No demand for Azeri package of Windows

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Azerbaijan is hardly going to have great demand for Azeri package of Windows software in the future. Nail Huseynguliyev, the director of the Educat training centre, said the cause is that Azerbaijan does not need translation of Windows versions into mother tongue.

“If demand for such version would have existed, then Azerbaijanian staffs had applied to Windows relevant bodies already five or six years ago. But the country is used to applying Windows software in Russian and English languages. Besides, high-skilled personnel and companies are needed to undertake creation of Azerbaijanian version,” Huseynguliyev said. Domestic company Sinam has already reported of translation of terms for interface Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 into Azerbaijani language and readiness of a dictionary of technical terms (glossary).

At present co-ordination of translation of interface and identification of Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 with the Microsoft head office is under way. The work completion is scheduled for late spring or early summer. Localization of Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 in Azerbaijani language was started in November 2006 in accordance with the agreement between Microsoft corporation and its official partner in Azerbaijan – Sinam.

Source: http://abc.az

Japan: Interpreters to get longer visas

Speak Japanese for better visa deal

TOKYO: Japan’s foreign minister yesterday gave the go-ahead to new immigration rules under which foreigners who speak Japanese will get preferential treatment in applying for visas. The government, which is trying to reduce Japan’s reputation as a country closed to outsiders, cast the plans as a way to encourage educated professionals to emigrate. “Considering Japanese language skills means the government is easing immigration policy, not tightening policy,” Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told reporters. He said the government is looking to submit bills on the new rules next year.
Business lobbies have asked the government to expand the immigration quota to ease a feared labour shortage in Japan, whose population is declining as fewer people have children. But Japan, where most people see the country as ethnically homoegeneous, has long rejected wide-scale immigration.
Under the new programme, foreigners — particularly professionals such as flight attendants and interpreters — would be given visas for longer periods if they prove proficiency in Japanese, a foreign ministry official said.
Their language abilities could also lower the requirements in terms of how much previous professional experience they need to be granted residency, the official said on condition of anonymity. “We would like them to have a kind of willingness to learn Japanese in order to adapt to the way of Japan smoothly,” he said. “Our intention is to have more foreign nationals come to Japan.” Japan now officially bans immigration of unskilled workers except for people of Japanese descent. Many immigrants of Japanese descent, particularly Brazilians, work here as manual labourers at places like car assembly factories. But a growing number of companies have used a loophole under which people from developing countries can come for “training” to Japan. A record 93,000 foreign trainees entered Japan in 2006.

Source: http://www.gulf-times.com

Setback for Danish Koran translator

The Danish author who commissioned cartoons to illustrate his 2005 book on the Prophet Muhammad – sketches which sparked outrage across the Muslim world – is now struggling to find a publisher for his latest book.

Kaare Bluitgen has just finished two new versions of the Koran which he intends to publish side-by-side, in a single volume. One text is a direct translation of the Arabic into Danish, including translations of the Hadiths – sayings reputed to come from the Prophet – as footnotes. The second is a prose version of the Koran, translated in clear and simple language which Mr Bluitgen hopes will be accessible to ordinary Danes.

Necessary texts

The Danish writer and journalist says that his country needs this book. “With the growing number of Muslims in Denmark, The Koran has become an important book,” he says. Mr Bluitgen uses money from a state-related fund to finance his literary works. “I live off the money called Biblioteksafgiften – a yearly sum paid to Danish writers by the state,” explains Mr Bluitgen. But Jakob Malling Lambert, from Copenhagen’s Rosinante publishing house, says that, while he finds the text an ambitious project, he cannot consider publishing it. “It’s very hard for me to evaluate the potential of this book. We don’t do these kinds of books at all. We simply don’t have the expertise,” he says.

But the same publishing house did publish Mr Bluitgen’s previous books, including one for children, called The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammad. The latter included illustrations of the Prophet Muhammad’s life as described in the Koran, though not the sketches that created such controversy. Mr Bluitgen had asked cartoonists to create some drawings to accompany that book but, fearing reprisals from Muslim extremists, he decided not to publish them.

Communicating culture

But the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did published a selection, triggering protests across the Muslim world and sparking a fierce debate about the limits of freedom of speech. The publisher denies that his decision not to go ahead with publication of Mr Bluitgen’s latest Koranic book was motivated by fear of a similar reaction. “You have to know about the Koran. You have to know the market,” Mr Lambert explains. “We don’t have the resources to do that.”

After publishing his first book on the Prophet, Mr Bluitgen struck a deal with Rosinante’s children’s books department to write two volumes. One, entitled Muhammad: The Prophet from the Desert and another, about Jesus, were both published earlier this month. At a conference in Copenhagen last week, the writer spoke about his belief that books had a crucial role to play in communicating culture to children in a globalised world. “It’s important to learn from each other and to learn the main values of our society,” he said.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

Indiana: Documentation and Training Life Sciences Conference

Medical Writers Convene in Indianapolis This June for Documentation and Training Life Sciences 2008 Conference

Medical, science, and marketing writers, and health care information technologists, will convene in downtown Indianapolis this June at the Documentation and Training Life Sciences Conference (http://www.doctrain.com/life) to explore ways to reduce the amount of time and energy it takes to create the content needed to run pharmaceutical companies, medical device firms, and health and hospital corporations. Attendees will explore solutions to health care information management challenges – everything from speeding the time it takes to get a new drug to market to designing health care websites that cater to an increasingly international audience.

Documentation and Training Life Sciences will be held at the Union Station Crowne Plaza from June 23-26, 2008. The event aims to attract science, medical and technical writers and editors, web marketing and PR professionals, regulatory specialists, information architects, knowledge managers, document engineers, interaction designers and web content and online community managers. The theme of the event is The Right Prescription for Life Sciences Content. Thought leaders, educators, analysts, consultants and practitioners will discuss content manufacturing processes, best practices, standards, software tools, and methods designed to help attendees understand how and where improvements can be made.

Keynote presenter, Joe Gollner, a structured information management expert, will discuss how life sciences organizations can leverage “intelligent automation” to ensure information quality. Featured presenter, Ann Rockley, president of The Rockley Group (http://www.rockley.com) and author of the best-selling book, “Managing Enterprise Content” (http://www.managingenterprisecontent.com), will help attendees understand the need for a “unified content model” to help improve quality, speed time-to-market, and reduce content creation, management and delivery costs. Jerome Nadel, Chief Experience Officer for Human Factors International (http://www.humanfactors.com/) will tackle Web 2.0 technologies and their impact on health care providers. Content management technology analyst, Alan Pelz-Sharpe will provide an overview of the content technologies market, and localization and translation guru Maxwell Hoffmann of Welocalize (http://www.welocalize.com) will help attendees understand how to create content that communicates with non-English speakers at home and abroad.

Other presentations include: a review of what is required of organizations to create valid Electronic Common Technical Documents (eCTD); case studies of companies using a Microsoft Word solution to create labels that comply with the Structured Product Labeling (SPL) standard, and a demonstration of advanced scanning and recognition technologies that can help hospitals and medical facilities make electronic records from paper-based forms and medical records.

“Indiana is leading cluster for the health and life sciences, said Kristin Jones, Vice President, Business Development, Indiana Health Industry Forum (http://www.ihif.org). “Our ability to offer a complete spectrum of innovation, services, and product development is unequaled. Conferences, like this, continue to highlight Indiana and the Midwest and reinforce great perceptions of our capabilities.

“Innovation is not limited to inventing new drugs or medical devices,” says Scott Abel, conference program manager and publisher of the popular technology blog, The Content Wrangler (http://www.thecontentwrangler.com). “Innovation also means admitting that the content we create is a business asset, worthy of being managed efficiently. Most companies still don’t see the savings potential of creating a repeatable process for creating, managing and delivering information to those who need it. They spend their time focusing on improvements made by outsourcing, off-shoring and budget-cutting. We aim to change that.”

Media passes available upon request. Interviews with Scott Abel or any of the presenters at Documentation and Training Life Sciences may be arranged with Andrea Ridder at 317-696-7478 or andrea@levelsixpr.com

Source: http://www.pr.com

EU: Proposals to automate translations of Community patents

Commission will fund translation technology development for Community patent

More details surrounding the proposals to automate translations of Community patents have been revealed in a discussion document prepared by the Slovenian government, which currently holds the EU presidency.
According to this “a significant number of Member States” support “providing for a Community patent with translation performed by a central service” but are also concerned to ensure the “good quality of such translations”. The central service envisaged is based around an automated system that would translate “the entire patent specification, including the claim”. Such translations would have no legal effect, but would be for information purposes only. The legal document would be the original patent, which would be in one of the three official languages of the EPO – English, French or German.
In the event of a dispute, if requested the patent holder would have to provide “a full translation of the patent and of supporting documentation in the language of the Member State where the other party is domiciled or where the alleged infringement took place”.
The document recognises that a considerable investment will be needed in order to get automated translation of an acceptable quality and states that, given the importance of the Community patent to Europe, development work “could be supported by Community funding to the extent necessary”. However, there is no mention of how long it may take for the technology to come on line, or who decides whether it is up to scratch or not. I guess that both these issues will be seized upon by people that, for whatever reason, might oppose the plans.
Interestingly, the same document also discusses the way in which fees relating to the Community patent might be distributed in the future, recognising that this too has been a major sticking point in negotiations up to now. The cost of a renewal would be the equivalent to the amount currently paid on the average European patent – in other words, one that covers five EU member states. The EPO would get 50% of the money and the remainder would be distributed among the national patent offices of the member states according to weighted criteria. On the final page of the document, there is a table that estimates what each country would get – with Germany, France, the UK and Italy being the major beneficiaries.

Source: http://www.iam-magazine.com

Princeton University Language Project to receive the 2008 International Service Award

International Service Award to be presented

Princeton junior Tashfin Samiul Huq and the Princeton University Language Project will receive the 2008 International Service Award, which is presented annually by the Davis International Center to a student or student group in recognition of cross-cultural humanitarian endeavors.

The award will be presented at a ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Monday, May 12, in 243 Frist Campus Center. The ceremony is open to the public.

Huq, an ecology and evolutionary biology major and a native of Bangladesh, will be honored for co-establishing the nongovernmental organization Combating AIDS and Protecting Environment Society. The organization is part of a national movement in Bangladesh to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among the urban and rural poor. The society also tries to educate the poor on sanitation, food nutrition and health maintenance through free camps.

The Princeton University Language Project is a student-led organization that offers free translation services to civic engagement organizations worldwide. It has provided services for nonprofit organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund and Safe Kids Worldwide, an international organization dedicated to preventing childhood injury. Founded three years ago, the language project now has more than 300 student members.

The awards will be presented by Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson and philanthropist Kathryn Davis. The Davis International Center is named for Kathryn Davis and her late husband, Shelby Cullom Davis, a member of the Princeton class of 1930.

Source: http://www.princeton.edu

“Truth in Translation” musical shows how translators can be affected by criminal hearings

Zimbabwe: Truth in Translation – Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It

IN 1994, the former South African President Nelson Mandela asked whether it was possible for the people to forgive and survive. “Can you forgive the past to survive the future?” he asked.

A year later the South African government set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bear witness to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations during the apartheid rule and to make reparation and rehabilitate the regime’s victims. There is a general belief that the confessions made by perpetrators of violence and their victims healed the wounds of apartheid and helped to restore relations between black and white.

Now the musical Truth in Translation that ran as part of Hifa at the Reps Tetrad theatre in Avondale shows how the innocent translators who helped in conveying the proceedings of the commission became victims of the horror stories they heard. Featuring a cast of 11, the musical traces how each one of the translators succumbed to nervous breakdowns after absorbing the confessions and testimonies.Both victims and perpetrators retrace their steps back through the translators who comprise of a former ANC soldier, a gay son of a brigadier in the security forces, a Zulu minister and middle class white girl.

The musical opens with the translators given a strong warning not to ‘become involved’ and avoid ‘personal sympathies and matters of the heart’ because they ‘have no place here’.The excitement of having been chosen to play the important role of translating fades when the testimonies and the confessions start rolling in.

Since a translator has to use the first person narrative in order to put the message across in exactly the same way the other perpetrator or the victim would have put it, the abuse, the pain, the anger, the hate and the desire for revenge is transferred to the translators. They become perpetrators and victims instead. So does a truth and reconciliation process heal the wounds and smoothen the scars? Or it reopens those wounds and deepens the scars? Does it erase the memories, provide for the losses and above all cause people to smile?

So has South Africa forgiven and forgotten to survive the past?

Take Winnie Mandela who is mentioned in the musical several times in connection with the murder of Stompie Seipei. After the confessions and the testimonies, Winnie and Stompie’s mother Joyce embraced and kissed. Was it enough? An actress in the musical sums up how victims feel about their losses and the perpetrators. She said when asked whether she was ready to forgive and forget. “Not today,” she says, “but some other time.”

But again Bishop Desmond Tutu who chaired the commission was quick to say:

“We all stand here to recognise the pain and anguish of so many. We want them to know they have our very deepest sympathy for what they suffered.

“We hope they have it in their hearts to reach out to those who may have caused them pain, to reach out in order for our land to be healed.”

Just like South Africans, Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels in her first book titled Fugitive Pieces published in 1996 through the portrayal of the life of a Jewish boy Jakob Beer who suffered losses and abuse in the hands of Nazis suggests that it’s hard to forgive and forget.

She says: “Neither repentance nor forgiveness can erase an immoral act.”

In like manner, Truth in Translation also suggests that while the commission was a beginning, it did not go down deeper to make much impact.

Truth in Translation draws from its rich cast and the great songs that were composed by Hugh Masekela. It’s encouraging in bridging racial and tribal divides for the cast to sing songs in vernacular the way the cast does.In any case, the musical puts across in song what the cast cannot bring out in words. One would love the way the cast takes turns to speak. On the surface it’s so jumbled to be meaningful but after following the conversation one understand how the voices merge. Zimbabwe has never seen anything like it.

Source: http://allafrica.com

Interpreter testifies on conditions at Guantánamo

A Prison of Shame, and It’s Ours

My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released.

Alas, we don’t treat our own inmates in Guantánamo with even that much respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. Mr. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to rub tissue raw.“Conditions in Guantánamo are very, very bad,” Mr. Hajj said in a televised interview from his hospital bed in Sudan, adding, “In Guantánamo, you have animals that are called iguanas … that are treated with more humanity.”

Al Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, said by telephone from the hospital that Mr. Hajj was so frail when he arrived that he had to be carried off the plane and into an ambulance. Guantánamo inmates are not allowed to see their families, so that evening Mr. Hajj met his 7-year-old son, whom he had last seen as a baby. Reliable information is still scarce about Guantánamo, but increasingly we’re gaining glimpses of life there — and they are painful to read. Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, has just published a memoir of his nearly five years in Guantánamo. He describes prolonged torture that included interruptions by a doctor to ensure that he was well enough for the torture to continue.

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, an American woman of Afghan descent who worked as an interpreter, has written a book to be published next month, “My Guantánamo Diary,” that is wrenching to read. She describes a pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his country — and was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy water and paraded around naked. Finally, after three years, officials apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home. A third powerful new book about Guantánamo, by an American lawyer named Steven Wax, is summed up by its title: “Kafka Comes to America.”

The new material suggests two essential truths about Guantánamo:

First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect.Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That’s why more than 100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. One of the men still in Guantánamo is Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi. He is a Libyan who had been running a bakery in Afghanistan with his Afghan wife. Bounty hunters turned him over to the United States as a terrorism suspect, and he has been in custody for more than six years.

Mr. Ghizzawi was taken before a “combatant status review tribunal,” which ruled unanimously in November 2004 that he was not an “enemy combatant.” One member of the tribunal later scoffed that the supposed evidence against him was “garbage.” But a later tribunal reversed the first one’s finding, and Mr. Ghizzawi is being held indefinitely, though he is unlikely to face trial. Candace Gorman, a lawyer for Mr. Ghizzawi, says that his health has sharply deteriorated since she first saw him. He is in constant pain from severe liver disease resulting from hepatitis B that first manifested itself in Guantánamo, Ms. Gorman said, adding that he also contracted tuberculosis there. Worse, a doctor at Guantánamo twice told Mr. Ghizzawi in December that he has H.I.V., she said. Ms. Gorman believes that officials were just trying to torment him.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that any doctor ever told Mr. Ghizzawi that he had H.I.V., or that Mr. Ghizzawi contracted tuberculosis or first suffered from hepatitis while in Guantánamo. Granted, it can be hard to figure out what version to believe. When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down Guantánamo because it undermines America’s standing and influence. They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have with Guantánamo.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com

King Abdullah calls for more efforts in translation of books

The King Abdullah International Prize for Translation was presented to the winners by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz the at his palace in Riyadh on Tuesday.

King Abdullah commended the winners, saying their work would contribute to exchanging knowledge and sciences among people of different cultures. “It will also bring people of the world closer,” the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted the king as saying. King Abdullah called for more efforts in translation of books from Arabic to different world languages. The winners spoke about their works that qualified them to win the prestigious award. The prize for institutions went to King Fahd Quran Printing Complex in Madinah, which was represented by its Secretary-General Dr Muhammad Salim Al Aufi.

The prize for translation from other languages to Arabic (in natural sciences) was shared by Dr Abdullah Al Muhaidab, a Saudi and professor of civil engineering at King Saud University, and Egyptian Dr Ahmed Fouad Basha, professor of physics at Cairo University. Dr Abdussalam Shadadi, professor of Islamic history at Muhammad V University in Rabat, Morocco, and Dr Claudia Maria, professor of Arabic language at Turin University, Italy, shared the prize for translation in humanities from Arabic to other languages. The prize for translation in humanities from other languages into Arabic went to Egyptian Dr Saleh Al Saadawi, a researcher at the Research Centre for History, Arts and Islamic Culture in Istanbul. Earlier, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, adviser to the king and member of the board of directors of King Abdul Aziz Public Library, distributed the prizes to the winners during a ceremony held at the library’s headquarters in Riyadh.

Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com

Translators In High Demand Across the Ozarks

Translators in our area are finding more jobs as the Latino community gets bigger.From police departments to school districts these interrupters are helping link Latinos to the many services being offered around the Ozarks.It’s a struggle Sara Cook of Lebanon sees first hand.Cook works as an interpreter for the Lebanon R-3 school system and helps students understand the English language.

“Some of my students were born in the U.S. they have been in the school system. I have a third grader for example. He’s been in school all three years, but he goes home to a Spanish speaking environment, which leaves him qualified as being a language minority because he essential lives between the two worlds,” said Cook. Cook says her students face a lot of barriers when it comes to speaking in English and Spanish because many students don’t speak either language perfectly.”Teaching the kids to speak out, to be heard to be a part of their classroom community, they’re school community and they have great things to say they are outgoing great kids, but they just are shy a lot times and leading them it’s not teaching them its helping them two bring out their social skills,” said Cook. Laura Valenti has been working with various agencies around the Ozarks and says there is a bigger need for translators than ever before.

“It could be very important. It could be vital. I’ve worked a lot of times with law enforcement with Highway Patrol and different ones over the years. I’ve worked with the Division of Family Services, I’ve worked with the Department of Public Health so, it could be really vital to get the right information and to understand people,” said Valenti. Many translators say the industry has become one even the struggling economy can’t slow down. “The way I explain it a couple of times is somebody can struggle for a lot of time, you know trying to get basic information, where as if you have someone that can interpret than you can get that information rapidly and know that its correct,” she said. Businesses often find translators through companies, but most jobs simply come to workers by word of mouth.

Source: http://ozarksfirst.com