Trajectory, a digital distributor and technology developer, has developed a proprietary algorithm platform it claims will take book recommendations to a new level of accuracy and utility. After scanning the text of a book, Trajectory claims its technology can deliver better keywords and book recommendations to its clients in the bookselling, library and school markets.
Trajectory is now offering commercial access to its Natural Language Processing Engine, a series of “deep learning algorithms,” said Trajectory CEO Jim Bryant, that will deliver a “big step forward in book discovery”—the ability to connect readers to desirable books they don’t already know about. The technology, he said, effectively maps and displays the personality of a book which can then be compared to other books.
The Translation and Localization Conference 2015, taking place in Warsaw on the 27-28 March 2015, would like to invite all IAPTI colleagues: translators, interpreters, terminologists and other linguists, to take part in their event.
As IAPTI is one of their partners, the organisers are offering a special 10% discount to all IAPTI members attending the conference. All you have to do is register and include “Member of partner organization, IAPTI” in the comments section on the registration form. You’ll surely see some familiar faces in the program! We’re pleased to have some IAPTI authorities presenting at the conference: Attila Piróth, Marta Stelmaszak and Valeria Aliperta.
Learn more about the conference program and activities and register here: http://www.translation-conference.com/register/. If you have any questions, contact the TLC organisers: info@translation-conference.com.
While typing a message, the computer you’re working on identifies the language you use instantly. As part of his PhD project, Binyam Gebrekidan Gebre trained a computer program to perform the same trick on sign languages. Language recognition is the first step for automatic translations of videos.
To study sign languages – natural languages that use hands, facial and body movements to convey meaning – large data collections are needed. Transcription of videos is very time consuming though and therefore very expensive. The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen set up a project to automate sign language transcription.
What’s an expletive, and is it bad? There are several types of expletives, and though some may be considered offensive, others merely signal passive sentence construction or a perhaps desirable vagueness.
Readers of a certain age may recall, during the Watergate scandal, references to “expletive deleted” in discussions of audiotape recordings of conversations between Richard Nixon and certain government officials: Profanity (lots of it) was censored when the recordings were prepared for court proceedings. At that time, “expletive deleted” entered the lexicon as an ironic reference to profanity.
This phrase derives from the linguistic definition of expletive, which comes from the Latin term explere, meaning “to fill”; it refers to a meaningless word. “Expletive deleted” denotes the omission of a potentially offensive word, but that’s not the only usage of expletive.
Back in November 2014, Skype launched a preview of Skype Translator, which will aim to provide real-time translation of conversations in over 40 languages. Hot on its heels, Google has now updated its own app to include an instant interpreting function using voice recognition, as well as an impressive translation feature which utilises a phone’s camera to automatically translate text viewed through the lens.
Long gone are the days of trying to decipher the unusual looking dishes on foreign menus – now all you have to do is hover your phone above the page and receive an instant translation. Here at Web-Translations, we’ve given the app a quick road test using three major tourist preoccupations: warning signs, tourist information and those all important menus. Take a look at how we got on below.
By 2115 about 90% of the languages in the world will be extinct, according to the prediction of a linguist from an American university. This means that what would remain will be about 600 languages. The reasons given for the possible situation are the inability of parents to teach their native languages to their children and because of globalization, as cultures tend to be fragmented when people migrate to new lands. The prediction was revealed by Dr. John McWhorter, who is a music, philosophy and American studies expert at Columbia University.
Do you cringe when a talking head pronounces “niche” as NITCH? Do you get bent out of shape when your teenager begins a sentence with “and,” or says “octopuses” instead of “octopi”?
Do you think British spellings are more “civilised” than the American versions? Would you bet the bank that “jeep” got its start as a military term and “SOS” as an abbreviation for “Save Our Ship”?
The author take us wherever myths lurk, from the Queen’s English to street slang, from Miss Grundy’s admonitions to four-letter unmentionables. This eye-opening romp will be the toast of grammarphiles and the salvation of grammarphobes.
Whenever the topic of data comes up at meetings or informal conversations it doesn’t take long for people’s eyes to glaze over. The subject is usually considered so complex and esoteric that only a few technically-minded geeks find value in the details. This easy dismissal of data is a real problem in the modern business world because so much of what we know about customers and products is codified as information and stored in corporate databases. Without a high level of data literacy this information sits idle and unused.
Data is simply something you want to remember (a concept I borrowed from an article by Rob Karel). Examples might include: