GALA Blog

Globalization Partners International has announced that “Glearch”, its new search engine launched this year has won both a 2009 Web Marketing Association (WMA) Standard of Excellence Award AND a Gold Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA)-W3 Awards. More than 2,000 sites from 45 countries were reviewed in 96 industry categories for the WMA Awards and less than 10% of entries to the IAVA-W3 Awards receive Gold Awards each year.

“Glearch (Global Search www.glearch.com) is a mega-search engine for international business professionals, travelers, translators, students, researchers and anyone else who needs to easily search the web by language, by country, and by search engine,” says Yasser Ahmed, Web Development Lead, GPI.

“Glearch’s global map-based interface and compilation of country specific facts, web resources, maps, newspapers and top sites are at the core of the mega-search utility,” says Marcelo Volmaro, Website Globalization Practice Director, GPI. “Our design and development teams are happy the competition judges and the general public feel the site meets the criteria to win awards including high marks in: creativity, usability, navigation, functionality, visual design, and ease of use”.

The Globalization and Localization Association kicked off the language conference season in September with its first-ever event. The organizers encouraged the speakers to think “big” and address technical and business matters from the perspective of the industry at large, not just from their own corporate or personal view. They generally delivered on this request and participants in the largely interactive sessions discussed the rapid transformation of the industry and the need to prepare for profound changes at both enterprise and functional levels. Besides the usual but valuable discussions about doing business, which technologies to use, and how to deal with perennial issues, talk of community within the language industry and beyond took center stage.

• Online communities exert great power, for the better. Craig’s List founder Craig Newmark keynoted the event, emphasizing that the site’s original intent to connect people in a virtual but strong community has survived despite its gargantuan growth and challenges like user fraud and abuse. He noted the site’s growing international presence and looked to the audience of language specialists for guidance. The attendees were interested in his advocacy of “personal diplomacy” and “bottoms-up democracy” outside his work at Craig’s List. In another session, Reinhard Schäler described the efforts of the The Rosetta Foundation and the crowd to empower minorities and populations in developing countries with access to information regardless of economic and political considerations.
• The language service community begins to coalesce. Over the last seven years, the language industry has balkanized into a variety of associations with overlapping mandates and memberships. At this conference, GALA reached out to fraternal organizations to mend the fractures. In a plenary hosted by Common Sense Advisory’s Don DePalma, this veritable Who’s Who of the industry focused on the challenges and opportunities for the industry. Panelists included Michael Fritz of tekom, Hans Fenstermacher of GALA, Arle Lommel of the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), Reinhard Schäler of the Localisation Resource Centre, and Jiri Stejskal of the American Translators Association (ATA), with Marla Schulman of the Association of Language Companies (ALC) joining the discussion.During that panel discussion and in sessions that followed, participants suggested convening representatives from associations to work towards eliminating fragmentation, combining conferences, and, importantly, developing a declaration of a human right to information in any language. While de-fragmenting the landscape and joining forces for bigger events are not new ideas, they gathered momentum in light of the rapid pace at which the industry is changing and a newfound willingness to cooperate. Overall, there was a sense of great anticipation as to what the near future may hold for GALA conference attendees and the language services industry as a whole.

For more industry insight from Common Sense Advisory’s analysts, visit the Global Watchtower.

Last week, the Executive Office of the President and National Economic Council issued its “Strategy for American Innovation.” Among the recommendations was a call for “automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world — greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.” In other words, machine translation (MT) has captured somebody’s attention in the President’s inner circle.

Having an American President cite an advanced language technology as one of the enablers to improve “our quality of life and establish the foundation for the industries and jobs of the future” is not that common an occurrence. So, even though Common Sense Advisory found this recommendation as the very last bullet in a dense thicket of dozens of other initiatives in a 22-page policy paper, it reinforces our contention that the current administration understands the importance of language both abroad and at home, to both improve the ability of American businesses to engage with foreign buyers and of the U.S. government to better understand the thinking of its partners on the world stage. In January, we wrote that the Obama administration was poised to improve language access on the domestic front (see “Title VI Enforcement to Grow under Obama,” a free download with registration at http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com). Now, the administration is turning its attention to the role of language in the country’s ability to compete globally.

The “Obama Innovation Strategy” relies on both the President’s budget and over US$100 billion of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds targeted for improving the building blocks of American innovation (fundamental research, education, infrastructure, and advanced IT); promoting competitive markets that spur productive businesses; and catalyzing breakthroughs for national priorities (clean energy, advanced vehicle, health care technology, and 21st-century innovations, which is where machine translation shows up).

Is MT ready for this new role in America’s political debate? Interviewees for our recent research into the business case for machine translation showed profound interest and enthusiasm for both the technology and its ability to increase the amount of translated information that they can provide to their customers or constituencies, with faster turnaround time and lower costs. In our report, we flagged several areas where suppliers are actively working to improve the technology, including advances in natural language processing and information sciences. More funding for the linguists and scientists working on the technology can only accelerate these advances — and the continuing improvement of MT will bode well for lower barriers to global commerce and collaboration.

Visit the Global Watchtower for additional industry posts.