Changing rooms at Debenhams
September 8th, 2009
As the words were leaving my mouth, I knew the question I was asking was stupid, “Are the changing rooms here?” The look on the faces of the two ladies on the till only served to confirm the fact. I was clearly and obviously standing at the checkout.
What was I thinking, or rather, what language was I thinking in…
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with translation
Google gyfieithu
September 2nd, 2009
Whilst idly considering the issues of bilingual blogging I came across an announcement about Google Translate on the murmur blog.
Google Translate now includes Welsh among its languages, but by Google’s own admission the quality of translation is “still a little rough”…
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with google, translation
Web2.0 and Bilingualism
August 19th, 2009
Implications of web2.0 for bilingualism on websites – towards best practice
Goblygiadau gwe2.0 ar gyfer gwefannau dwyieithog – tuag at arfer gorau
This has just been released by the Welsh Language Board. It explores issues, good practice and suggestions for organisations which are planning to make web2.0 services available bilingually.
It is an independent report commissioned by the Board from me, with the assistance of Courtenay Honeycutt (Indiana University) and the input of a number of stakeholders.
It is very much intended to be a discussion starter, rather than a definitive statement, so please feel free to join the discussion here…
Read the rest of this entryWelsh Language Blog Deficit 2
July 26th, 2009
This morning I woke up and knew where the mistake was in the calculations.
So the estimate was wrong, but how wrong…
Read the rest of this entryWelsh language blog deficit?
July 24th, 2009
I was reflecting on my last blog post about opportunities provided by new media and whether or not the Welsh language was taking advantage of these opportunities, and this led me to wonder how many Welsh language blogs we would expect there to be, and how many there actually are. So I set out to do some estimates…
Read the rest of this entryPlanet Wicipedia
July 21st, 2009
There’s a nice little English-language article “Look it up in Wicipedia” published in the latest issue of Planet (195, pp 27-31) written by Craig Owen Jones from Bangor University (startling that such a fresh-faced young man should have responsibility for Punk Rock!).
The article makes a number of interesting points…
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with Wikipediae, wikipediae, wikis
History mis-repeating itself
July 7th, 2009
Yet another funny (perhaps, though the joke is wearing a little thin now) story about a mistranslated sign Walkers’ sign lost in translation – you know the sort of thing, English says “look left”, Welsh says “look right”... hang on, that sounds awfully familiar…
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with translation
Automatic translation from Welsh gets a boost from France!
May 13th, 2009
Having previously suggested that Google might be doing some interesting things with regards to minority languages, I was delighted to receive the following press release about the Apertium Welsh-English translator.
I know that they have had a few set-backs in the past, and they seem like nice guys, so it is great to see them getting a bit of a boost.
I think Fran’s comments about not getting any Welsh students applying for the post are interesting – many people have commented that Wales should be well-placed to be a leader in bilingual software design, localisation, translation technology and so on, and we have some great people doing some excellent work around the country – maybe we need to think about how this might be more directly fed into the computing and other curricula in universities to really build a knowledge/skill base and develop an industry.
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with apertium, google, translation
Is Google Street View bilingual?
March 24th, 2009
Amid all the excitement and furore around Google’s Street View a colleague of mine (thanks Ceri) unearthed this little gem from the comments on dot.life – A blog about technology from BBC News.
“20. At 3:56pm on 20 Mar 2009, paulvilla wrote:
I had a look at Swansea and noticed that streetview had blurred the Welsh version on some of the roadsigns. I assume the numberplate detection got confused by the non-standard letter patterns. Curiously the English on the same sign is un-blurred. If nothing else, at least streetview brings a bit of relief from bi-lingual everything – if only briefly!”
I must confess to having tried to find some examples of this – without success. Can anyone with the necessary lack of a life find any examples of this? Has this affected other languages?
Ceri’s email had the subject line “Google tries to stamp out Welsh language shocker” which I was really tempted to use as the title of this post. However I have learned that humorous titles don’t always travel well :-)
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with distractions, google
ebook in Welsh
March 16th, 2009
According to an article in Wales Online, the publisher y Lolfa is launching a Welsh language novel in ebook format.
I’m not really sure where I stand on the whole ebook question, somehow I don’t think I would enjoy the experience of owning an ebook as much as I enjoy owning a book. However I can see that there might be real advantages for minority language publishing if this technology becomes established. One to keep an eye on I think.
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with media, Media, newtechnology
Perfect Translation and Website Localization Services
March 3rd, 2009
I get a depressingly large amount of spam email, which our spam filter does a pretty good job of identifying and tagging so that I can shift it off to a folder for a quick review before deleting. It’s all the usual kind of stuff – warning messages from banks, promises of enlargement, shady offers to transfer millions of dollars to my account and so on.
However, in amongst all the chaff I just found this single grain of wheat, which I feel I have to share:
Subject: Perfect Translation and Website Localization Services
Dear Sirs/Madamp
We are a porofessional translation and cultural solution company with over 10 years of experience in the market.
...
and so it goes on.
So much joy from one small email.
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with distractions, localisation, translation
Office Online in Catalan
February 27th, 2009
Last week Office Online launched a Catalan portal page on the Office Online Spain site for Catalan users of MS Office.
This is apparently the first time that they have done this for a regional language. There are a number of different resources, including help articles and templates. They also link to other resources for Catalan speakers and encourage them to submit templates themselves.
A reliable source informs me that we can expect something similar for Welsh next year. Something to look forward to.
Read the rest of this entryPosted by djcunlif | Tagged with localisation, microsoft
Serendipity
November 25th, 2008
Yesterday was one of those days when I was looking for something on the WWW, didn’t find it, but found some other (more) interesting things instead.
Warning, both of the more interesting things I found are large pdf files.
The first thing is a dissertation entitled Appropriating New Technology for Minority Language Revitalization: The Welsh Case by Mourad Ben Slimane at the Frei Universitat Berlin (it’s in English).
The second thing a dissertation entitled The Role of Online MT in Webpage Translation by Fredrico Gaspari at the University of Manchester.
I haven’t had a chance to read either of them yet – enjoy!
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with dissertations, newtechnology, translation
'Historic' use of Welsh in EU
November 20th, 2008
Normally I’d consider a report about the use of Welsh in the EU to be of only passing interest, without much direct relevance to technology. However Mark’s comments on my post about Google Reader flag up the importance of having a large corpus of parallel texts to enable machine translation. Perhaps this would be a less obvious, but more tangible benefit of any wider use of Welsh within the EU in the future.
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with localisation, translation
Is Google Reader Truly World-Wide?
November 14th, 2008
There is an interesting snippet on the Google Reader Blog entitled Is Your Web Truly World-Wide?. The title is rather misleading however, it actually refers to a new feature in Google Reader whereby you can have feeds translated into your language. Or at least you can if your language is one of the chosen few and you are happy to put up with the vagaries of machine translation.
I do get the feeling that opening up to multiple languages is rather the flavour of the moment, which is no bad thing and long overdue in my opinion. My concern is that this will only extend as far as the usual suspects, reinforcing their position and weakening the lesser used languages – again.
Posted by djcunlif | Tagged with google, localisation, translation, web2.0
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