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TRANSLATION AND LOCALIZATION
Anthony PymUniversitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona, Spain
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Visible localization:
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Partial localization:
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D-day localization
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What is localization? Localization: taking a product and
tailoring it to an individual local market (i.e. ‘locale’).
Translation: converting user-visible natural-language strings from one language to another.
Localization = translation + factor X.
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What is factor X? Internationalization (e.g. character
encoding) Adaptation (e.g. dates, time, currency
conventions) product reengineering product testing project management.
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Don’t think like this:
ST TT
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Think like this:
ST TT1Interlingua
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Language technicians focus on...
Controlled writing field-specific concept mapping multilingual documentation use of multilingual translation memories integration of MT project management?
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1. Diversity at Microsoft:
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Welcome to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s most acclaimed large-vocabulary continuous-speech dictation system. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking you can dictate to your computer instead of using the computer to enter and revise text.
2. Linearity at Dragon:
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Welcome to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s most acclaimed large-vocabulary continuous-speech dictation system. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking you can dictate to your computer instead of typing.
Two pages later:
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Welcome to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s most acclaimed large-vocabulary continuous-speech dictation system. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking you can compose e-mail messages, create reports, draft letters, edit proposals, and more, all by speaking to your computer instead of typing.
And again:
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This means: Texts become ‘information objects’. They lose linearity (we read with the
Find function). The discourse producer has no locale. Text production is also non-linear
(modifications and updates). Localization extends what is done in the
source language.
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Globalization at Ikea:
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In Malaysia:
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In Greece:
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In Poland:
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Globalization at Ikea:
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In Germany:
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In France:
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In Hong Kong:
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This means: The most global product is the most
symbolically domesticated. There is a clear professional distinction
between natural-language replacement (‘translation’) and complete localization.
The dehumanizing processes are at the level of natural-language replacement.
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Work space at DejaVu...
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This means: Translators are being separated from
the most lucrative IT techniques of localization.
Translators are being separated from the most humanizing marketing techniques.
We remain mere technicians.
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