Thei Zervaki
Thei Zervaki, 32, has been working in the language industry for more than eight years in five countries.
She started her career as an intern in the Translation and Terminology division of European Parliament, Luxembourg. After working in Brussels as a freelance translator specializing in European Union documents and terminology, she joined Soft-Art, a multilingual software company based in Florida, USA as an in-house language specialist. She was the Translation Category Manager for Smarterwork.com, an Internet start-up and an Account Manager for ALPNET, one of the top five localization companies.
She holds a BA in French Linguistics and Literature from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Masters in Linguistics from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Belgium and Masters in Translation from Mons University, Belgium.
She specializes in linguistic strategy, cost analysis and outsourcing.
Do you need to localize your web site, your software or products? How will you find this out?
a. Do a SWOT analysis: what are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as a company? See it in relation with your target markets and clients, countries of expansion and competitors.
b. What kind of business are you in? A corporation, e-business or a small traditional business looking for global expansion? (page 14).
ONLINE TRANSLATION SERVICES
Many translation companies, translation portals and other related sites offer online translation services. These can be:
1. Online purchase of translation services. You can order your translation online by uploading your documents, specifying the language pairs and paying by credit card. The translation is done by professional translators and is sent to you when ready.
2. Online Machine translation. MT software integrated by the translation portal. It is usually free and real time. You can either translate a document, a web site or email. In most cases, you have a draft translation document or "gisting" of your source documents.
MT software used online can be useful for and allow the following:
Text "gisting"
Email translation
Web page translation
Search translation
(page 28)
11. PORTALS USING ONLINE MACHINE TRANSLATION
ALTAVISTA.COM
http://www.altavista.com Uses Systran software for its online services, called Babel Fish.
SOFTISSIMO
http://www.softissimo.com: French portal offering online machine translation on the fly using Reverso software.
(page 53)
