STAR TS Translation Services Blog

LRC Best Thesis Award 2011 : Call for entries

Closing Date for entries – 02 September 2011

The Localistation Reserach Centre and Symantec Ireland are pleased to announce the 2011 LRC Best Thesis Award, sponsored by Symantec.

The LRC Best Thesis Award is an annual award given to the auther of the best research publication in an area relevent to internationalisation and localisation.

Students who have completed a thesis on a revelent localistion theme within the past two years are invited to submit their work to the LRC for consideration. Theses may be submitted prior to their degree award and will be judged by a panel of academic and in-dustry experts.

The winner will receive €1,000 and one of Symantec’s professional retail products.

The scope of the entries for the award need not be confined to a technical linguistic area, and applications are also invited from students who are carrying out research into com-mercial and management aspects of the localisation industry.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Localisation Workflows
• Crowd Sourcing in Localisation
• Global Web Design and Content Management
• Machine Translation
• Computer Aided Translation
• Terminology Management
• Internationalisation and Global Software Design

For more information on the awards visit www.localisation.ie or email LRC@ul.ie

Proposals may be sent by email to LRC@ul.ie

Or by mail to:

Localisation Research Center,
CSIS Department, University of Limerrick,
Ireland

STAR Technology Solutions announced today their recent acquisition of the ISO 9001:2008 certification for its Quality Management System for translation services.

For Immediate Release: STAR Translation Dublin, Ireland, March 20, 2011

STAR Technology Solutions the translation agency is proud to announce that in February 2011, their Quality Management System was independently audited and awarded with the prestigious ISO 9001:2008 Certification.

With close to 10 years experience providing professional translation services the ISO standard is a further stamp of approval to the high quality services the company delivers to its global clients.

Recognised in more than 160 countries, the ISO 9001:2008 standard provides a tried and tested world class framework for taking a systematic approach to managing an organizations processes to deliver consistently high quality results.

Paul Quigley receives official iso 9001 certification

Paul Quigley Director of STAR speaking on behalf of the company states,

We are delighted to have such external recognition for our team. To achieve ISO 9001:2008 Certification a company must employ a Quality Management System (QMS) that delivers superior customer services and continuous improvements in skills and competency of all employees in the translation process.

ISO 9001 places a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction, management responsibility, continual improvement and organizational performance.

Damian Scattergood Managing Director of STAR commented,

Translation is all about confidence in your ability to do business worldwide in different languages and culture. ISO 9001 Certification gives our clients the confidence in their translations to achieve this goal.

About STAR Technology Solutions

STAR Technology Solutions is a translation agency based in Dublin Ireland. It delivers translation and document translation services to clients around the globe in over 40 languages. STAR helps its clients do more business internationally by providing the website translation, technical translation and document services they require to communicate worldwide.

STAR – Confidence in a Translated World.

Contact:

Damian Scattergood

STAR Technology Solutions

Docklands Innovation Park

128-130 East Wall Road

Dublin 3

Ireland

Phone + 353 (0)1 8365614

http://www.star-ts.com

Last week we attended the Health and Safety Authority’s “Taking Care of Business” expo. An excellent event run in the new Dublin Convention Centre, Spencer Dock.

BeSmart Risk Assessment Launch:

The event launched  the new “BeSmart Risk Assessment Tool” which we’ve been using and found to be a extremely useful tool. The tool helps you easily and quickly define a Safety Statement for your business alonside a Risk Assessment policy and action list.  Produced by the HSA it outlines and complies with all the latest legislation here in Ireland.

Launch of HSA BeSmart Risk Assessment Tool

You can login anonymously or create an account so you can use/update your statement on an ongoing basis.

Also at the expo we came across a number of other items of interest.

Health and Safety Review:

For this involved in managing any substantional operation the Health and Safety Review is a monthly publication on all cases and legislation updates.

Alongside demonstrations of sample environments Dublin Fire Brigade was available and thanks to them for the advice on correct use of Fire detection systems.

Enterprise Ireland was at hand to discuss funding for companies who are required to achieve Environmental Compliance for their products for export. So if you need ISO 9002  or ISO 14001 you should contact the Environmental Unit at Enterprise Ireland.

We see Google has changed its search algorithm again today. Its interesting that they say the change is subtle and only affects 11.8% of their searchs. By my reckoning that a lot of search content.

The main change is around reducing popularity of sites that are not great content and contain lower quality text. I fully commend Google on this as webscraping and low quality content has certainly been on the increase in the last few years.

The change has only just been released in the US (Google.com) and they will roll it out across the world following review of the impact on US search results.

For the official release on the update visit Google Blog.

Are you an English Scholar?

Some words have a similar sound but have very different meaning. Here is a test to see how good your English really is.

Explain the difference between the following:

1.  abuse, misuse

2. adapt, adopt

3. affect and effect

4. agnostic, atheist

5. allusion, illusion

6. alternative, alternate

7. all right, alright

8. bare, bear

9. childlike, childish

10. compliment, complement

11. course, coarse

12. credible, credulous

13. cynic, sceptic

14. elemental, elementary

15. emigrate, migrate

16. except, accept

17. descent, dissent

18. dual, duel

19. fair, fare

20. flout, flaunt

21. gorilla, guerrilla

22. hare, hair, heir

23. heard, herd

24. heroin, heroine

25. it’s and its

26. licence, license

27. lose and loose

28. peak, peak, pique

29. poll, pole

30. principal and principle

31. refer, allude

32. simple simplistic

33. stationary, stationery

34. story, storey

35. You, Your and You’re

36. Their, there and they’re

So how did you do ? Are you an English Scholar or did you just do “All Right” or should that be “Alright”?

I had a quick read through The Irish Independent and I came across an interesting article on William Safire’s rules for improving your English. William Safire writes columns for the New York Times and in one of those columns he drew up a list of rules for writers. Each rule is self-contradictory, That is, it violates the thing it tells the reader to avoid. Here are some that have stood the test of time.

1. A preposition is something never to end a sentence with.
2. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
3. Don’t use no double negatives.
4. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn’t
5. Reserve the apostrophe for its proper use and omit it when its not needed
6. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
7. Avoid commas, that are not necessary
8. Don’t over use exclamation marks!!!
9. Hyphenate between sy-?llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
10. Write all adverbial forms correct.
11. Don’t use contractions in formal writing.
12. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
13. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
14. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
15. “Avoid overuse of ‘quotation “marks.””
16. Avoid clichés like the plague; They’re old hat; seek viable alternatives
17. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
18. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words then necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
19. Be more or less specific.
20. capitalise every sentence and remember always end it with a full stop

Its not what you say – its how you say it.

It pays to be especially careful when using words to describe someone. Often a very subtle wordchange can give a very different meaning and impact on what you say.

Some words carry an emotional punch. Take a look and see if you can tell which words press emotional buttons in each context. One word in each sentence evokes a favourable, even warm response; another word elicits a more wary, even negative reaction.

1. Michael is shy; Tom is introverted.
2. Mary is slim: Frances is thin.
3. John is firm; Brian is stubborn.
4. Deirdre has strong views; Emma is prejudiced.
5. Sam was courageous; Dan was foolhardy.

Alongside our translation services STAR also provides English language proofreading and design services.  For more information call us for a quote today.