The TermWiki bee has been busily buzzing around this summer, working hard to provide users with new and improved additions to the world’s fastest growing social learning network. Below is a recap of what’s new at TermWiki:

1. TermWiki speaks with the pronunciation feature available in 20 languages

As a social learning network, one TermWiki’s long-terms goals is to provide users with access to a variety of learning tools. We understand that everyone has different approaches to learning and work hard to demonstrate our understanding of this. The pronunciation feature offers additional support to learners by allowing users to hear how a term is pronounce in twenty different languages, including major world languages, such as English, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, German, and Japanese.

2. The Wall is a one-stop shop that makes it easy for users to see all of the latest updates on TermWiki.

Recent visitors to TermWiki may have noticed the website’s welcome page was recently restructured to include the TermWiki Wall. The Wall allows visitors to see the latest updates to the site via a real-time feed, including term and translation contributions, new questions or answers to AnswerBea, the latest forum post, announcements, new additions to the community, etc.

TermWiki’s extended functionality and intuitive user interface have been designed from the ground up to facilitate quick integration into a variety of different workflows (including casual browsing). That said, we would like to take this opportunity to make sure that you understand how you can personally make the most of TermWiki.

For this entry, we’ll focus on three different types of users (you can click on the links below to skip to each individual section):

• General Users

• Translators

• Corporations

And if you have any specific questions about how TermWiki.com might appeal to other types of users, please feel free and ask in the comments section below!

It’s funny how a-ha moments strike when you are least expecting it. A fun fact about TermWiki that you might not know is that it was conceived in a downtown bar in Beijing! The live music band that was onstage that night was supposedly playing with such gusto that the beat of the drum and the strums of the guitar were enough to pulsate to life the beginning wisps of what would soon turn into TermWiki.

A few weeks later, the TermWiki concept began unraveling, synthetic bricks being laid down to form the foundation of an idea that would change how countless companies, individuals, and translators from all around the world would approach social learning and terminology management.

It is hard to believe that a year has already gone by. The entire journey has been a great adventure and experience, and the hard work of many around the world made every moment worthwhile. To all of our supporters, contributors, and believers, many thanks…This day goes out to you!

The timeline below will take you through TermWiki’s first year—our achievements, the addition of new features, and the result of ongoing collaboration with all of our supporters.

As the day of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Royal Wedding, today is no ordinary day in world history. If you are one of the estimated 2 billion television viewers who will be watching the royal wedding progression from around the world, read on to learn about some fun royal wedding facts, brought to you by TermWiki.com!

If you’re not one of the lucky 1,900 guests attending, then perhaps you will be the receiver of a , which are invitations sent out to 100 individuals who were randomly selected from the public to enjoy the ceremony alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton’s guests. (No trip to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory with these golden tickets, we’re afraid.)

If you want to congratulate the happy couple, instead of sending gifts, Kate Middleton and Prince William have asked well-wishers to contribute to their. The funds will be distributed to one of five causes through Prince William’s Foundation—the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Henry. These five causes have been specifically chosen by Prince William and Kate themselves, which include helping children fulfill their potential, supporting individuals who are enlisted in the services, positively changing lives through arts and sports, providing help and care at home, and supporting the wildlife conservation effort.

Since the beginning of the month, we have been brimming with excitement as the TermWiki countdown neared its target of one million terms. On Monday evening, April 11th, the TermWiki Community finally did it… the terms, definitions, and translations in TermWiki are now one million and counting!

We are also happy to announce today’s post is an interview with the contributor of the one millionth term, Raúl Barrera! Take a moment and sit down with us as we talk to Raúl about this momentous occasion, his reasons for using TermWiki, and what his favorite TermWiki features are. On behalf of the entire TermWiki Community, thanks again Raúl for all your hard work!

Here at CSOFT, we’re excited. Sure, it’s Friday. We’ve had a fantastic lunch. The sun outside is shining, hints of spring in the air. But that’s not all we have to be excited about….

You see, TermWiki is about to hit its one millionth term. One millionth! So yes, we are excited! Stop on by to check out the countdown.

To all of you who have contributed, translated, believed in us; all who are now certified TermWiki-heads, who have offered us your advice, feedback and constructive criticism; all who see the potential in TermWiki, who have told a friend about TermWiki, who have been with us from the very beginning or just since yesterday…

… to you, our biggest thank you, one million times over. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we appreciate your effort more than you can imagine.

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.