LINGUIST List 4.563

Mon 26 Jul 1993

Sum: Language Technology/Electric Word

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1. Kate Finn, Language Technology/Electric Word: SUM

Well, the LT/EW people should be pleased at the number of responses I got
to my query asking about whatever happened to this magazine. Most respondents
referred me to a newer publication called Language Industry Monitor;
some offered other alternatives; some wanted to know what I was finding
out; but they all mourned the loss of the old LT. Below are excerpts
of responses, with names and e-mail included as appropriate. I've included
Colin Brace's response to the Linguist mailing list, in case you missed it.

thanks,
 Kate Finn

=====================================================================
The same people who published Electric Word, Jane Metcalfe and Louis
Rossetto, are the publisher and editor of WIRED, which you probably
have gotten copies of since you're a CHI member. It doesn't exactly
cover the same stuff, but if you write them a fan letter about EW,
they'd love to hear it, and it might push the editorial content more
in the direction you enjoyed (e.g. janewired.com).

They relocated from Amsterdam to SF area.

 -------------------------------------------------

You are quite right! Electric Word died over a year ago, and was a great
loss. There are some successors, however, not with the same style but
have some of the content.

Language Industry Monitor [published in Netherlands, edited by Colin Brace]

La Tribune des Industries de la Langue [published in France, edited
by Andre Abbou.]

MT News International [published as newsletter of IAMT and associated
organisations, including AMTA (Association for Machine Translation in
the Americas) ]

 =====================================================================

Colin Brace, now produces a pamphlet every 2 months entitled
"Language Industry Monitor", subscription $95 per year.
I saw him recently in Dublin and he told me that Electic Word finally perished
in glorious fashion having consumed vast sums of cash in the process!

 ====================================================================
Electric Word is dead. One of its former publishers, Mr.Colin Brace,
(colinbparamount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl) now puts out a small
(approx. 12 page) but informative publication called Language Industry
Monitori (ISSN: 0925-3327). LIM is published six times a year by:

UITGEVERIJ LIM
Eerste Helmersstraat 183
1054 DT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Subscriptions are US$95 per year.
To give you an idea of contents, here are the titles of the articles
in issue 13, Jan-Feb 1993.

- Making MT Work. How do you translate 500,000 pages from English into
French? Ask Lexi-tech.
- Logos: New Partners, New Language Pairs
- PC Lingua Version 2
- Boeing's Simplified English Checker
- Knowledge Technology at Sun
- Reference-Perfect?
- Corpus Cruncher
- INK Acquired by R.R. Donnelley
- A Report on MT from the ATA

 ===================================================================

You asked about Language Technology/Electric Word. I was one of the
editors of EW, and I can tell you that it folded in May 1990. The last
issue (with Richard Saul Wurman on the cover) appeared in July of that
year. After approximately three years, the magazine had not managed to
turn a profit and the Dutch publisher finally pulled the plug.

EW enjoyed a small but very appreciative audience -- people like
yourself -- and it is sorely missed. Once every few months, I see a
message like yours on the Net. The last one I saw was on the LANGAGE
NATUREL list a few months ago...

You might be interested to know that I launched a bi-monthly
newsletter in January 1991 together with several other old EW hands,
with the aim of covering something of a subset of the same subject
matter that Electric Word did. It is called LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR
and it offers a collection of news, background information, and
opinion concerning matters related to language processing, with a
decided emphasis on applications. We are currently the only
publication covering this field at the moment.

I am afraid, however, that we have eschewed the "zany" style of EW
that you refer to and -- for better or worse -- have adopted a more
"restrained" approach. While we don't offer lots of blinding graphics,
I think you will find lots of useful information in LANGUAGE INDUSTRY
MONITOR. An annual subscription costs US$95 per year.

Our next issue will be shipping next week. You or any other reader of
LINGUIST may receive a sample copy to peruse at your leisure by
sending me name, affiliation and complete mailing address. I will
append an overview of the contents of the last few issues for your
convenience. [to: Colin Brace at colinbparamount.nikhefk.nikhef.n]

Back issues of Language Industry Monitor

A limited number of back issues of Language Industry Monitor are still
available. Cost: US$15/NLG25 per copy, including airmail shipping.

 No. 8 March/April 1992
AND Software and the new OED on CD-ROM, Larousse online, Janet Baker
of Dragon Systems, Chandioux's GramR, ESPRIT Translators' Workbench,
Natural Language Inc, a linguistic software exhibition, Whitecomb:
"Did Ovum get it right?"

No. 9 May/June 1992
Systran revitalized? Nestor's handwriting recognizer, Localization at
France's Bull, Lernout & Hauspie retrench, Systex's spirit, NLP groups
at BIM (b) and Oce (nl), writing tools, Whitecomb: "A Case for Natural
Numerics"

No. 10 July/August 1992
SGML for Interleaf, Al-Kaatib International, Europe's libraries
online, SITE's lexical workstation, MT news, Talo's hyphenators, Mac
system extensions, Voice Navigator, Engelien: "A Reply from Ovum"

No. 11 September/October 1992
Whitecomb's report from tmi '92, SoftCore, translation software from
Trados and IBM, the lisa organization, new French reading station, MT
for CompuServe? AICorp merges, Cambridge Language Survey gets started

No. 12 November/December 1992
MT Evalution Workshop/ATA Conference, DEC's high tech library's (cmu
and Tilburg), NLP at Unisys, Euroglot revisited, A look at
RightWriter, Richardson: TMI '92: second opinion, IDOC's XL8

No. 13 January/February 1993
A visit to MT user Lexi-tech, Logos update, Boeing's Simplified
English Checker, Knowledge engineering at SunSoft, Corpus crunching in
Holland, R.R. Donnelley acquires INK International, MT report from the
ATA

No. 14 March/April 1993
Why WordPerfect bought Reference software, pangloss: interlingua MT,
Oracle's linguistic software group, Collins 100 line, Terminology
focus: TermKey from CAP debis, Melby on TIF, Termbase design. Also:
Seen at CeBIT '93

No. 15 May/June
IBM's translation strategy, Houghton Mifflin's Software Division,
Oxford & Dec's corpus tool, LRE Eagles off to a flying start, the LISA
annual meeting, ARPA's funding for NSF

 ==========================================

Concerning your querie about LT. This journal is no longer. I believe
the last issue appeared 2 years ago. Instead I can recommend Language
International. If you give me your address I'll forward a free
inspection copy.
With best regards,
Kees Vaes
John Benjamins Publishing Co.
100034.1023CompuServe.COM