Day 1 finished off the way it had begun, with plenty of interaction amongst the participants. We started by dividing into two groups, those who had use-cases describing content in need of translation, and those who had translation tools to discuss and enumerate. I was in the group attempting to characterize clearly differentiated use-cases. The challenge with such work is to be as granular as possible since this is the only way that an accurate mapping will be made later between the use-cases and the tools available.

One of the things I've liked best about this event has been the focus on documenting what we are doing. Four separate documenters are participating in the event. One is continuously adding content to the event wiki. Another is specifically responsible for gathering and characterising the variety of use-cases. Another is doing the same thing with the range of tools available. And finally there is another documenter videoing the proceedings who will also conduct video interviews with each of the participants. It's all about openness and these various documentation methods and tools should guarantee that outcomes from this event will be available widely and not just for the participants.

The final session of the afternoon took three of the problem areas that we had brainstormed in the morning and made them the focus of a discussion. For this I joined the “Translation 101” group in order to get a crash course on the translation industry (which I was shocked to find is a 12 billion dollar behemoth). This session was facilitated by two professionals in the field of translation (though admittedly they got very little notice that they would be facilitating a session): Ed Zad of dotSUB and Dwayne Bailey of Translate.org.za This session was absolutely priceless for me. I am now considerably better versed in the correct terminology. For example, I now know the difference between internationalization and localization, and between translation and interpretation. I understand the traditional model (translate - edit - proofread) used in the industry and why that is changing. I learned about the all important component of any successful computer assisted translation tool or CATT, namely translation memory TM, not be confused with MT, machine translation. I also learned of the emerging XLIFF standard which encompasses po, the string set format typically found in software translation cases. To say it was a lightening class is an understatement. And this has made the likelihood that I will get something even more valuable out of day 2 an almost certainty.