The Translation and Localization conference 2012, Warsaw, Poland

After a rich week in Berlin at conhIT 2012, off to Warsaw for the weekend where I was a guest speaker at the Translation and Localization Conference 2012 (“Konferencja Tłumaczy”- don’t ask me to pronounce it in Polish! ;))

It has been around a year and half since my last Translation industry event and it was truly a pleasure to see familiar faces again and meet new ones.  The event had the good idea of offering bilingual tracks: throughout the weekend, we had one room with English presentations only, while the other room featured only Polish contents. Given my non-existent Polish, this was very welcome!

The general subject areas of the conference were Computer-Aided Translation (how far can we stretch CATs, how do we manage CAT resources, segmentation, data formats, consistence and cohesion, virtualisation, dictation instead of typing and other pivotal issues in the area of computer-aided translation),  audio-visual translation and localization (computer games, dubbing, subtitling, copyright and related rights, going rates, audio-description, accessibility of films and theatrical performances and other cutting-edge developments on the audio-visual translation market), legal and specialist translation  (from fascinating case studies to popular debates on certified translation (and sworn translators): new strategies, food for thought and the big picture,  the business of translation and interpretation (hard data on freelancing, VAT and flat rate tax, as well as translation and localisation agencies. Expert insights on marketing translation services. (Down-to-earth, tried and true advice and fresh perspectives).

I made some interesting contacts and above all, we had very interesting discussions around a cup of coffee at breaks – discussions about the Polish market but also about the way the industry is going, particularly about machine translation (MT). The overall  shared opinion was the fact that MT was now inevitable and that it could be a translator’s best tool in terms of quality and productivity – when used wisely and with a strict quality-control procedure as well as the need to implement confidentiality measures. In short, the consensus was that MT was not completely mature yet – but will be very soon and that the industry should get ready to embrace it.

Entitled “Social Media Marketing for Translators: a must or a should?”, my presentation took place on Sunday morning with a small and lively group of translators with a broad background. There were many “young translators” (beginning in the industry) and experienced ones, curious about finding out whether this new marketing trend could apply to them and could work for them.  I hope that the colleagues who attended left the conference room with their own answer “Yes, Social Media marketing may be something for me, I want to know more” or “Nope, not for me.” At least that was the goal of this presentation, my aim was to give them some keys to help them decide. At the end of the day, as I specified many times during that hour with them, every translator is unique, every business is unique, and they all should see this presentation as a buffet where they just pick up what suits them, their needs and their goals. The presentation went well, there were quite a few questions and I had some very good feedback, so I guess the buffet formula worked for those colleagues!

It was also a fantastic opportunity to discover Warsaw and its gorgeous Old Town – a very enjoyable tour with two locals who know the history of their city by heart.

It was an excellent weekend, informational, interesting, fun (and incredibly hot, 30°C in Warsaw!) – thank you Agenor and Jacek of Localize.pl ;) , Maria Szpor and Anna Konieczna-Purchała of TexteM and their teams for organizing this great conference!

Visit the conference website and the Facebook Page with the photos and feedback – and hopefully see you next year for the 2013 Conference! :)

Watch out! A new trend in pharma marketing – GIGO – SEO

In the past few months, we were involved in localizing various websites targeting certain patient populations. These projects were all sponsored/run by big pharma and these websites all claim to provide useful information, e.g. for people interested in participating in clinical studies or supporting patient education on health problems.

After a while it became obvious that most of these websites contain highly SEO optimized content serving only one purpose:  driving traffic to the pharma companies’ websites or their dedicated websites for given products/clinical studies.

Since these sites are extremely SEO optimized, which results in high rankings in the various search tools, they divert traffic from more impartial websites run e.g. by patient organizations.

Some might consider this a highly questionable trend in itself, but this is not my point.

The problem for me lies in the fact that huge parts of these web pages’ content seem to be created by marketing copy writers – it seems they’re given a list of SEO keywords, and they just have to produce page after page after page using these keywords.

Wrong and even dangerous contents

In contrast with what you would expect from a responsible pharma company, nobody seems to check this content, which results in statements such as:

-    The objective in diabetes treatment is to achieve the lowest possible blood glucose level.
This is not only wrong, but also extremely dangerous, as this would cause hypoglycemic coma.

-    The red blood cells transport oxygen to the lungs
This is plain wrong. The red blood cells transport oxygen from the lungs to the tissue.

-    Hemoglobin transports the carbon dioxide to the lungs
I consider this statement as being incorrect too, since only 5-10 percent of the carbon dioxide is transported by hemoglobin.

These examples have been edited so that you can’t identify the respective websites, but their aim is to help you understand my point that these websites don’t even get the most basic medical facts right. Looking at more complex content, e. g. relating to cancer treatment, the situation isn’t any better.

Localization requires more than just translating contents

Another aspect of these websites solely created for SEO purposes, is that they really don’t care about the reader. Quite often you will find that:
-    the only contact option they offer is a toll free phone number in the US (on the localized pages) which you can’t even contact from abroad,
-    they only provide links to English sources such as patient organizations
-    there are no literature references in the target languages.

What this means to the translation industry

As a language service provider, our role is to raise these issues with clients. We should not contribute to multiplying wrong or even dangerous content by translating it. We should also stress the fact that localization requires more than just translating the content.
By doing this we will not only help our clients by preventing costly legal actions if somebody gets harmed after following wrong instructions and by raising the quality of the content and giving the websites a more professional image. Badly localized websites also damage the reputation of our own industry, as many readers might believe it was the translator who introduced these errors.