Language Weaver Presents Updates on the State of Automated Statistical Translation Technologies to Support a More Connected World

Business Wire, Oct 9, 2007

- VP of Sales and Marketing Kirti Vashee will demonstrate ways to maximize productivity of translation automation technologies at four major globalization industry events this fall -

LOS ANGELES -- Language Weaver, a leading software company developing enterprise software for the automated translation of human languages, has announced that its Vice President of Sales and Marketing Kirti Vashee is an invited speaker at four major international globalization industry events this fall. The company's presentations will focus on the capabilities of statistical machine translation (SMT) and its evolving impact on language translation automation in commercial enterprise. The four events include: Localization World in Seattle, Oct. 16-18; LISA Forum Europe 2007 in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 22-26; Tekom Annual Conference, November 7-9, Wiesbaden, Germany; and Idiom WorldSummit Europe 2007, Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 12-14.

According to Language Weaver, this intense interest in the promising capabilities of statistically-based translation shows the need for automation to provide translation capabilities that companies have not had heretofore, and is reflective of the success of early implementations of SMT. For example, as companies conduct more business over the Internet internationally, there is a greater need for customer service support and knowledge base information in multiple languages. Microsoft's widely publicized success and high customer satisfaction ratings after converting their knowledge base content, using automated translation, into multiple languages has raised awareness at many other companies. Enterprises now realize that many international customers would be satisfied if more technical support materials could be made available in their own languages, even if the translation is not perfect.

"The fact is there are simply not enough human multilingual resources nor time in each day to keep up with all the content being created. By adding automated translation capabilities to a company's technical documentation and online self-service support, a company increases its efficiencies immensely, but most importantly, it positively impacts its relationship with customers," said Dr. Daniel Marcu, interim CEO of Language Weaver. "The technology is already adding considerable productivity to translation service providers who use it to support human editors, and is rapidly achieving the capabilities to support international business and provide translation where it never existed before."

Localization World has a theme of "Local Languages First!" With three concurrent tracks, the program covers a wide range of issues in translation and localization and includes myriad case studies from a wide range of applications. With Stephen Ryan of Moravia as host, Kirti Vashee of Language Weaver will deliver a detailed presentation on Wed., Oct 17th, entitled, "Is My Company Ready for Statistical Machine Translation?" During this interactive presentation, users will learn how to assess if their organization is ready to add SMT to existing translation processes and how to best go about using this technology successfully.

The day before Localization World opens, Language Weaver will host a free seminar with its key integration partners, which addresses SMT's best practices and customization capabilities. Enterprise participants will learn how they can get the best return on investment by leveraging the translations they already have to increase accuracy of future translations.

For Language Weaver's first time presenting at the LISA Forum, which this year is focused on outsourcing, Vashee will participate on Wed., Oct 24 in a panel discussion entitled, "Translation Tools and Technologies: What the Future Holds," with Vitaly Borok from Multilize and Lisa Seeman, UB Access.

The tekom Annual Conference is Europe's largest event in the field of technical communication and information development and will take place from November 7th to 9th in the Rhein-Main Hallen in Wiesbaden, Germany. Vashee will participate in a point/counterpoint discussion with Jaap van der Meer, director of TAUS (Translation Automation User Society.) The discussion, to be moderated by research analyst Dr. Donald DePalma of Commonsense Advisory, will explore machine translation and best practices for translation in product environments.

Idiom WorldSummit Europe 2007 is hosted by Idiom Technologies, a strategic partner of Language Weaver's, which provides the market-leading globalization management system, WorldServer. Used by over 60 companies worldwide, it is the preferred solution for a globalization supply chain that includes global enterprises, independent language service providers (LSPs) and translators. Language Weaver translation software has been integrated into WorldServer 9. Kirti Vashee will participate on Nov. 13th in a panel called "Integrating TM (translation memory) and MT (machine translation)" with Fred Hollowood of Symantec and Kevin Gillespie of Idiom.

"Most multinational companies have growing volumes of existing, high quality, translated documents that could be used to increase the quality of translations, especially regarding technical language and fragmented terms that are common to industry domains," said Vashee. "We are seeing very successful implementations where human and computer collaboration radically transforms the way translation is done. Because an SMT system can learn and correct mistakes over time, the more you use it and as you feedback error corrections, the better it gets."