Hello,
Here it is: #SmartReads 2-2018 on the Translation Industry.
I skipped the February newsletter because there are few interesting things in the pipeline. I am going to write about them very soon. For the time being I am going to give you just one small sneak preview… Keep reading.
Sneak Preview: Translation Technology for the Summer 2018
The International Summer School for Translation Technology, organized by the Belgian university KU Leuven, is now in its 3rd edition and will take place from Sep. 3 to Sep. 7, 2018. It’s a whole week filled with workshops and trainings aimed at those who are looking for a practice-oriented and state-of-the-art introduction to translation and localization processes, issues and tools.
Together with Iulianna van der Lek, research associate and CAT tools trainer, I will hold a workshop with the title Futurebound: A Matrix for Translation Professionals.
Education and training are vital to prepare the next generation of professionals. The success – and survival – of any innovation depends, after all, entirely on the people who are going to nurture, develop, and implement it. In this workshop, participants will be asked to share their ideas and visions on the future of translation. We will encourage them to develop a matrix for the translation professionals of the future. The finalized program of the Summer School will be online in the next few weeks but registration is already open. The number of participants is limited to 40; so, you’d better hurry.
Let’s get on with the #SmartReads now.
How Does a Robot Talk?
If you’re already using Siri, Alexa or another voice assistant, you’ll want to read these articles on how the “mind” of a social robot learns to speak.
- Inside the Mechanical Brain of the World’s First Robot Citizen
- A linguist explains how Sophia the robot does – and doesn’t – talk like us
On the subject of robots and artificial intelligence, consider (re)reading Speak, a beautiful novel by poet Louisa Hall on the chasm between computers and humans. The novel features Alan Turing, some dangerously addictive robots and a computer program named MARY. You can find an excerpt here.
Terms Galore
- A Dictionary of Academic Obfuscation – Inspired, among others, by Ambrose Pierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary“, a group of Princeton academics has developed a dictionary of academic terms with the grand title of “Keywords; For Further Consideration and Particularly Relevant to Academic Life, Especially as It Concerns Disciplines, Inter-Disciplinary Endeavor, and Modes of Resistance to the Same.” If you want to find out where the language of modern life comes from, you might want to check this volume out. Start with the selection of terms made by The Paris Review.
- Whether you live in Europe or elsewhere, chances are that the GDPR will have some impact on your life and/or work. With this in mind, you might like to download this free Cybersecurity Style Guide, courtesy of security consulting firm Bishop Fox.
- TERMCAT, the center for terminology in the Catalan language, has created an online test that can help you evaluate your terminological/lexicographical methodology. The test is made up of three sets of questions: the first about the glossary/dictionary as a whole, the second about the designations and equivalent designations, and the third about any definitions included.
Each question comes with a short explanatory text, so that the test can serve as a basic means to learn a little more about terminology.
At the end of the test, users will receive a numerical score, rating how well their dictionary or glossary conforms to terminological methodology.
Fun Link
- The always amazing website Atlas Obscura has a great article on how one of my favorite Italian songs, Prisencolinensinainciusol (as difficult to pronounce as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious), was written. The song’s lyrics sound phonetically like American English, but they are utter nonsense. Here is the link to the 1972 video. You’ll find the lyrics here in case you’d like to sing along.If you want to know more about invented and constructed languages, check out Arika Okrent’s In The Land of Invented Languages (website with excerpts from the book).