Lack of language skills costing British firms £21 billion

The Forum of Private Business is warning that poor foreign language skills cost British businesses £21 billion per year, leaving them behind large companies which are increasingly investing in multilingual staff.
Cardiff University’s 2007 ‘Costing Babel’ research revealed that UK businesses miss out on £21 billion annually in lost contracts.
It followed an earlier study showing that the demand for non-English language skills in large European companies is greater than the demand for English — often seen by UK small and medium businesses (SMEs) as the international ‘lingua franca’ of business.
The 2006 ELAN Project survey, which emerged from the European Commission’s 2000 Lisbon strategy to stimulate economic growth and employment, said there was evidence of ‘Anglophone complacency’ within small firms.
The report highlighted the importance of language skills, as well as an awareness of cultural differences, to export success.
Four elements of language management were found to be associated with successful export performance: having a language strategy, appointing native speakers, recruiting staff with language skills and using professionally qualified translators or interpreters.
An SME investing in these four elements was calculated to achieve an export sales proportion 44.5% higher than one without these investments.
The not-for-profit Forum has responded by launching a new language service for SMEs in conjunction with a translation agency.
Expert translators in all major languages with experience in a wide range of industries will be on hand to help translate tenders, contracts, manuals, corporate literature and websites, localised to suit specific markets, and provide face-to-face and telephone interpreting services.
In all, 73% of large companies responding to the ELAN survey had an established scheme for recruiting language-skilled employees, while a further 20% said recruiting these workers was common practice.
However, the report found that demand for skills in non-English languages over English was ‘significantly higher’ in these large companies compared to SMEs, which it found lose a ‘significant amount’ of business as a result, hindering both their existing and future export plans.
Many respondents viewed English as a key language for gaining access to export markets as a lingua franca for international business. However, the survey found that, while English might be used for initial market entry, the picture is far more complex and geographically variable. For example French is commonly used in trade negotiations in Africa and Spanish in Latin America. Source: proz.com

Internationalization versus localization

i18n and L10n
Internationalization (also known in various circles as i18n — the 18 denoting the number of missing letters from the middle of the word) is designing a site, a piece of software or an application that can be adapted for many different cultures. It is a process that is generally only performed once during the creation process. In a sense it’s sort of a one-size-fits-all solution that paves a neat path towards…
…Localization (often abbreviated to L10n… the same rules apply), which is the actual adaptation of your design, interface, software, etc. for a particular area or culture. This includes translating the text into other languages, making sure pictures are culturally acceptable and removing references that may not be relevant. Where internationalization is a process that is done only once, localization is performed each time you want to target a particular culture/language set.

Internationalization
To internationalize, you need to be one step ahead. What features might you want to implement in the future? Even if you haven’t even thought about breaking into China or India yet, these are both up-and-coming countries with languages that are non-Latin script. Unicode is pretty much essential these days and can support all manner of scripts, languages and characters for when the time comes.
And this also involves the ways in which languages are read. Some scripts, like Hebrew or Farsi are read from right to left, which will affect all of your text, text entry controls and scroll bars. You can add markup in your DTD which will support bidirectional text (and thankfully Unicode automatically supports it too).
To this end, separating specific elements from your source code that you may need to localize later is certainly a must. By isolating these localizable elements, you can ensure that when you change these, the rest of the code remains untouched. Examples here might involve date and time formats or name and address inputs. Source: proz.com

Good proofreaders and bad proofreaders

Your translation often needs to be checked to ensure its good quality. A person who checks a translation done by someone else can be called a reviewer, an editor, a proofreader or simply a checker. In this article, by the term ‘proofreader’ I mean the one who is usually hired by a translation company to check a translation against the source text for accuracy, completeness, linguistic and stylistic appropriateness, grammar, and spelling, although I am aware that some experts in our field may contend that a proofreader is only expected to check the spelling, grammar and style of the target document while an editor is expected to do more.
In some cases translations are checked by experienced and professional proofreaders. However in other cases, the work is corrected by bad and unfair proofreaders. These proofreaders often waste the time of the project manager, of the translator and even of themselves. They also bring about unpleasant feelings for both translator and the project manager.

Correcting approach

The job of a proofreader is to correct a translation, but good proofreaders and bad proofreaders have different approaches to doing it. Except spelling or typo issues that require immediate changes, a good proofreader will hesitate to change anything until he is sure that the change will serve a purpose, such as help clarify a certain meaning, fit the client’s style sheet or terminology, avoid misunderstandings or enhance the naturalness of the message. A bad proofreader usually hurries to change anything that he thinks does not match his own stylistic preference. Many bad proofreaders even tend to rewrite everything in their own words, falsely believing the more changes they make, the more competence they can show, at least, to a project manager. While a good proofreader tends to focus on errors that can obfuscate the clarity of meaning or result in misunderstanding of a text, a bad proofreader often concentrates on the minor details. Needless to say, a good proofreader often reviews all the changes he makes before submitting the edited work to the client. A bad proofreader does not review changes or does this in a careless way. Not long ago, I received back an edited version of my translation in which I realized that the proofreader used the ‘find and replace’ function so carelessly that he replaced many correct terms including the original name of company and its original website address! Source: proz.com

Freelancing stress

Some stress has always been a part of freelancing and will likely always be a part of freelancing. Here are some of the usual suspects that cause freelancers to experience stress:

• Project Deadlines (crunch time)
• Finances (or lack thereof)
• Finding Work (also known as the feast or famine cycle)
• Illness (sometimes caused by stress)

To be honest, many of these stressors exist for non-freelancers too. For example, non-freelancers may face project deadlines, have trouble with their finances, or get sick. Everyone, whether they are freelancing or not, has to deal with some stress in life.
The usual suspects have been stressing us out for a long time and aren’t likely to go away any time soon.

The New Players

In the past year, or so, global factors have emerged that may cause freelancers to experience additional stress that they may not have experienced in the past.

• The Economy. It’s no secret that the global economy is floundering. The effects of a weakened economy can be felt in the freelance marketplace. I am seeing more and more “freelancers” state that they have been forced to turn to freelancing after losing a traditional job. (I hate to think of someone being “forced” to become a freelancer if they don’t really want that lifestyle for themselves.) A weakened economy also means more freelancers competing for fewer opportunities.
• The Technology. Technology is changing more rapidly than ever before. Not only are there constantly new software tools a freelancer must learn to use and master, but also new hardware and new platforms as well. In fact, things are changing so rapidly that it is nearly impossible to keep up. Plus, we are constantly being bombarded with information that we can’t use and don’t need and it takes time to filter through everything we are exposed to.
• The Social Clutter. One of the greatest relational changes that humankind has faced has occurred in the past ten years. I’m talking about social media. Before social media, must adults were lucky if they met two dozen new people in a year. Maybe, if they really worked at it, they could meet three dozen new people in a year’s time. Suddenly, through social media magic, all of us are getting to “know” not dozens, but possibly hundreds of new “friends” each year from all over the world. This sudden access to the multitudes has stretched and strained what friendship really means. Source: proz.com

Translator/interpreter becomes top profession for 2012

In today's information society, communication is more than just important. It's crucial. Every business and political message runs the risk of being misinterpreted, especially when it comes to complex ideas, and the results of misinterpretation can range from a failed business agreement to the collapse of government talks. In short, there never has been more demand for specialists in translation and interpretation, which makes these two jobs hot prospects for the coming years.
If you're fluent in two or more languages, you may find this career area of great interest to you, perhaps as you explore an entirely new vocation or if you're just starting your career after college. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, translators and interpreters will experience faster-than-average employment growth through 2018.
What's the difference between translators and interpreters? Translators work with the written word, whereas interpreters work with the spoken word. Many corporations are in great need of professionals in both aspects of the field, as are government agencies and other employers.
For instance, the American Translators Association is composed of more than 11,000 members -- including translators, interpreters, teachers, project managers, Web and software developers, language company owners, hospitals, universities and government agencies -- in more than 90 countries.
Dawn Rosenberg McKay, the career planning guide for About.com, says, "Most employers will only consider candidates who have bachelor's degrees, as well as specialized training from a formal program."
Visit Salary.com to find out income ranges in your region.
Should you decide that your language fluency, education and experience make you a suitable candidate, visit the American Translators Association's website (www.ATAnet.org) for information on taking the test to become a credited member of the organization. You can take practice tests before paying the $300 test fee and signing up to take your exam.
You will need to provide proof of your education and work experience to qualify to take the test, which is a three-hour proctored exam in a specific language pair of your choice. The ATA currently offers exams for your proficiency in translating into English from Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, as well as from English into Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian.
Be aware that the test is challenging. The current overall pass rate is less than 20 percent, but when you do pass, you earn entry into the ATA, as well as your designation as a certified interpreter or translator, ready to launch into your new field.
How Will You Work?
The next consideration is this: Do you wish to work for a company or organization, or do you wish to be an independent contractor? The former requires that you locate in-house job opportunities -- a perk of belonging to the ATA -- and go through the process of interviewing in order to land your dream job.
Some companies maintain their employees in an office, and some send their employees into the field to interpret and translate. Consider the travel implications as an important factor in your job search.
If you wish to be an independent contractor, you will need to establish your own business, with resources from the ATA and the U.S. Small Business Administration, set up your home office, apply for a state license (if required), pay quarterly taxes, set up an organized bookkeeping system, market yourself and set your own prices, among other requirements for the self-employed. The ATA reports that it can take up to two years to fully establish your own business.
Ongoing Training
Just as with any other job, you will need to take smart steps to maximize your career's potential and advancement. According to the ATA's website, here are some advised steps:
- Take courses to keep up-to-date on trends in your field and learn new terminology.
- Join professional organizations to find out more about and network within your chosen specialties.
- Travel abroad, if at all possible.
- Read often, in all your languages, to hone your skills.
- Subscribe to trade magazines in your areas of expertise.
- Add to your hardware/software collection and learn new programs.
- Check your local community college for classes in accounting, taxes, business management, marketing, etc.
- Check out assistance from women's or minority business organizations if you fit those categories. Source: www.lvrj.com

What are localization and other scary words people use?

Newbies in translation and localization industry may be fascinated – or scared – by the terms pros use, like localization (or localisation in British English), globalization, internationalization etc. What exactly do these fancy terms mean and how are they different?
Localization (commonly abbreviated as l10n, first and last characters of the word plus 10 characters between them) means not just translating software but making it look and feel like it was originally written for the target market. Apart from the translation, the following issues must be taken into account.

• Date formats; for example, for December 8^th 1994 in United States we write 12/08/94, in Spain 08/12/94, in Germany 08.12.1994, in Japan 94/12/08. We should watch this very carefully, as these issues may lead to user confusion.
• Time formats; in USA the AM/PM format is used but in most of European and Asian countries the 24-hour format is preferred.
• Number formats; for example, in USA the thousand separator is a comma (2,244), in Germany it’s a period (2.244) and in Russia a space (2 244)
• Address formats
• Currency, telephone numbers, paper sizes, units of measurement
• Cultural peculiarities; for example, some colors or signs/symbols may have different meaning in different Countries and cultures: white in Japan symbolizes death whereas in Western cultures it symbolizes purity.
• National symbols and flags, appropriate country information
• Idioms and proverbs of the local culture
• Web links and addresses; for example changing http://www.google.com tohttp://www.google.fr for France
• Product and brand names. Note that most software applications are developed in English and when translating products names in most cases trademarked names are left in as-is (e.g.Microsoft, Nikon, Nokia). but service names may need to be translated, for example Google Books is translated into German as Google Bücher, into Spanish as Google Libros etc.

Locale indicates the combination “language_country”, for example “en_us” is English language for US users, “en_gb” is English language for Great Britain. Other examples are Spanish for Argentina (“es_ar”), Urugay (“es_uy”) or Spain (“es_es”). When it comes to software development, language codes usually follow the ISO 639-1 standard, while Country codes follow the ISO 3166 standard. Language and Country codes are separated by a dash or by an underscore, depending on the development platform.
Software localization consists in the translation of all UI items and help information, if available.
Internationalization aims to make the product more general and support usage in multiple languages and different cultural environments, ready for localization. In most cases it is recommended to be done during the software development phase. Read more. Source: blog.amanuens.com

How to assign a Word command or macro to a toolbar or menu

1. Choose Customize on the Tools menu.
2. On the Commands tab, where it says “Save In”, select the template in which you want to save the changes you are about to make; or accept the default, which is usually to save them in your Normal.dot template (which will make your customisation global). If you are new to this, you will probably want to accept the default:

For the sake of older hands: the “Save in” box defaults to “Normal.dot”, unless the current document is another template or add-in, in which case it defaults to that template or addin. If the current document is attached to a template other than Normal.dot, then you will be able to select that template by pulling down the “Save in” List, thus allowing you to make your customisation specific to documents based on that template, if that's what you want.
If you want to make the changes in an add-in, you need to open the add-in as the current document before you start.
If you want to create a new Toolbar, click on the “Toolbars” tab, click New, give the new toolbar a name, and choose which template you want to store the toolbar in:

Figure 1

Or, if you want to create a new menu, click on the “Commands” tab. In the Categories list, click New Menu. In the Commands list, drag the “New Menu” item onto the Menu Bar (or onto a toolbar – any toolbar can act as a menu bar):

Figure 2

3. Then right-click on your new menu, and rename it.
4. Put an ampersand (&) just before the character which you want to be the shortcut key (the underlined character) – for instance if your menu is called “/font>My macros”, and you want the user to be able to invoke it using Alt+M, you should name it  “My &macros” or “&My macros”.

FFigure 3

Or, if you want to assign the command or macro to a shortcut menu (otherwise known as a “right-click” menu), click on the “Toolbars” tab, and select “Shortcut menus” in the list of toolbars. The “Shortcut menus” toolbar will be displayed, and you can modify the menus on that in the same way as any other menu:

Figure 4

&  

5. Once you've done that, select the Commands tab
6. In the Categories list, choose All Commands to assign a Word command, or choose Macros to assign a macro. Then in the list on the right, choose a command or macro and drag it onto the menu or toolbar you want it to be part of.
7. If you are customising a menu (including a shortcut/right-click menu), you will need to hold the mouse still until the menu drops down. Then position it, and only release the mouse when you have the command where you want it:

Figure 5

Note: If customising shortcut (i.e. context-sensitive right-click) menus, you may be surprised by how many menus you actually have to customise! For instance, if you want to add a command to the context-sensitive “Table” menus, you may well need to amend all of the menus shown in Figure 6. The trick here is, customise just one menu to start with. Then, when you're sure you've got it right, you can drag your new button, with your Ctrl key held down, to copy it from one menu to another. That way, you won't need to rename your buttons, or assign Tooltips or button images to them, more than once.

Figure 6

For a more detailed illustration of how to modify a shortcut menu, see also:
How to fix the Word 2000+ Cell Alignment buttons
  

8. Right-click on your new menu or toolbar button, and rename it (see Figure 3).

If you've dragged the command or macro onto a toolbar and only want an icon to appear, right-click on it, and change it from “Text only” to “Default Style”.
Then you can select “Edit button Image”, or “Change button image”; or “Paste button image”. In order to paste a button image, obviously you have to copy one first: You can copy an image from the document, or from another button; or from a graphic in a graphics package. For much more detail on this, see the article: Assigning custom button images to your toolbar and menu buttons.
If you've dragged the macro onto a menu, put an ampersand (&) just before the character which you want to be the shortcut key (the underlined character) – for instance if your button  is called “Heading Numbering”, and you want the user to be able to invoke it by pressing N, you should name it  “Heading &Numbering”. And again, see also: Assigning custom button images to your toolbar and menu buttons.

9. Click Close.

Hold your Shift key down and select File + Save All, in order to save the changes in your template or add-in.
If it is a macro that you're assigning, and if you capitalise your macro name so that  the first letter of each “word” is capitalised and the rest is lower case, then the Tooltip will automatically have spaces between the “words”; so that a macro called “HeadingNumbering” would automatically have a Tooltip of “Heading Numbering”.
Whether it's a macro or a command that you're assigning, if you want to change the Tooltip text which appears when a user hovers over the button, you have to run a line of code such as the following – but this is a one-off –  you only need to run the code once (you could run it from the Immediate Window – press Ctrl+G, or select View + Immediate Window): 

CommandBars("MyCommandBarName").Controls("NameOfMyNewButton"). _
        TooltipText = "My tooltip text"

Or if your button is on a menu you'd use something like:

CommandBars("MenuBarName").Controls("NameOfMenu"). _
        .Controls("NameOfMyNewButton").TooltipText = "My tooltip text"

10. Then select b> File + Save All again.

If it is a macro that you're assigning to a menu button, and if you want the menu to display the keybaord shortcut that's been assigned to your  macro (in the same way that the File + Save menu button displays Ctrl+S, over on the right), see: How to get a menu button that is assigned to a macro to display the keyboard shortcut on the menu.Source: http://word.mvps.org

How to Find Anything Under Linux

The Linux find, grep, and awk commands are amazing power tools for fine-grained file searches, and for finding things inside files. With them you can find the largest and newest files on a system, fine-tune search parameters, search for text inside files, and perform some slick user management tricks.

Find Largest or Newest Files

The find command can do nearly anything, if you can figure out how. This example hunts down space hogs by finding the 10 largest files on your system, and sorts them from small to large in human-readable form:

# find / -type f -exec du {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -n | tail -n 10 | xargs -n 1 du -h 2>/dev/null
1.2G	/home/carla/.local/share/Trash/files/download
1.3G	/home/carla/sda1/carla/.VirtualBox/Machines/ubuntu-hoary/Snapshots/{671041dd-700c-4506-68a8-7edfcd0e3c58}.vdi
2.2G	/home/carla/.local/share/Trash/files/dreamstudio.iso
[...]

These results remind me why I don’t like having a Trash bin, because when I delete something I mean it, by cracky. This command is a brute-force search of the entire filesystem and may take a few minutes to run, so use it as an excuse to go have a quick healthy walk outside. Of course you can modify the command to search whatever directories you want; for example, use find /var/ to hunt down obese logfiles.
Let’s dissect the command. find / -type f means “search all files in the entire root filesystem.” The -exec option is for incorporating other commands, in this case du, the disk usage command. -exec du {} \; means “run the du command on every file to get its size in bytes.” 2>/dev/null sends all error messages to the bitbucket, so they don’t clutter up your results. You can delete both 2>/dev/null occurrences and rerun the command if you’re curious about what you’re missing. sort -n puts all the files in order by size, and tail -n 10 displays the last 10, which thanks to the sort are the largest. You could stop there, and then your output would look like this:

1206316	/home/carla/.local/share/Trash/files/download
2209784	/home/carla/.local/share/Trash/files/dreamstudio.iso

xargs -n 1 du -h adds the final refinement, converting the file sizes from bytes to an easy-to-read format.
You can easily find all files on your system that were changed in the last five minutes:

# find / -mmin -5 -type f

This command finds all files changed between 10 and 20 minutes ago:

# find / -mmin +10 -mmin -20 -type f

+10 means more than 10 minutes ago, and -20 means less than 20. If you do not use a plus or minus, it means that number exactly. Use -mtime to search by 24-hour days. If you want to find directories, use -type d.

Searching Multiple Directories

You can list multiple arbitrary directories in which to search like this:

# find /etc /var /mnt /media -xdev -mmin -5 -type f

- xdev limits the search to the filesystem you are in and will not enter any other mounted filesystems. By default find does not follow symlinks, so you only need to include -xdev to stay inside a filesystem and not go wandering through network shares and removable devices.

Excluding Directories

You can narrow your searches by excluding directories with the prune option. prune is a little weird; you have to think backwards. This example searches the whole filesystem except for the /proc and /sys pseudo-directories:

# find / \( -name proc -o -name sys \) -prune -o -type f -mmin -1

First you name the directories to exclude, where -o means “or,” and escape the parentheses. Then -prune -o means “don’t look in the previously named directories.”
I like to use prune to exclude web browser caches, because they clutter the results. The following example does that, and also prints the date and time for each file:

$ find / \( -name proc -o -name sys -o -name .mozilla -o -name chromium \) -prune -o -type f -mmin -10 -printf "%Ac\t%p\n"
Wed 28 Sep 2011 10:34:54 AM PDT	/home/carla/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/ib_logfile0
Wed 28 Sep 2011 10:34:54 AM PDT	/home/carla/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/ibdata1
Wed 28 Sep 2011 05:21:48 PM PDT	/home/carla/articles/findgrep.html

The printf option is “print format.” Use printf when you want to control the formatting of your output. You get to specify newlines, date and time formatting, and file attributes such as permissions, ownership, and time stamps. %Ac prints the date and time, \t inserts a tab, %p prints the full filename, and \n inserts a newline.
As you can see, find has a lot of built-in functionality that people often add the ls command for.

Finding File Types

Searching by file extension is easy too. This example searches the current directory for three different types of image files:

$ find . -name "*.png" -o -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.gif" -type f

Use the -name option to search on any part of a filename; either the extension or part of the name. For example, to find mysong.ogg you could search for mys*, or any part of it, using normal shell wildcards. Use -iname for a case-insensitive search.

Finding Duplicate Files

You can find duplicates files in a couple of ways. This command checks MD5 hashes:

$ find . -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq --all-repeated=separate -w 24

This calculates an MD5 hash for all the files, sorts them by hash, displays them on separate lines, and matches the first 24 digits of each hash.
The second way is to match files by file size:

$ find . -type f -printf "%p - %s\n" | sort -nr -k3 | uniq -D -f1

MD5 hashes are more accurate, but matching file sizes is faster.

Finding Text Inside Files

The grep command is endlessly useful for searching inside text files to find things. Suppose you have a directory full of configuration files for a server, and you want to search all of them to find all of your test entries. If you were foresightful you used the word “test” in all of them, so this command will find them:

# grep -inR -A2 test /etc/fooserver/

This tells grep to do a case-insensitive recursive search for “test” in all the files in the /etc/fooserver/ directory, and to print the next two lines following the line that matches the search. The n option prints line numbers, which is a nice bonus in large files.

Finding Blocks of Text

The awk command can find blocks of related text in a way that grep can’t, using this simple syntax: awk '/start-pattern/,/stop-pattern/'. Suppose you want to see expanded information from lspci for just your Ethernet device:

$ lspci -v | awk '/[Ee]thernet/,/^$/'
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device 2131
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
        I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
        Memory at f2004000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at f2020000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: r8169
        Kernel modules: r8169

You need to know the beginning and end of the block that you want to see, so it’s a great tool for quickly snagging sections of configuration files.
This example takes advantage of configuration blocks delimited with curly braces, and homes in on the listen directives in radiusd.conf:

# awk '/listen {/,/}/' /etc/freeradius/radiusd.conf
listen {
	    ipaddr = *
#	    ipv6addr = ::
	    port = 0
	    type = acct
#	    interface = eth0
#	    clients = per_socket_clients
}

Managing Users and Files

Employees leave, and file ownership and permissions get messed up on an organization’s system files – but don’t worry, find can help you set things right quickly. You can find all files that belong to a specified username:

# find / -user carla

Or to a group:

# find / -group admins

You can also search by UID and GID with the -uid and -gid options. You can then move all of a user’s files to another user by either username or UID:

# find / -uid 1100 -ok chown -v 1200 {} \;
# find / -user carla -ok chown -v steven {} \;

Of course this works for changing group membership as well:

# find / -group carla -ok chgrp -v admins {} \;

The ok option requires you to verify each and every change. Replace it with -exec if you’re confident about your changes.
When employees leave you may have a policy of deleting their files, which find can do with ease:

# find / -user 1100 -exec rm {} \;

Of course you want to be very sure you have it right, because find won’t nag you and ask if you are sure. It will simply do what you tell it to.
find, grep, and awk – with tools like these, and maybe a little help from their man pages, you can find just about anything on your Linux systems. Source: http://olex.openlogic.com