Can we localize entire libraries?
How close are we to being able to localize entire libraries?
The question is not as crazy as it might seem. Projects for “mass digitization of books” have been using technology like robots for some years already with the idea of literally digitizing all books and entire libraries. This goes way beyond the concept of e-books championed by Michael Hart and Project Gutenberg. Currently, Google Book Search and the Open Content Alliance (OCA) seem to be the main players among a varied lot of digital library projects. Despite the closing of Microsoft’s Live Search, it seems like projects digitizing older publications plus appropriate cycling of new publications (everything today is digital before it’s printed anyway) will continue to expand vastly what is available for digital libraries and book searches.
The fact of having so much in digital form could open other possibilities besides just searching and reading online.
Consider the field of localization, which is actually a diverse academic and professional language-related field covering translation, technology, and adaptation to specific markets. The localization industry is continually developing new capacities to render material from one language in another. Technically this involves computer assisted translation tools (basically translation memory and increasingly, machine translation [MT]) and methodologies for managing content. The aims heretofore have been pretty focused on particular needs of companies and organizations to reach linguistically diverse markets (localization is relatively minor still in international development, and where markets are not so lucrative).
I suspect however that the field of localization will not remain confined to any particular area. For one thing, as the technologies it is using advance, they will find diverse uses. In my previous posting on this blog, I mentioned Lou Cremers‘ assertion that improving MT will tend to lead to a larger amount of text being translated. His context was work within organizations, but why not beyond?
Keep in mind also that there are academic programs now in localization, notably the Localisation Research Centre at the University of Limerick (Ireland), which by their nature will also explore and expand the boundaries of their field.
At what point might one consider harnessing of the steadily improving technologies and methodologies for content localization to the potential inherent in vast and increasing quantities of digitized material?