IMUG Past Events Archive: 2014
2014 Events:
- Dec: Annual IMUG International Potluck and Holiday Bash
- Nov: Corporate Strategies To Accelerate International Revenue || Anna Schlegel
- Oct: Google Translate || Sveta Kelman, Arne Mauser, & Keith Stevens
- Sep: How Unicode Came to "Dominate the World" || Lee Collins
- Aug: GALA-IMUG Networking Night
- Jul: It's Time for a Big Idea: the Human Language Project || Jaap van der Meer
- Jun: The eBay Machine Translation Initiative: Localization PM Overview || Jen Wang
- May: Tips for Successful In-Country Reviews in Translation and Localization Projects || Aki Ito
- Apr: Localization at Startups || Panel, moderated by Eva Gross
- Mar: Globalizing at the Crowd Speed || Matthew Romaine
- Feb: Changing the Game: A Painless Localization Process || Masahiro Arai
- Jan: L20n: Next Generation Localization Framework for the Web || Zbigniew Braniecki
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2014 Events Archive
December 11, 2014, 6-9 PM
Annual IMUG International Potluck and Holiday Bash
Hosted by Adobe
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/25790373/ 
The IMUG holiday bash always features unusual food and good conversation, including discussions of language technology, business, travel, life across cultures, and more.
Dr. Ken Lunde and the Adobe globalization team have once again graciously offered to host our event at Café Adobe, and will supply the drinks including soda, wine and spirits.* IMUG will supply free pizza. You needn't bring a thing, but we always look forward to the fantastic variety of ethnic dishes the less culinarily-challenged among us can muster up for this annual food-fest. That always takes things to a higher level.
You needn't prepare or buy more than 3 to 4 portions worth, and in fact you needn't bring anything at all. Come as you are, with or without a potluck contribution, but do come prepared to eat!
November 20, 2014, 7-9 PM
Corporate Strategies To Accelerate International Revenue
Hosted by Adobe
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/25754212/
Video: https://my.adobeconnect.com/p7x0s2zxn4e/
Many companies today are struggling to gain market share or maintain their number 1 position in targeted countries. What does it take to focus and double down to start gaining share in specific markets? It is not just localization!
Come and learn about some of these global strategies, techniques and programs from Anna Schlegel (@annapapallona), Head of Globalization at NetApp, and Co-Founder of Women in Localization. Anna is a 20 year vet in the globalization space, having been part of Cisco’s first localization team, and led Xerox, VeriSign and VMware globalization and digital groups.
You can read some of Anna’s articles on Forbes, Fortune and other publishing forums here: www.linkedin.com/in/annanschlegel/
October 16, 2014, 7-9 PM
Google Translate and Crowdsourcing
Hosted by Google
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/25230712/
Video: http://youtu.be/burqhA9fBVk
This talk will be repeated - with updates - in March 2015
Google Translate is a statistical machine translation service that currently supports 80 languages and processes more than 1B user translation requests per day. While Translate helps numerous people around the world communicate and learn new languages, it could always use a little help to improve translation quality for already supported languages, as well as help in adding new languages. This talk will focus on Translate's evolution over the years, its inner workings, and the recent launch of the Translate Community, a crowdsourcing platform designed to improve machine translation quality by leveraging knowledge of multilingual users and language enthusiasts.
About the Speakers:
In her current role, Sveta Kelman is a program manager for Google Translate. She has previously spent several years on the Google Localization team, managing L10n process for a number of Google consumer products. Having made a switch to the machine translation team, she is currently focusing on expanding Google Translate to more languages, as well as the recently launched Google Translate Community. Passionate about languages and translation for many years, Sveta holds an M.A. in Scandinavian Philology from St. Petersburg State University (Russia).
Arne Mauser (Technical lead, Google Translate in More Languages) and Keith Stevens (Technical lead, Google Translate Crowdsourcing) will join the panel.
September 18, 2014, 7-9 PM
How Unicode Came to "Dominate the World"
Hosted by Adobe
Slides: LCollins IMUG Nov. 2014 Preso.key.pdf
Video: https://my.adobeconnect.com/p5wpjef397p/
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/24774022/
The success of a character encoding can be measured by its ubiquity: support in operating systems, applications, programming languages, and the amount of data encoded in it. By all of these measures, Unicode is an unqualified success, and can truly be said to have dominated the world. However, back in the late 1980s, when we began discussing the need for a universal encoding and how it might achieve “world domination", success was not a given, and the original designers would not have predicted the degree of success or the changes and design compromises required for that achievement.
This talk will consider the beginning of Unicode, its original design and goals, and the key changes and decisions and circumstances that lead to Unicode’s current success (and some failures). It will conclude with speculation about where Unicode might go from here or whether Unicode will continue to enjoy its current status.
Lee Collins has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and has worked on international text encoding, input and display since the early 1980s.
He started his career at Xerox where he began the long collaboration with Joe Becker on the effort that was to become Unicode. He then went on to Apple where he met another Unicode founder, Mark Davis. At Apple he worked for 23 years as engineer and manager, starting with Mac OS 6, then Mac OS X and iOS. He also took several side trips to Taligent and Ariba. In 2013 he left Apple to devote full time to the study of Arabic.
He currently consults as Internationalization Architect at Netflix and serves as a board member of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. Lee first presented on Unicode at one of the first IMUG meetings in 1991.
August 21, 2014, 6:30 PM to whenever
GALA-IMUG Networking Night
At Xahn restaurant, Castro Street, Mountain View, CA
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/24025482/
IMUG is proud to once again partner with GALA on a local networking evening! Come for a tempting buffet, cash bar and fine conversation with your GILT industry friends and colleagues in the lounge at Xahn on Castro Street in Mountain View.
The above photo shows some of the happy 42 attendees at the last GALA-IMUG event, in August 2012.
GALA local networking events are intended as relaxed, non-commercial gatherings. This is one of the many ways GALA carries out its mission to bring the industry together to share information, foster innovation among GALA members and the industry as a whole, and to offer clients collaborative value.
The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) is the world's largest trade association for the language industry with over 400 member companies in more than 50 countries. As a non-profit organization, we provide resources, education, advocacy, and research for thousands of global companies. GALA's mission is to support our members and the language industry by creating communities, championing standards, sharing knowledge, and advancing technology. For more information: www.gala-global.org
July 17, 2014, 7-9 PM
It's Time for a Big Idea: the Human Language Project
Hosted by Facebook
Slides: Big-Idea-IMUG-June-2014.pdf
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/23261062/
It's Time for a Big Idea. It's Time for the Human Language Project.
In an interactive session with the localization and globalization community in Silicon Valley, Jaap van der Meer will make the case for the Human Language Project: a far-reaching collaboration and sharing among all buyers and providers of language services.
Like the Human Genome Project, which unraveled the secret workings of the human body, Jaap van der Meer proposes fearless sharing of data and open collaborative efforts to crack the language barrier. The translation industry has undergone a paradigm shift every decade since 1980, but none was as big as the one we are facing now.
Hyper-globalization is driving the industry now into the Convergence era: translation will be a utility embedded in every app, device, sign board and screen. Businesses will prosper by finding new customers in new markets. Governments and citizens will connect and communicate easily. Consumers will become world-wise, talking to everyone everywhere as if language barriers never existed.
It will not be perfect, but it will open doors and break down barriers. And it will give a boost to the translation industry, which will be chartered to constantly improve the technology and fill the gaps in global communications.
It's time for a big idea. It's time for the Human Language Project. The Human Language Project will be a key enabler for companies to expand their global reach and grow their revenues.
Jaap van der Meer founded TAUS in 2004. He is a language industry pioneer and visionary, who started his first translation company, INK, in The Netherlands in 1980. Jaap is a regular speaker at conferences and author of many articles about technologies, translation and globalization trends.
June 19, 2014, 7-9 PM
The eBay Machine Translation Initiative: Localization PM Overview
Hosted by Google
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/22685752/
Machine translation has been a buzzword in the industry in recent years. eBay is developing its own world-class machine translation solution for the translation of user generated content. This talk will be focusing on the support eBay's localization team provides for the testing and training of the machine translation engine, including the process, the quality evaluation, and other factors that contribute to the success of the initiative.
Jen Wang is a localization project manager at eBay Inc., where she has supported the localization of multiple mobile applications, the machine translation initiative to expand cross-border trade, and most recently the company's geographic expansion into new markets. She was previously a localization project manager at Translations.com and Lingo Systems, a translation intern at UN headquarters, and a programmer at a software company in Taiwan. She holds an MA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
May 15, 2014, 7-9 PM
Tips for Successful In-Country Reviews in Translation and Localization Projects
Hosted by Adobe
Slides: IMUG-Aki-Ito-2014.05.pdf
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/21962682/
The in-country review process is one of the most difficult steps to manage in translation and localization projects. This step is where misunderstanding, disputes, and even complete loss of communication can happen, leading to delayed deadlines, compromised quality, higher costs, frustrated project team members and dissatisfied customers. This session will provide some useful tips that you can put to practical use immediately. The speaker will give you some real-life examples from some of the Japanese projects he has managed.
Aki Ito is Director of Operations for TOIN Corporation and owner of LocalizationGuy, LLC. A TAUS representative and a past board member of GALA and Multilingual Magazine, he has been in the translation and localization industry since 1996, working in sales management, operations management, project management, Japanese language management and consulting, and translation memory tool management, and even as the Japanese interpreter for a Major League Baseball team. He holds an MBA in international marketing and a BA in international relations.
April 17, 2014, 7-9 PM
Localization at Startups
Hosted by Box, Inc.
Video: http://youtu.be/GeO1-lU6Lp4
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/21798792/
By popular request, this SF Globalization panel discussion will be repeated in the South Bay! Many thanks to Eva Gross of Live Career for organizing and moderating both panels, and to Katell Jentreau of Box for hosting. The panel will not be webcast, but our hosts will attempt to record it.
When startups think about going global, they might be faced with different challenges than larger, more established companies: Do they have an international strategy? Internationalization or localization expertise in-house? What is the budget? At what stage in their development as a business should they go global? Who drives and supports the decision to go global?
A panel of localization managers from Bay Area startups will share their thoughts and recommendations on building a successful localization strategy for startups. Topics include:
• The role of Localization Manager within a startup
• Effective global content strategies for startups
• Localization tools and processes
• Placement/support of localization within a startup
• International Product Management
Panelists:
Mark Bulmer has worked in consumer internet for the past 10 years in the USA and Europe. This has been with a strong focus on Localization and International Product Management for Communities and Search products. It has involved bringing large-scale products to global audiences at a number of leading brands – Freeserve.com, Wanadoo, Yahoo!, Flickr, and Ask.com.
Catherine Porter has worked in international market development, business development, and consumer growth for more than 15 years in a variety of Internet companies. She is currently responsible for international optimization of current ex-US markets and international expansion at OpenTable. Catherine has lived in Japan three times during her career and speaks Japanese fluently.
Katell Jentreau started her career as an English-to-French translator, and has been working in localization for 15+ years, both on the vendor and client sides. She is currently responsible for all globalization work at Box, one of the leaders in enterprise cloud-based collaboration platforms, based in Los Altos, CA. In 2013, Katell also joined the board of the Women in Localization, an organization dedicated to promote professional development, networking and continuous education among its rapidly-growing membership.
Eva Gross (also moderator and organizer of this panel) leads localization at LiveCareer, helping launch LiveCareer's core products into global markets. Prior to joining LiveCareer in September 2013, she worked at Apple and Language Automation, Inc. Born and raised in Germany, Eva is fully bilingual in English and German, and earned her Master Degree in Translation and Localization Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2010.
Topics and ideas raised by participants from Pinterest and Eventbrite at the last panel in San Francisco may also be reintroduced to the discussion.
March 19, 2014, 7-9 PM
Globalizing at the Crowd Speed
Hosted by Facebook
Video: http://youtu.be/dgNflThY_GM
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/20925572/
Crowdsourcing is a familiar trend in the tech industry, but finding the right balance to control the crowd and deliver quick, affordable and scalable services is often a challenge. Through its simple web order form and open API, Gengo is revolutionizing the translation industry.
With the right combination of speed, price, scalability and a human touch, Gengo is massively disrupting the industry and quickly helping the world read and publish across languages, with one click.
This talk will shed some light on how companies can manage their crowd for a more effective globalization process, discuss best practices and share his experience on how Gengo has evolved.
Matthew Romaine is Co-Founder and CTO of Gengo, Inc., a crowd-sourced translation platform launched from Tokyo, Japan. He’s lived in Tokyo for almost 1/2 his life, first as a child and then after studying Computer Science and Music Theory at both Brown and Stanford University. He returned to Japan to join Sony Corporation, followed by building Japan’s first Internet-only talent voting platform Otorevo for Columbia Music Entertainment. Through Gengo, Matthew has built a sliver of Silicon Valley in Tokyo. You can follow him on Twitter as @quanza.
February 20, 2014, 7-9 PM
Changing the Game: A Painless Localization Process
Hosted by Google
Photos: http://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/photos/20370832/
This talk will explain how our development team transformed a rather painful and costly localization process into a painless, less expensive process that resulted in higher quality results. We did this by rewriting the rules of the game: changing the development process, the localization infrastructure, the technical writing process, and the localization testing scheme, mainly through automated processes and a new team structure.
This was not just a pick-up game, either. Embarcadero Technologies provides the industry's broadest and deepest set of software tools for software developers, DBAs and architects. One of the company's biggest products, RAD Studio contains more than a quarter million software translation units, and offers more than 100,000 pages of documentation. RAD Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides native executable code for Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android from one code base, one team, and one schedule. When we undertook this transformation, we were aware that the wrong choices could have led to very serious consequences worldwide.
Masahiro Arai is a manager for quality assurance, documentation, and localization at Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. He manages engineering quality assurance teams, and teams of technical writers, localization coordinators, localization engineers, and linguists, in North America, Europe, and Asia. He was previously with Borland Software, where he managed localization engineering teams in the U.S., after working as a product marketing manager at Borland Japan. He holds a master degree in electronics engineering from Tokyo Denki University in Japan.
January 16, 2014, 7-9 PM
L20n: Next Generation Localization Framework for the Web
Hosted by Adobe
Slides: www.braniecki.net/talks/imug2014/ (To view: right arrow, then down arrows as they appear.)
Photos: Meetup photo album
As the web grows and becomes more dynamic, Mozilla seeks to uphold the standards and practices that keep it open for all.
The key to that is to break the paradigm that linguistically ties translations to a source string. That paradigm, which is fundamental to almost all localization technologies used on the Web today, is becoming more limiting than ever, especially with the rise of responsive user interfaces.
Based on 15 years of experience in building open source software, localized into over 90 locales, Mozilla came up with a new localization framework that shifts this paradigm, called L20n. L20n isolates localizations and enables translators to provide naturally expressive translations for even the most complex user interfaces.
Mozilla is investing in moving its products - Firefox, Firefox OS, and Firefox for Android - to this new architecture. At this talk you'll get a chance to see what L20n brings to the table.
Zbigniew Braniecki
Software Engineer, Mozilla Corporation
Zibi Braniecki is a software engineer on the Localization Drivers team at Mozilla. He works on multiple localization technologies such as Pontoon, L20n, Silme, and Common Pool. With experience in computer science, community building, and localization management, Zibi's involved in internationalization and localizability of applications such as Mozilla Firefox and Firefox OS.
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