The Nexus Between Machine Translation and the Interpreting Market
Published: 31 July 2013
InterpretAmerica is on the move in October attending the TAUS Annual Conference in Portland and hosting a GALA Webinar on The Interpreting Market.
October is ramping up as a significant month for InterpretAmerica in our continuing efforts to raise the profile of the interpreting profession. Central to that effort is creating visibility and excitement about our profession inside and outside our traditional ranks.
InterpretAmerica Co-President Barry S. Olsen is speaking this week at the TAUS 2013 Annual Conference He will be among a tiny number of speakers tackling the human side of interpreting and translation at one of the world's primary events focused on translation automation,localization business innovation and industry collaboration.
TAUS refers to itself as "the leading organization for advancing translation technologies and strategies." Its current mission envisions a world where "translation"
is a standard feature, a ubiquitous service. Like the Internet, electricity, and water, translation is one of the basic needs of human civilization." It aims to "increase the size and significance of the translation industry to help the world communicate better."
Sounds great, right? And frankly, realistic. The need for ubiquitous translation is now, not in some distant or even close future. The same is true for interpreting. Mobile technology has wiped out geographic barriers across the globe. The only significant impediment left in the way of effortless communication between the world's billions is language. Pressure and demand are building for interpreting to be available globally 24/7.
The only problem with TAUS's vision from a human translation and interpreting point of view is where do we fit? TAUS membership is made up of some of the world's biggest communication companies, including Google, Dell, Cisco, Intel, Intuit, Oracle, and Symantec, alongside our industry's biggest translation and localization companies.
Growth, one of the featured tracks at the conference, is framed in the following way: "It is obvious for Google and Facebook, but also true for most other global companies: growth comes from the fast growing new middle class that speaks new languages that we don’t cover and don’t know how to cover yet. Going from 1 billion users to 6 billion users in the next 15 to 25 years is like drawing a whole new map of the world. English is quickly losing its dominance as a world language."
In the broad expanse of the language services industry, it is the machine translation and localization end of our profession which has its eye on the big picture. In transition from 1 billion to 6 billion humans seeking to communicate across 6,000 languages we will witness both tremendous disruption and incredible opportunity as translators and interpreters. At InterpretAmerica, our efforts will continue to focus on how high quality, professional human interpreting stays a vital ingredient in the world's multilingual communication.
Follow our Twitter feed for for TAUS 2013 at #TAUSAC at @InterpAmerica.
GALA WEBINAR SERIES The Interpreting Market: What You Need To Know
Presented by InterpretAmerica Co-Presidents Barry S. Olsen and Katharine Allen 24 October 11:00 EDT (17:00 CEST)
If our presence at the TAUS conference is an effort to raise the visibility of interpreting outside of our profession, our work with GALA this year will help to expand awareness of the importance of interpreting inside the language services industry. In addition to the special think! Interpreting track at GALA's 2013 Business of Language conference in Istanbul, Turkey in March, we kick off our collaboration with GALA with this upcoming webinar focusing on The Interpreting Market.
After decades of relatively static growth, interpreting is growing far beyond its origins and struggling to adapt to new market demands and new technological delivery platforms. The language services industry is seeing explosive demand for smooth, seamless multilingual communication, as end users care less and less about how their communication needs are met and more and more about being able to communicate in a growing number of scenarios. Join us, Barry Slaughter Olsen and Katharine Allen, for this informative webinar to learn how the interpreting market is relevant to your language service company.
