10 posts and columns on English

Smartling, a Language Translation Engine for the Web, Raises $10 Million

in News on July 27, 2011 at 7:00 am PT

Ever thought that translation on the Web could be better? You’re not alone. Smartling, a New York-based start-up, aims to break down the Web’s language barriers.
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News Byte

Man, I Got So WikiLeaked Last Night

in News on December 21, 2010 at 12:23 pm PT

“WikiLeaks” has entered the canon of the English language, but not according to the OED. Research done by a group known as Global Language Monitor shows that “WikiLeaks” has appeared in global media more than 300 million times since 2006. The Texas-based group cites a minimum of 25,000 mentions in English-speaking media as a requirement for the name to become its own lowercase, generic word. Unfortunately, GLM doesn’t specify its definition or whether the word would be used as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.

D8 Tech Demo: Wordnik

in D8 on June 3, 2010 at 11:45 am PT

What does it all mean? For nine million words of the English language, Wordnik claims to have the answer. Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading.
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Connecting With Your Inner Earpiece

in The Digital Solution on January 19, 2010 at 4:17 pm PT

The new Jawbone Icon synchs with a PC to expand its voice-command capability and add personality to your Bluetooth device.

BoomTown Decodes Google CEO Schmidt's Shut-Up-You-Whiny-News-Folk Op-Ed (So You Don't Have To)!

in News on December 3, 2009 at 1:30 pm PT

Google CEO Eric Schmidt did one of his patented throat-clearers in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal today and it pretty much begs for translation. Well, BoomTown shall not tarry from the task of decoding the extra-long rumination from the head of Google, who was responding to the recent spate of aggressive attacks by traditional media publishers. They have blamed the search giant for everything from their current business woes to the destruction of journalism to Tiger Woods’s dicey marital troubles. Okay, not that! But the rest for sure.
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YouTube, Univision and Google: The Three Amigos

in News on November 16, 2009 at 10:05 am PT

Univision, home to Spanish-language TV staples “Sabado Gigante,” “El Show de Cristina” and “Tormenta en el Paraiso,” is coming to YouTube. This morning, the Spanish-language media outfit announced a deal that will see its programming featured on Google’s video site.
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Lost in Immersion: Speaking French on the Web

in The Digital Solution on August 18, 2009 at 4:00 pm PT

Rosetta Stone Totale may be the next best thing to living in a country.

TEDTalks Go Global Online in 40 Languages (Including Urdu!)

in News on May 13, 2009 at 2:55 am PT

Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design. The organizers have long put those analog talks, called TEDTalks, online. But they are now trying to make them even more accessible globally–with subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers world-wide. It launches today with 300 translations in 40 languages, including Urdu. Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to cost.
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With Online Services, Foreign Texts Can Get Lost in Translation

in Personal Technology on December 20, 2007 at 12:01 am PT

Free online translation services are in greater demand, but their results can be rife with syntactic and semantic errors — from the merely too-literal to the laughably bad.