From Open Source to AI: Tech & Localization News in Preparation for EuroPython

With EuroPython 2019 drawing near (here we come, Switzerland!) and a foundational look at the recent python trends and applications, we continue the developer fun with some more news in the industry. From increased translation performance to integrating new technologies like AI and updates from the open source world, here is a roundup of all the must-know developer news as you prepare to head to EuroPython 2019.

1. Re-thinking open source via the challenges of building modern software.

A different perspective and application of open source, as explored by Emulation Cross: “When open source works, the results can be incredible. Anyone can fix, create, or implement anything while having unparalleled access to the internals of [the software] it can run. You don't even need programming experience to contribute, with many people contributing through services like Transifex to help translate and increase accessibility of emulators around the world.”

2. The state of open source translation tools for project contributors.

An article exploring the current state and evolution of open source in the translation and localization world: “Linguistic and cultural diversity does not bring money: It opens doors and allows local development. It emancipates populations and can ensure the survival of certain cultures and languages. In the 21st century, is your culture really alive if it does not exist in cyberspace?”

3. How to expand into more markets faster with translation and localization.

From store-downloaded apps to installable applications, the world of localization software is rapidly expanding to become a massive category of products that can now rapidly localize content into different language sat scale. Marketing Technology Insights explores the growing range of products and localization methods, from manual freelance translation to automated and machine translation.

4. The difficulties of integrating AI into machine translation for localization.

A closer look at a new emerging area of translation integrating AI to add more value for translation automation projects like machine translations. And while the area is innovative, recent survey results there is still a long road ahead: “Despite the AI-powered technique’s promise for adapting international brands to local markets, a survey by an AI vendor specializing in machine translation finds that most of those AI projects fall short.”

5. Ensuring digitalization success requires localization.

When compared to manual web development, localization is far more competitive in terms of cost-effectiveness. And when companies include localization in their development process from an early stage, the savings are exponentially greater. This article by Supply & Demand Chain Executive takes a closer look at the bridge between development, localization, and business growth: “If you already spent a serious amount of money to develop your marketing strategy, you will just need a small percentage to adapt your product to the local market and thus ensure your successful penetration.”

6. Google achieves state-of-the-art translation performance with latest update.

New in the world of Google updates and translation tool refinement is the release of a new model, the Evolved Transformer, a library of open source AI models and data sets that “achieves both state-of-the-art translation results and improved performance on language modeling.” In fact, experiments on this new technology have revealed that “translation with different language pairs and language modeling resulted in an observed performance improvement of nearly two perplexity.”

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Meet Transifex & Go Global at EuroPython 2019

The Transifex team is headed to Basel, Switzerland next week (July 8-14) for EuroPython 2019! Meet up with us to learn the well-kept secret that most successful global companies have for capturing new markets worldwide: localisation.

Visit us at Booth #44 to learn more about our chat continuous localisation workflows, pick up some fun swag, or just say hello! (And be sure to catch our lightning talk session during the conference — more details to come.)