Yesterday the New Statesman ran an article which explores some of the possible reasons. I’m tempted to conclude that politicians in the UK  have simply not yet taken the internet seriously enough as medium (remember Cameron’s ‘too many tweets make a twit’ comment?). However, the major parties do seem to all have Twitter profiles, and the Conservatives even have their ‘WebCameron’, so it’s not as if they have completely ignored the medium’s potential.  

However, I think one of the problems is they still don’t quite fully understand it or know how to exploit its full potential. The internet is certainly a powerful vehicle which can quickly speed out of control, but instead of attempting to take the wheel, the parties seem to tend to just let it do its own thing. So we see the supporters, such as Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, starting their own Twitter campaigns and the politicians just piggybacking on that once the campaign gains in popularity.

Perhaps the politicians just don’t believe that using the internet to garner support will make a difference. But, from the voting public’s point of view, aside from door-to-door visits, reaching out via the internet (e.g. using something like Twitter) must surely be the most direct and democratic way of communicating, right? It offers politicians a direct line of communication with the public. If they’re worried that communicating with voters via social media may come across as cheesy or cynical, is this really more of a concern than the fact that TV and the press can never offer a truly neutral medium for a political message? There is always an editorial agenda of some kind, and while this is of course also true of much the internet (particularly blogs), it at least offers a more interactive, diverse medium. What politics needs, surely, is a two-way conversation with the electorate, not just one-way electioneering.

I imagine the real reason politicians have not made more use of Twitter, for example, is that they believe it is used only by the country’s chattering classes, liberals and progressives, who have probably already made up their minds about who to vote for. But this assumption really underestimates the far-reaching power of social media. Using the search hash-tag for my local town, I’ve certainly seen a number of undecided voters who have not yet engaged with any party and are looking for information.

I would argue that the internet really can help to change the course of an election, or at least help inform people about their options. Sites such as Votematch and 38Degrees help to provide the public with the facts and make an informed decision, an antidote to the irresponsible journalism and scaremongering often peddled by the press from both ends of political spectrum.

On a lighter note, it seems I’m not the only one trying to draw comparisons with the 2008 US elections  – The Sun has published a picture of David Cameron on its front page edited to look like one of Obama’s famous election images.  Alarmingly, they seem to be piggybacking on support for a US President in what is a completely and utterly different election, in completely and utterly different circumstances. At least, if Obama happens to see it (possibly via Twitter), it’d probably make him chuckle, given his previous meeting with Cameron. Oh dear, I think I’ve just been decidedly un-neutral

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) deals with optimising websites for people who use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. If you’re wondering what this has to do with translation, read on…

What is SEO?

SEO is centred around the ‘natural’ (or ‘organic’) search listings shown in a search engine results page. This is distinct from ’sponsored’ results (coloured red below) also seen on a search results page.

Sponsored results can be paid for by companies that want their website to appear when someone performs a search for a particular word or phrase. However, natural search results are determined by proprietary algorithms, and companies cannot pay to appear in the listings for these search results.

SEO can help websites to improve their positions in the natural results for certain search phrases (or ‘keywords’), which can significantly increase the number of visitors coming to a website.

So why is this important to translators?

As members of the translation industry know better than most, translating from one language to another is not simply about copying a text word for word into another language. As content on the internet grows, the need for quality translation services naturally grows with it.

As with any other discipline, writing for the web requires certain skills that may not be immediately obvious. Firstly, usability is an issue – usability guru Jakob Nielsen sums it up perfectly under the heading How users read on the web:

They don’t

Although this study was undertaken 12 years ago now, the fundamental principles hold true; you can’t write content for the internet in the same way as you do for paper. On the web, reading habits are vastly different, and this must affect the way we write or translate.

Secondly, findability is a consideration; if nobody can find your translated content on the internet, why was it translated? This is where even a basic knowledge of SEO can come in handy. Beyond the technical aspects of a website, SEO also deals with linguistic aspects of a website’s content.

One of the first processes SEOs undertake when optimising a website is keyword research, which analyses the language people use when searching for a particular product or service. By focusing the language used on a website to what people are actually searching for, the website’s content becomes more likely to appear in the natural search results and attract visitors.

As a starter for ten, a couple of free online tools that translators may find useful when translating online texts can be found with Google Insights and Google Trends.

Google Insights for Search

Both of these tools offer international data on searcher behaviour over the last 5 years. Data can be narrowed down to country and city level, and may be useful when researching terminology usage. For example the image above shows that more people are using the phrase “mpv” than “people carrier”, although the gap between the two phrases has narrowed since 2004.

Further reading

There is a huge number of free resources available on the net if you’re interested in learning more about SEO. Unfortunately the quality of information found on a the majority of blogs and forums is at best poor at often misleading if not wrong.

However, the links below are some of the best places to start:

• Official Google SEO Starter Guide – a useful reference to the basics, available in 40 languages.
• Google Webmaster Central blog – a must-read blog for anyone running a website.
• Search Engine Land – leading search engine news website.
• Matt Cutts’ Blog – Google’s head of Webspam blogs about a number of issues that affect webmasters.
• SEOBook – leading SEO blog; highly recommend buying the book for a detailed guide for anyone learning about SEO.

What have been your experiences of SEO? How much do you know about the inner workings of Google? For more discussion on SEO, check out Rob’s blog at robbiehammond.com. Feel free to leave any SEO-related questions in the comments below and Rob will answer them.

In case you hadn’t guessed from the name, Rob is my other half

Image courtesy of http://www.backup2go.com.au/dataloss.php

Céline over at Naked Translations wrote a post yesterday about back-up systems for freelancers, and invited others to share how they guard their businesses against data loss. Céline, if you’re reading, this post is my answer!

I actually have what some might call a fairly paranoid approach to how I back-up my work, and have a few solutions. It took me a long time (too long) to fully realise just how important it is to make sure important documents can be recovered in the event of computer failure/other business disaster. I’ve never experienced the anguish of losing a humongous translation hours before a deadline, but last week I did experience major data loss. I think we can all identify with how it feels at that moment you realise something important has just gone ‘poof!’ and disappeared into thin air.

My first solution, similar to Céline’s Dropbox solution, is to use online syncing. I use Sugarsync. Essentially, as I’m typing, each document is then automatically backed-up on their servers, meaning I can access all my updated files from any computer that is connected to the internet (whether it’s a PC or a Mac). I can do this remotely via my profile on the Sugarsync website or via the downloadable Sugarsync file manager. Sugarsync also offers a number of advanced features, including an intriguingly named ‘magic briefcase’ and a secure ftp location for sending large files. For anyone worried about data security and backing-up in ‘the cloud’, files are encrypted with 128-bit AES – can you say that about email?

I love Sugarsync, but it’s certainly not my only solution. I also use a more traditional back-up and storage tool called ZenVault that stores my important files at a remote location. The data loss I experienced last week illustrated exactly why I use back-up as well as syncing: as soon as I managed to lose the crucial files on one computer, that change was automatically synced across all my computers, so there was no chance of recovery. However, instead I was able to go into my ZenVault terminal and recover the documents from previous back-ups. So, I have a way of taking a static snapshot of all my documents and past documents, as well as a way of making the latest versions of my documents available across all my computers.

Another key back-up for me is having alternative computers to work on in case my main PC fails. I also use the über-traditional method of backing up to an external hard-drive on my desk, which is the preferred option for most freelancers. At this year’s ITI conference, there was a lot of chatter about using ‘the cloud’ to store data, but people seemed to assume that storing it in offline was automatically more secure. What would you do if your home was burgled or burned down and your one and only back-up solution was inside? Is that really any more of a secure solution than using an encrypted online back-up service to store important files at a remote location?

The possibilities really are endless for the paranoid, and my view is that these contingencies are not likely to happen at the same time. However, it’s really does pay to be too careful when you’re freelance (i.e. without IT support on hand).  Essentially, the only (almost) fail-safe solution is to have more than one contingency planning solution.

To learn more about online back-up and syncing, have a read of this article.  Warning – the review is rather long, but if you can scan it and pick up the salient points it’s a good starting place for contingency planning. The key message is not to rely on just one solution.

The response to our presentation has been really positive, with many people wanting to learn more or see the slides again, so we decided to take our little 2 person roadshow online for the big wide world to see. We are now pleased to unveil a stripped down, re-recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare.net. You can view the show within this post (below) or by following this link to Slideshare if you have problems hearing or viewing the embed.

Looking at the website of OneHour Translation, I’m sceptical (to say the least) about their ability to turn around larger documents (projects they say they can take on include websites and presentations) within just 1 hour. To me, the best use of this type of service is for something like Twitrans, not important or lengthy documents. What do others think about this type of service?

In Obama’s victory speech he said that the unsung heroes are his campaign managers and his strategist. Just look at how they tapped into communication tools that no candidate has ever bothered with before, such as Facebook right from the early days of the campaign, to creating his very own online community at MyBarackObama, to the point where Obama’s internet following was a self-driven vehicle.

For example, Obama (or one of Obama’s assistants) was tweeting on Twitter, with no less than 119,730 followers. Everytime he was speaking at a rally, a little link would be posted to allow his followers to watch it in realtime. By engaging with new forms of media, Obama has succeeded in reaching out to a new generation of voters, showing that he is a man of the world, for the world. He realises the amazing potential of social media and is able to use it as a means of getting his message across and cultivate a grassroots following through it.

For those of us who were unable to vote, how amazing it was to live through an historic event like this and, thanks to the internet and social media, to be able to feel like you’re really part of it. No matter who you supported in the campaign, after Obama’s victory, we must all agree that the internet’s ability to unite people and allow them to share experiences and interact should not be underestimated. Just look at some of reactions of people around the world, which we are now able to see for ourselves.

This article in the pioneering Huffington Post discusses how in this election the internet has done more than supplement traditional media:

While discussing with a friend an election night viewing party he’s throwing, he announced there would be “televisions all over the place.” “That’s great,” I said, “but just make sure the WiFi is working.” Because this year, the laptop — along with the array of Internet-connected mobile devices — has replaced the television as the must-have election night device.

P.S. While we’re on the subject, the blogosphere is currently alive with Obama-inspired posts, even suggesting that as freelancers we can learn from the campaign in terms of how we present ourselves, such as this one over at Contract Worker.

I’ve just returned from a short holiday in the Devon countryside. Living in London I tend to lust after the peace and quiet of remote countryside. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be quite as ‘remote’ from my work as I’d hoped. I hadn’t quite managed to complete all of my translation jobs before going away, so I had to face the grim reality of backing my trusty laptop and allocating precious fun and relaxation time to work whilst away.

I actually didn’t mind this too much, and was in some weird way treating it as an experiment in remote working. By the way, when I say remote working I mean working that takes place outside of my normal office (even though my normal office is basically our spare room). I personally see being able to work remotely with, hopefully, no discernable compromise to work quality and efficiency as one of the major bonuses of being freelance. Until now, I’ve been too afraid to put this into practice. I still feel relatively new to the whole freelance lifestyle and have felt more secure chained to my home office, as if my whole business would collapse if I left it even for a minute. I’m pleased to say, however, I managed to let go of these fears and the ‘experiment’ was successful. With the powers of my laptop and Blackberry combined, I was able to remain contactable and reliable in the same way as I would if I was in my home office.

Of course, before I decided to do this, I had to check whether the cottage we were staying in had wireless internet available. Yes, even in deepest darkest Devon it is still possible to access the internet if your laptop has a wireless card.  Long-term, I’m also looking into the possibility of a dongle so that I can work remotely more often without having to worry about finding wireless internet access. In the city, however, I am lucky to have access to several free Wi-fi networks in cafes, libraries, and public spaces.

The future of Wi-fi and what it spells for our working practices featured recently in an article by the Western Mail on WalesOnline, with reference to the city of Cardiff (incidentally the seat of my old university):

Microsoft’s experts, working with the Future Laboratory, say that traditional fixed-location workplaces will move to a mosaic pattern of working as 70% of UK office workers say that work in the 21st century is increasingly about work/life balance and the death of nine-to-five.

I’m still not sure if work/life balance can truly exist when you’re freelance, or whether it’s just that your life and your work become intertwined, but this article paints a very different vision of the future of the way we work. The futurologists cited in the article also apparently claim that remote working encourages greater creativity – I’m not convinced of this but having a beautiful view to look out on certainly helps

This is a step in a new direction for the mighty Google, which is fast completing utter dominance of the  internet and follows their foray into machine translation with ‘Google Translate’. Google Translate received a fairly good reception when it was released, as being ‘not too bad’ as far as machine translation goes, if you need to get a very rough approximation of isolated sentences. It does surprise me that they’re now attempting to diversify into human translation, though. Perhaps they’ve seen the success of collaborative translation on open-source projects (by volunteer translators), and of subscription translator community sites such as ProZ and want a piece of the action.

But then, Google Translation Center doesn’t look like a translator community site, nor is there any mention of money changing hands, so I can’t help wondering what’s in it for them? Their stated aim is: “Google Translation Center is part of our effort to make information universally accessible through translation”, but surely, as a company as powerful and successful as theirs must have a profit-driven or market dominance-driven motive lurking behind everything it does, right?

According to Stephen Shankland:

“[...]the company also has technology called Cross Language Information Retrieval  (CLIR)  that builds            translation into its search engine.”

And:

“Google’s translation system uses a statistical model that works better the more it can compare the same text in two different languages. And Google evidently will track translation work in its database; according to the center’s introduction for translators, “our translation search feature matches your current translation with previous translations, so you don’t have to translate over and over again.”

Google is fervently interested in better machine translation. With it, it can use its search technology to link people with data around the world, regardless of language barriers, making its search engine significantly more powerful.”

Interesting stuff that may further enhance the way we search for information, not to mention the possibilities for a gigantic global translation memory. You can read Google’s own full explanation of what it’s all about here.

Although I am a reasonably competent internet user I’m afraid this problem was not something I’d encountered before or knew how to deal with. Luckily there’s always someone who does have the know-how, and I was subsequently advised by my learned friend at Pagespank.com that some horrid hacker had ‘injected’ an ‘iframe virus’ into my site. It was invisible, apparently, but the nasty little blighter ended up bringing my whole site down after Google and my domain hoster decided I was a ‘dangerous’ website. For a more technical explanation of how this happened go to Pagespank.com, but rest assured that this is still a healthy, virus-free, clean-living little blog.