Category Archives: Translation and Localization Management

An Interview with Kayoko Takeda

Be sure to look at Anthony Pym’s interview with Professor Kayoko Takeda, where she discusses her role at MIIS as a professor in the Translation and Interpretation program, her current research interests, and how she got to where she is today.

She also discusses her new book, Interpreting the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, which looks at the 3-tiered interpreting arrangement at the Tokyo War Crimes trial and included Japanese diplomats, Japanese-Americans, and U.S. military officials as interpreters. Lastly, Professor Kayoko Takeda gives a brief look at what’s happening in Japan today with translation, and gives a few words about translation research topics she’s still curious about.

Annual MIIS Alumni ATA Conference Reception

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Pre-Dinner Alumni Mixer

In conjunction with the 51st Annual Conference of the American Translators Association

Friday, October 29, 2010

5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.

Rialto Cafe

Art Gallery Room

The Courtyard Marriott Denver Downtown

934 16^th St., Denver, CO 80202

Please join Dr. Renee Jourdenais, Dean of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, Language and Education (GSTILE), at the annual MIIS alumni reception held in conjunction with the ATA conference. Dean Jourdenais will speak to the alumni about news on campus, and will be joined by Translation, Conference Interpretation, Translation & Interpretation, and Translation & Localization Management faculty and staff.

Complimentary appetizers. Cash bar available.

Please register to attend by October 21, 2010 at http://alumni.miis.edu. Click on the Events button to register online. Additional RSVPs can be submitted via email to alumni@miis.edu or by telephone to 831-647-3557.

TIJ 25th Anniversary Symposium on Translator and Interpreter Education

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On June 20, 2010, the MIIS Translation and Interpretation Program in Japanese (TIJ) program held its 25^th Anniversary Symposium on Translator and Interpreter Education at the International House of Japan in Tokyo.

The 4-hour symposium began with greetings and a presentation by Professor Kayoko Takeda, entitled “The Future of Translator/Interpreter Training at Higher Education” and included the history of TIJ. Dr. Winter then gave a short talk about how TIJ began at the Monterey Institute.

Following the presentation, an Interpreter Panel consisting of three alumni and one former visiting scholar and moderated by Takeda discussed the current interpreting markets and what they expect of interpreter education programs in the future.

The was also a Translator Panel moderated by Professor Tanya Pound, consisting of three alumni and one former visiting scholar, which similarly discussed the current translation markets and what they expect of translator education programs.

A teacher panel was also moderated by Takeda, which included four current and former MIIS faculty members, an alumnus, and a Translation and Interpretation agency rep. They discussed the future of translator/interpreter education in response to the discussions by the previous panels.

The symposium resulted in many good discussions, including an interesting discussion of how machine translation, translation tools, and crowd sourcing may affect the practice and training of translators.

The 108 attendees were comprised of 44 alumni, 3 faculty (Takeda, Pound, and Winter), 9 prospective students, 1 staff member (Leah Gowron), and 51 guests, including former faculty members and visiting scholars, university professors, translators and interpreters, and TI agencies. One notable attended was Mr. Koichi Ishiyama (Midd 1969), a renowned author of very popular Japanese – English dictionaries.

Many of the attendees enjoyed the symposium so much that they asked when another similar event would be hosted, and some alumni started discussing the possibility of organizing a TI seminar series in Japan. After the symposium was completed, more than 50 people attended a reception at a restaurant in Roppongi.

The symposium could not have been such a success without the help of sponsors Honda Kaihatsu Kogyo and Creer and Communicators and we thank them for their support!

Professor Uwe Muegge introduces TermWiki to a global audience

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While most practitioners in the language business understand the critical importance of managing terminology, very few translators, let alone interpreters, actually create comprehensive, project-specific dictionaries. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the lack of powerful, easy-to-use, low-cost tools for collecting and maintaining multilingual vocabulary. TermWiki, a new web-based terminology management solution developed by CSOFT in collaboration with professor Uwe Muegge, is a free community solution that allows global organizations as well as individual freelancers to manage term collections of any size without installing or buying any software.

muegge termwiki

After presenting TermWiki to the academic community at the Leipzig International Conference on Translation Studies (LICTRA) last month, Uwe Muegge has been invited by the publisher of tcworld to contribute an article on TermWiki and collaborative terminology management to a special print issue of the online magazine tcworld. In his fourth publication this year, Muegge discusses the implications of not managing terminology in the context of a large, multilingual translation project, and how TermWiki revolutionizes authoring, translation, and review processes.

Conference Terminology and Procedures Workshop Well-Received

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Thirty-three students participated in Conference Terminology and Procedures, a three-day workshop (March 5-7th 2010) giving students both an insider’s view on how an international organization such as the United Nations navigates negotiations, discussions, debates and decisions, and providing basic materials on how to conduct and participate in meetings at a wide variety of organizations.

Students primarily from the Spanish, Chinese and Russian TI programs, as well as a Japanese TI and an IPS representative and two members of the public were most enthusiastic participants, and seemed to be having a very good time while absorbing large quantities of information. Prior to the course they had received e-files of background and vocabulary material which reinforced the terminology and procedure lectures, and each received a thick course reader which will be of use to them in the future. The public participants in the course (a conference interpreting student from PUC, Brazil and an Arabic/English translation professional from the Bay Area) made valuable contributions.

The lecture sections of the course dealt with basic parliamentary procedure, the terminology for proceeding with agenda items, the structure of resolutions and other documents, and basic negotiating techniques. Following the lecture section of the course the students were divided into three groups, with the task of taking three completely opposed positions on an issue of great concern to the students.

Despite the time pressures, the students seem to have successfully grasped the principles of drafting a resolution and of negotiating to consensus.

Dean Renee Jourdenais was pleased to have Dr. Lynn Visson join us to teach this workshop for the fourth year in a row, this year launching the Dean’s Lecture Series program. Dr. Visson’s vibrant personality, humorous stories from inside the UN where she served as a staff interpreter in the English booth for French and Russian for more than twenty years, and her thorough knowledge of complex procedures make the class enjoyable and informative each year. Dr. Visson received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, taught Russian language and literature at Columbia University, and is currently a member of the editorial board of Mosty, a Moscow-based journal on translation and interpretation, and a consulting editor of Hippocrene Books, NY. Of Russian background, she is the author of many works on interpretation, translation, Russian-American marriages and various aspects of Russian culture, which have been published in both the US and Russia.

Thank you to Dr. Visson and students for making this workshop a success!

GSTILE Lecture Series Features Architect of Windows 7 Global Launch

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Ulrike Irmler, Principal Group Manager at Microsoft, discussed the complexity of a worldwide, simultaneous software launch that involved more than 90 languages. In her presentation, Ms. Irmler talked about the different audiences the

Microsoft operating system has, and how this diversity requires multiple, customized localization strategies. This presentation also highlighted the fact that in order to participate in a large-scale localization project today, language professionals must not only have excellent translation skills but also a good understanding of localization tools and processes, as well as subject-matter expertise.

Ulrike Irmler at her lecture

Ulrike Irmler’s talk, which had been advertised in the Monterey Herald and the Santa Cruz Sentinel, attracted a sizeable crowd of students, faculty, and members of the general public. Ms. Irmler’s presentation, the first half of which she gave in her native language of German (made available in English by members of the Interpretation Practicum course), focused on the difficulties of having widely different content (e.g. software user interface, marketing collateral, and forum content) translated for audiences with very different needs (e.g. private end-users vs. members of the developer community). She illustrated how the demands on her organization have grown from one release of Windows to the next: Process a growing volume of source text (Windows XP: 1 million words, Windows 7: 11 million words), in a growing number of languages (Windows XP: 77, Windows 7: 95), deliver localized versions faster (Windows XP: 120 days after English version, Windows 7: on the same day as English version) and do all of that with ever fewer people (Windows XP: staff of 250, Windows 7: staff of 100).

Ms. Irmler explained that the growing demands on her localization group are symptomatic for the entire software industry, and that these demands can only be met by constantly changing the way content for global audiences is created and localized. Microsoft fully embraces the outsourcing model, and in Ms. Irmler’s opinion, new business models like crowdsourcing (working with large groups of subject-matter experts that are lay translators) and machine translation (using automated translation tools for certain types of text) are here to stay.

About the speaker:

Ulrike Irmler has been involved in localization in different roles since 1997. Since 2008 she has been managing the Windows Localization organization. Her staff works in Redmond, Washington and 11 locations throughout the world. Her team is responsible for the localization of Windows Client and Server, all Windows family products and the international Windows Online localization, site management and publishing.

Windows Localization – Language for Worldwide and Local Audiences

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Who: Ulrike Irmler, Microsoft

When: Monday, April 5, 2010 from 2-4pm

Where: Irvine Auditorium, MIIS

Microsoft Windows covers a breadth of audiences from consumer, to IT professionals to developers. With more than 1 billion customers worldwide and 100 target languages, translation and localization activities span from user interface localization to digital marketing, developer kits, licensing agreements, and many other text and domain types.

Ulrike Irmler, who manages Window’s localization team, will give an overview of the Windows business by presenting several end-to-end localization scenarios (user interface, web content, developer and consumer). She will focus on market-strategy, translation challenges, standards and linguistic quality. Ulrike will also discuss the latest translation paradigms such as machine translation and crowd sourcing in the context of large-scale enterprise localization.