Do you remember the vehicle ad campaign in the early sixties “Think Small”? It was a great campaign to catch the American market’s eye for the tiny Volkswagen Beetle. And it worked. VW Beetles may be small, but the company is anything but that. With nearly 10% of the global automobile market and 49 production sites, Volkswagen produces Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT and Skoda in addition to the VW line.

Along comes Across. With their Language Server, Across is making major inroads in the market as an independent technology provider, just when we thought that was a difficult thing to do. And a major inroad was announced last week: Volkswagen is going to implement Language Server from Across Systems, GmbH.

Just three years ago, we received press releases about how TRADOS was being used at VW and now VW is changing over. Is this a blip on the screen? An anomaly? Judging by other recent announcements from Across, I think not. They are evidently thinking large.

Issues like cultural misalignment, lack of localized features, dismal translation quality, wrong platform emphasis, and more, are all covered.  For example, the writer, Serkan Toto laments the lack of optimized versions of MySpace and Facebook for Japanese mobile users:

Millions of Japanese are accustomed to using one thumb, a dialpad and a jog dial on their phones when accessing the web during their commutes to school and work. In this country, the mobile web is bigger than the PC web.

And again, we hear about the presence of a local offering that’s holding its own: Mixi

Mixi, the country’s biggest social network, positioned itself as a tool for communicating at a distance through diaries and communities to meet like-minded members. It doesn’t primarily exist to make new friends (poking is restricted) or as a platform for public self-presentation.

A basic reading of the Pew Internet and American Life Project tells us that American boys and girls don’t even use social networking the same way, so why would people in different countries be expected to behave the same, without even a pause for thought?

Why companies continue to make such mistakes amazes me.

I know this is a subject close to many of your hearts (including Laurel’s), and you can listen to the entire program here.

The discussion centers on Haitham Jasim, one such translator, who has now moved his family to San Jose, and introduces us to Operation Falcon, a non-profit devoted to bringing translators like Jasim to the U.S. The phone-in section includes the concerns of citizens of the U.S. struggling in a declining economy, so it’s a well-rounded discussion.

By the way, it’s really great to be back in the Bay Area.

Amazing growth. A testament to the pervasiveness of the Google message, but also Unicode.

Fantastic.

The report is well worth a read, ‘though some of it is not that surprising given the size of the market and what we know from other developing nations about the “bypass” impact of cell phones and how other phenomena of technology adoption can change communication and business patterns:

“Where most American netizens still rely on emails to communicate with each other, their Chinese counterparts use IM and web 2.0 applications.”

It appears there are three categories of Chinese user: little emperors, reform beneficiaries, and frugal middle-agers (this stuff must have lost something in translation).

However, the report is largely business driven (Really? The BCG?). Despite claims that with “many activities such as IM and blogging, China is more advanced than the United States and other Western economies” we’re not told about how the participative social side of Web 2.0 and what the French call “contenu auto-créé” are impacted by the state’s censorship.

And I’ve love to know how many of those “web 2.0 applications” (it would be more helpful if they were named) are localized and to what extent. I am guessing quite a lot, and that as we have seen from search engine market growth in China, local app offerings rule the day.

See also John Yunker’s posting on iPhone localization opportunities, by the way.

If you have an Irish name, say “Liam Ó Maonlaí”, then you might expect U.S. authorities (whatever about the population) to mangle your name thus:

* Liam OMaonlai (IRS/DMV: Don’t do accents, apostrophes, or spaces)
* Liam O’Maonlai (Department of State: Don’t do accents).
* Liam O. Maonlai (telephone providers, insurance, etc, immediately giving you a middle initial. I always liked to insist on a trailing “VI” everytime they did this to me).

The Social Security people get it right: Liam Ó Maonlaí (ironically, the SSN itself tracks you anyway).

But now, the Irish themselves are at it. And worse, they’re managing to combine apostrophes with the accent on the “O” (known as a fada or síneadh fada in Irish):  Liam Ó’Maonlaí

(photo taken in The Coombe, Dublin, 25-June).

So, the next time you hear an Irish person knocking how Americans say “Ma-Hone-E” instead of “Mah-On-E” for “Mahony”, ask them to spell the name of the former lead singer of the Hot House Flowers.

Anyway, you can see and hear what Murray (Maurice to his friends) has to say in about a common ancestor for languages in this video from TED 2007:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/276

This is an interesting perspective, though as all Irish people know, language begins and ends with James Joyce.

Check out the other videos there too.

Apparently, it’s the capital letter equivalent of ß, which up to now has been taken care of (in Germany) by use of two “S” letters instead, because only a small letter ß exists.

They’d been trying to kill the case for the thing off for years, but now, the “German Norms Institute (DIN) ...proposed a capital ß to the International Organisation for Standardisation and, on Monday, the letter became standard - with ISO 10646.” The article quotes an excited Dr Günter of the German Language Council:

"We are not responsible for letters, but for keeping an eye on spelling and to make sure rules are followed. Whether there is a need for this letter is a question that remained unanswered for centuries. It’s likely to remain that way for a while to come.”

Anyway, I couldn’t find much about on the Internet as to what this new letter even looks like, or is supposed to look like. Maybe someone knows?

Yes: Someone did (see the comments too):

(WikiPedia has Unicode details too. Hat Tip: Will)

To read more about it, you’ll need an Irish Times paid subscription (don’t bother, it’s not worth getting streßed about).

Will this lead to a mad updating of translation memories, I wonder?

The Chinese site can be accessed by going directly to zh-cn.facebook.com. However, this takes me to an English logon screen (presumably because of my Irish IP address), and then logging in with my usual details makes me think this Chinese version is rendered from a single global instance that’s just been cross-mounted with a .CN domain.

However, it does not - unlike other “international versions” - allow for “social translation” (see the “Translations” options in the following screen shot):

You can get the Chinese UI by simply switching your language option. Go to account > Language.

Hhmmmmm.....

Continuing the latter theme, I draw your attention to the new release of WebbIE - which is also available in French, Spanish, Estonian, Polish and Greek. WebbIE is a free browser for users who have visual impairments or are completely blind.  It’s a a free web browser, and pod-catcher, podcast downloader, accessible version of the BBC’s iPlayer (note that you need to be in the UK to get certain programs), Gutenberg Library, BBC’s Listen Again Player, Web Directory, accessible PDF reader, RSS reader, and a bunch more.

Check it out.

* However, JavaScript is not inaccessible. This myth is shattered by this book; a resource I encourage all interested parties to read.