IMUG Past Events Archive: 2011
2011 Events:
- Dec:11th Annual International Potluck & Holiday Bash
- Nov: User Experience Design for Emerging Markets
- Oct: Statistical MT: 10 Years of Innovation and a Look Ahead
- Sep: Inside the Mind of the I18n/L10n Recruiter
- Aug: The Strategic Importance of Content Quality
- Jul: Brand Internationalization
- Jun: Google's International Bloopers...and How We Fixed One
- May: The Power of Plain Text
- Apr: Mobile App Localization as a Service (LaaS)
- Mar: IMUG Networking and Discussion Event @ Worldware
- Feb: Demystifying Bidi: Bidirectional Languages in Software & Web Apps
- Jan: Translation Tools in the Cloud: TermWiki & ReviewIT
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2011 Events Archive
December 15, 2011, 6-9 PM
11th Annual International Potluck & Holiday Bash
Hosted by the Google i18n Intergrouplet
The traditional IMUG holiday bash always features unusual food and good conversation, including discussions of language technology, business, travel, life across cultures and more.
The Google i18n Intergrouplet will arrange catering from the famous Google kitchens, so you don't need to 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 17, 2011, 7-9 PM
User Experience Design for Emerging Markets
Hosted by Adobe in San Jose and on Adobe® Connect™ webcast
To create a good user experience (UX) for products, websites and services in emerging markets, it is critical to understand the four main themes that describe the emerging market ecosystem:
- Culture
- People
- Technology
- Transition
An understanding of these themes also clarifies the differences between the emerging and developed markets, and hence how UX design for emerging markets has a different flavor. In this talk, the focus will be on understanding the four themes and presenting examples of user experience design for and from emerging markets.
Apala Lahiri Chavin
Human Factors International (HFI)
Apala Lahiri Chavin was responsible for starting up Human Factors International's UX consulting operations across Asia (Mumbai, Bangalore, Pondicherry, Shanghai and Singapore). She joined HFI in 2000 as Managing Director — India and Vice President — Asia, and has recently taken on the role of Chief Oracle and Innovator. She is an award-winning designer (International Audi Design Award), and specializes in the area of Cross Cultural Innovation and Design.
Apala and her Contextual Innovation team have helped designers, marketers, product managers and ethnographers in Fortune 500 companies apply her innovative techniques to develop exciting new concepts and products. She systematically guides the ideation process to uncover subtle patterns in ethnographic and market data to reveal the exciting breakthrough ideas that can drive business and generate more revenue and profit on the one hand and improve quality of life for users, on the other hand.
Her recent focus has been on emerging markets, on which she has written a book titled Innovative Solutions: What Designers Need to Know For Today's Emerging Markets .
Her recent videos on emerging market ecosystems can be viewed here:
- The Importance of Ecosystem Research with Apala Lahiri Chavan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URKdRW_wxOc - Think locally, Win Globally - Designing for Emerging Markets with Apala Lahiri Chavan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxrjh8oZ6Sg
Her video blog can be viewed here:
- From Singapore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKagcsdSaZw
- From Cairo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joLEvTIy16o
- From Johannesburg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9xeIuZQwbw
October 20, 2011, 7-9 PM
Statistical MT: 10 Years of Innovation and a Look Ahead
Hosted at Google and recorded by the Google Tech Talks team - will announce here when posted to YouTube.
In this presentation we’ll take a look back at the last 10 years of commercialized
statistical machine translation (SMT), factors driving previous and ongoing innovation,
and share new product advances that respond to the needs of both government and
commercial organizations.
Hannah Grap
Senior Marketing Director, SDL Language Technologies
Hannah is responsible for marketing initiatives for all Language Technology products. Prior to SDL, Hannah led corporate marketing at Language Weaver. Her background is in marketing and technical communications and she holds a Master of Science degree in technical communications from the University of Washington.
Radu Soricut
Senior Research Scientist, SDL Language Technologies
Radu focuses on building the infrastructure and managing a team dedicated to productizing custom-built automatic translation systems for commercial customers and rapidly transferring scientific advances in the field of automatic translation into system production. As a research scientist, his focus and extensive experience is in statistical natural language processing (machine translation, language generation, syntactic parsing, discourse parsing, question answering, automatic summarization) and machine learning (quality prediction for structured output). Radu holds a PhD from USC in Computer Science.
Michael Potts
Director of Professional Services & Customer Support, SDL Language Technologies
Michael is responsible for ensuring successful customer deployments of automated translation systems, identifying customer requirements for new translation workflows, and managing the pre- and post-sales support teams. Prior to SDL/Language Weaver, Michael spent 15 years in the web content management space working with Vignette, the US government and running large content oriented websites. He holds a Master's Degree in International Law & Organization, and a BA in International Relations, both from The American University.
September 27, 2011, 7-9 PM
Inside the Mind of the I18n/L10n Recruiter
Hosted by Yahoo! (Remote audio was not recorded.)
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The job description fit you like a glove. But the company didn't even acknowledge that they received your resume.
Several people interviewed you and the discussions all seemed promising, but you didn't get the job or an explanation.
Several questions had nothing to do with the job requirements; tricky puzzles and questions based on pop psychology.
You interviewed for a linguist role where an engineer inexplicably asked you to write pseudocode.
A product manager asserted that an i18n programmer should know how to use translation memory tools.
What is their hiring process? Join us at Yahoo! for an evening with a panel of hiring managers and recruiters from key high technology companies in the Bay Area, who will explain how they cull resumes and the rationale behind their interview processes. There will be plenty of time for questions, and this is your chance to learn how to make your job search more effective.
There will be hiring managers on hand and you will be able to discretely provide your resume and learn about career opportunities in the Bay Area.
Moderator:
Tex Texin, Chief Globalization Architect, Rearden Commerce. Many thanks to Tex for initiating the idea for this panel and doing so much to organize this!
Panelists:
Lotfi Herzi, VP of Global Product Development, Yahoo!
Petrina Ferguson, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Yahoo!
Teresa Marshall, Senior Manager, Localization, Salesforce.com
Lily Wen, International Engineering Manager, Adobe Systems
Darryl Bozeman, Staff Recruiter, Rearden Commerce
Speaker bios:
Tex Texin is the Chief Globalization Architect for Rearden Commerce. Tex provides the strategic overview for globalization practices and technologies. Tex is a recognized industry thought leader with more than 2 decades of experience specific to globalization. He is the co-chair for a localization tools user group, on the steering committees of open source projects and a contributor to several industry standards. Tex has designed architecture, processes and organization, for some of the most prominent Web and e-Commerce companies and has created a number of successful global products. Over the course of his career, Tex has recruited and coached numerous staff in i18n and L10n roles. Tex is also a core member of the IMUG volunteer advisory committee.
Lotfi Herzi is Vice President in the Global Product Development (GPD) group at Yahoo! He is originally from Toulouse, France; his wife and his three children are settled in California and he works at Yahoo!'s Sunnyvale headquarters. Lotfi joined Yahoo! in March 2011 and is responsible for Yahoo!'s globalization team, which covers internationalization architecture, international product management, product planning and strategy, as well as business planning and communications for GPD overall. During Lotfi's 20+ years as a software industry veteran, he has held many roles in the areas of internationalization, localization, product development, product planning, enterprise sales & marketing. In his past experiences, he has led large teams & released many global products. In his previous role as a General Manager in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, Lotfi's responsibilities included leadership of the international teams for Microsoft Xbox & Kinect (platform, games, and Xbox Live Services).
Petrina Ferguson, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager at Yahoo!, is a staffing professional with a proven ability to manage teams, recruit, source and hire qualified candidates in the areas of: Quality Engineering, Mobile, Product Management, Business Development, Engineering, Program/Project Management, Database Administration, eServices, Localization, Internationalization, Customer Support, MIS, Marketing, Finance and Administration. She has 15 years of experience in the Staffing industry and has been a Staffing Manager for the past 10 years. She has worked for Charles Schwab, Visa International, Core Media Connections, Actuate Corporation and has been employed with Yahoo since 2004. She received her Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco and her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Southern California.
Teresa Marshall, Senior Manager of Localization at Salesforce.com, started her localization career in localization as Lead Linguist and Translation Manager at eTranslate Inc, where she was quickly chosen to establish a new team to focus on language quality. In 2003, she joined Google as one of the first project managers in localization. During her tenure at Google, she went on to lead Google's localization team as Manager for Localization and Global Content, and later the newly formed Localization Operations team, focusing on process and tool design as well as vendor and quality management. In 2009, Teresa joined salesforce.com as the Sr. Localization Manager, leading the R&D Localization team, responsible for all localization efforts of salesforce.com's product offerings. Teresa is an adjunct member of the faculty at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and teaches in the Translation and Localization Management program of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation and Language Education. She earned her Bachelor in Technical Translation for the Fremdspacheninstitut Munich and holds a Masters in Translation and Interpretation and a Certificate in Translation Teaching from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Lily Wen is an international engineering manager in Adobe's Globalization department. Her 13-year professional career at Adobe includes software development, internationalization and localization. She currently manages the internationalization and localization of traditional desktop products such as Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Flex; mobile products such as Photoshop and Adobe Ideas; and SaaS products such as Photoshop.com, and Scene7. The Adobe Globalization team is actively working on product internationalization to ensure WorldReadiness, community translation, machine translation, agile localization and cloud based localization.
Darryl Bozeman is a Staff Recruiter at Rearden Commerce, which has averaged 30+ hires per month for the last seven months. Darryl has over 25 years' experience and expertise in technical and executive recruiting, management consulting, business development, organizational and leadership performance, as well as a teacher of meditation. Darryl is also Chief Coach and founder of Communication Network, a life and career performance acceleration firm which provides leaders & entrepreneurs with tools and practices that allow their ventures to flourish with speed, grace, fun, and ease. He has delivered services in the U.S. and internationally in India, Brazil, Ghana, Singapore, Canada and France as an Activation Speaker, Group
August 18, 2011, 7-9 PM
The Strategic Importance of Content Quality
Hosted at Google and recorded by the Google Tech Talks team - will announce here when posted to YouTube.
The introduction of the Internet and the digitization of content didn't just change the world of information development; it completely reinvented it. People can access information at the touch of a button through search engines and social media, and content is being developed at a rapid pace. With so much information out there, it is undeniable that the quality of the information that you produce matters. It matters for your bottom line.
It is essential that everyone involved, from executive management to content creators, translators and localizers, understand the importance of the quality of customer facing information and supports an enterprise-wide content quality strategy that delivers the best possible customer experience.
This presentation will discuss how to manage quality, optimize your information for search, and strengthen your digital presence with an effective content strategy. You will learn to view corporate content through the eyes of your customer and enable your company to deliver a consistent information experience- all while keeping translation costs down and getting to market faster.
Dr. Andrew Bredenkamp is co-founder and CEO of Acrolinx. Andrew has over 20 years of experience in multilingual information development. Before starting Acrolinx, Andrew was Head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab.
Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics. He is on the advisory board of a number of organizations, including Translators without Borders and The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL).
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July 21, 2011, 7-9 PM
Brand Internationalization
Hosted at Adobe HQ and via Adobe® Connect™ webcast
The webcast of this event was recorded: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p1yx064j0qr/
Folks across the globe are wired differently. Therefore, it's key to design and market a brand product with an eye on cultural adaptation to regional markets. A product mis-internationalized, misunderstood, is a product unsold. An ROI unreaped.
This presentation is a roller coaster ride through pains & gains in the pre-natal product development process. We'll review contextual and visual elements to consider for producing a winner glocal brand. We'll dive into locale-tailored campaigns and resurface just in time for a quick peek into glocal strategy for product acceptance in new market entry.
Talia Baruch is a vendor-independent & client-side globalization consultant, providing internationalization setup and localization support. Talia has 23 yrs. experience in the industry, developing and orchestrating enterprise localization accounts, such as Google's localization of Maps & Earth products into 62 languages, HP, Adobe, Cisco, among many others. LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9782804
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June 16, 2011, 7-9 PM
Google's International Bloopers...and How We Fixed One
Google has millions of users around the world...but occasionally we mess up. In this lighthearted talk, we'll explore some of Google's international "bloopers", and show how to avoid similar mistakes in other web applications. We'll also highlight how we solved a persistent blooper, namely having UI strings like "Alice has added 3 contact to his address book." Our Plural/Gender API allows complicated UI strings to change appropriately, based on numbers and personal gender.
Mark Davis co-founded the Unicode project and has been the president of the Unicode Consortium since its incorporation in 1991. He is one of the key technical contributors to the Unicode specifications. Mark founded and was responsible for the overall architecture of International Components for Unicode (ICU), the premier Unicode software internationalization library, and architected the core of the Java internationalization classes. He also founded and is the chair of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) project, and is a co-author of BCP 47 Tags for Identifying Languages (RFC 4646 and RFC 4646), used for identifying languages in all XML and HTML documents. Since the start of 2006, Mark has been working on software internationalization at Google, focusing on effective and secure use of Unicode (especially in the index and search pipeline), the software internationalization libraries (including ICU) and stable international identifiers.
Luke Swartz has a BS in Symbolic Systems and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. He served as a nuclear submariner in the US Navy, as a divisional and project manager both on a submarine (USS Ohio) and shore command (Commander of Submarines, Europe and Africa). Since 2010, he has been a Product Manager for Google's Internationalization team, where he has worked on various projects involving language in Google products and the Plural/Gender API.
May 19, 2011, 7-9 PM
The Power of Plain Text
Copy of this presentation: http://lundestudio.com/PDF/imug-05192011-lunde.pdf
Unicode has accomplished what no other character set or encoding can claim, in that it has been extraordinarily successful in accomplishing many of its goals, and it continues to develop to rise to new challenges.
Regardless of how text is stylized using various applications or markup languages, the ability to search, copy, paste, import, and export is crucial for using and repurposing documents and their text. In other words, embracing Unicode's representation of "plain text" will ensure user-friendly digital data throughout a document's workflow and lifetime.
This presentation will cover the basics of "plain text" and its importance in providing meaningful content, and will explore some recent developments in Unicode that allow otherwise unencodable characters, such as variant forms of CJK Unified Ideographs, to be reliably represented in a "plain text" paradigm through the use of the Ideographic Variation Database (IVD).
Examples from other scripts will also be provided. Various "plain text" pitfalls and bad-practices that undermine Unicode's success, such as PUA usage, CJK Compatibility Ideographs, and code point poaching, will be touched upon. Finally, emerging environments that thrive on "plain text" data, such as mobile, will be discussed.
Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Dr. Ken Lunde has worked for Adobe for nearly 20 years, and is a Senior Computer Scientist in CJKV Type Development. He is also the author of CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly 2009).
April 21, 2011, 7-9 PM
Mobile App Localization as a Service (LaaS)
Tethras has launched a disruptive new cloud-based localization solution for small mobile app developers. In a recent post on Blogos, the Multilingual blog, Ultan Ó Broin noted that the traditional LSP model does not scale down well for small jobs from individual developers, and that "it's great to see cloud-based disintermediation localization options like Ireland's Tethras". The service, which launched at MacWorld 2011, automatically identifies items requiring localization and distributes them to a network of human translators. Tethras has offices in Silicon Valley and Dublin.
Brendan Clavin is co-founder and CTO of Tethras. Originally from a house near a crossroads, beside a hamlet, close to a very small village, beyond the resolution of Google Earth, Brendan escaped cosmopolitan Ireland and planted himself firmly in Silicon Valley.
He was the first software engineer at Claris Ireland in 1990, set up the engineering tools team at Iona Software in 1995, built the localization department at Ariba in 1999, and was the first hire into the internationalization engineering team at Google in 2005.
He fits right in with the Valley crowd with his collection of bicycles and Hawaiian shirts.
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March 17, 2011, 6-9 PM
IMUG Networking and Discussion Event @ Worldware
Join us for a free IMUG networking event co-hosted by the Worldware Conference from 6 to 9 PM at the TechMart in Santa Clara. We will be in the Fremont Room, inside the Network Meeting Center.
You do not need to register for Worldware to join us at this event. Sponsored by Lingoport and acrolinx, this event will feature food and drink from 6 to 7 PM, user story discussions from 7 to 7:30, and then back to more hanging out!
If you are also going to Worldware, professionals are eligible for a15% discount off the conference fee, and all students are eligible for a 50% discount. Plus, the Localization Institute is sponsoring a contest for a FREE conference pass for IMUG members.
February 17, 2011, 7-9 PM
Demystifying Bidi: Bidirectional Languages in Software and Web Apps
Enabling software and web apps for people who write in bidirectional languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu presents many challenges. Not only must we support mixed writing directions, but "bidi" locales in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia have additional requirements like localized numbers and alternative calendars.
This talk will address common problems of bidirectionalization, current approaches taken by the industry, and suggestions for avoiding headaches, plus some examples of bidirectionalization for web apps. We will also discuss bidi localization engineering, a cost-saving step in the localization process.
Roozbeh Pournader is an internationalization expert at HighTech Passport, a company specializing in localization and internationalization services. Roozbeh has been working on software bidirectionalization for his whole professional life, since 1996.
As a native speaker of Persian, Roozbeh has had ample opportunity to experience the challenges of bidirectionalization firsthand. He is an author of multiple standards and technical reports for Persian support in software for Iran and Afghanistan, and a contributor to the Unicode Standard.
Roozbeh contributes to various free software projects and is an advocate of open source software development. He represents the GNOME Foundation in the Unicode Consortium.
January 13, 2011, 7-9 PM
Translation Tools in the Cloud: TermWiki & ReviewIT
Come hear from a leading innovator and educator in the field of translation about a new approach to multilingual terminology management and document collaboration.
TermWiki is a web-based, multilingual terminology management system for collaboratively developing, managing, and distributing personal & corporate glossaries. As a centralized system, TermWiki enables all stakeholders in the content development and translation process to maintain a consistent use of key terms and brand voice.
ReviewIT is a web-based, collaborative document review and annotation platform. It requires no software installation, no training, and enables reviewers and linguists to validate multilingual documents with a powerful suite of features directly available in their internet browsers.
Uwe Muegge, Chief Terminologist and Co-Director MedL10N, has many years of experience in terminology management and the localization industry. You'll find interesting information on Mugge's work in controlled languages and machine translation in this Wikipedia article and on his popular machine translation website.
Muegge performs the dual role of Co-Director of CSOFT’s life sciences division, MedL10N, and serves as the company’s Chief Terminologist. Before joining CSOFT, he served as the Corporate Terminologist at Medtronic, the world’s largest manufacturer of medical devices and technology.
Muegge is currently a member of the technical committee for terminology at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and teaches graduate courses in Terminology Management at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Muegge holds a Bachelor of Arts equivalent from Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tubingen, a Master’s in Translation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a Masters in Telecommunication and Film from the University of Oregon and is in the Ph.D. Program at the Universitat Leipzig.
Matt Arney, Vice President, North America Market, leads CSOFT’s North America sales team and is accountable for driving revenue and managing customer relationships throughout the region. He joined CSOFT in 2004 after working more than 8 years in the Japanese software distribution industry. Most recently, Arney was Vice President of Business Development at Act2 Inc., one of Japan's leading software distribution companies that he co-founded. In this role, he grew the company’s annual revenues from zero to $10 million dollars. Earlier, Arney drove Japan sales for Seiwa Systems as well as managed the localization of software titles. Arney holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University and is fluent in Japanese.
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