Thursday, July 24, 2014

Welcome to the world of new words!



Welcome to the world of new words!
Since 18th century, each year/month/week/day, number new terms are coming in to market for the original English terms. May be it started with movie for motion picture! In those days, there was huge debate on such new terms. In the period of time these new terms settled in the society, in the world community; even in British culture itself! Now a day people just discuss on it and then adopt them. Sometimes most of them are unaware of the original and they feel (strongly!) that, this is just totally new!!. If you try to explain, they laugh on you.
For example:
(British) I live in Pune
(American) I live out of Pune
(British) create a timetable
(American) make schedule
(British) this is Alsatian dog 
(American) this is German shepherd
This new terminology has created havoc in translation/localization industry. People are good enough confused with the term usage. They strongly feel, translation/editing is different and localization/proofreading/ is different and Quality Assurance this is completely different from all of this. In fact this all is same! Shocked?
I am trying here to explain this. The beginning of translation is unknown. But, interpretation must have introduced first when humans started expressing in words, through different languages. And ofcourse translation should have been introduced after scripting these spoken expressions. In the settling and development of translation, editing is introduced. In editing, editor is expected to correct every error; may be grammar, context, or term usage.
In the later period this came to printing industry, Editor become a higher position and actual editor became a proof-reader, doing the same job as editor was doing before. Editor was to review the final output. In 18th century with development of industrial globalization, translation of industrial content became a vast need, to ease and keep processes consistent globally, which marked a need of consistency in term usage; and thus introduced one more parameter of term consistency check.
In 19th century, computers were introduced, and got introduced to translate faster. Later with software developments; people get translation softwares to keep same source translations consistent. Around decade of 80’s, new terms came in market. Localization/review and quality assurance. Translation industry suddenly became Localization industry calling itself ‘knowledge process outsourcing’ industrial sector. People in the industry amazed with new introduction and outsiders are still stun!
In fact “Clark” is “Superman”! (गंगाधर ही शक्‍ति‍मान है)! Locel is Local, Localization is Translation, and Quality assurance is review/proof-reading! Please don’t get shocked, realizing old wine in new bottle, this is market!
I see some people in industry get nervous when I try to explain this. They have a strong belief that Localization is different, it is advance form of translation process and the introduced processes of proofread/review/QA are all different. It is difficult to explain that this all is same; use one single term of it, to get thing done. Actually you are reviewing/proof-reading the content; but you are considering ‘tag’s’ check, or Xbench like software run under QA, and thinking that this is different. In fact it is same!
You think you market, but fact is you are marketed!
Wise people drive markets; common man feel, it was their decision!
I have given here two links just to let you understand British English and American English. Now on, don’t correct when someone pronounce schedule as “sheduel”, because you pronounce it as “skedule"! Keep in mind they are with British English and you are using American way!
That’s it!
N.B.: Get know that here are more than 100 dialects of English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language, recognized officially! Don’t laugh on people who don’t speak your English!
Sudarshan