👅 Duolingo has published its annual report on the state of the language learning market. Highlights:

😃 Despite NMT, LLMs, and other AI technologies, general interest in language learning is at an all-time high.

😃 English is the most widely studied language — in 79% of countries worldwide (159 in total). At the same time, demand for language proficiency certification is growing. After English, the most popular languages are Spanish, French, Japanese, and German.

😃 Popularity of second languages: French (60 countries), Spanish (48), German (22), English (15), and Japanese (13).

😃 Among the fastest-growing languages are Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and Japanese. This growth has been driven in part by new opportunities to learn these languages in one’s native language rather than through English.

😃 Countries with the largest number of students learning three or more languages: Japan ranks first, followed by Australia in second place, Finland in third, Germany in fourth, and the United Kingdom in fifth.

😃 The most diligent students are in Japan. The language that most attracts highly motivated learners is Spanish.

* * *
Earlier in 2025, Duolingo announced that users can now broadcast their learning achievements — specifically, the levels they have reached in language study — directly to their LinkedIn profiles in real time, thereby showcasing their language skills to potential employers. According to the announcement, these achievements are updated instantly.

#duolingo #linkedin #studylanguage

⚖️ The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), an independent non-profit organization dedicated to improving the justice system in the United States and other countries, has published Considerations and Cautions for Courts considering the use of machine translation in legal proceedings (find a PDF version here).

General considerations:

😃 Courts should only use qualified court interpreters for courtroom interactions.

😃 Whenever possible, courts should provide language access at non-courtroom points of contact through bilingual staff or qualified court interpreters.

😃 Significantly limit the use of machine translation to brief, non-complex, out-of-court interactions.

😃 Use machine translation as a starting point for human review.

😃 Clearly inform court users if communication or information was created using machine translation and about the limitations of machine translation.

😃 Only use machine translation for in-person interactions after users have provided informed consent.

😃 Create a grievance procedure related to problems arising from the use of machine translation.

😃 Consider developing custom-programmed machine translation applications.

😃 Create jurisdiction-wide policies about the use of machine translation.

* * *
→ Interpreter errors during interrogation of suspects and witnesses

#machinetranslation #MT #legaltranslation

👩‍💻 Some tips on preparing files for translation in Trados Studio (from this article).

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😃 Avoid monolithic documents that are hundreds of mega-bytes in file size, rather organize content into smaller chunks in order to avoid memory problems on the translator’s PC.
😃 Don't break sentences into multiple paragraphs: both the translation and subsequent layout of the document with such breaks will turn into a nightmare. Instead, use soft line breaks.
😃 Don't indent paragraphs with spaces and tabs—use auto-indent styles instead.
😃 Use the built-in table editor rather than tabs to create tables. Leave enough room for the table headers to expand.

* * *
😃 Avoid sending PDF files to translation.
😃 For Microsoft Office files, avoid using the old binary file formats (DOC, XLS, and PPT) rather use the modern equivalents (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX).
😃 In Word and PowerPoint, separate text to be translated from text not to be translated using styles or the hidden text feature.
😃 In Word, it is a good idea to accept all tracked changes before submitting documents for translation.
😃 For Excel documents, do not collapse or hide any columns or rows that you would like to be translated, as these will not get imported into the translation editor like Trados Studio.
😃 Avoid long text chunks in table cells—table cells in Excel are limited to 32,767 characters per cell. If the translated text is longer than the original, it may exceed this limit.
😃 Avoid using Microsoft Publisher if at all possible, rather use InDesign (or QuarkXPress) as there is no reliable file type filter available at the moment for MS Publisher, so translating these documents always means tedious post-processing work.

#techtips #excel #word #powerpoint #tradosstudio

📈 Report by the analytical agency Nimdzi on the state of the interpreting market.

😃 In 2024, the interpreting market accounted for just over 16% of the total language services market. In absolute terms, this amounted to $11.7 billion. It is expected to grow to $17.2 billion by 2029, meaning this sector will expand significantly faster than the language industry as a whole.

😃 AI is gradually entering the field of interpreting, primarily in contexts where low cost and speed are more important than quality, as well as in cases involving rare languages that were previously not supported.

😃 The biggest problem in the field of interpreting is the growing shortage of qualified interpreters, driven by pressure from AI, the closure of university translation programs, and instability caused by the actions of the Trump administration.

😃 There is a trend toward consolidation in the market: language service providers are seeking to expand their range of services, increase their geographical coverage, and adopt new technologies, primarily AI.

#interpreting #language_services_market #artificialintelligence #AI

💻 March Linguistic News

😃 Tools

😁 Release of Weblate 5.16
😁 Release of Service Pack 18 Update 9 for Transit/TermStar NXT
😁 Release of Subtitle Edit 4.0.15
😁 February updates at CrowdIn
😁 Google Translate has improved: thanks to Gemini’s AI capabilities, it now offers alternative translations for idioms and colloquial expressions
😁 BeLazy now supports Trados Cloud

😃 Publications

😁 March edition of Multilingual (also attached)
😁 The Slator Tool Box is officially retired
😁 Edition of The Linguist

#crowdin #transit #subtitle_edit #belazy #audiovisualtranslation

🐈‍⬛ If your CAT tool crashes and there is a risk of losing the completed portion of your translation, the first priority is to preserve the work you have already done. Only after securing the data should you attempt to fix the issue. Otherwise, you may have to redo the translation from scratch.

In most CAT tools, your translation is stored in two places:
😁 The project files you are actively working on
😁 The Translation Memory (TM), which stores the segments you have translated

If the most recent version is stored in the project files:
😁 Make a copy of the files in their current state
😁 Delete the entire project
😁 Re-import the original (untranslated) project
😁 Replace the newly imported files with the saved versions

If the most recent version is stored in the Translation Memory (TM):
😁 Make a backup copy of the TM in its current state or export it (for example, in TMX format)
😁 Delete the entire project
😁 Re-import the original (untranslated) project
😁 Replace the project’s TM with the saved version (or import the saved TMX file into it)
😁 Re-run the translation of the source files using the restored or updated TM

Both approaches involve certain nuances. During these steps, it is important to clearly understand what you are doing to avoid accidentally losing the translation entirely.

#techtips

🖌Why Word may refuse to check spelling

😃 Spell checking is not enabled.

Go to File → Options → Proofing, then select the Check spelling as you type checkbox and clear the Hide spelling errors in this document only checkbox (see image).

😃 The text is marked with the wrong language.

Select the text you want to check, then verify that the correct language is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If it is not, click the language name and choose the correct language from the list that appears.

By the way, Word can check spelling in multiple languages at the same time. To enable this, assign the appropriate language to each part of the text written in a different language.

😃 The number of errors in the text exceeds 2,000, so Word has automatically stopped checking spelling to conserve system resources.

Either assign the correct language to the text (see above), reduce the number of errors and enable spell checking again (also see above), or split a large document into several smaller files to review errors more easily.

Even if Word disables automatic spell checking due to a large number of errors, you can still run a manual check by pressing F7.

😃 Word does not support the language of the text you want to check.

Install support for the required language. This usually involves downloading and installing the appropriate language pack from Microsoft.

#word #spelling #spellcheck #techtips

📹 An educational video about a little linguistic nightmare — the pronunciation of English city and town names: (in English, 14 min, the most relevant part starts at 2:23).

Although there are certain pronunciation patterns for endings like -shire, -cester, -ham, -wich, -worth, and so on, the general rule is simple: when you encounter a British place name you don’t recognize, open a dictionary.

* * *
→ How do British Isles differ from British Islands
→ Some other useful services to check pronunciation

#English #toponyms #terminology #phonetics

📈 DeepL has published its study Borderless Business: Transforming Translation in the Age of AI, in which more than 5,000 business leaders across the translation and localization field were surveyed:

😃 35% of companies worldwide still handle translation entirely manually, with no automation at all. Japan and the US lead in manual translation reliance.

😃 33% use traditional translation automation tools such as translation management systems (TMS), which still rely on human review and editing.

😃 17% are deploying next-generation AI tools. The UK leads in this area — meaning 83% have yet to adopt any AI tools.

😃 64% of companies plan to increase their investment in Language AI in 2026.

😃 71% of business leaders consider workflow automation a priority for 2026, with 36% calling it a high priority.

😃 54% of business leaders believe real-time voice translation will be essential in 2026.

The PDF is attached (13 MB). The webinar where these results were presented is here, previously mentioned here, and the recording is available after registration — let me know if you need it.

#language_services_market #AI #artificialintelligence