Saving money - or rather, spending your translation budget effectively - is more important than ever.

Leading XML guru Sarah O'Keefe recently published an article on Efficient Multilingual Workflows, which might equally well be called How to save money by using XML when translating and publishing your company's documentation.

Sarah and I had some interesting and wide-ranging discussions about XML when she was writing the article, and her article kindly quotes my views on how you can save costs in the translation cycle through the effective use of XML to reduce DTP costs. Click here to read Sarah O'Keefe's article.

A pencil sharpener: That's how I think of next weekend's "Style Matters" workshop, organised by the Scottish network of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

I'm a technical translator by original training, with a full set of professional qualifications (starting with a degree in languages, then moving on to membership of two professional bodies, including passing relevant professional exams in both organisations). Yup, translators have professional qualifications, too!

But these days, most of my time is spent actually running a translation company in England. So whilst I spend a lot of time on quality assurance matters (from initial translator recruitment, through to training issues, to workflow management and final QA checks before we return completed translations to clients), I get to spend very little time actually translating.

That's the appeal of professional development days for translators. I get to translate. Better yet, I get to translate alongside other professionals, with constructive feedback.

It helps keep me at the top of my game. It makes sure my pencil stays sharp. Whatever line of work we are in, it is always good to stay fresh!

String concatenation used to be a big issue in the translation world, once upon a long ago. Programmers would insert variables into the middle of a sentence in their software strings, not realising that pluralisation in other languages involves more than sticking the letter S on the end of a word. But I thought that era was past, most programmers now know better, and internationalise their applications from the start. Based on some comments I heard at the recent ITI Conference in London, it appears that it is sometimes still an issue, so I am re-posting some old notes on the subject.

If we look at sentence structures in different languages, it quickly becomes clear that string concatenation is bound to result in problems in at least one language. Some languages, such as German, require the verb to be at the end of the sentence. Some require different structures for negative constructions (think of ne ... pas in French), other languages require adjective agreement for gender and even for different cases.

Back in 1997 in a "Global from Day One" article in Byte, the authors made the point that stringing together the local string for "file", the local string for "error", and the local string for "has occurred" may not give the local string for "file error has occurred". Hall quotes the example of "%d long green blade(s) of grass", and points out that in many languages the adjectives ("long" and "green") must reflect the number used in the variable. He also gives an example in Polish, showing that plural agreements are not always as simple as one might think:

1 red armchair 1 czerwony fotel

2, 3, 4 red armchairs 2, 3, 4 czerwone fotele

5-20 red armchairs 5-20 cerwonych foteli

Well-intentioned programmers often used to try to save space by using variables in strings, rather than creating a number of similar complete strings that have to be stored for calling up by the program. Unfortunately, this approach often does not work across different languages. For example, in Developing International Software for Windows 95 and Windows NT, Nadine Kano gives the example of the following three sentences:

• "Not enough memory to open the file FileName1."
• "Not enough memory to save the file FileName1."
• "Not enough memory to spellcheck the file FileName1."

Let's have a look at what happens when we translate these sentences into German, and notice how the italicised variables move around (they do not all follow the same pattern):

• "Nicht genug Speicher, um DateiName1 zu öffnen."
• "Nicht genug Speicher, um DateiName1 zu speichern."
• "Nicht genug Speicher für Rechtschreibprüfung von DateiName1."

Most books and articles on this subject strongly recommend storing each sentence in its entirety, and I would fully endorse that approach.

Conference time: I am speaking at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting's International Conference in London this weekend, which will be a lot of fun.

I'm involved in two things at the ITI Conference.

Firstly, I'm taking part in a panel discussion on Customer Service in the translation profession, which I'm sure will be a lively and interesting discussion.

And secondly, I'm telling people about the ITI's PSG course, which is an online course that teaches business skills to professional translators.

A quick overview of features in the new MemoQ 3.5: Kevin Lossner in Berlin has kindly posted a short review of the new features in MemoQ's new version 3.5. This is a major update to the MemoQ translation memory tool, particularly their new sub-segment matching feature. If you are interested in translation technology, and in the tools that professional translators use in their work, then do have a read of Kevin's article.

Communicating well with your staff is essential for any business. So I was interested to read an article on the American Bar Association's website about a court case in France where a company was sued for failing to provide French employees with information in their own language (French). The company in question provided internal documentation in English only - and the French courts duly ruled that this was inappropriate. (At the time of writing, the company is appealing against this legal decision.)

Without wishing to criticise the company in question, it amazes me that any company would not want to communicate clearly with their own staff. Am I old-fashioned in thinking that your staff are your company's greatest asset? And in thinking that making them feel valued is important for a company's success?

15 minutes of fame: The ITI conference is approaching, and Sarah Dillon has interviewed me as part of her series of interviews with people who are speaking at the ITI Conference in 2009. See http://www.dillonslattery.com/2009/05/experts-in-the-industry-nick-rosenthal-salftrans.html#more-414

Website translations: Clients often ask me if they can have a look at some translations that our SalfTrans team have translated. So we've updated our website to include some more links to websites that we have translated.

"Never let the cock beat loose.... ". There, that got your attention, didn't it? But I bet it didn't quite get your attention in the way you'd like to grasp the attention of your customers when they read your product manual, did it?

Kevin Lossner, a translator based in Berlin, quotes this lovely example of shoddy translation on his blog at http://simmer-lossner.blogspot.com/2009/03/never-let-cock-beat-loose.html

Next time somebody offers you a cheap translation, stop and think. Are you sure that is what you really want?

ITI's West Midlands Regional Group (www.iti-wmg.org.uk) have very kindly invited me to speak to them in October 2009 on Customer Service, which is one of my pet topics. This will be part of a one-day training seminar for translators, and will be held on a Saturday in October 2009, probably at Aston University.

A lot of translators don't realise how important customer service is. Fortunately, there are a lot who do! The old "I don't do customer service, I just translate" attitude is dying out, replaced with a brighter, chirpier, more proactive generation of translators (although in fairness, I know some very "mature" translators who also give excellent customer service to their clients).

I spoke at a West Midlands regional group event a couple of years ago, and the day received a lot of positive feedback. Equally importantly, it was tremendous fun!

Where foreign-language teaching in Britain is going wrong: I was shcoked ( but not suprised) to see an article on the BBC News website today which claims that teachers of modern languages are being trained to use scripting to help kids pass oral exams in French or German or Spanish. Nothing wrong with that. My teachers taught me how to pass the exams, too. But they taught me how to do so on a basis of understanding, or responding appropriately by showing I had understood the question. Now, it seems, the whole thing can be scripted, with questions asked in an order that the child knows in advance:



He suggested getting pupils to learn and rehearse phrases which showed their ability to use a verb properly and then to ask questions in a particular order which elicited those phrases, interspersed with others that required "Oui" as the response.


He said it was also important that the pupil knew the order the questions would come up.



I would go so far as to suggest that while this may help kids to pass language exams, it contributes absolutely nothing to giving them the language skills or confidence that they need if they wish to travel, or to be effective in the modern international business world.



And I shake my head, sadly.

It is good to see the program for the Institute of Translation and Interpreting's Conference in May 2009 taking shape. They now have speaker details listed at http://iti-conference.org.uk/conference-2009/content/view/18/54/

I will be participating in a panel discussion on customer service, and also giving a short presentation about a professional development course for translators that ITI runs. It promises to be a fun conference!