Will Burgett - Intel
A major mantra at Intel is efficiency: Do more with less; Do it faster; Do it better; Do it in a scalable fashion. Automation is the key means of achieving localization and translation efficiencies. However, each company or institution reaches a limit on how much they can do this on their own.
The TAUS Data Association offers a collaborative community that builds synergy around localization processes and translation automation.
Sharing language data allows members to enhance or build:
- Translation memories
- Advanced leveraging
- Machine translation systems
- New or expanded markets
- Global revenue
- Standards in industry-sector languages and terminology
- New L10N methods, processes and technology through collaborative R&D
TDA has the potential to build collective value on a level playing field as other collaborative community efforts have done for their domains and industries.
Melissa Biggs - Sun Microsystems
Motivation Statement: One of the key strategies and basis of the business model at Sun Microsystems Inc. is to interact, assist in building, enable, and contribute to communities. Sun is eager to work within TDA to build out a framework for optimizing language data and possibly for incubating new language technologies. Sun is aligned with, and enthusiastic about, the TDA initiative. It is an exciting trend in increasing productivity and expanding in-language content offerings through sharing/ exchanging language data.
Melissa Biggs is Sr. Business Manager for the Globalization group (internationalization and localization) at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Her background in localization extends over 15 years, with management responsibiities for localization business strategies, finance, product acquisitions, program management, corporate globalization standards and operations within Sun's Globalization organization. The Globalization team at Sun is responsible for internationalization enabling, localization engineering and testing, translation and program management, and localization technology management. The team manages localized contents --- from engineering and testing, through translation --- for Sun's hardware and software products, web offerings, training, and support materials in up to 30 languages. Melissa drives Sun's machine translation framework and advanced translation technology initiatives. Her localization scope spans projects in both engineering and marketing. Melissa has also held management positions at both startups and larger corporations, including Xerox , Gould Imaging and Graphics, and Envos. Melissa is a graduate of Bucknell University.
Chris Wendt - Microsoft
Motivation statement: The principal objective for my work in the TDA supervisory board is to get the language data service operational within the shortest time possible, and in a form that entices data owners to contribute their language assets with confidence, making the reciprocal nature of this initiative a reality. I am bringing a deep understanding of the effects of language data in large volumes through my work in the machine translation team, as well as experience sharing data in Microsoft's ongoing TM publishing effort. It is important that a community-directed language data sharing organization comes to fruition, and I'll give my time and energy to help bringing this to life.
Chris Wendt graduated as Diplom-Informatiker from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and subsequently spent most of his career in several globalization-related positions at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, including Windows, Internet Explorer and MSN. He is the Group Program Manager for the Machine Translation (MT) team in Microsoft Research, responsible for applications of MT across Microsoft, including the Microsoft Translator web service, as well as language quality considerations for the MT engine itself.
Francis Tsang - Adobe Systems
Gilles Martel - Canadian Government Translation Bureau
Motivation statement: The TDA initiative really excites me. It represents values in which I always believed : networking and sharing rather than isolating oneself, collaborating as a complement to competing in order to stimulate innovation, and using common resources to reduce costs. I have been working since a few years with international organizations and national governments in establishing ways to exchange language data. As a natural extension of that work, I wish to become a member of the Supervisory Board and contribute to developing the governmental dimension of TDA.
Gilles graduated in astrophycis at the Université de Montréal. After teaching physics for a few years, he reoriented his career in translation. He managed various translation services, before becoming Director of Translation and Interpretation for the Canadian Parliament and then Vice-President, Corporate Services, of the Canadian Translation Bureau. He is currently Director, Special Projects and Machine Translation, for the Bureau.
Jessica Roland - EMC
Valarie Gilbert - Cisco Systems
Motivation statement: Cisco continues to have a strong focus on translation techniques and in particular machine translation (MT). Recognizing industry direction, we want to play a key role in forward looking technologies, standards and best practices. Within Cisco, my team has sole responsibility for MT and we believe leveraging TDA assests will allow us to support a wider range of organizations throughout the company. As a member of the TDA Board, I'm hoping to influence both the direction and awareness of MT technologies in the industry and across Cisco.
As Director of Technology Strategy & Prototyping, Valarie Gilbert defines the framework and infrastructure for machine translation throughout Cisco. Her team has successfully translated the Cisco Support Web Site into several languages by creating a cost effective, scalable and repeatable machine translation process. Current expansions include, the addition of new languages and creating a bulk translation service for Corporate-wide documentation and applications system interfaces.
Valarie came to Cisco with over 15 years of experience in engineering and technology having worked for variety of organizations including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Alcoa, Xerox and the Department of Defense. She has held positions in research and development, technical program management, standards development, international service development, sales and systems engineering. Valarie has been with Cisco for 11 years working in sales, product engineering, operations and web platform development.
Valarie is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, holding a M.S. and B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering and Computer Science. She is married with two daughters and resides in Colts Neck, New Jersey.