The first wave of research in Machine Translation came to an abrupt end in 1966. An influential report concluded it had no prospect of success, and there were no economic reasons for using it anyway. Much of it was abandoned for the next decade, with resources poured into developing electronic dictionaries instead.
It’s hard to avoid translation in our everyday lives. We find translations on food labels and instruction manuals, websites, and TV screens. Switch on the daily news, or turn over a bottle of shampoo, and the chances are the information will have been translated.
English is rapidly losing its status as the world’s lingua franca – but there’s no language to take over. As the world becomes more interconnected, global businesses are having to become multilingual to survive. But how can they reach the billions of people in the world, who speak more than 6000 languages between them?
With more and more businesses operating globally, localization has never been more important. The internet might have made the world seem smaller, but there are still cultural and linguistic borders to overcome. Speaking the right language can be the key to reaching new audiences both at home and abroad.
Languages and translation play a vital role in helping commercial companies, educational and non-profit organisations communicate and grow. With the theme “New Horizons”, the Localisation Research Centre Conference aimed to bring these sectors together, and explore this fast-changing field.
For many visitors, the sun, sea and picturesque Old Town are among Nice’s main attractions. But visitors had another reason to visit the French city this month – finding out about the latest developments in machine translation technology.
How is the way we watch TV changing? Why does anyone need ultra-high definition? And how can media companies adapt their strategies to reach today’s connected, multi-screen viewers?
Imagine if updates to your website could be translated into other languages at the click of a button. Every time you posted a blog, it could be instantly sent for translation by professional linguists. And information about new products would be quickly available to all your global customers.
Almost every week we hear about new developments in automatic language processing and machine translation. The world of computer-assisted translation is developing fast, with the quality of results improving every day.
Translation is one of the world’s oldest professions, but the job has changed significantly in recent years. A generation ago, translators might have relied on their trusty dictionaries, thesauruses and typewriters as the tools of their trade.