We understand that new technology might be intimidating at first. To ease any anxiety you might have and to help you maximize use and productivity, sit back, relax, and get ready to have your socks blown off! In an attempt to establish open lines of communication and to mitigate any confusion, today’s post will be a roundup of definitions regarding TermWiki features.

To first define the tool, TermWiki is:

• a social learning network that supports multilingual terminology and definitions.

• a web-based platform where users are able to collaboratively develop terms, definitions, and translations. TermWiki strives for the most perfect definitions and translations by way of its wiki-based nature.

• organized by industry, product category, and language.

• a space to search for and share existing terminology and definitions.

Need help identifying the difference between vaccines? Want to learn more about physical geography? Learning Japanese and are looking for a dictionary resource? Find what you need within seconds using TermWiki.

Why is translating stuff so complicated?

I mean, good translation isn’t easy, and managing it can be a pain in the butt. But it’s not as convoluted and impenetrable as most language service providers would have you believe.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, said in a Charlie Rose interview earlier this year: “It’s really complex to make something simple… My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.”

Why haven’t localization vendors been able to simplify things for their customers? As a whole, the industry seems to be fixated on creating as many acronyms, initialisms, and numeronyms as possible (TM, GMS, TBX, L10N, G11N, XLIFF, XML, etc.) and producing complex localization workflow tools (translation management systems, controlled authoring systems, quality metrics, ISO standards, translator certifications, and more), when what being a good LSP (there’s another one!) really comes down to is providing our clients with what they want most: good quality translations, on time and under budget.

Although most LSPs promote themselves as being technologically superior or leaders in technological development, a lot of all the fancy tools that are out there for business use are just plain junk. For example, several years ago one of our clients purchased a complex, must-have translation management system to help them control their growing translation assets. Slick sales guys did a great job of pitching them on the benefits of TM consolidation, content filtering and other ways to maximize translation reuse and improve translation quality. A million dollars in license fees later, we and their other preferred language service providers still use it as a glorified FTP client to send/receive translation memories through their servers.

(Had they called me first, I could have saved them $999,966 by pointing them towards the world’s best FTP client, Transmit! )

Strap on your favorite running shoes, flex those typing fingers, and tune into the Language Race hosted by TermWiki.com!

To briefly summarize for those who are unfamiliar with it, TermWiki is a cloud-based terminology management and multilingual social learning platform. Launched just last year, it is the localization industry’s first online collaborative terminology management and translation system, allowing users to import, export, edit, translate, and track terms, definitions, and translations—all in more than 100 languages. All the terms in TermWiki are human-inputted and human-reviewed, providing users with a community checks and balances system. The more terms you enter, the more your name is circulated around the site, but be aware that inappropriate or irrelevant contributions will be targeted by moderators and other users to ensure that the quality of data in TermWiki is maintained.

Guest blog entry by Uwe Muegge, Chief Terminologist and Co-Director of MedL10N at CSOFT

Imagine a place where total newbies to localization and internationalization can just walk up and introduce themselves to the folks who got this whole industry started, a place that brims with the energy of today’s movers and shakers in the L10Nverse, a place that’s truly open, welcoming and, of course, international. The International Multilingual User Group (IMUG) is just that place: Founded in 1987 and holding regular monthly meetings since 1991, IMUG has been a driving force in the localization community that reaches far beyond its base in Silicon Valley.

Screenshot of Adobe Connect simulcast of the IMUG event. Presentation slide is in the center, and on the left is the video feed of the presenter, the list of virtual attendees, and a chat box for feedback.

What better crowd to introduce CSOFT’s latest tool developments than this? And what better venue than the ultra high-tech conference facilities (think webcasting with not one, not two, but three remote-controlled HD video cameras!) at Adobe’s headquarters in San Jose? We had a total audience of about 50 industry experts, half of whom were physically present, the other half participating via Adobe Connect from locations in the U.S., Belgium, Canada, and Japan. I18n Guy, Tex Texin, won the prize for hailing from the greatest distance: He logged on from Shanghai. I really got a kick out of being part of this truly global environment, and I think Matt Arney, CSOFT’s VP of the North America Market, did too.

This has been an exciting month for language technology folks, first with the initial beta release of the My Glossary feature at TermWiki.com, which is a free online tool that enables freelance translators, technical writers and other glossary owners to store, translate, develop, share, and perfect their own personal glossaries online—all in a real-time, collaborative environment.

This month also brought TermWiki’s first Galaxy Pad Contest to an official close. In the contest, translators, technical writers, and other developers of multilingual content were invited to enter terms and translations into TermWiki’s master termbase, and the person who entered the most terms would win a free Samsung Galaxy Pad. After a fierce competition, Cristina Fernández—a professional translator from Spain—ended up taking the prize after entering and translating over 10,000 terms!

The cool thing was, Cristina didn’t even know there was a contest going on—she just entered 10,000 terms of her own accord. What possessed Cristina to manage her glossaries like a crazed logophile? Check out this exclusive interview with the winner of the 2010 TermWiki Galaxy Pad Contest to find out! (And congratulations, Cristina!)

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.”

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

Click here for previous issues.

About today’s comic:

Removing my marketing hat for the moment, I’d actually like to talk about the inspiration behind today’s comic. A while back, Renato Beninatto made a reference to “All your base are belong to us” on Twitter. Naturally, being a gaming geek, I was thoroughly impressed, especially because members of his (there’s no nice way of saying this, really, so at the risk of sounding ageist:) “age bracket” don’t tend to keep up with nerdy memes as much as say, Generation Xers who grew up with this stuff. That’s not always the case, obviously, but my brothers and I tend to get blanks stares from our parents whenever we refer to lame stuff on the internet. But that just goes to show that Renato’s a pretty cool guy.

Anyway, his Tweet reacquainted me with this outdated yet still hilarious internet meme, and because it’s a direct result of translation problems, I was instantly set on including it in the comic one day.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I was writing the script for this week’s comic. I went to our Head Italian Linguist for a translation of “Oh my God, it’s a full on double rainbow!”, the infamous phrase that made Double Rainbow Guy go viral on Youtube back in July of this year. To give her a bit of context, I showed her the video and, after watching it, she said, “You know, only Americans come up with crazy things like this.”

The thing is, that’s not true. I’m sure there are tons of Double Rainbow Guy-equivalents from different countries all over the web, but because native English speakers (particularly Americans and the British) are, for the most part, notably uninterested in the goings on of the rest of the world (aside from various surface-scratchings on the Discovery Channel), a lot of potentially hilarious stuff is overlooked. (For example, did you know that in China a large portion of young internet users say “Oh My Lady Gaga!” instead of OMG? Not comedic gold, necessarily—but still, it’s pretty interesting.)

In order to fix this, I went in and added a category for internet memes on TermWiki.com. I think it’s a pretty good platform for defining these memes, and doing so in a multilingual context. Because the data is interconnected so well, now my Chinese friends can understand why geeky Americans laugh when someone makes an “All your base are belong to us” reference. And my Egyptian friends can enjoy the more recently popular and delightfully ridiculous contraptions in the Troll Physics trend. From there, they can also share with everyone else some of the hilarious stuff that goes on in their respective countries and languages.

I’ll admit that, on the one hand, explaining these things runs the age-old risk of ruining the joke by trying to break down why it’s funny. On the other hand, it always feels good to be let in on an inside joke. And that’s all internet memes are, really: big, viral inside jokes.

So yeah. That’s the story behind this week’s comic. If you’ve got any funny internet memes to add, feel free to sign up for a free account on TermWiki.com and add away! As always, translations into other languages are definitely appreciated.

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Issue Seven 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 information:

When dealing with auditors, it never hurts to be precise. For that matter, it’s best to be precise in all aspects of your business, especially if you’re working in highly regulated sectors, like pharmaceuticals, biotech, or medical devices. TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, enables you to bring a new degree of precision to your product documentation by providing a one-stop platform for the collaborative terminology development, management, translation, and dissemination processes. When it comes to the Life Sciences, there’s no room for error when the international compliance of your product is on the line—just ask your auditors. Better yet, ask your friendly neighborhood LSP.

• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Click here to read “10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology.”
• Check out more detailed information on TermWiki.

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Issue Six 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 information:

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, was developed with MediaWiki software, which, unlike the development platforms of other terminology management systems on the market, is especially open in terms of infrastructure—and thus highly customizable.

Every organization manages their terminology differently, and because of that, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. With TermWiki, you don’t have to worry about getting “locked in” by rigid software that forces you to adapt your workflow to the limitations of the system. There are currently tens-of-thousands of extensions available for MediaWiki software, a testament to the fact that this PHP-based application can be easily tweaked and prodded to meet your individual terminology management needs—and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.

Check out www.TermWiki.com for a free test drive.

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