Localization Today

Educators in dual-language immersion programs across the United States are calling on the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to improve language access on the company’s Praxis teacher-certification exam.

Translated, a Rome, Italy-based language service provider (LSP), announced May 19 that it has finalized plans to merge with the machine translation (MT) provider ModernMT.

A recent study published in the journal  IEEE Access  is shining light on ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) tools can be used to assess the quality of a human-created translation.

Netflix is making it easier for everyone to enjoy its content — on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, no less.

RWS shares declined sharply this morning as Baring Private Equity Asia Fund VIII (BPEA) announced that it would not be making an offer for the language services provider (LSP).

Since the 1960s Manhattan’s Chinatown has featured bilingual street signs, but recently these signs have begun to disappear.

It looks like the next group of professionals to hone their understanding of corpus linguistics could be lawyers.

Earlier this week, Google announced that its machine translation (MT) platform, Google Translate, will now offer 24 more languages.

Earlier this month, Meta announced the development of its large language model Open Pretrained Transformer (OPT-175B), which has been trained on 175 billion parameters from public datasets. 

A bill in the Louisiana State Senate could allow schools to offer programming languages in place of a foreign language.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that its Reading Progress tool — a free platform that allows teachers to assess students’ reading progress — will include Ukrainian in its list of available languages.

There is an increasing call for interpreters and bilingual speakers, but why is the word "certified" left out so often? Marjolein talks to Bill and Gabe — the founders of language testing company ParrotUSA about the meaning and importance of verified language skills today. 

There’s a new player in the content translation space. And thanks to an innovative new business model, HelloTranslate aims to make content translation more affordable for smaller players. 

A February article in  Business Insider Africa  listed the 10 largest African economies to invest in as of 2022. Those economies come with their own array of important African languages.

A Canadian Federal Court has ordered two airports in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador to pay thousands in damages for official language rights violations, stemming from complaints by language activist Michel Thibodeau. 

A 134-page report from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy warns researchers and policymakers alike against the potential dangers of large language models (LLMs), which have been  on the rise  in recent years.

A team of researchers at the University of Toronto has introduced a new framework for interpreting slang in natural language processing (NLP).

Beyond the theoretical definitions, the distinction between what we call a language and what we call a dialect gets a lot murkier very quickly. Quite often, politics play an important role in whether something gets labeled a language or a dialect.  

A team of  anonymous Chinese speakers  is attempting to shine light on misinformation and propaganda on Chinese-language social media. The group launched The Great Translation Movement in March 2022, gaining more than 145,000 followers in just a matter of weeks, in the hopes of “raising awareness about the state of public opinion in China.”

The supply of courtroom interpreters in Colorado isn’t the only thing that remains low — wages are too. According to the  Denver Post , the state’s courtroom interpreters are “among the lowest-paid in the nation.”

While the need for professional interpreters in settings like courtrooms,  healthcare institutions , and conferences has long been established, interpreters have been somewhat absent in the U.S. education system.

Recently, social media saw the birth of a whole new language coined Algospeak, employing code words and phrases to prevent posts from being removed, demoted in rank, or demonetized by automated content moderation systems. 

The New India Foundation (NIF) has launched a new fellowship promoting the translation from ten different Indian languages into English.

Recently, we highlighted five mistakes to avoid when planning and envisioning a localization project. But what about the pitfalls that arise when you get into the work of localizing content?

Confirmation that private equity firm Baring Private Equity Asia Fund VIII (BPEA) is eyeing a takeover of translation and localization juggernaut RWS sent the stock market into a tizzy Thursday.