Hyperlocality in the Age of WhatsApp

WhatsApp时代的超局域性

2020-07-11 06:50 CSOFT

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As governmental bodies determine their responses to the coronavirus pandemic, technology is reaching across nations to aid these efforts. In these times, information regularly crosses linguistic boundaries with the utmost urgency, and in response people all over the world have come together to aid translators in their work. For example, WhatsApp, a social media chat app with more than 2 billion users globally, has teamed up with the World Health Organization to combat misinformation. Especially popular in India, South America and Africa, WhatsApp hopes to use its influence to provide life-saving information through a tailored platform on the app that allows users to request and receive free news on symptoms and other advice. The app is currently available in Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, with plans to roll out more languages. Developments at WhatsApp help illustrate the profound societal change towards “hyperlocality” recently noted by Tricia Wang, co-founder of the consulting firm Sudden Compass, whose portfolio includes industries in China, Mexico, and India. Envisioning what life could be like five years on from the pandemic, Wang reflected on mutual aid groups and the large chat groups in Wuhan, China that were created to pool resources. She predicted that hyperlocal groups will “outlive” the pandemic, all while “embrac[ing] differences as a key feature of the participants all the while maintaining allegiance to the group’s mission”. Embracing differences while maintaining a key message not only mirrors key considerations and practices from professional translation but further emphasizes the need for it. Translation, which enables the sharing of critical information to different communities, will be the hallmark of our hyperlocal future. In the meanwhile, not only are translators working tirelessly, but translation tools are improving as well. In one example of how this relentless work can help empower translators with machine translation, researchers in South Africa have compiled a dataset of a few hundred headlines in Setswana and Sepedi, two of South Africa’s official languages. In addition, others are adding headlines in Xhosa and Zulu. In the future, tools for these languages will be able to more accurately aid translation projects in South Africa. As translation tools improve and the need grows for accurately translated information, CSOFT’s global network of expert linguists and subject matter experts continues to provide crucial localization solutions in 250+ languages. With expertise in software localization best practices and optimization, our linguists are uniquely equipped to help drive the rollout of these communications solutions in new languages, when and where they are needed.
随着政府机构确定其对冠状病毒大流行的反应,技术正在遍及各国,以协助这些努力。 在当今时代,信息经常以最大的紧急性跨越语言界限,为此,世界各地的人们聚集在一起,以协助翻译人员开展工作。 例如,WhatsApp是一个社交媒体聊天应用程序,在全球拥有超过20亿用户,该公司已与世界卫生组织合作,以打击错误信息。 WhatsApp希望在印度,南美和非洲特别受欢迎,它希望通过其量身定制的平台利用其影响力提供救生信息,该平台允许用户请求和接收有关症状和其他建议的免费新闻。 该应用程序目前支持阿拉伯语,英语,法语,印地语,意大利语,西班牙语和葡萄牙语,并计划推出更多语言。 咨询公司Sudden Compass的联合创始人特里西娅·王(Tricia Wang)最近指出,WhatsApp的发展有助于说明社会向“超地方性”的深刻变化。该公司的业务范围包括中国,墨西哥和印度。 Wang设想了大流行5年后的生活状况,回顾了互助小组和中国武汉为收集资源而建立的大型聊天小组。 她预测,超地方团体将“消灭”大流行,同时“始终将差异作为参与者的主要特征,同时保持对团体使命的忠诚”。 在保持关键信息的同时拥抱差异,不仅反映了专业翻译的关键注意事项和实践,而且进一步强调了这一点。 能够将关键信息共享给不同社区的翻译将成为我们超本地化未来的标志。 同时,不仅翻译人员不懈地工作,翻译工具也在不断完善。 在一项不懈的工作如何帮助翻译人员进行机器翻译的例子中,南非的研究人员用南非的两种官方语言塞茨瓦纳和塞佩迪编制了一个包含数百个标题的数据集。 此外,其他人也在科萨(Khosa)和祖鲁(Zulu)增加头条。 将来,这些语言的工具将能够更准确地帮助南非的翻译项目。 随着翻译工具的改进以及对准确翻译信息的需求的增长,CSOFT的全球专家语言学家和主题专家网络将继续以250多种语言提供关键的本地化解决方案。 凭借在软件本地化最佳实践和优化方面的专业知识,我们的语言学家拥有独特的装备,可帮助在需要它们的时间和地点以新语言推动这些通信解决方案的推出。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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