My first post on my nice little blog – and the fear of the blank page is overwhelming. A good place to start might be to attempt to define what this blog is actually about and to outline why I believe it might contribute something new to this continuously evolving maze of more or less serious thoughts and interactions commonly referred to as the Worldwide Web.

After almost two years in the localization industry and with a keen interest in web development and creative technological innovation, I have come across a number of situations where I would have wished to see a greater deal of courage, innovation, creativity and excellence, rather than just narrow-minded efforts to find ever cheaper labour and some timid attempts at better workflow automation. Now I know some of my readers (if I have any) are going to ask me where I have been all my life, throwing names at me such as SDL Workflow, Knowledge-based Translation System, Localization 2.0 or Global Information Management or mentioning the emergence of all kinds of new server-based CAT tools, the growing acceptance and use of open XML standards such as XLIFF and TMX, the success of statistical machine translation and so forth. Fair enough, but all these innovations are, at the end of the day, nothing else than the logical next step in a long-term evolution or applications of generic global trends to this specific sector. When was the last time a new idea that first originated in the world of localization really blew your mind?

Let's face it: In its current state, the translation and localization is about as dull and uncreative as it gets.

I am afraid over the past months and years I have become a serious Web 2.0 junkie, and bringing some authentic Web 2.0 spirit, some innovation, some creativity to translation is a goal that I would like to passionately explore and promote. (Admittedly, “Web 2.0” has never been too well-defined a term, and its overuse by corporate marketing folks is on the verge of making it completely meaningless – more on this in my next post “Why 0.1 is the real 2.0” – but you know what I mean, don't you?)

As you see, this blog will circle around a range of diverse topics related to internationalization, localization, translation, language, but also web development, software, business and technological creativity in general. This may smack of a lack of focus – then again, I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned, I love unfocused blogs.

You may have noticed that by now I have somehow managed to overcome my fear of the blank page and actually get writing. In fact, blank pages are not that bad after all. Metaphysically speaking, looking at things as a blank page helps one think outside the box and avoid beaten paths. In this sense, more than anything else, I hope this blog will make its readers discover a lot of new blank pages to fill with their ideas.

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Categories: Localization and Internationalization Loose Talk

Keywords/tags: i18n l10n blog localization translation internationalization workflow development web development xliff tmx sdl workflow automation localization industry

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Christian Flury – World 0.1

Christian Flury

World 0.1

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