Greek Translation and the Web

Updates from January, 2011

• Dimitris 12:41 on 27/01/2011 Permalink
  Tags: Machine Translation ( 7 )   

  Intensive School in Machine Translation 

  

  Joint EAMT – SUSU Intensive School in Machine Translation

  European Association for Machine Translation and South Ural State University are pleased to announce an exciting co-sponsored event “Intensive School in Machine Translation (ISMT)” which will be held in Chelyabinsk, Russia from 16 to 20 May 2011. The venue of the school is South Ural State University.

  The overall goal of ISMT is to provide participants with a reference frame for major areas of study within the field of MT technology while defining critical problems of MT and the most useful methods for their solutions.

  The ISMT courses on the state-of-the-art MT aspects will be delivered by internationally renowned researchers from different countries. Click here to see the lecturers.

  ISMT will also feature a discussion panel which will enable participants to discuss specific issues in MT with experts in the field. The working languages are English and Russian. A course certificate will be issued upon completion of the course, based on 90% participation.

  The primary ISMT target audience is university students, PhD students and young researchers for whom attendance is free of charge. The school is also open for everyone else professionally interested in machine translation. Participants from industry/commerce will be charged a registration fee.

  Since there are a limited number of participant slots we do recommend interested parties to register as early as possible. Assistance with accommodation is offered once you have registered.

  Important Dates
  15 January 2011		Registration opens    Click here to register
  15 April 2011		Registration deadline
  16-20 May 2011		Intensive School in Machine Translation

  Contact: org@mtschool-susu.info

  The ISMT courses on the state-of-the-art MT aspects will be delivered by internationally renowned researchers from different countries. Continue reading “Intensive School in Machine Translation” »
   

• Dimitris 17:55 on 25/01/2011 Permalink
  Tags: translation ( 4 ), Translation Industry ( 4 ), translators ( 3 )   

  Translation in the Time of Crisis 

  The world is currently experiencing a financial and economic crisis of proportions unseen in many decades. All sectors of he economy are taking a hit and so is the Translation Industry. From my personal experience, I see that a number of agencies I have been working with for years are struggling; some of them handle their limited projects only with their internal translators and a few of them are even thinking of going out of business. Freelancers, however, are better positioned in this crisis compared to agencies. Independent translators need limited resources (bank loans, premises, equipment and other running costs) to provide their services and so they can survive even a severe drop in their work volume. On the other hand, agencies have to bear very high (and increasing) running costs that shape their pricing policy and, ultimately, make them unappealing to prospective clients.

  In light of the crisis, translation buyers are looking to cut down on their expenses but also maintain a certain level of quality. In the past, those clients had sufficient income and cash flows in order to outsource their projects to another company with a relatively high cost. Nowadays, professional and reliable freelancers prove to be a good alternative for them, for two reasons:

  1) Low cost. Freelancers charge considerably less than agencies, for the above mentioned and many other reasons.

  2) The volume that freelancers can handle and the quality level they can offer increases every day, what with all the new QA tools, translation memories, cloud shared content, automatic translation, dictionaries …you name it.

  Of course, the crisis does not hit all companies in the market. Reports suggest that the largest Language Service Providers like Lionbridge, Thebigword and SDL, are actually recording increase in profits and number of translation orders. This is partly due to the fact that ‘blue-chip’ corporations -which are the ones with the greatest translation needs- do not trust their work on freelancers, mainly due to volume and project management considerations. Instead, they prefer to outsource their projects to ‘one stop shops’ with proven record and large marketing campaigns.

  This leads us to the preliminary conclusion that those that can withstand or even benefit from the crisis are freelancers and large translation companies. At the moment, prospects don’t look good for mid-size and smaller agencies. Time will show us if this is definite or just a sign of the times. Until then, we, as freelancers, should try to improve the services we offer and invest in our profession in every possible way; because the crisis will be over sooner or later and we do not want to find ourselves against the wall.

  Continue reading “Translation in the Time of Crisis” »
   

• Dimitris 12:58 on 21/01/2011 Permalink
  Tags: google, Internet ( 3 ), SEO ( 12 ), SEO tool ( 7 ), SEO Translation ( 8 )   

  Google’s SEO Starter Guide 

  

  “What are some simple ways that I can improve my website’s performance in Google?” There are lots of possible answers to this question, and a wealth of search engine optimization information on the web, so much that it can be intimidating for newer webmasters or those unfamiliar with the topic. Google thought it’d be useful to create a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites’ crawlability and indexing.

  Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. This guide contains many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand the explanation of the topics. So, now there is a simple answer to the question, “I’m new to SEO, how do I improve my site?”. Just take a look at the list of best practices recommended by Google.”

  And if that’s not enough for you, the SEO Starter Guide is now available in 40 languages!

  Continue reading “Google’s SEO Starter Guide” »