SAN DIEGO, June 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel gets brighter, it's time that small and medium-sized businesses - the backbone of the global economy - begin taking necessary steps to bounce back. Today, SYSTRAN, the leader in AI-based translation technology, announces the launch of its newest cloud-based software, "SYSTRAN Translate PRO", designed to equip SMBs, freelancers and organizations with the ability to communicate across language borders and conquer new markets in just a few clicks.
Effectively communicating with customers is the pinnacle for business success. However, many companies find language barriers to be an intimidating hinderance to expansion progress. Beyond internationalization, it's important that businesses market to potential customers in their native language whether it is for regulatory or marketing purposes. According to CSA Research, "76 percent of customers prefer to buy in their native language and 40 percent will not buy from a website if it's [only available] in another language."
SYSTRAN Translate PRO attempts to solve that. Their cutting-edge solution uses AI and Deep Learning in conjunction with 53 years of experience with linguists and language experts.
SYSTRAN Translate PRO is:
Easy to integrate in current workflows (Office 365, PDF and email)
Easy to set-up, 30-seconds to sign up and sign-in
Professional-grade and highly specialized with access to over 325 language combinations and industry-specific translation models, developed by translation experts
Fast, with the ability to translate 10 pages in 10 seconds
Highly customizable as the AI can use the user's custom terminology and language preferences
Completely secure with guaranteed data privacy
Additionally, the technology will save SMBs' time and money, while drastically increasing the engagement of SMBs' prospects and customers. The software is available in four different plan tiers, which allow SMBs' the flexibility they need with plans starting as low as $5.49/month.
"Communication is a critical component for companies that want to be agile," states Director of Cloud Sales at SYSTRAN, Keith Jameson. "Our SaaS solution can help provide smaller businesses with the same technology being used by large enterprise corporations that benefit from a global presence. We listened to customer requests and it became apparent that we needed to develop a solution for SMBs so they too could provide sales support and customer service across language barriers."
SYSTRAN, a pioneer in the machine translation industry, was established 53 years ago to work on translation of Russian to English text for the United States during the Cold War. More recently, the international company, in partnership with Harvard University, developed the industry leading AI-based OpenNMT technology. Today, SYSTRAN provides businesses of all sizes with advanced and secure translation solutions and technologies.
For more information on SYSTRAN Translate PRO, click here. For more information on SYSTRAN, visit www.systrangroup.com.
About SYSTRAN With more than 50 years of experience, SYSTRAN provides business users with advanced and secure translation solutions. For more information, visit www.systrangroup.com.
The world has changed a lot since COVID-19 has come into existence — both individuals and companies now need to adapt to the new realities. For offline businesses it became evident that it would be too challenging, if not impossible, to survive without going online.
To pull through lockdown struggles, businesses realized that becoming worldwide online brands had become an emergency must. Thus, using professional translation online tools has been strongly rooted as a new expense in a company’s budget.
Today translation and localization services are a necessity, not a choice. Companies usually choose from two types of translation: human and AI. But which one to choose to translate the content at the lowest cost but still preserve the high quality and get the maximum value?
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both of these translation types.
Human translation
Human translation, as it’s clear from the name, is done by people. Even though it’s believed that AI can replace translators, human translation is still prevalent.
People know the context. Context is one of the essentials for the correct translation and localization.
People are creative. To make the content engaging, it’s necessary to be creative and understand the local context.
People have expertise in narrow domains. When it comes to specific topics, like engineering or medicine, people have more knowledge and can explain even the most difficult things in an easy-to-understand manner.
Cons:
Human translation is quite expensive. Comparing human translation to AI, the first one is more expensive. This can become an obstacle for startups.
Human factor. People are more prone to make mistakes, especially when they work on monotonous tasks.
AI translation
AI translation involves software and tools created specifically for text translation purposes.
Pros:
AI translation is fast. It can take 10 minutes to translate all the texts a company needs, which means a quick turnaround time.
It’s cheap. There are a lot of free tools such as Google Translate or Skype Translator, so your company can spend 0$ for translating the texts needed.
Cons:
Inaccuracy. Even though AI translation becomes more and more sophisticated every month, it’s still less accurate than humans, especially in terms of context and creativity.
AI doesn’t get the context. Context is everything, especially for localization purposes. Thus, AI translation is not the best option from this point of view.
Too literal translation. A key to successful localization is not in simple translation. To make text look local, literal translation won’t suit.
The simple existence of both human and AI translation doesn’t make them enemies. Vice versa, it’s great if you combine these types to get the best from each of them.
Today, more and more companies use a mix of AI and human translation: they translate with the help of machines, but humans proofread translated text to make it sound local, creative, and fit the context and tone for 100%.
Connect AI with humans, translate texts with accuracy and speed, and make your business rock in the new markets!
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Newly proposed legislation in Quebec may increase demand for local translations into Canadian French.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, Minister Responsible for Languages, presented Bill 96 in the National Assembly on May 12, 2021. The bill, “An Act Respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Québec,” aims to affirm French as the Canadian province’s only official language, and as the “common language of the Québec nation.”
Bill 96 is the long-awaited reform to the Charter of the French Language (a.k.a. Bill 101) adopted in 1977. If passed, the 100-page Bill 96 would enshrine the Charter of the French Language in the Canadian Constitution. It would also establish a Ministry of the French language as well as a French Language Commissioner, appointed by the National Assembly.
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The proposal follows the government’s April 2021 announcement of CAD 17m (USD 14.1m) in funding for eight projects promoting the French language, including a CAD 2.7m (USD 2.2m) grant for the ASDCM (Association des Sociétés de développement commercial de Montréal) to support Montreal-area businesses.
Slator 2021 Language Industry Market Report
Data and Research, Slator reports
80-pages. Market Size by Vertical, Geo, Intention. Expert-in-Loop Model. M&A. Frontier Tech. Hybrid Future. Outlook 2021-2025.
According to Bill 96, bilingual municipalities would need to meet new demographic requirements in order to maintain their bilingual status. The bill would also freeze the proportion of students enrolling in English-language colleges, and would require all students to pass a standard French exam in order to receive their diplomas. Both anglophone Quebecers and immigrants who do not speak French would be encouraged to learn French.
For language service providers (LSPs) offering translation into French, however, the most relevant part of the bill is likely an extension of the French certification process, which would now apply to businesses with 25 to 49 employees. After a three-year grace period, these businesses would be required to serve customers in French and to produce commercial publications and documentation, such as invoices, in French.
Quebec-based companies are already required to provide written communications about an employee’s working conditions in French. The new bill would expand the obligation to include training documents and employment application forms, as Canadian legal firm McMillan pointed out on its website.
Pro Guide: Translation Pricing and Procurement
Data and Research, Slator reports
45 pages on translation and localization pricing and procurement, human-in-the-loop models, and linguist compensation.
Outdoor signage with trademarks in a language other than French must also feature clearly predominant French text.
Customers unable to access services in French at a store would be able to submit a complaint to the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française), while the Language Commissioner would handle complaints about the application of the new language laws. Proposed fines for infractions run in the thousands.
Complaints against Bill 96 already abound online, primarily from anglophones and “allophones” (Quebecers with a first language other than French or English). And a change.org petition, “Fight Against Bill 96!,” garnered over 24,000 signatures in three weeks.
Robin Ayoub, President of the Canadian Language Industry Association, told Slator that if Bill 96 does become law, they “hope that it would increase the level of demands for professional language related services, and have a positive impact for the Canadian language industry, and on Canada in all of its provinces.”
Welcome back to #TripwireBookClub. If you recall, the last book we reviewed was The Ghidra Book: The Definitive Guide, a book that I thoroughly enjoyed because I’m a huge fan of everything Chris Eagle writes. This time, we’re looking at THIS LINK DOES NOT WORK Crypto Dictionary: 500 Tasty Tidbits for the Curious Cryptographer. THIS […]… Read More
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Four years after the City Council passed a law boosting the number of languages government documents must be translated to, many frequently used forms — including COVID materials — aren’t getting the required treatment, nonprofit service providers charge.
The city’s language access law mandates the translation of “commonly distributed documents” into the top 10 most-spoken languages in New York City other than English. That list, which includes Spanish, Korean, Bengali, Russian, Haitian Creole and Chinese, expanded in 2017 to add Arabic, Urdu, French and Polish.
When the law went into effect, the Mayor’s Office estimated more than 86% of New Yorkers with limited English proficiency would benefit.
Yet information sheets and other documents distributed by city agencies are often available in English alone, and occasionally also in Spanish and Chinese, say those who rely on them to inform clients about programs and services.
“Getting information and the correct information to people, it’s so important,” said Rachel Sherrow, the associate executive director of Citymeals on Wheels, a nonprofit organization that has delivered more than three million meals during the pandemic.
As part of a city-led vaccine task force, the Mayor’s Office asked Citymeals on Wheels to distribute COVID vaccine access information from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The fliers arrived only in English, Sherrow said. Though the nonprofit followed up to ask for the forms in multiple languages, the translated documents never materialized.
“They said they would look into it and get that for us,” Sherrow said. “We’re still waiting to get a variety of different languages, and that’s a huge problem.”
Patrick Gallahue, spokesperson for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the agency works “furiously” to translate materials rapidly.
“But in the rush of printing materials, a document might be available in one language while translations are still being done,” he added. “That is what happened in this instance.”
Just over 62% of New York City adults have received at least one COVID vaccine shot, according to DOHMH. Community leaders in neighborhoods with significant numbers of immigrants cite lack of access to reliable health information in people’s preferred languages as a barrier to wider uptake.
Seeking Staff Translators
New Yorkers speak more than 200 languages, and roughly one in four has limited proficiency in English, according to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.
That agency is responsible for guiding other parts of city government in implementing Local Law 30, the expanded translation law, along with the Mayor’s Office of Operations.
To comply, agencies have largely turned to contracts with private vendors, spending $20.7 million last year, the Independent Budget Office found after Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer requested a review.
Brewer, who is running for City Council on the Upper West Side ahead of the end of her second and final term as borough president, also asked the IBO to estimate the expense of forming a dedicated unit of city employees who could handle translation services.
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
She said the city should ensure equal language access for all New Yorkers by establishing a separate office composed of in-house experts to translate written materials and review online content.
Based on the $93,000 salary the city Department of Education spends on its translation team members, the IBO estimated $930,000 annually for the 10 required languages, plus an additional cost for supervisors.
Brewer told THE CITY that the pandemic highlighted the urgency of getting materials to people in their own languages — exposing “striking disparities in accessing critical services and life-saving information throughout the city.”
Translated materials and resources only posted on city websites fail to reach all who need them, she added.
“While I know this cannot be the city’s intention, effectively this communicates that life-saving information is only important for English speakers — or those with internet access — to receive,” Brewer said.
Volunteer Interpreters
The need for more language support stood out during the rush earlier this year to schedule and complete appointments for live-saving COVID vaccines.
At city-run vaccination sites, managed by the NYC Health + Hospitals system, video interpretation is available for more than 40 languages, according to spokesperson Victoria Merlino.
At the Brooklyn Army Terminal vaccination site in Sunset Park on a drizzly late April afternoon, a city staffer spoke English and Spanish with people lining up to check in, turning to a tablet screen to reach an interpreter when needed. The back-and-forth between staff, interpreters and visitors tended to be time consuming and sometimes frustrating for some vaccine-seekers.
Another line snaked in front of Michelle Ho, a 30-year-old volunteer who speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese. Ho is not a city employee, but a volunteer with the Chinese Translation Pod, an informal group that’s organized approximately 500 Chinese language speakers in New York City since April to help those seeking vaccinations navigate the process.
Michelle Ho, center, volunteered to help Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking people get coronavirus vaccines at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.Christine Chung/THE CITY
Ho said that most people she’d assisted were older folks who had needed extra guidance understanding how to check in and answer screening questions about their health. “I think it’s much better if you have a Chinese interpreter here who can explain to them so they get less worried and stressed,” Ho said. “I would feel the same too.”
Beatrix Chu, an organizer with the Chinese Translation Pod, told THE CITY that over the last several months she’s reached out to City Council members, community organizations, and mutual aid groups in neighborhoods with large Chinese communities to identify sites in need of translation.
“It’s obviously such an immediate need,” said Chu, 27, who lives on the Upper West Side. “And there’s so many logistical components to the rollout that, I guess [translation] is something that has sort of, fallen, been neglected.”
She said she was taken aback by the lack of translation happening across the city especially in neighborhoods like Flushing and Sunset Park, which have large Chinese populations.
“Why isn’t this a top priority?” she asked. “Especially in those areas that anybody who knows New York at all would know, that’s where a huge percentage of Chinese people are living.”
Filling the Void
Where city agencies have failed to fulfill their translation obligations, nonprofit groups have stepped up to fill the void.
Asian American Federation Deputy Director Joo Han said that member and partner agencies did translations of city-issued materials themselves as COVID brought down a hailstorm of health updates. “Our member and partner agencies have been doing the translations themselves, especially during COVID when info needed to be turned around quickly,” she said.
Typically, when city agencies release announcements, they are printed in English and there’s no conversation with community groups about what other languages might be necessary, said Gregory Morris, executive director of the Isaacs Center, a multiservice nonprofit based in the Upper East Side.
Translations of materials into only English, Spanish and Chinese, says Morris, is “not reflective of the diversity of need in our city.”
The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs did not comment on the allegations the translation law isn’t being followed. Deputy commissioner May Malik said in a statement that the agency remains “committed to advocating for language access improvements across all levels of local and national government to help keep our communities safe and healthy.”
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PARIS - A massive and long-awaited new translation of Mein Kampf — peppered with scholarly commentary to explain Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's disjointed, hate-filled manifesto — has been released in France. The project has been controversial, but supporters say it could serve as a warning against rising acts of hate and antisemitism today.
The book is a recast translation of Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, Hitler's 1925 manifesto detailing how he became antisemitic, his ideology and his plans for Germany. The recast is 1,000 pages and costs more than $120. Adolf Hitler's name and face do not appear on its plain white cover.
The new edition by French publisher Fayard — titled Putting Evil in Context: A Critical Edition of Mein Kampf — does not aim to be a bestseller. French bookstores cannot stock copies, which are available by order only. All proceeds will go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.
Historian Christian Ingrao, part of the academic team involved in the Fayard edition, told French radio the book aims to desacralize Hitler's work that has attracted a kind of fetishism. It aims to offer an unvarnished take on the Nazi leader's writing, which Ingrao and others say is repetitive, rambling and riddled with mistakes. Translator Olivier Mannoni called Hitler's manifesto an "incoherent soup."
The translation is accompanied by lengthy historians' notes and annotations that make up most of the book.
Germany and Poland have published similar scholarly translations in recent years.
In France, the first edition of Mein Kampf came out in 1934, and attempted to improve on Hitler's writing. By that time he was chancellor of Germany, where his book had become a bestseller. Hitler's rule saw Europe plunged into World War II — and the Holocaust that killed roughly six million Jews, including more than 70,000 from France.
Today, antisemitism is again on the rise across Europe, watchdog groups say. So is the far right. While printed copies of Mein Kampf have stagnated worldwide, digital editions have surged in recent years, although publishers point to a mix of reasons. Last year, Amazon banned most editions of the book from its site.
Ninety-six-year-old Holocaust survivor Ginette Kolinka speaks to French school groups about her memories. She told French radio she never read Mein Kampf — mostly, she says, because she had other books to read. But she says young people need to read everything — good and bad — to form opinions for themselves, and eventually understand tolerance.
The Fayard translation project has been controversial. A few years ago, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon called it "morally unacceptable." Since then, it has been endorsed by several prominent Jewish figures, including Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.
France's Grand Rabbi, Haim Korsia, told VOA that Klarsfeld's support for the translation shaped his own views. His argument: You can't reproach the world for not having read Hitler's writings nearly a century ago — which forecast the horror the Nazi leader was preparing — and then tell people today not to read this new translation, which could help prevent hatred, prejudice and antisemitism from reappearing.
BENGALURU: The social media handle of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta once again caught the attention of netizens, but this time for all the wrong reasons. An auto translation of a Facebook post, which went viral on Wednesday, not just put BBMP officials in a tight spot, but also embarrassed citizens.
Gupta’s social media handle had a post informing students travelling abroad, that a special vaccination camp had been organised for them at Bangalore University campus. The post was in Kannada and English. But when auto translation was applied, it showed up indecent content. Netizens picked it up and shared it on multiple platforms.
A similar incident had happened in May. The Twitter handle of the chief commissioner had shared a video explaining how citizens can register on the CoWin portal for vaccination. But the slots shown were all red (all booked). Netizens trolled the post, stating that while the intention was good, the unavailability of slots was questionable. Taking note of the messages, the social media team of the chief commissioner is now taking every step with caution, to ensure there are no such posts to embarrass officials.
An official from the social media team told TNIE, “The post on Facebook pertaining to students’ information is fake and morphed. It’s mischief by someone.” On the issue of CoWIN registration, the official stated that it was corrected and the slots now shown are green. However, when checked, the video still showed the slots coloured red.
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