translation at a cheaper word–rate, but as a potential to extend our service offerings through innovative use in workflow.
At a keynote presentation in 2004 for the conference honoring Saint Jerome at Universidad de Vera Cruz, Xalapa, Mexico, Alex Gross reviewed the history of translation, pointing out what comparatively minute progress had been made over the centuries in understanding the nature of translation while there has been manifestly so much progress in fields such as medicine, mathematics, and engineering. He presented this slide which shows Translation Knowledge as a flat line since 2000 B.C. relative to other fields.
(http://languag2.home.sprynet.com/f/xalapa.htm for more info and the complete presentation.)
While my industry experience of 20 years supports this rather extreme graphical glimpse of technical development in translation, I truly believe that an era of unprecedented change is upon us. McElroy will continue to serve clients with traditional workflows and focus on quality. But a Statistical Machine Translation revolution led by Google, Microsoft and private companies like Language Weaver will make “fitness for use” a standard which leads to completely new market opportunities. McElroy has already identified new clients whose translation needs have emerged as feasible for the first time because of advancements in technology.
Read more...
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“
If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
—Anais Nin
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Rose Neas
Business Development Manager, Legal
Rose joined McElroy in July of 2006. Leaving the technology services world to enter into the translation services arena has been a welcome change. And, with a sales management and business development background, her current role as Business Development Manager for Legal is a comfortable fit. Rose worked in legal after college and even co–founded the pre–law fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta, at Texas State University. After putting herself through college, a trip to law school looked a bit daunting financially. Thus, she decided to work in the legal environment while she made a more informed decision about law school.
Rose grew up in Sealy, Texas which is known for its thriving Czech community. She has enjoyed her share of polka dances and warm kolaches. Both sets of grandparents made their journey to the states and entered Texas via the Gulf of Mexico in the early 1900s. Sealy, known for its rich, black soil, was a perfect fit for her grandparents who were farmers in the former Czechoslovakia. And, it is fitting in this month of January to note that Rose’s maiden name is “Stastny” (which means “happy” in Czech). So, Stastny Novy Rok (Happy New Year) to you!
Rose was employed at Gwinn & Roby in Dallas after college as a legal assistant to the managing partner and then ventured to Austin to work at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld as a legal assistant to their Of Counsel. Before that attorney passed away, he mentioned that she should try her hand at sales, so she landed at Dell and has stayed in the sales field ever since. At Dell, Rose moved her way up to become an Account Executive and then scurried on to two technology services companies working as a Major Account Manager, V.P. of Sales, V.P. and G.M., and V.P. of Business Development. Rose even had the opportunity during her days at Dell to move to Prague for a year in order to connect with her Czech heritage.
Rose has been very active in the Austin community with various charities and her church community over the years, but has had to hold off on quite a few things after having her son, Luke, 18 months ago. Apparently, little boys have lots of energy and all of Rose’s free time now is devoted to him. She can’t imagine any better way to spend it!
And, while Rose is at work, she has a lovely au pair, Klara, from the Czech Republic who cares for Luke and speaks Czech to him. Rose is adamant about keeping her heritage alive and well.
Translating dog barks
Computer decodes dog communication
Excerpt from an article published in NewScientistTech, January 17, 2008 By Colin Barras
 Photo from iStock.com
Barking dogs might be better communicators than we thought, according to a new study.
Computer software can distinguish individual dogs by their barks, and also suggests that certain barks act as a “universal language,” carrying information about the dog’s mind–set that is readily understood by their fellow pooches.
Csaba Molnár and his colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, recorded 14 Hungarian sheepdogs barking in a range of situations: when approached by a stranger, during play, during a fight, and when the dog was alone.
Then they fed the sound recordings into an artificial neural network developed by a team led by Frédéric Kaplan at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
The artificial neural network identified key audio features of each bark and Molnár’s team found that the computer software could identify the situation in which a bark was recorded.
Read More...
Anniversaries
McElroy Translation appreciates the business of the following clients and announces the anniversaries of these client relationships:
10 year
- Inspire Pharmaceutical
- Nexstar Pharmaceutical
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The Need for Localization Education
Goals of the Localization Certification Program
Over 230 countries, 6,700 languages, 147 currencies, 24 time zones–the Web allows companies to traverse these barriers and reach consumers worldwide.
Today global online trade is driven by the spread of free markets, increasing literacy and computer access in developing countries, deregulation and liberalization of industries, and the continuing trend of globalization across the world. As of 2006, almost 1.08 billion online users were accounted across the globe, with the US share being only about 210 million (Internet World Stats).
According to Singh and Pereira (2005), a firm must localize its web site linguistically and culturally in order to sell successfully to online global consumers. Studies have shown that web site localization and cultural customization can lead to better navigation, usage, attitude toward the site and even higher purchase intentions on the site (Singh and Pereira, 2005; Singh et al 2006).
During the past 10 years the localization industry has grown up around helping companies design multilingual web sites and software applications for different countries. This industry generated an estimated $8.8 billion in revenue in 2006 and is expected to reach $12 billion by 2010 (DePalma and Beninatto, 2006). However, the localization industry and multinational companies with global web presence are finding it increasingly difficult to find trained localization professionals who can help them localize web sites and other software applications. This shortage of skills and trained human power can be attributed to the lack of academic offerings in localization, the knowledge gap and the limited executive business training for localization professionals.
1. Lack of Academic Offerings. Currently, few programs offer courses related to localization. In the US and Europe, a handful of programs offer some kind of localization training; for example, localization and international e–business (online and offline at California State University Chico), software localization and programming (University of Limerick, Ireland), translation technology and business at the graduate level (Monterey Institute of International Business, and Kent State University, U.S.), and online courses in localization (Austin Community College, U.S.) . With very few courses and integrated programs in localization, a limited number of trained professionals are being groomed to take up the role of implementing localization and web globalization strategy.
2. The Knowledge Gap. Both from the academic and the business point's of view, there is a deficit in knowledge and course offerings teaching how to successfully design international web sites, localize applications, and develop web site globalization strategy. A person competent to handle the web localization efforts of a company should be trained in international e–marketing strategy, international web site design/localization and implementation, foreign language orientation and translation technology, working in cross–national teams, project management, and have intercultural communication skills.
3. The Business Education Gap. There is currently a lack of formalized management or executive training opportunities in business schools for international e–business/web globalization strategy/localization. Thus, we are not providing high-level business training, via business schools, specifically catered to localization professionals. Most of the limited training available is through private sector or nonprofit associations like Globalization and Localization Association, Localization Institute, and Localization Industry Standards Association. To provide well–rounded management training, we need to bring the expertise of private companies, industry associations and business schools together.
Read more...
Chinese Translation
McElroy is continuing this series of interviews that highlight some of the characteristics of languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at Chinese.
What are some pitfalls specific to Chinese to avoid that a client should be aware of when translating into this language?
The most common pitfall of the Chinese language is whether to use Simplified or Traditional Chinese or both. This is the first thing the client needs to specify when requesting a Chinese translation. There are two different categories of written Chinese. While Traditional Chinese is for people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese population residing in the United States, Simplified Chinese is for mainland China–Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. The difference lies not only in the characters, but also in the manner of expression.
Sometimes a client may ask for a translation into “Mandarin” Chinese. Actually this does not make sense at all because Mandarin only refers to spoken Chinese and to the official Chinese used everywhere versus Cantonese which is a dialect in the southern province Guangdong, Hong Kong, and some “old” Chinese communities in the States, especially in the San Francisco area.
So, when it comes to written Chinese, we always translate into either Traditional or Simplified Chinese, whereas we speak or interpret in either Mandarin or Cantonese.
Unfortunately, many translation agencies and clients used to take it for granted that their Chinese translators were “universal.” They were not aware of or even didn’t care that most Simplified Chinese translators don’t have the real ability to do a decent Traditional Chinese translation, and vice versa. They just use the Traditional fonts. The difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese is not merely about fonts, but more importantly about the manner of expression and terminology.
If the agency or client is still not sure what to specify, the translator needs to know where the translation product is going to be used, or who the target audience is. An experienced professional translator can easily figure this out for you.
What are characteristics of Chinese that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?
The characteristics of Chinese comprise, among other things, the following aspects:
- The Chinese language is written in characters each of which consists of one up to dozens of strokes, and a phrase/sentence can be made of several characters. Since the characters are much shorter than the corresponding English words, the Chinese translation version always takes much less space than the English original if the “font” sizes remain the same. So when you translate a brochure or localize a website from English into Chinese, the layout of the pages will be affected by the shrinking text. One whole paragraph of English could become one or two lines, and the Chinese version of one full web page of English original could end up as two–thirds of a page or even less.
- However, in many cases, one English word may be expressed in two to three Chinese characters, such as gao–xing for “happy” and kai–che for “drive,” making the “word” count of Chinese translation always higher than the English original. The ratio of English to Chinese is roughly 1:1.5 depending on the nature of the document and the style of the translator. So if you want a 1,000–word English document translated into Chinese, the word count of the “target language,” Chinese in this case, will be 1,350 to 1,500. And a 1,000–character Chinese document will be translated into an English version of about 700 words.
- Moreover, since Chinese has different grammar than English, the order of words/phrases in the English original may be reshuffled in the translation, sometimes even reversed. If you use a translation memory tool such as Trados or déjà vu, the TM is not smart enough to adjust the word order, and you have to do it yourself. This is especially true in the titles/subtitles of books, brochures, catalogs, etc. For example, when the upper line of a title says “Features and Advantages of,” and the lower line says “Computer–Assisted Designing System,” the translator or the formatter should reverse the order and put the “Computer–Assisted Designing System”（计算机辅助设计系统的）above “Features and Advantages of”（特点和优势）.
Read more...
McElroy Gives to Mother’s Milk Bank
McElroy is donating $500 to Mother’s Milk Bank this month. The Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accept, pasteurize and dispense donor human milk by physician prescription primarily to premature and ill infants.
Why do babies need human milk?
It’s simply the very best food for all babies.
It is especially critical for preterm or ill infants who are at greater risk for intestinal infections. Human milk contains antibodies to fight disease and infection and also protects against allergies. It contains growth hormones to help babies develop and properties that have been shown to increase intelligence and decrease the risks of obesity and diabetes later in life. Mom’s own milk is always preferable, but when it is not available, milk given generously by screened donor mothers is the next best alternative.
Common reasons for prescribing donor milk include:
- Prematurity
- Failure to thrive
- Malabsorption syndromes
- Allergies
- Feeding/formula intolerance
- Immunologic deficiencies
- Pre- or Postoperative nutrition
- Infectious diseases
Click here to learn more about the Mother’s Milk Bank.
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McElroy’s Vision Statement
Setting the industry standard in customer satisfaction
McElroy’s Mission Statement
McElroy Translation provides translation and localization services in all languages to business and government clientele enhancing their ability to compete in global markets.
China: Censorship and Translation
Interesting times
Excerpt from an article published in Guardian Unlimited, January 17, 2008
 A busy market ... Browsing in a Beijing bookshop.Photograph: Elizabeth Dalziel/AP
In 1985 there was just one skyscraper in Shanghai. Today there are more than 300. Chinese authors, living through a period of change so rapid that six months seems to be enough to change everyone’s way of life, are presented with unprecedented opportunities for wealth, and faced with a population which has little time to engage with serious literature. But the struggle for readers and the demands of the market are not the only difficulties faced by Chinese writers. There is also, according to the London–based Chinese poet Yang Lian, the continued pressure of government censorship, which is “even stricter than before.”
“Before, there were some subjects everyone knew you weren’t allowed to touch, such as criticising Mao Zedong,” he explains. “Now the government says to the outside world that they want to build a harmonious society, but internally they’ve made a list of taboo subjects. That’s actually worse than in the 1980s.” Read more…
Afghan refugee is found in translation
Excerpt from an article published in Statesman Journal, Salem Oregon, January 16, 2008
 Photo by Lori Cain, Statesman Journal
By Jillian Daley
As a colonel with the Oregon National Guard, Bob Elliott spent six months in some dangerous areas of Afghanistan.
Elliott’s job was to learn the whereabouts of the Taliban, visiting villages and offering donated clothes and school supplies in return for information.
It was dangerous, tricky work, but when his deployment was over in December 2006, Elliott returned home to West Salem.
His interpreter, however, stayed behind in the war–torn country.
Ahmad Mohebi translated for Elliott, but he did much more than convert words from one language to another.
Mohebi could sense when people were lying, when a crowd was getting militant, and his observations about missions protected Elliott and his soldiers.
“There were several times when Ahmad would look at the crowd and see the people and say: ‘It’s time to leave,’ “ Elliott said.
Elliott was impressed with the young man’s honesty and courage. So, when Mohebi asked for Elliott’s aid, the soldier helped. Mohebi feared for his life because his work as a translator for the U.S. military made him a target for the Taliban. He figured his only chance was to leave his home in Afghanistan. Elliott chose to help him, bringing him to the U.S. about three months ago. Read more...
McElroy at 40 Years–A Historical Perspective
continued
Terms when translated do not always preserve the same meaning; and every nation has certain idioms impossible to express intelligently to others. You may possibly translate them, but they no longer preserve the same force.
–Iamblichus of Chalcis, ca. 330 A.D.
Iamblichus of Chalcis was a late neoplatonic philosopher in the school of Plotinus and Porphyry. He lived in what is now Syria and was clearly influenced by oriental doctrines in his best–known work, On the Egyptian Mysteries, from which this excerpt is taken. And here we find one of the first statements about how difficult the translation of technical terms can be. He was almost certainly working with ancient Egyptian religious texts now lost to us and attempting to convey their meaning to a more rational Hellenic world.
Yes, in some ways, eternal truths about translation will always guide our profession. We accept this challenge and will continue to work with clients to understand what “fitness for use” means in each unique business scenario. For some it will require the quality of 100% human translation that approaches perfection, for others it will mean quality at a level sufficient to flag documents in an automated key term search. McElroy looks forward to many more key anniversaries as we recognize all the possibilities for growth.
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