14-15 October 2013

TAUS Annual Conference 2013
Translation Becoming a Utility
Portland, OR (USA)

The TAUS Annual Conference is a non-sponsored once-a-year event focused on translation automation, localization business innovation and industry collaboration.

Join us in Portland to see how leading practitioners are tackling the most pressing issues and opportunities facing the global industry. Explore the best in translation technologies and strategies. Benefit from high-value networking with the TAUS community.

We propose that translation is becoming a utility

Becoming something similar to electricity, internet or water. Like things we need in our daily lives, things we need so dearly that we feel lost without them. Always available. Real-time when needed. Destined to be embedded in every app, on every screen. Every bit of information delivered in the languages we understand.

What are the impacts?

If you are a buyer of translation you will be delighted if translation becomes a utility. You will be able to help so many more customers. You can make translation available on customer support sites, on the employee portal, in your media campaigns. You might imagine that translation will be embedded in every piece of content. Content becoming intelligent and automatically presenting itself in the language of the receiver. You will still do your heavy-lifting product localization, but you will see the emphasis shifting to serving enterprise-wide needs in all languages.

If you are a translator or with a translation company, you might think that translation becoming a utility is the end of the world: machines taking over your beautiful profession and your business. Would that really be the case? Today translation is a luxury service. Not all expect it. Many less can afford it. But if translation becomes a utility and all citizens of the world become users, the need for translation in myriad forms will grow beyond our imagination.

Some would change their formula, automate and innovate. Others would enter with fresh new offerings. Just as expensive bottled water keeps selling well, despite good drinkable water flowing cheaply from the tap. Demand for boutique-style, specialist translation could grow tremendously.

But of course, much of this is happening already…

Ingredients Of Translation As a Utility

What defines translation as a utility for the end-user? The least managed steps, the best user experience: it’s there when I need it and I don’t know how it got there. Translation as a utility is ubiquitous. Like electricity, internet, water, we like it to be available to every citizen in the world.

But for the industry stakeholders – the entrepreneurs and decision makers who build the future translation industry – the ingredients of translation as a utility must be utterly clear. They need to know how to scale up, grow, innovate, automate, manage quality, comply to standards and deliver real-time. These ingredients provide a good structure for the program of the Annual Conference on October 14-15 in Portland (OR):

    Growth. The million dollar question is: how do we grow from 1 billion people online to 6 billion, how do we cover the thousands of new languages in our communications?
    Innovation. Translation as a utility requires quantum leaps in speed and ease of translation services. How is the technology and service sector preparing itself for this big paradigm shift?
    Strategy. Translation as a utility requires a fundamental rethinking of the global content strategy. How can we optimize and what can we do differently?
    Quality. The evolution of translation from a luxury service to a commodity and now a utility requires a rethinking of quality. What is the right quality and how do we measure?
    Automation. Translation as a utility without question requires automation. But how do we mimic something so human and intellectual as translation?
    Standards. To deliver translation seamlessly as utility in every app, on every device and every screen, we need to abide by standards and common APIs to ensure that services and tools work together without human intervention and friction in the process.

https://www.taus.net/conferences/taus-user-conference-2013