Translating tech into profit

By Dave Rogers, The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, February 15, 2008

CEO Alain Chamsi at the Université du Québec en Outaouais Language Technology Research Centre in Gatineau's Hull sector. 'Software developers know about Nortel, BCE and biotechnology, but they don't know that there is another sector here.' (Photo: David Kawai, The Ottawa Citizen)

Gatineau hopes to become the Silicon Valley of translation and language training

Gatineau wants to develop a homegrown "language industry" in the same way that Silicon Valley produces software and Windsor and Detroit build cars.

The Quebec government has invested $4 million to create a centre at the Université du Québec en Outaouais for language-software research and the city's 80 language-related companies. It is the only centre for language translation, training and translation-software development in Canada.

Raymond Bachand, Quebec's minister of economic development, innovation and export, said the province's goal is to have the Outaouais recognized worldwide as a leader in translation technology by 2020.

The industry in Gatineau has emerged over the last five years. Gonzalo Peralta, president of the Language Industry Association, said small Gatineau companies such as JiveFusion Technologies are doing fine in the Canadian market, but want to export to the world.

"This is a $5-billion-a year industry in Canada," Mr. Peralta said. "More than 51,000 Canadians are involved directly or indirectly in the language industry.

"The industry employs more than 700 private-sector workers in Gatineau, including translators, language teachers, software engineers and project managers. At least 100 people work for technology companies."

Most Gatineau companies are still freelance translators or mom-and-pop businesses specializing in translation and language training in French and English.

But JiveFusion Technologies and Multicorpora produce computer-aided translation software that can be used in any language and is exported to more than 35 countries around the world. The entrepreneurs who started the companies hope eventually to compete with industry leaders such as SDL International, a British company that reported earnings of $227 million in 2007.
Some of the research used in translation software in Gatineau is done at the $15.2-million

Language Technologies Research Centre opened by the federal and Quebec governments on the Université du Québec en Outaouais campus on Alexandre-Taché Boulevard in April 2006.

Machine-based translation technologies developed during the 1950s and 1960s were based on language rules and dictionaries. Their modern counterparts, the Google search-engine's translator and Babblefish.com, can turn French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese phrases into English and vice versa. The result gives the reader the gist of a document or sentence, but not necessarily an accurate translation.

The new software does not replace translators, but allows them to avoid translating entire documents that change periodically.

Such programs use "text mining" to compare documents requiring translation, such as government regulations or technical manuals, to a database of similar documents translated previously so translators need only revise what has changed.

"The software has to search big databases of text," said Alain Chamsi, chief executive officer of JiveFusion Technologies. "You have to have a clever algorithm to store and retrieve data.

"You have to be able to match a sentence segment with that algorithm so you know very quickly where things are."

Mr. Chamsi said this approach means documents are translated similarly for each client. The software even puts words into context.

Take the use the French word "avocat," which which can mean either avocado or lawyer, according to Daniel Vincent, director of the university's Language Technology Research Centre.
It is necessary to put the word in context in a sentence and compare it to similar translations to get a lawyer to take your case instead of an avocado.

Daniel Gervais, vice-president of Multicorpora, said the language-technology centre will train people in software engineering and marketing, and develop partnerships among Gatineau language-industry firms.

Multicorpora sells software to 25 international organizations such as UNESCO and the Belgian government. It is used in 35 language pairs including Chinese and Russian. Mr. Gervais said combining the efforts of translators, language teachers and software engineers will strengthen the industry.

"This industry is currently very fragmented, and we want to build larger companies and larger pools of resources to compete throughout the world," he said. "By building bridges between these companies, we can become stronger internationally.

"We have good expertise in the region, but we are not exploiting it to attract international business to the region. This plan for a centre of excellence is to take that expertise, grow it and export it internationally."

Mr. Chamsi said it will be a challenge to expand the language industry because it is still new and few people know about it.

"One of our challenges is to make people aware of the industry and to make it attractive so they will want to work in it," Mr. Chamsi said. "Software developers know about Nortel, BCE and biotechnology; but they don't know that there is another sector here.

"We are hiring people who could work at places like Nortel, so we are competing with big industries for new workers."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008