RE: Script replacement for Khrushchev

Arle, I really like this example!

It is so much better than obsolete Cold War "folklore", which is not really
relevant for modern practice.

We could also do the culturally relevant examples. I believe that practical
examples of annotation are very relevant to further propagation of ITS and
explanation why ITS is needed.

Regards,
Serge


-----Original Message-----
From: Arle Lommel [mailto:arle.lommel@dfki.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 12:42 PM
To: Multilingual Web LT Public List Public List
Subject: Script replacement for Khrushchev

Imagine the following scenario:
An German pharmaceutical company makes a new medicine for chronic
indigestion. If people take too much of the medicine it can lead to very
serious side effects. To help make sure that no one is harmed by the
medicine, the company ships it with a paper that explains the side effects.
It warns that one side effect can be a "Herzinfarkt."

Later the product is sold in the U.S. and Herzinfarkt is translated as
"myocardial infarction." A patient in the U.S. takes the medicine and later
feels some pain in his chest, but he doesn't know that a "myocardial
infarction" is more commonly known as a "heart attack." (In German
Herzinfarkt is both the common and specialist term.) So he does not realize
his symptoms are related to the medicine and he does not call an ambulance
until the pain gets much worse. He is rushed to the hospital and barely
survives but suffers serious heart damage.

But let's rewind a little bit and see how this situation would be different
with ITS. With ITS 2.0 the pharmaceutical company can use the "terminology"
data category to link to information about how terms like "Herzinfarkt"
should be translated. It could also use the "localization note" data
category to tell the translator that the text needs to be translated for
non-specialist readers. So the translator translates Herzinfarkt as
"myocardial infarction (also known as a heart attack)". As a result the
patient recognizes his symptoms early on and goes directly to the hospital
where he is treated before the medicine can cause serious heart damage.

While most cases won't be quite so serious, ITS can help save lives.

Received on Thursday, 28 November 2013 10:37:04 UTC