The way we see things

Lately, our teams have been working hard on an extremely large collection of content for a high-profile client. With so many people involved on the same large project, our biggest priority is to have a workflow to implement edits and ensure consistency across all files of this project from start to finish. With that high volume of content, we were definitely maximizing every possible tool and skill: glossary development, the development of content databases, adherence to client style guides or requests, and multi-step process by which to net potential errors.

(1) Implementing a style guide

First in our arsenal of tools is a style guide – a set of agreed-upon guidelines for the project that we send out to our talented linguists. Not all projects have one, but for the larger projects or for more high-profile clients, the requester often provides instructions or a style guide to define tone, terminology, punctuation, capitalization, formatting, and other characteristics of content. Multiple hands means that variations in translating/writing style and word use are inevitable but manageable – as long as every person involved is sticking by the same rules.

(2) Computer-assisted QA

After translation, we're able to apply a customizable QA process that helps a language specialist or linguist cross-check thousands (or tens of thousands) of words to look for various possible errors or inconsistencies. We run this initial QA after translation and editing are complete. It searches for the following error types, among others, and flags each for resolution by a human: 

• whether non-translatable terms indeed stayed un-translated. We maintain lists of items that are not to be translated under certain contexts, or not to be translated at all.
• whether specialized terms were translated consistently throughout. Glossaries allow us to mutually settle on a particular translation for a particular term – and to enforce its use.
• whether forbidden terms have been used. The same way our tools check for the correct term, they can flag erroneous terms, which are presented to the user to fix.
• whether the proper tags and code have been replicated (in the correct places) in the target language content
• whether character formatting has been replicated in the target language content
• whether capitalization matches. This could vary by language depending on the unique capitalization rules of that particular language, or the complete lack of capitalization (in languages such as Chinese that use script characters).

*Client feedback: Some clients request that content be transmitted to them for their team(s)' final review, before it goes to the Glyph design/multimedia team for publishing and implementation.

(3) Final visual QA before delivery

After computer-assisted QA and, if applicable, after the client has had a look, content moves to the design/multimedia team, which handles the presentation of each project in the target language. This could mean layout and publishing, voiceover and video engineering, or other preparation in final file format.

After design, the final product gets 1-2 more sets of eyes for a visual QA. We look at the source and target files side-by-side, with content in its natural habitat, to look for remaining changes. During this post-design QA, we are also able to look at the entire forest instead of just trees... aiming for consistency across a large collection and, as necessary, make edits to our content databases for future implementation. 

So the other week, Anagram Manager was looking around for our chief tech officer (the Code Commander) to ask him a nerdy question. The question? Why the Save button still has a disk image even though there is no more floppy disk in the equation.

We talked about the idea of an item made to have characteristics that are old, expensive or obsolete...Turns out it's called a skeuomorph, which refers to the new object that has these features of the old. A tangible skeuomorph might be a metal cafeteria table with artificial wood finish, or a chandelier might have flame-shaped light bulbs. There is no functional use for the flame shape in a light bulb.

Skeuomorphism has also been applied to digital design – as a symbol that communicates something's function based on existing understanding. Fake knobs and sliders, fake textural backgrounds, etc.. mimic the real thing (This guy calls them digital metaphors).

The upside is that we recognize these objects in real life, so that we'd find it comforting or at least less abstract than some unrelated gesture. In Adobe InDesign, for print publishing, there are times when mousing over images in certain ways will give you focus semicircles like in the viewfinders of classic film cameras.

But instead of swiping your finger to turn the page, would it ever be OK to turn a dial? What if your clock showed time in the form of colored squares? What if instead of scroll bars, your browser showed you a less useful metaphor – such as a percentage, a scatterplot, or a game of hangman? It makes me wonder: First of all, what is the threshold of abstraction at which a metaphor does not communicate the creator's intent? Secondly, is the relevance or functionality of a metaphor socially constructed? Do we expect scroll bars simply because that's what's always been there, or are they really that logical? Thirdly, is abstractness relative? (Do different people feel differently about metaphors, influenced by our personal experiences with abstraction?)

Then again, skeuomorphs also take up space and provide functions that are sometimes unnecessary. Blogger and software developer James Higgs wrote in one of his posts, "I detest these new apps. Why? Simply put: it's because they are lies. They attempt to comfort us (to patronise us) by trying to show how they relate to physical objects in the real world when there is no need"... Here's more discussion about Apple software UI, written by the founder of MacStories.net.

For the longest time, a friend of mine passed on the cell phone and only kept a landline – with a vintage Bell handset. He's a very tech-savvy information architect living in Portland, the convergence of vastly different worlds, where a happy boy running around in nature grows up to become a genius in abstract data modeling.

Landline recently sold his beautiful silver convertible, put all his things in storage, and went for a two-month surfing sabbatical in Central America without many belongings or concerns. Back home now in the States, he's readjusting and re-acclimating to urban pace. 

We've been talking lately about our existential struggle with western material life. It might be an imaginary problem for most people, but the thought of having "too much stuff" tends to bother me every day. We talked a lot about actively maintaining a slow outflow just to stay net-zero – like Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass, who travels past hills that become valleys and moves forward just to make the world stand still.

'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

Having an average American home raises an even bigger material challenge because there's no lack of space/no pressure to purge, Landline explained. And then, there are the "house things" you need to own because the house requires them.

These conversations we have (spiritual communions) are simultaneously full of comfort and angst. I haven't asked about my friend's adventures in Central America – hikes, waves, animals, public transit, and other crazy encounters. I've been more interested in the aftermath of how such trips bring radical personal growth. He seems even more existentially unfulfilled than when he'd left, finding discomfort in social expectation about how one ought to hurtle through time and space.... that one ought to pursue a particular career structure, settle by a certain age, maintain a home in one city and fill it with useful or attractive objects. We discover that the unsettled feelings never leave. They just get duller after months and years.

George Carlin's "Stuff" routine (*contains 4 expletives)

A couple nights after my best girlfriend had surgery, I visited as her first human contact in 48 hours. She had been resting at home and fuzzy on painkillers. 

"I am stir crazy," she said in a recent text. "I enjoy the challenge and beauty of being my own best company, but when healing it is quite the opposite and I find it hard to be alone."

Visiting was a spiritual communion, the exchange of long hugs and a tea party. We were little old ladies again under a blanket on the couch, talking for hours about human experience.

Our conversations do get me thinking about human need. Despite human need to reach out to others an be understood, there are a myriad of voluntary and involuntary ways in which we cut off communication with others and with our environments. On the voluntary side there are solo hobbies, camping, retreats and vows of silence. There's a grey area that includes spaces such as hospitalization where, despite the company of professionals and strangers, patients spend a lot of time alone. Then there's the rare extreme of longer-term isolation...such as field research, walkabout, or solitary confinement.

Perhaps less need- and location-based, there's also the transition of communication methods: quitting Facebook, getting rid of a cell phone, or moving to a different city. I tend to fluctuate between periods of isolation and periods of sensory overload. There is a cycle in which I gravitate toward gatherings and intimacy and then push it all away when it becomes overwhelming.

How long can a person go without human communication without going mad? How long can a person keep up the necessary workarounds?

When is the longest you have gone without communication with others, and how was that experience? Have you ever tried to quit Facebook? 

Last season, while the rest of the world was telephoning, texting and interwebbing, USA won gold at the world championship of Morse code. This was in the pileup category, in which a participant listens to a mix of several ongoing messages at different volumes and speeds.

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) puts on the High Speed Telegraphy World Championship every odd-numbered year, this recent one having taken place in Bielefeld, Germany. Participants transmit and receive Morse code messages as quickly as humanly possible in different competitive categories, under these rules).

Morse might seem difficult, but a statistical research project shows that frequently used letters do have shorter codes. The long-term goal of an operator, according to this relatively popular telegraphy guide, is to eventually reach a point of understanding the series of long and short sounds as naturally as if they were words. Here's a quick demo:

Technically, Morse and Braille differ from language because they are not massive environments of interdependent symbols, symbols by which to understand and transmit our thoughts. These codes are simply a means to transcribe and/or transmit segments in existing languages. Because of their relationship/integration with existing language, though, even though Morse is "just a code", personal style manifests itself. For example, the personalities and communication habits of World War II radio operators would leak into their work, sometimes making it possible to tell their identities and locations merely by receiving their messages and guessing at form or cadence.

And if users of American Sign Language also develop their own slang and personal styles, is ASL a language or a code? Drawing boundaries around the definition of a language is a tricky subject because the answer really depends on whom you ask.

Recent years of telephone and Internet use have left Morse code by the wayside. The FCC eliminated Morse code in 2003 from the FCC exam requirements for amateur radio service, as "the public interest is not served by requiring facility in Morse Code when the trend in amateur communications is to use voice and digital technologies for exchanging messages."

There are few remaining modern uses –Morse code has made its way into assistive technology for people in rehabilitation settings or with special needs – for example, those who cannot use communication devices that require the voice (one such Morse device is the TandemMaster). Even in such settings, Morse code is becoming less and less useful as newer assistive technology becomes available.

When all else falls away, the telegraph remains an art piece. Telegraphy still belongs to a romantic steampunk aesthetic – one that unites time-traveling and futuristic technology with the brass, leather, and gears of the H.G. Wells and Thomas Edison era. We're far from consumer editions of a telegraph to transcribe your thoughts, but somewhere, there at least are instructions to make one that delivers your RSS feed...in Morse. 

If you use more than one language keyboard on your computer or iPhone, you may have encountered a sometimes humorous, sometimes annoying phenomenon: the auto-correct feature misinterpreting your intentions. 

Usually the auto-correct function works to my advantage – for instance, it just added the letter ‘a’ before ‘ge’ in the word ‘advantage’ because I had neglected to hit the ‘a’ key hard enough.

However, the English auto-correct feature occasionally finds my combination of letters so odd that it decides it cannot possibly help me – and that the best solution is to shift whatever I type into Korean Hangeul.

Interestingly, it does not seem to care whether or not my Hangeul typing makes any sense. For example, if I mistype the word ‘short’ in English by omitting the ‘o’, my computer politely (i.e. without asking me or making a fuss) changes my impossible combination of letters ‘shrt’, into a possible but nonsensical combination in Hangeul, ‘녻’.  

Unfortunately, this does not work vice versa on my computer. If I enter a series of impossible Hangeul letters, my computer – again, politely – lets me carry on typing nonsense and does not switch me back into English.

Those of you with iPhones, who use the English keyboard to send text messages, are familiar with the iPhone’s helpful offers to either correct or finish typing your word, based on what knows to be statistically most likely. If you happen to use keyboards of various languages, however, and neglect to change from one to the other on the iPhone, you may end up transmitting some unintended, ‘interpretative’ translations.

On my iPhone, I have 5 keyboards installed: English, French, Italian, Korean and Spanish. The iPhone will not switch my current keyboard but makes likely spelling suggestions based on that current keyboard.

Unlike on my computer, I do have the option of refusing the suggested word – assuming I catch the misguided guess soon enough – but hitting the space bar is interpreted as a sign of acceptance and the suggestion enters my text, like it or not.

This can have comical results. If I forget that I have selected the French keyboard, and I am typing the English word ‘does’, the iPhone thinks I must mean ‘dors’ – the 2^nd person singular familiar form of ‘sleep’. ‘Just’ becomes ‘jus’ – ‘juice’ in French. ‘The’ is misinterpreted as another beverage, ‘thé’ for ‘tea’.

An Italian keyboard interprets the English ‘please’ to be ‘pelasse’ – the 3^rd person singular imperfect subjunctive form of the verb ‘pelare’, which has many translations in English: to pluck, to shave one’s head, or to fleece (interestingly, ‘to fleece’ has the same figurative, idiomatic meaning as it does in English – to cheat someone).

If, though, I have the English keyboard selected but happen to be typing Spanish text and enter ‘lleguen’ – subjunctive form for ‘they arrive’, in English – the proposed English word is ‘lowdown’…

Accidental language gems, such as the above, are often found in translation. New technology, especially in the form of apps and other devices that support multiple languages, is a great self-generating source of unintended, cross-cultural linguistic fun. What have you ‘found in translation’ recently via some new technology that you’d like to share?

Five years ago, as a newsroommate, I would have said that RPG stood for rocket-propelled grenade. 

Glyph is getting more and more game-oriented as time goes on. It started as a group of verbivores (pretty much everybody who works here now is bilingual or more), but now the most common second languages here are technology, the mobilizing of skill, the efficient transmission of data, and smart information design. The work demands it – translation projects have gotten more media-complex.

We're making really big toasters, many of them for game developers. L10n Tamer (director of localization) describes us as taking things apart, sending the content out to be translated, then reassembling and testing everything when it's finished.

I used to take games for granted. I used to say they were a waste of time, despite previously spending hours in high school playing Super Mario. I never saw the elegance behind the machine until I stumbled upon various aspects of game design via Google – aspects such as simulating the avoidance behavior of a fake crowd, the demand for royalty-free "art assets" for homebrew game developers, or the use of artificial intelligence to create challenging gameplay environments (a bit technical, but a great discussion from International Journal of Computer Games Technology). Hello, Mr. Minsky, we haven't forgotten about you after all.

I'm learning that we play because it lets us explore, escape, solve, orchestrate, vent, experience the absurd, practice and refine... in-home gaming is part of an arc of history [some say] killed off the video arcade, while deniers reminisce and other research shows it's simply evolved to suit changing times.

Game development has changed so much over the past 3+ decades. Here's a gallery from between 1990 and 2008 alone, showing the progression of graphic design. It's astounding to me how extremely simple games such as Akalabeth (1980) were entertaining, but perhaps even the simplest games hook people for the same reason that Haruki Murakami keeps people reading....creates frustration in the reader, in addition to creating elegant backstory or neediness in the plot.

Here's a clip from 1980 of the aforementioned Akalabeth. I guess this is how gaming used to be.

Compare this with a very old version of Everquest, from 1996, or with the latest installment of Elder Scrolls. Elder Scrolls Skyrim came out on 11/11/11:

The last thing I expected to do with my weekend was to attend an 8-bit blip-electronica festival in a Portland video arcade. Micropalooza is a chiptunes show: Musicians hook vintage Game Boys to loop pedals and digital synthesizers, to create music that is based on classic gaming sounds.

The two-part festival took place at Jupiter Hotel and then Ground Kontrol – a video arcade, drinkspot, and music venue on Couch Street just a few blocks in from the Willamette River.

Most of the first floor is a maze of video arcade machines – familiar ones such as Star Wars, Pac-Man, Galaga, etc... and an array of square seats [pixels! Tetris blocks!] beside tables lining the window and back wall. The second floor is two balconies' worth of pinball machines. The bathroom floors are microtile mosaics of Pac-Man ghosts and the sinks have pastel lights.

The music was bright, blippy and danceable, set to Warholized neon game images or video static projected onto a screen.

The genre aims for "...creative transforming and repurposing of technology that resonates widely in contemporary gaming and computing cultures. To produce music in the ways we document reflects a preference derived from, but no longer limited to, games." (Kevin Driscoll and Joshua Diaz, published 2009 in the journal Transformative Works and Cultures. This is a very complete overview of the history of the genre). It's also rather big in Japan.

Video footage of the 2011 fest don't seem to be available yet, but Mechlo (Matt Hunter) came back to perform this year...below is an excerpt from his set in 2010. It's really dark, but you can sometimes see what he's holding... Listen for what sounds like Super Mario coming out of a pipe. 

Inside Facebook posted the growth rate of Facebook's Top Language growth in August.  While still the smallest in overall numbers, Arabic's growth shot ahead of Portuguese, last month's top growing language.

Inside Facebook posted the growth rate of Facebook's Top 10 Languages on July 28.  Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish, and French have July's top growth rates.