CULTURE

Christmas in Peru

In Peru, since the first days of December, families decorate their homes with garland on their doors and adornments all around the house. They decorate the Christmas tree with colorful lights, bright ribbons and little ornaments. But the most special place of the house is reserved for the nativity scene.

On December 24th, relatives gather together to wait for Christmas. They share a Christmas dinner which consisting of turkey, applesauce, and different kinds of salads. When Christmas Eve arrives, hugs and best wishes flow in the air. All the family stands around the nativity scene and says a prayer of thanks for this year’s blessings. Afterwards, some people set off fireworks, making the night sky bright and full of color. This is the moment that children wait for; it’s time for opening the gifts that are under the tree.

As a tradition, on December 25th, some groups of children called “the toribianitos” go door to door singing carols in worship of the baby Jesus. People let them enter their houses and give them food or presents.

NEW CLIENTS

MultiLing has substantially increased its service contract with LSI Corporation. LSI Corporation is a leading supplier of host-based RAID technologies to the global PC and server markets. MultiLing was originally commissioned to translate RAID related technical documentation. The expanded cooperation now encompasses translation services for several US LSI offices including their corporate headquarters in Milpitas, California. The work has extended to the translation of technical documentation for a variety of products as well as marketing material and web site content into 10 different languages. Owing to the efficiency of MultiLing's translation memory system Fortis^®, glossaries, and other databases, LSI Corporation saves a lot of money on this high volume of translations.

BEST PRACTICE

Task Automation with Macros

Do you ever find yourself performing repetitive computer tasks and thinking that, at this moment, a well trained monkey or a robot could replace you?  Before you design that robot, and subject the future of the world to the risk of a rogue cyborg, let’s examine how you might automate those repetitive tasks using macros or scripts.

With a macro you can automate virtually any predictable, repetitive task you do in Windows. Our team uses macros for many highly repetitive processes such as creating folder structures for a project, organizing and zipping project deliverables, renaming large quantities of files, and even opening and arranging specific sets of applications at startup. Macros can also interface with command line utilities.  One such utility converts text files from one type of encoding to another (ie UTF-8 or shift-JIS).  Rather than opening a command prompt and typing the command along with switches and executing, we simply select a file or folder and execute the macro.  All the work is done behind the scenes.

Some macros will save merely 3-4 seconds of your time.  Others may have a more profound impact.  The aforementioned encoding macro can literally save several minutes, if not hours, of work depending on the number of files and language encodings involved.  In a recent estimate, we discovered that our macros saved each member of the team at least 10 minutes a day.  Not much, but multiplied by the average 261 work days per year, that’s a savings of at least 45 hours per person per year.  In the case of more complex macros, the savings can be much larger.

The second major advantage of automation through macros is the reduction in the margin for error.  In the translation industry, many companies have specific file naming structures or other requirements for deliverables.  A well-designed macro will not only perform these tasks, but will perform them the same way every time.  This offers predictable results and reduces the risk for human error.  Additionally, because the macro runs in the background, you can start it and move on to the next task.

There are two notable macro applications for Windows. The first is Macro Express. This application is good for the novice up to expert level macro programmer.  By selecting from a large list of predefined actions included with the program, one can quickly build a new macro.  While you do have to purchase Macro Express, it will pay for itself in the first week of serious macro usage. The second macro application worth noting is AutoIt.  AutoIt is freeware and uses a BASIC-like scripting language.  Though more difficult to learn for a non-programmer, AutoIt has the advantage of being free.  It also has a broader range of available actions and scripts can be compiled into stand-alone executables.  This is useful for sharing your macros with a non-user.

Regardless of application choice, automating your repetitive processes will allow you to focus on your more important tasks and provide job security against invading chimps.