Localization Industry: Evolution and Innovation presentation

Another interesting presentation from Localization and Translation Thailand 2009 Conference.

Renato Beninatto C.E.O. from Milengo on the evolution and innovation of the translation and localization industry:
The future has to go on "an increase in productivity" and technology has a lot to say on the topic. We have to be open to this technology evolution, Human edited Machine Translation and similar.

Revisiting the recent post on Machine Translation: Human edited Machine Translation, Crowdsourcing, Collaboration Technology as the core of content rich translation projects are here to stay and we better learn, evolve and adapt.

Mr. Wiggins was kind enough to express his point of view on my comments on that post:
Thanks for taking the time to watch my presentation. I would like to respond to your comment above.

"Not that I agree with the fact that if you need translation, MT + Post editing will do the trick:
If you need quality, please oh please, trust professional translators!"

One of the key points I made in the presentation is that human should nearly always be involved. Machine Translation is a tool to enhance human productivity, not to replace them. Its not a choice of MT or Human, its MT and Human. Typical productivity gains on regular text such as manuals, novels etc are around 250-300% productivity gains - i.e. from 2000-3000 words per day up to 9,000 words per day or even greater. If the text is extremely technical, such as patents, studies has shown that productivity can be increased by 1,000 percent. This is because nearly all the technical terms are already translated well.

I agree if you want quality, you should trust a professional translator, but how that professional translator executes the translation task at hand is what is the change in the market now. MT now has reached a quality level where it can be a true performance enhancer. This was not the case just 2 year ago.

Regards

Dion Wiggins,
CEO, Asia Online

Again, technology will revolutionize what we do. Let's open our eyes and watch carefully. The future may be closer than we think.

Social Media ROI: We are transparent, so we better have passion for what we do

Interesting video below illustrating why social media is vital in your marketing strategy.

By the way: Isn't the separation between marketing and sales more and more difficult to make? And to go even further (well, I'm not the first one to say this of course) but isn't the the separation between production and marketing and sales smaller and smaller?
If your employees don´t feel engaged, don't understand that each interaction, communication or conversation is an opportunity for the business, then you are in trouble. Everybody in the company must understand this.

But I wil go further...
If you, as employer, partner, or vendor of a company do not feel commited, ready to spread the word around your projects, ready to "sell" what you are doing... you better try to find something that will move you and excite you. If you don't, that lack of engagement will show up easily to future employers, sponsors, or any stakeholder that will need to chose whether to work with you or not.
If you are not already motivated, find motivation NOW, or find a project that will passionate you.