The Inttranet is a multilingual portal for and global network of professional interpreters and translators, fully compatible with ISO 9001 quality assurance requirements, and was officially inaugurated in October 2002.
Its purpose is to provide all the functions required by professional interpreters and translators and the users of their services, and to enable access to those services in any language, in accordance with UNESCO's "Access to All" program.
Launched after two years of development, with input from the heads of the translation departments of UNESCO, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament (freelance section), and professional interpreters and translators from 26 countries, the portal is currently (2006) available in 33 languages, but has been designed to be translated and interoperable in any other.
One of the unique features of the Inttranet is the capacity to automatically display member CVs in the language of the visitor to the portal.
The portal also includes a multilingual terminology database (Terminal), compatible with ISO 12616, designed to store and share specific translation terms used by Inttranet members and their customers. It is capable of displaying the search interface as well as the source and target terms in any three different languages.
The Inttranet also comprises an external search system linked to Inttranet CVs that can be hosted as a piece of HTML code on any third-party website (Exttranet), thereby constituting a genuinely global (multilingual) search and display system for users of the services of professional interpreters and translators.
The portal was approved for inclusion in the UNESCO Observatory for the Information Society in January 2006.
A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”. Individual words are handled by terminology bases and are not within the domain of TM.
In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (BrE), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and technical requirements of a target locale. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by translating text and adding locale-specific components. Localization uses the infrastructure or flexibility provided by internationalization.
Cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) is a subfield of information retrieval dealing with retrieving information written in a language different from the language of the user's query. The term "cross-language information retrieval" has many synonyms, of which the following are perhaps the most frequent: cross-lingual information retrieval, translingual information retrieval, multilingual information retrieval. The term "multilingual information retrieval" refers more generally both to technology for retrieval of multilingual collections and to technology which has been moved to handle material in one language to another. The term Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) involves the study of systems that accept queries for information in various languages and return objects of various languages, translated into the user's language. Cross-language information retrieval refers more specifically to the use case where users formulate their information need in one language and the system retrieves relevant documents in another. To do so, most CLIR systems use various translation techniques. CLIR techniques can be classified into different categories based on different translation resources:
Computer-aided translation (CAT), also referred to as machine-assisted translation (MAT) or machine-aided human translation (MAHT), is the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation process. The translation is created by a human, and certain aspects of the process are facilitated by software; this is in contrast with machine translation (MT), in which the translation is created by a computer, optionally with some human intervention.
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final translation on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is a software interface for Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. This is achieved by running file system code in user space while the FUSE module provides only a "bridge" to the actual kernel interfaces.
Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google, to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an application programming interface that helps developers build browser extensions and software applications. As of May 2021, Google Translate supports 109 languages at various levels and as of April 2016, claimed over 500 million total users, with more than 100 billion words translated daily.
Language localisation is the process of adapting a product's translation to a specific country or region. It is the second phase of a larger process of product translation and cultural adaptation to account for differences in distinct markets, a process known as internationalisation and localisation.
WorldWideScience.org is a global science search engine designed to accelerate scientific discovery and progress by accelerating the sharing of scientific knowledge. Through a multilateral partnership, WorldWideScience.org enables anyone with internet access to launch a single-query search of national scientific databases and portals in more than 70 countries, covering all of the world's inhabited continents and over three-quarters of the world's population. From a user's perspective, WorldWideScience.org makes the databases act as if they were a unified whole.
Technical translation is a type of specialized translation involving the translation of documents produced by technical writers, or more specifically, texts which relate to technological subject areas or texts which deal with the practical application of scientific and technological information. While the presence of specialized terminology is a feature of technical texts, specialized terminology alone is not sufficient for classifying a text as "technical" since numerous disciplines and subjects which are not "technical" possess what can be regarded as specialized terminology. Technical translation covers the translation of many kinds of specialized texts and requires a high level of subject knowledge and mastery of the relevant terminology and writing conventions.
Telephone interpreting connects human interpreters via telephone to individuals who wish to speak to each other but do not share a common language. The telephone interpreter converts the spoken language from one language to another, enabling listeners and speakers to understand each other. Interpretation over the telephone most often takes place in consecutive mode, which means that the interpreter waits until the speaker finishes an utterance before rendering the interpretation into the other language.
Mobile translation is any electronic device or software application that provides audio translation. The concept includes any handheld electronic device that is specifically designed for audio translation. It also includes any machine translation service or software application for hand-held devices, including mobile telephones, Pocket PCs, and PDAs. Mobile translation provides hand-held device users with the advantage of instantaneous and non-mediated translation from one human language to another, usually against a service fee that is, nevertheless, significantly smaller than a human translator charges.
Microsoft Translator is a multilingual machine translation cloud service provided by Microsoft. Microsoft Translator is a part of Microsoft Cognitive Services and integrated across multiple consumer, developer, and enterprise products; including Bing, Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Lync, Yammer, Skype Translator, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Translator apps for Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone and Apple Watch, and Android phone and Android Wear.
Post-editing is the process whereby humans amend machine-generated translation to achieve an acceptable final product. A person who post-edits is called a post-editor. The concept of post-editing is linked to that of pre-editing. In the process of translating a text via machine translation, best results may be gained by pre-editing the source text – for example by applying the principles of controlled language – and then post-editing the machine output. It is distinct from editing, which refers to the process of improving human generated text. Post-edited text may afterwards be revised to ensure the quality of the language choices are proofread to correct simple mistakes.
TermWiki.com is a major social learning network that allows users to learn, discover, share, and store personal terms and glossaries in 1487 domains in 97 languages. The site emphasizes collaboration, with a forum, a question/answer module, messaging features that encourage user interaction, and discussion pages on each term. The personal profile page allows users to become fans of other users, add photos, and add links and post comments on other users recent activity. TermWiki also allows companies to conduct international ad campaigns on keyword terms, for improved SEO performance.
ISO 25964 is the international standard for thesauri, published in two parts as follows:
ISO 25964 Information and documentation - Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabulariesPart 1: Thesauri for information retrieval [published August 2011] Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies [published March 2013]
SDL MultiTerm is a terminology management tool, developed by SDL Plc, providing one solution to store and manage multilingual terminology.
In the context of information retrieval, a thesaurus is a form of controlled vocabulary that seeks to dictate semantic manifestations of metadata in the indexing of content objects. A thesaurus serves to minimise semantic ambiguity by ensuring uniformity and consistency in the storage and retrieval of the manifestations of content objects. ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 defines a content object as "any item that is to be described for inclusion in an information retrieval system, website, or other source of information". The thesaurus aids the assignment of preferred terms to convey semantic metadata associated with the content object.
The Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters is a non-profit professional association that was founded on April 16, 1955 in Brussels. The Chamber works to advance the profession and the recognition of specific skills and abilities of translators and interpreters in Belgium. It seeks to make players and users of translation and interpretation services more aware of the importance of quality and responsibility.
Lingotek is a cloud-based translation services provider, offering translation management software and professional linguistic services for web content, software platforms, product documentation and electronic documents.