The ultimate test of machine translation is in the translation. Can someone who can’t read the source language understand enough of the text to take an appropriate action? We’re not talking the BLEU test here or a NIST MT evaluation — just a simple test case with everyday language.

October has been a busy month for the machine translation crowd. Google dropped SYSTRAN in favor of its own statistical MT technology, Language Weaver expanded its European presence, and PROMT saw its online MT usage on the upswing. Sooner or later, whether you like/want/know it or not, MT will touch everyone.

The U.S. dollar is down. Way down. It’s more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and to buy their Bimmers and Mont Blancs at home. Meanwhile, planes to the States are filled with Europeans and Canadians looking to cash in on cheap iPods and digital cameras. But LSPs using non-U.S. resources have yet to transfer their increased costs to translation buyers, choosing instead to reduce margins or to renegotiate rates with suppliers. But there’s only so much squeezing they can tolerate. If the dollar keeps sinking, U.S. translation buyers will face bigger invoices.

Were you born before 1977? If you suffer the dreaded diseases of AGE or ABD (Ancient Birth Date), you might be the root cause of malaise in the localization industry. Localization World began with inspiring keynote on crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine. As a good keynote should do, it set the tone and made collaboration and community the fulcrum of many of the discussions in the conference rooms and hallways. Read about the battle of the generations in localization.