GALA Blog

Common Sense Advisory’s report for Translators without Borders will include detailed information about the state of translation for African languages

(BOSTON and PARIS) – Information is power. The lack of information can leave people powerless. There are more than 2,000 languages spoken in Africa, but the majority of information is not available to people unless they speak one of the world’s few mega-languages, such as English, French, or Arabic. Now, a new study by independent market research Common Sense Advisory for Translators without Borders will explore the link between the availability of translated content and social issues that stem from lack of access to information, such as health disparities and political inclusion.

“Our firm continually publishes research about the importance of translation in business settings,” explains Tahar Bouhafs, CEO of Common Sense Advisory. “But translation also serves a much broader purpose, enabling people to obtain access to basic information that can help them enjoy greater social and political participation and ultimately live healthier and more fulfilling lives,” comments Bouhafs, a native of Northern Africa.

“We see a need in Africa to find out more about the impact translation has on individuals’ ability to take control of their own health and participate in political processes,” says Lori Thicke, co-founder of Translators without Borders. “Exploring this connection in greater depth will enable us to have a better understanding of the true scope of the services our volunteer translators provide, and, in turn, give people who speak languages such as Amharic, Igbo, and Somali access to more information.”

The study is made possible through an in-kind donation from Common Sense Advisory to Translators without Borders. The resulting report will include detailed information about the state of translation for African languages, including information about employment opportunities for translators, training and education, challenges to providing translation, and translators’ views on how their work affects the lives of their community members. The report will be published online by Common Sense Advisory, and will be distributed free of charge.

For more information about the survey, visit https://www.research.net/s/csa_africa.

About Common Sense Advisory

Common Sense Advisory is an independent market research company helping companies profitably grow their international businesses and gain access to new markets and new customers. Its focus is on assisting its clients to operationalize, benchmark, optimize, and innovate industry best practices in translation, localization, interpreting, globalization, and internationalization. For more information, visit: www.commonsenseadvisory.com or www.twitter.com/CSA_Research.

About Translators without Borders

The mission of Translators without Borders (and its sister organization in in France, Traducteurs sans Frontières) is to translate knowledge for humanity. Translators without Borders has met that mission through quality humanitarian translations provided by a community of trained translators to vetted NGOs who focus on health, nutrition and education. On average, Translators without Borders volunteers translate millions of words per year, focusing on three types of humanitarian translations: crisis translations needed urgently to inform people in crisis, translations that support an NGO’s operations, and educational translations that directly support people in need. For more information, visit: www.translatorswithoutborders.com or www.twitter.com/TranslatorsWB.

The European Commission wishes to promote SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) in their international activities. SMEs have ideas that sometimes cannot be implemented because they depend on the availability of data resources or specialized tools that are too expensive to obtain and maintain. In some areas, data pooling, sharing, and reuse are further complicated by Europe’s many languages. Actions under SME-DCL aim to make it easier for innovative players, especially SMEs, to exploit and contribute to large digital resource pools. User-centered experimentation will also be supported, with the aim of demonstrating the integration of data-intensive technologies within innovative solutions and processes.

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Work Programme 2011-2012, under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), is divided into eight Challenges of strategic interest to European society. Challenge 4 and strategic objective 4.1 have been designed specifically for SMEs, with a focus on the need for multilingual digital content.

Challenge 4: Technologies for Digital Content and Languages

Digital content is the foundation of a knowledge based society. Not only is knowledge stored in digital content; it is also from digital content that knowledge is extracted and exploited by individuals and organizations across modalities and languages. This makes it crucial for information stored digitally to be readily and reliably accessible over time to European citizens and enterprises. In addition, in every step of its lifecycle digital content should be be adequately supported and enhanced, as businesses respond to changes in the technology landscape.

The EC recognizes that SMEs require special support, but would like to see evidence that the proposed idea has a definite potential and will result in something that is both useful and viable. Therefore, EC encourages experimentation with innovative technologies, solutions, and processes at the first-use stage that will yield the desired results.

The call should achieve the following objectives:

• Improved European competitive position in a multilingual digital market, achieved through the provision of better services to citizens and businesses.
• Novel forms of partnership between new program entrants and established players, reduced development costs, and shorter time-to-market, all of which stimulate innovation and help expand markets.
• Result-driven knowledge transfer among research centers (and their spin-offs), progressive technology providers (especially SMEs), data brokers/aggregators, and content providers.

Outline proposals (5 pages max.) should be submitted by 28 April 2011. The complete information package and submission rules can be found on

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/dc/index.cfm?fuseaction=UserSite.CooperationDetailsCallPage&call_id=392#prereg and

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/language-technologies/fp7-sme_en.html

If you would like more information on the SME-DCL call, please contact infso-e1@ec.europa.eu.

The University of Washington (Seattle) is launching a new training program for future localization managers and professionals looking to grow their careers beyond project management.  To help the program board develop a curriculum that will train our next generation of localization managers, companies with localization professional are encouraged to share their company’s job descriptions for professionals in positions of localization managers and above.

Descriptions may be posted here, on the GALA LinkedIn group discussion on this topic, or, if you prefer not to post online, you can also share your input by sending job descriptions directly to Julianna Jones (juj@uw.edu) — no company names needed, just the title and description.

Thank you!
Laura Brandon