We had two main goals in writing this book: (1) to illustrate the profound impact of new communications infrastructure on the language industry, and (2) to raise industry player awareness of new challenges and opportunities in catering to multilingual multimedia communication needs.

Over the last few years what is technically called Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) has rapidly been embraced as our communication platform. CMC means that there is a computer between the Sender and the Receiver of the Message and one of its defining characteristics is "being digital" from beginning to end. For example, the whole chat process takes place on computer screen, as does emailing, which has more recently become accessible via portable devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. These differ from traditional communication modes such as face-to-face interactions, fax, snail mail or telephone calls.

By going digital, the message’s key characteristics have changed. Although email is an asynchronous written communication, it is often used in less formal exchanges than traditional written communication and can convey a powerful sense of immediacy. Email also allows multimedia attachments. And importantly, these characteristics all affect the design of language support which needs to operate on the same platform. In this way, a whole new context for the language support industry is emerging, as CMC continues to provide increasingly shared modes of communication across languages and cultures.

In this book, we address the new context in which this language support industry will need to function. For example, for an inter-lingual text chat session, such support has to be real-time and in interactive written form. This requires "transterpreting" (Ashworth, 1997) - a hybrid mode of translating and interpreting whereby the written text needs to be processed as a translation yet synchronously as in speech interpreting. Providing language support for this new mode of communication therefore demands an understanding not only of the nature of the medium but also of the interrelationship between the Sender and the Receiver of the Message.

To analyze these factors, we treat translation and interpretation as a communication function, and introduce a framework called "translation-mediated communication" (TMC). We refer to any message subjected to language support such as translation, interpretation or localization as TMC. We also use this term analogously to CMC to include the impact of technologies on the language support function.

Teletranslation and teleinterpretation

In our search for a new language support model, we refer to the emerging paradigm as teletranslation and teleinterpretation: language support which functions in the new IT-based infrastructure allowing inter-lingual interactions in new modes of communication such as CMC. Our assumption is that as we move from a more traditional physical transportation-based infrastructure to an extensively IT-supported platform, TMC will expand to all digital and eventually virtual environments. Translators will increasingly find themselves processing documents which are created, stored and distributed in cyberspace, while interpreters may be asked to facilitate virtual meetings where all participants are geographically distributed. The shift towards an extensive use of broadband-based CMC will drive a number of key changes for language support.

We consider that the seeds of a number of far-reaching changes can be traced back to developments in the localization industry. One example is the internationalization process which is now implemented as part of product globalization. This is a completely new perspective for traditional TMC; as many translators today can testify, since their clients typically treat translation as an after-thought - the source text is created without any consideration for the Receiver, who does not share the Sender’s linguistic or cultural background.

By contrast, the internationalization process prioritizes concern for subsequent translation/localization requirements right from the onset of the product development cycle. This is a significant departure from conventional TMC. We argue that organizations that wish to go global on the back of this new IT-based infrastructure will need to develop high TMC awareness and adopt an approach which we call "translation upstreaming ".

Translation engineering

We also point to the increasing importance of engineering inputs into language support. Since the localization industry today simply could not exist with production based only on word-processing input, digital communications platforms will continue to impose engineering processes as an integral part of language support production. Which means that we can envisage the emergence of a new profession of "translation engineer".

Although today's language engineers will be familiar with technical procedures such as double-byte enabling, they may not necessarily understand the art of translation. Translation engineers, on the other hand, will have the combined skills of language engineering and translation. They will facilitate digital multilingual communications in a technically and culturally appropriate form, tailored to the Receiver of the Message.

A successful transition to teletranslation and teleinterpretation requires language professionals to develop digital literacy which is different from literacy based on written or spoken words in traditional modes of communication. For example, translating Web sites requires a general grasp of how hypertext works and how people behave when using this new communication platform. Similarly, facilitating a computer conference via text and voice chat requires the interpreter (teleinterpreter) to be familiar with ‘chat’ protocol. These form part of what we call digital literacy, which we believe will come to underpin a new set of translator and interpreter skills and knowledge, so that they can provide the kind of language support that blends seamlessly with these new communications modes.

Content and package

To analyze these new requirements further, we draw on concepts developed by Daniel Gile (1995), who considers the Message (spoken or written) as consisting of "content" and "package". ‘Content’ refers to informational content, while ‘package’ is both the set of linguistic and non-linguistic choices made by the Sender of the Message and the physical medium in which the Message is instantiated. For example, a Message containing good-quality informational content can fail to deliver because of a poor-quality package - an inappropriate writing style or an inaudible speaking voice, for example. We argue that the CMC environment generates a more explicit processing of a "package" within the language support function than in traditional communication environments.

Just consider how constrained translators are when processing the package dimension of paper-based TMC. Translators may have to fit a somewhat longer target text into a pre-determined space, or compromise in terms of font selection to create the equivalent "look & feel" in the target text. Similarly, interpreters are constrained since they cannot change parameters of the speaker's package such as delivery style and nonverbal communication.

In both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, the Receiver of the Message is exposed to the Sender's (speaker's) nonverbal communication. By comparison, a Web localization task can provide a greater freedom to manipulate the package aspect. According to Receiver’s expectations, images may be added or deleted, hyperlinks may be altered, the background wallpaper can be changed, and the image/text ratio can be changed. These actions are forms of what we call the ‘culturalization of the content’ and they involve substantial "package" processing.

Further into the future, there is likely to be further manipulation of the "package" dimension in language support. For example, in a sophisticated interactive virtual reality environment, the facial expressions of participants who are represented as avatars can be changed according to the Receiver's nonverbal communication protocol, and the entire communication setting can be re-created to allow optimum TMC (O'Hagan, 2000). On this sort of communications platform, the nature of language support could drastically change from strictly word-based to more holistic communication facilitation, encompassing both verbal and nonverbal communication.

POTS and plans

The localization industry which emerged in the early 1990's has been constantly evolving and maturing to meet changing needs, initially catering to computer software, and then swiftly expanding to the localization of Web sites. In future it will evolve to serve any other new media requiring the linguistic and cultural customization of the Message. Some localization services are already moving into comprehensive globalization services, offering everything from internationalization to culturalization.

As a result, the localization sector is now providing much greater added value than a conventional translation service. We therefore consider conventional translation services as relatively low value-added, and call them Plain Old Translation Services (POTS) – with a wink at the common telecoms usage of "POTS" as standing for "Plain Old Telephone Services".

If you are a POTS of the language industry, and you remain largely paper-based with only piecemeal adoption of IT in your production capability, then you will miss out on new opportunities being created by emerging communications environments.

In this fast-changing space, continued professional training will become a critical issue, and is being addressed by LISA and other institutions. Indeed, the new communications infrastructure itself offers new ways to facilitate such community requirements. Translators can now take online courses to improve their knowledge and skills from a number of universities and other institutions of the world without having to physically attend classes; and this will soon be the case for interpreters. We therefore discuss cyberspace classrooms, drawing on our experience as the learner and provider of such a course.

In addressing this new global context for the language support industry, we realize how difficult it is to discuss future developments with any confidence. For one thing, traditional research methodologies do not readily allow one to study future scenarios. We adopt a futures research approach whereby we attempt to raise readers' awareness of relevant current developments and challenge their perception of possible future consequences, using a number of scenarios. In today's rapidly advancing technological climate, we can no longer expect to find well-defined, definitive knowledge since we cannot clearly define the problem. However, we can prepare ourselves to be sufficiently agile to respond to whatever situation may unfold. The very way that localization evolved out of POTS through its involvement with the software industry provides an example of how teletranslation and teleinterpretation may in turn result from developments in cyberspace.

References

Ashworth, D. (1997, January). Transterpreting: a new modality for interpreting on the Internet. Paper presented at the PPDLA (Pan-Pacific Distance Learning Association) conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

GiIe, D. (1995). Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Education. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.

O'Hagan, M. (2000). HyperTranslation. In HyperReality: the Metastructure of the Information Society (Tiffin & Terashima [eds.]). London: Routledge.