The most important way that we contribute is through the simple fact that we know something about the people.

In today’s world, perhaps the most important way that we contribute is through the simple fact that we know something about the people for whom we are globalizing. As Lommel explains it, we have to know about their language, their culture and their society, and this means that we have to engage them as human beings worthy of the same benefits and options we enjoy. This knowledge is something that the GILT community can offer to the broader world, and indeed, in the end, we are hired primarily for our knowledge of how to deal with language and culture.

Of course, as with everything, there is a flip side to the positive side of our localization efforts. As I sit in an internet cafe in the old city of Antioch in the eastern Mediterranean, finishing this editorial, I am surrounded by pre-adolescent males who are engaged in (vociferously) playing various (albeit localized) versions of Counter-Strike (still the perennial favorite among groups of players and always punctuated with insults hurled at Saddam Hussein – or Huseyin, as it’s spelled in Turkey) and Vice City (preferred by individual players who delight in deciphering the text codes in English). No Yahooligans nor disney.com for these 10-year-olds!

Currently, Translators Without Borders urgently needs English-to-French and French-to-English translators and editors.

So, how to bring these two worlds into synch? By giving back to the communities in which we operate as organizations. Giving back takes many forms, but I would like to highlight one organization, Translators Without Borders/Traducteurs sans frontieres. In 1993, Eurotexte created the not-for-profit association Translators Without Borders to provide free translations to humanitarian organizations. Today, this pro bono work assists organizations such as Doctors Without Borders (winners of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize), the Aides Organization and Amnesty International. The funds saved are then used to finance on-going and/or new humanitarian projects. Currently, there is an urgent need for English-to-French and French-to-English translators and editors. Please click here if you are interested in volunteering.

We have the privilege and the responsibility to act and lead in culturally sensitive ways.

With the nature of our members’ business activities come the privilege and the responsibility to be globally literate – to act and lead in culturally sensitive ways, as outlined in our Code of Ethics (pdf). One of the biggest contributions that we can make as an industry is to enable access to technology that allows everyone, regardless of linguistic or socioeconomic level, to communicate. Victor Gaultney, creator of Gentium (a Unicode typeface that contains Roman, Greek and Cyrillic characters), provides us all with a very concrete example of how to give back to the community – literally. You can read how Gaultney developed and contributed his work to SIL International as part of the latter’s efforts to not only bridge, but eliminate, the Digital Divide in Gentium: Providing Type to the World (public).

Start small within your own sphere of influence to help erase the Digital Divide.

According to Gaultney, the Digital Divide will not disappear until mainstream computer operating systems and applications acknowledge that they cannot assume to know in what language a user wishes to communicate. He advises us to “start small and within our own sphere of influence.” When we might limit software to a specific set of users, he recommends that we try to find a way to include more of the developing world. We can also contribute time and expertise to many of the open source projects to ensure that they become less Eurocentric. He points out that even many major private corporations realize that they have a moral duty to welcome the developing nations into their world, and often find that doing so is a smart business decision.

Trying to establish a measure for the size of a given GILT task is not unlike trying to fight a many-headed dragon.

One of the very important ways in which LISA and its members contribute to making worldwide communication possible is through its standards work. In GILT Metrics - Slaying the Word Count Dragon (public), Andrzej Zydron of xml:Intl describes his proposed word count standard that is now being considered by OSCAR. One of the most enduring features of the GILT (Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation) industry has been the inconsistency of word counts, not only between rival products, but even between different versions of the same product. Trying to establish a measure for the size of a given GILT task is not unlike trying to fight a many-headed dragon. GILT Metrics is aimed at providing a unified and verifiable (and unlike the French Revolution, a bloodless) way of establishing the size of a given localization task for electronic files.

In our second article on word count, Is Gutenberg Guilty? (public), Frederico Carvalho at All Tasks Technical Translations in Brazil takes a quick historical and humorous look at what it means in the “real world” for project managers and business people to be responsible for so many words, yet have no standard method to count them.

Standards such as TMX ‘future-proof’ your intellectual property investments.

In the advertorial sponsored by SDL International, TMX: Maximizing the Return on your Translation Memory Investments (public), find out how TMX – Translation Memory eXchange – allows you to share translation memories across platforms and applications while, at the same time, permitting you to protect your intellectual property. Standards such as TMX are extremely important because they ‘future-proof’ the investments of customers, language service providers and tools vendors. (Editor’s Note: How does SDL give back? Through donating every year to several charities related to cancer research and to educating and supporting sick children in developing countries.)

In our fourth and final article related to standards, Peter Reynolds of Bowne Global Solutions and Chair of the Translation Web Services Technical Committe for OASIS, discusses the rationale for Translation Web Services, the evolving specification and future plans to extend the benefits of web services to all those involved in localization in Web Services for Translation (public). (Editor’s Note: How does BGS give back? By supporting the recent world games of the Special Olympics through contributing over USD 1 million in language services, in addition to the donation of employee time.)

LISA is offering two great conferences in June, and we have content to match. The first, the LISA Forum Russia Outsourcing Summit, was held last week in St. Petersburg. Nikita Vladimirov, VP of Business Development for C.T.XM SIA in Latvia, had this to say after attending: