Hey there, everyone! We hope your week is moving along fantastically. Today we’d like to start off a new little blog tradition, the first of many biweekly Tuesday Tips on localization and translation from different members of the CSOFT family.

For our inaugural post, Donna Huang, a senior project manager in CSOFT’s Shanghai office, would like to share some tips from a project management perspective about what translation buyers can do to make the localization process go a little more smoothly.

In honor of his birthday this past Saturday (Nov. 27th), we thought it would be cool to share with you a Monday Morning Quote from the master of lightning fists himself, both actor, teacher, and philosopher—the indomitable Bruce Lee (李小龍). Contrary to popular belief (especially in China), Bruce Lee was actually a full-blooded American, having been born in China Town, San Francisco, only to move to Hong Kong with his family at three months of age.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Interestingly enough (for someone who grew to become an international icon for martial machismo), Bruce Lee’s nickname growing up was Sai Fon (细鳳), which according to Lee’s online biography is a girl’s name meaning “Little Peacock” in Cantonese. This is because, after losing their first son within a few month’s after his birth, Lee’s parents felt that males born into their family were cursed with bad luck. So the female nickname given to Bruce was an attempt to trick any malignant ghosts that may have otherwise brought disaster on their newborn baby boy.

In spite of his cutesy beginnings, a little peacock Bruce Lee was not. For one, in his role as a celebrated martial arts instructor, Bruce Lee helped Chuck Norris become the human killing machine later known as Walker, Texas Ranger. In addition to having trained some of the world’s best known martial artists, Bruce Lee’s many skills also included performing one-hand pushups with only his thumb and forefinger, sending people flying across the room with his one-inch punches, and being an award-winning Cha-Cha dancer (betcha’ didn’t know that one!).

For those of you who grew up throwing air punches and kicks, who dreamt about learning the legendary dim mak touch of death on a secluded, arboreous mountain in China, be sure to dedicate a boisterous WAAAATAAAAAAAAH!! today to our friend and kung fu master, Mr. Bruce Lee.

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For some people, today is a very special holiday for family, football, and good eating—otherwise known as Thanksgiving in America. For most people, however, today is just the day before the day before the weekend. More likely than not, this second group of people will have received a barrage of well-meaning e-mails over the past few days, wishing them a happy Thanksgiving.

In response, although some folks might admonish their American brethren for being culturally Americentric, we suggest that you take this opportunity to employ the fourth most-used phrase among English speakers in 2010 and declare this a “teachable moment” in which you can talk about other Thanksgiving-esque holidays from around the globe.

It’s the day before Thursday, which means it’s time again for Wacky Word Wednesday, a weekly celebration of the wackiest and most interesting words from around the world!

Getting right down to business, today’s wacky word is: novercal.

Here’s the definition from TermWiki.com:

no·ver·cal [noh-vur-kuhl] -adjective of, like, or befitting a stepmother

The etymology of this word is pretty straightforward, having originated from the Latin word novercalis, meaning stepmother. Because it’s an adjective, novercal can only be used to modify nouns or pronouns.

As most of us are aware, modernity has brought with it a new form of family composition. In the United States alone, one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. Among remarriages, 65 percent involve children from previous marriages. With this phenomenon of marriage, divorce, then marriage again, a new category of family has come about: the stepfamily, otherwise known as the blended family.

This modern new family is not without backing—fictional backing anyways. For as long as we can remember, stepmothers have had a maleficent presence in children stories, such as the classic story of Cinderella, or Snow White and the Wicked Queen (who also happened to be her stepmother). All around the mythical world, stepmothers bring wickedness to those around them, so much so that the “wicked stepmother” is a well-documented, historical trope in literature. (Even Euripides, the Greek playwright circa 480 BCE, is known to have written “Better a serpent than a stepmother!” in his play Alcestis.)

Guest blog entry by Carl Yao, TermWiki Masta’ and the Vice President of Global Strategy at CSOFT

The DITA Europe 2010 Conference was held in Vienna, the scenic home of Mozart, and I simply can’t imagine a better location to meet up and talk shop. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) Conference is a biannual convention organized by CIDM (the Center for Information-Development Management) that draws content professionals and CMS enthusiasts from around the world to share XML publishing experience, best practices, and showcase cutting-edge CMS technology. As a set of standards for developing content, DITA itself enables companies to develop and publish content with better reuse, consistency, faster document creation and overall reduced translation costs.

When I arrived at Vienna International Airport, there was an incredibly dense layer of fog that only allowed for about 30 meters of visibility on all sides (you’ve got to admire the bravery of those Lufthansa pilots, because weather conditions like that would’ve caused major traffic delays in the US and other parts of the world). The sky quickly cleared up, however, and I was pleasantly surprised to meet a warm November sun that, according to locals, was completely out of the ordinary for this time of year in Austria.

As I made my way into the city, something happened that immediately impressed on me the importance of the conference. I had hailed a cab and told the driver that I wanted to go downtown. He just looked at me with a surprised expression on his face, indicating that he didn’t speak any English. It made me smile, because I’m constantly reminded in small ways that translation and localization services are still very much in demand in today’s multilingual world. Though not necessarily related to XML publishing and content management, this little event made me all the more confident that CSOFT’s globalization business will continue to fly high. Luckily enough, the resourceful cab driver pulled up to a pedestrian couple and asked how to translate “the place where all the tourists go.”

With the weather having taken a turn for the worse, it seems like half the office came down with a cold over the weekend. In between hacks and nose-blowings, we decided that a little bit of (perhaps misguided) health advice wouldn’t go amiss for this week’s Monday Morning Quote. So without further ado, today’s quote is by the delightfully snarky American satirist and man of letters, Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. - Samuel Langhorne Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain, the American novelist

Clemens, who is better known by his nom de plume, Mark Twain, is the author of several important works in the American literary canon, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Throughout his life, Clemens worked as a typesetter, a steamboat pilot (woot-woot!), a miner, a travel writer and, of course, a novelist.

Largely self-educated in public libraries, both Clemens’ life and his writing are marked by an incisive wit, which is clearly evident in a number of his famous quotes and public insults. He was also quite the eccentric, having correctly predicted his own death to coincide with the arrival of Halley’s Comet in April of 1910. Interestingly enough, Clemens was born shortly after the arrival of Halley’s Comet 75 years prior. Spooky, eh? But then again, we’ve come to expect nothing less from someone with such an awesome mustache.

And on that note, have a great Monday!

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Welcome back for Issue Nine of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

Click here for previous issues.

More on Terminology Management:

When talking about terminology management, a lot of emphasis is placed on managing terms in a multilingual context. While this is an important step in ensuring quality translations and consistent branding abroad, people tend to overlook the fact that terminology management is most efficacious when applied as a preventive measure early on in the source-authoring stage of a product’s development cycle.

In a single organization, many departments contribute to the different forms of written communication that accompany a product. Regardless of the type of product, it’s not uncommon to have anywhere from four to ten operative groups from different offices around the world writing content simultaneously. Without a glossary in place to guide the development of this content, you run the risk of different terms being applied to the same concept.

Now, to most people, this doesn’t really sound like a big deal. But consider this: Your organization develops an electronic device with a brand new, never-before-seen function. Your hardware engineers decide to use Term A to refer to this function on the device’s LCD screen, whereas your software engineers use Term B to label this function in related software UI strings. At the same time, your technical writers, who are working on writing the Help menus, user manuals, and training documents, etc., use Term C to refer to the same function. And then your marketing team uses Term D to, yet again, refer to the exact same concept.

What’s your customer going to think when he buys the device on account of Term D, but then has a problem with Term A on the device itself, because it doesn’t match Term B in the accompanying software, so he looks in the Help menu only to find that Term A and B are alternately referred to as Term C? He’s going to throw your product out the window and pray that someone drives over it with their car.

Yes, mixing up your terminology is that confusing to the end-user. And yes, this type of inconsistency affects the quality of your branding and adds significant costs in terms of post-sales support, re-printing, levied fines for refused shipments, and the list goes on.

So be sure and manage your terms from the source, folks—and do it early on in the product development cycle, ideally before source-authoring even begins. It’ll save you a lot of hassle, a lot of time, and a lot of money in the long run, especially when you decide to localize your content into several dozen languages.

If you’re interested in reading more about the benefits of terminology management, check out this article that details 10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology. Alternatively, check out TermWiki.com, where you can sign up for a free account and start managing your multilingual glossaries right away.

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Don’t look now, but the week is officially halfway over, folks, which means it’s time for Wacky Word Wednesday, a weekly celebration of some of the wackiest and most interesting words from around the world.

As we approach the holiday season, good eats and festive cheer also come with their fair share of jam-packed schedules and family reunions, among which you’re bound to come across the occasional and much-dreaded (dumDUM DUMM!) awkward family dinner.

In a frantic search to help you stave off the holiday awkwardness, we came across the following wacky word: deipnosophist.

The definition from TermWiki.com:

deip·nos·o·phist [dahyp-nos-uh-fist] -noun a person who is a master of dinner-table conversation

Like gyros and Plato, this word hails from Greece: deipnon means meal, and sophistai refers to a wise man. From sophistai, we also get the modern-day meaning of the word sophistry, which is the act of using specious, cleverly-stated arguments (sophisms) in an intentionally deceptive manner.

Is it just us, or do weekends fly by way too quickly? On the upside, however, you’ve got yourself another Monday Morning Quote to start this week off on the right foot. In commemoration of his 160th birthday on Saturday, this week’s quote is by the celebrated Scottish novelist, Robert Louis Stevenson, whose most well-known works include Treasure Island and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the original draft for which Stevenson wrote in three days—only to burn it and start again).

It’s a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes. Robert Louis Stevenson in Treasure Island

This particular quote comes straight from the mouth of Long John Silver, the main antagonist of Treasure Island—a parrot-shouldered scalawag and the inspiration behind the delectable American fast-food chain of the same name. In context, the quote makes a lot more sense considering that Long John Silver—in what has become a favorite stereotype of pirates around the world—has a big fat wooden peg leg.

Out of context, however, there’s something to be said for being young and still having all ten of your metaphorical toes. So make sure to dedicate a silent, piratical Y’aaaaaaaar! to our good friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, and spend a moment to reflect on the blessings of youth and well-being on this fine Monday morning.

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As a Friday treat, I thought I’d take this opportunity to teach an interesting Chinese phrase to all of our friends and fellow logophiles out there in cyberspace.

A while back, I talked about the phrase 马后炮 (mă hòu pào), which is essentially a way of telling someone to shove it when they scold you for an event or situation that’s too late to avoid. (One of our readers suggested an English translation of “No use crying over spilled milk,” which I think is pretty appropriate.) In that same entry, we discussed how the Chinese language is chock-full of metaphorical idioms (called chengyu, or 成语) pulled from ancient stories and literature, which are used to offer concise insight into common experiences or situations.

Today, I’d like to talk about another one of my favorite Chinese idioms: 刻舟求剑 (kè zhōu qiú jiàn). To take this phrase character by character, 刻 (kè) means to carve or engrave, a 舟 (zhōu) is a boat, 求 (qiú) is a verb meaning to seek, and 剑 (jiàn) means sword. Put them all together, and this phrase literally means “to mark (or put a notch on) the boat to find one’s sword.” But what the heck does that mean? Read on a bit and it’ll make more sense, I promise.