LRC XII 
The Localisation Research Forum

The 12th Annual Internationalisation and Localisation Conference 
organised by the Localisation Research Centre (LRC)
with the Global Initiative for Local Computing (GILC)

Programme

Accommodation

How to get there

TILP Pre-conference

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Thomas Arend of Google 

Dr Thomas Arend of Google will provide the first keynote presentation of the LRC XII Localisation Research Forum.

Abstract:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second. 

"The Web Globalization Report Card ― now in its fourth edition ― rates how successfully companies develop Web sites for international markets. we look at things such as number of languages offered, depth of localization, global consistency, and global navigation. [...] Google has become a regular in the number one spot. But it's not just because of its 100+ language search interface. It is the rapid localization of the many Google software applications that has kept this company on top."
Source

This talk explains how Google manages to be so successful in localizing products and services. The speaker will share some insight into the Google way of internationalizing and localizing web applications and next generation desktop solutions: using and propagating open standards, creating best-practices for the industry, integrating professional translation and a community-based approach, Google localization technology, combining human and machine translation, empowering the web community, etc. 

How could Google share knowledge and tools to empower web users and to make contents and applications universally accessible? Join the discussion!

About Google 

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

About Dr Thomas Arend

Dr. Thomas Arend was born 1969 in Germany. From 1990-1995 he studied Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science at the Technical University in Berlin/Germany with an awarded scholarship of Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation. In 1995 he earned his masters degree in complex analysis. During his studies he started his career as Software Engineer and project lead with IBM. He joined SAP in the year 1995 in the role of Product Manager and lead for international projects and global product design. In 1999 he became Senior Product Manager for SAP's new Development Platform. He led a team of international Engineers and Product Managers and managed global projects with international clients. In 2001 he took over responsibility for SAP's Mobile Technology platform which resulted in the presentation of the world's first business application for Microsoft's Tablet PC platform. Thomas has been speaker at conferences and project lead for strategic customer projects in many different countries. He earned his PhD degree in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction in 2003 in Berlin. 
As a next step of his professional career, he was invited to work in the office of the CEO to support Henning Kagermann and SAP's executive management team as strategic business consultant from 2004 to 2006. 
Thomas joined Google in Feb 2006. He is responsible for enabling the company to localize all products and services effectively and in native quality for a global market. 

David M Rojas of Tegic Communications

Corpus linguistics and culturally relevant localisation for the global mobile market 

With T9 text input software in worldwide distribution and our evolutionary XT9 product being introduced on more and more high-performance devices, Tegic Communications represents a de facto standard for mobile usability in over 65 languages. Through the creation of linguistic databases for T9 and XT9, Tegic effectively serves as a globalisation resource for our customers, who seek to gain an ever-stronger foothold in handheld device sales both in emerging markets and in more developed regions alike. Importantly, the text input software we create is an enabling technology that Tegic continues to bring to millions of speakers of numerous languages each year.

Our aggressive development cycle and quick time-to-market for new languages are critical ingredients in Tegic’s success. This talk describes the efforts of the linguistics team in managing the localisation process of T9 and XT9 through the use of statistical corpus techniques applied to large amounts of text in order to create distinct linguistic databases for each language. The term localisation, in this sense, is thus somewhat different from the standard idea of translating or adapting a set of strings used in the software into a different language. Our process involves research into and accommodation for morphological and orthographical idiosyncrasies each language may exhibit and includes native speakers on both ends of the development lifecycle to ensure significant and topically appropriate linguistic coverage. The linguistics team at Tegic engages in what could therefore be considered culturally relevant and individualised localisation for each new market we approach with our customers. 

About Tegic Communications

Tegic Communications builds robust, innovative, embedded software designed to enhance communications on small mobile devices. Their flagship T9® Text Input product has shipped on more than 2 billion handsets worldwide and supports over 60 languages.

About David M Rojas

On the language engineering team at Tegic, David and his colleagues are creating text messaging software for languages spoken in emerging markets and using linguistic principles to improve text input on embedded devices. Prior to joining Tegic, David worked as a linguistic consultant and machine translation customisation specialist for Butler Hill Group in collaboration with the MT effort at Microsoft Research. He holds master’s degrees from the University of Edinburgh in Informatics and from the Louisiana State University in French Linguistics. David is currently a PhD candidate in linguistics and cognitive science at Indiana University. Academic and professional research has included the study of language planning and policy in the E.U., computer-aided  lexicography for Louisiana French, modelling accent variation in spoken language, and the role of source content as a predictor of machine translation quality.