Glossary of Terms
API
API stands for Application Program Interface. An API is a set of
instructions that lay out the rules that must be followed if two computer
programs are to talk to each other.
ASCII
Acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII is a code for representing English characters
as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example,
the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77. Most computers use ASCII codes to
represent text, which makes it possible to transfer data from one computer
to another.
Email Alias
An alternative name for a more complex email address. A WorldLingo
language pair can be 'hidden' by an email alias. A choice of alias can
be anything from a corporate name, a business department or a personal
nickname. An email alias 'hides' the fact that you are using an email
translation service. For example john@acme.com could be
an alias for the WorldLingo English to French email translation address
english-french@translate.worldlingo.com.
Email Translation
WorldLingo provides email translation from a source language to a
target language. If you receive an email in German (source language),
WorldLingo can translate this text into English for you (target language).
WorldLingo provides email translation for corporates, localisation vendors
and personal use.
Globalization
The process of making all the necessary technical, financial, managerial,
personnel, marketing, and other enterprise decisions necessary to facilitate
localisation. Products have to be globalized before they are localized.
A well-globalized product is one that has been enabled at a technical
level for localisation. In other words a globalized product does not require
remedial engineering or redesign, as opposed to adaption to a specific
local language or platform.
Human Translator
Human translators are native speakers who physically translate the text
themselves which results in a 100% accurate translation vs the 70% accurate
translation that you get from machine translation.
HTML
Stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the authoring language
used in the creation of documents for the World Wide Web. HTML was initially
created for use as a universal common document language for the World
Wide Web. It indicates the type of information rather than the exact way
it is to be presented. The actual presentation is left to the software
that converts the contents to a suitable format for viewing. Text in an
HTML document can be translated on-the-fly by a machine translator whereas
text embedded in images and graphics (gifs, jpegs) must be localized.
HTML Translation Object
Is a special piece of HTML code that webmasters place on their websites
to translate the text in their web pages (HTML documents).
The basic struture of an HTML translation object consists of:
(i) a Form that sends the web page (URL) to a WorldLingo Translation
Engine
(ii) an Input field to select the languages involved in the translation
process
(iii) a Submit button
Internationalization
The process of ensuring at a technical/design level that a product
can be easily localized. Internationalization is thus part of globalization.
Language Pair
Language pair is the term used to denote the source language and the
target language involved in text translation. The source language is translated
into the target language. For example the language pair English-French
(en-fr) means that English will be translated into French. Language pairs
are often abbreviated to the shorter two character form which is identical
to the ISO language code definitions eg. en-fr (english to french), en-de
(english to german).
Localisation
The process of adapting text and cultural content to specific target audiences
in specific locations. The process of localisation is much broader than
just the linguistic process of translation. Cultural, content and technical
issues must also be taken into account. The Localisation Industry Standards
Association (LISA) defines localisation as "the process of modifying
products or services to account for differences in distinct markets".
See www.lisa.org for more detailed information
about the localisation process.
Machine Translation
Machine translation (MT) is the automatic translation of human language
by computers. For instance, an English --> German MT system translates
English (the source language) into German (the target language). With
the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and ever-expanding
international communication and commerce, there is an increasing need
for quick and inexpensive translation. New Web pages are created daily
in tremendous numbers, and many Web page authors would like their material
to be readable immediately all around the globe. Likewise, there is need
for fast e-mail communication between speakers of different languages.
It is difficult to keep up with the volume via human translation alone.
Machine translation has been under development in universities and industry
for several years -- essentially since the advent of programmable computers.
MT is a difficult problem, mainly because human language is so ambiguous
and so full of special constructions and exceptions to rules. In some
cases it is impossible to arrive at a correct translation without using
everyday knowledge of the world and reasoning ability that only humans
have.
Whilst machine translation is not 100% accurate, WorldLingo provides
best-of-breed MT that enables readers of the translated text to quickly
get the gist of the document's meaning instantly, without having to resort
to expensive and timely professional human translations.
Professional Human Translation
Is the translation of text by accredited native language professional
translators. Translation by professional translators is more accurate
than machine translation, however, it is usually more expensive and requires
more resources than machine translation.
Rich Text Format (RTF)
A standard formalized by Microsoft Corporation for specifying formatting
of documents. RTF files are actually ASCII files with special commands
to indicate formatting information, such as fonts and margins.
Source Language
The specified original language of a document, web page or email before
it is translated.
Text (TXT)
Data presented with alphanumeric characters, usually in the form of
words, sentences, and paragraphs. Typically, the term text refers to pure
text stored as ASCII codes (that is, without any formatting). Objects
that are not text include graphics, numbers (if they're not stored as
ASCII characters), and program code.
Target Language
The specified language a document is to be translated into (the resulting
translation).
Translation
The process of transforming text from one language into another language.
Translation Memory
Translation memory software stores matching source and target language
segments that were translated by translator in a database for future reuse.
Newly encountered segments are compared to the database content, and the
resulting output (exact, fuzzy or no match) is reviewed and completed
by the translator.
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