The appearance and soaring development of internet-associated communication technologies have led to the unstoppable growth of the contents and tools that manage them. These collaborative-type contents management tools are increasingly used by the virtual communicated to either generate information or to reflect their growing activity in blogs, wikis or forums. This issue presents Wikipedia, one of the most far-reaching phenomena of current times and the result of a combined effort that has become a vital resource among language professionals.

This issue also refers to the Association of Translation Companies (ACT) following the incorporation of STAR Servicios Lingüísticos.

Reference is also made to the decision of the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) to purchase collaborative technology for the global, remote management of its knowledge bases.

Finally, given that Christmas goodies can already be bought in November, we conclude our publication with on-line linguistic resources for Advent and Christmas.

      Given that Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world, we must start by assuming that everyone knows that it is the most interactive and plurilingual encyclopaedia that exists —100 languages have been counted—. This encyclopaedia is one of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, the main aim of which is to disseminate collaborative, free contents in all languages through instant on-line editing technology known as wiki. Through this technology, users can edit contents in a fast, simple and interactive manner. The repercussions of this possibility of collaborative editing, together with the phenomenon of blogs —the term weblog is also used— are without a doubt the trigger for a new wave of euphoria in internet culture, where users not only consume but produce contents in real time. Hence, the growth of Wikipedia articles continue to spiral, given the incessant proliferation of editing users. This increased popularity in the authorship of articles may lead to certain apprehension in terms of quality. However, this logical prevention is cleared upon referring to the study carried out by the prestigious magazine Nature. In the comparison made between the Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, it was shown that there is in general approximately the same number of errors in one encyclopaedia as in the other. It confirms that, despite any cognitive slip-ups, it is a unique tool into which translators can delve to find documentary information on any subject and, on many occasions, its equivalent terms in several different languages. Transversal relationships can also be established to translated encyclopaedia articles and endless semantic networks can be accessed through the subject matter of a particular search.

      In March 2006, STAR Servicios Lingüísticos joined the Spanish Association of Translation Companies (ACT). The ACT was founded in 1990 by 6 small translation companies in Barcelona to establish common criteria for the regulation of the sector, improve relationships with freelance translators and gain more visibility for the profession with customers. The ACT looks after the interests of quality-oriented customers, guaranteeing an impeccable image and communications. In 1994, it became the founding member of the EUATC, the international federation of translation-sector company associations, which currently has 17 member countries.

“We made the decision to join the ACT due to the extraordinary drive the association has shown over the past year. Not only has it actively collaborated in the creation of EN 15038, the new translation service quality standard, but also began the first market study into translation services in Spain”, says Michael Scholand, CEO of STAR Servicios Lingüísticos. “We would therefore like to offer our support to an increasingly dynamic organisation that is representative of a vital sector in the age of business globalisation: translation. By joining, we want to contribute towards the founding objective of the ACT: to look after the interests of our customers and, more particularly, we want to show special interest in exploring matters concerning quality and the standardisation of our profession.”

      The World Tourism Organization, the specialised agency of the United Nations headquartered in Madrid, Spain, that serves as a global forum for tourism policy and tourism know-how, recently joined the more than 60 organizations around the world that already use STAR WebTerm 6.0 as their online terminology management tool.

      The World Tourism Organization regularly publishes in five official languages: Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish, and occasionally in others, such as Italian, German and Portuguese. In total, the UNWTO translates well over two million words per year thanks to a mixture of in-house and freelance resources. To professionally coordinate and manage their linguistic assets and foster an efficient use of translators’ time, the UNWTO has also been using the integrated computer-assisted translation tools STAR Transit and STAR TermStar since 2003. However, lately, recognising the growing importance of disseminating its key terminology on a global scale, the UNWTO started to look out for a viable and cost-effective solution to suit their needs. The software application WebTerm 6.0 meets all these requirements.

      WebTerm, created by STAR, allows for terminology to be managed and distributed among people anywhere in the world. It provides employees and terminology experts of multinational corporations or organizations with easy, internal and cross-organizational access to terminology using a standard Web browser. The administration and search options, in combination with the filter functions, provide fast and effective user profile configuration and term recovery and editing. WebTerm also helps in the elimination of errors and inconsistencies in international communications thanks to the possibility of quickly publishing terminological databases on the internet and their real-time available for all employees, external co-workers and interested public.

      For more information on WebTerm, please visit:
http://www.star-spain.com/es/tecnologia/term_webterm.html
For an online-demo of WebTerm, go to: http://www.star-webterm.com/.

Christmas on the internet: Internet is plagued with technological information relating to the Christmas holiday. Given that the Christmas Lottery is often the starting signal for the celebrations in Spain, what better than to begin this section with an interesting collection of terms relating to a Christmas lottery. If the time has come to wish our friends a Merry Christmas, this page shows you how to say Happy Christmas in over 100 languages. Another interesting website is this Italian collection of terminology related to Christmas. However, if you want to know what Karai Bosá has to do with Christmas in Paraguay or you are simply interested in finding out how Christmas is celebrated in other parts of the world or if you want to share experiences linked to this time of year, there is a Christmas encyclopaedia, the philosophy of which is based on the previously-mentioned Wikipedia. Finally, all those of you wishing to make the most of this time to discover the Bible, you might find this Parallel Bible interesting, which arranges corpus parallel with the equivalent biblical texts in Spanish, English and Arabic. Another similar resource, in Latin this time, but with the possibility of its translation into ancient and modern Spanish is the Polyglot Bible.

Merry Christmas!

STAR Servicios Lingüísticos was set up in 1999 in Barcelona and forms part of the STAR Group, one of the 3 most important multinational companies in the field of translation and language technology development services in the world. The STAR Group, created in 1984 in Switzerland, has 38 offices in 4 continents with more than 850 staff. Since its creation, the Spanish office has experienced continuous growth, mainly due to the excellent service and price-quality ratio it offers its clients. The more than 23 members that make up its workforce come from translation, terminology, language engineering, marketing, IT and graphic design fields, and form a team that is totally committed to offering the best service possible. The flagship of the STAR range of products is Transit, the computer-aided translation system designed specifically to meet the needs of translators and that includes the most sophisticated translation memory in the language industry. The integratable TermStar and WebTerm terminology management tools, the FormatChecker quality control system for designers and advanced solutions for translation workflow and James globalization and GRIPS comprise the successful STAR product range. Its clients include highly prestigious companies such as Adobe, American Express, Airbus, Blaupunkt, BMW, Bosch, BSH, Bulgari, Cartier, Diesel, Dior, Hitachi, Leica, Lexus, Mercedes, Microsoft, McAfee, Peugeot, Roche, Tissot, Toshiba, Toyota, Unicef and Xerox.

STAR Servicios Lingüísticos, S.L.
Ali Bei, 67. 08013 Barcelona. Spain.
+34 932 440 880 - starspain @ star-group.net
www.star-spain.com