The International Association for Advancement in Language Technology
… derives it acronym, ASLING (or AsLing) from its full name, in French: Association internationale pour la promotion des technologies Linguistiques.
Why French? ASLING is an international non-profit association governed by Articles 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code, registered in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
Objectives
- promote the use of information technology in the fields of language, translation, terminology and related fields;
- organize and manage conferences to achieve its objective;
- defend the professional, economic, social, legal and moral interests of stakeholders in its fields of competence in general and its members in particular;
- provide the general public and its members in particular, a better understanding of the contribution of technology in the fields of language, translation, terminology and related fields;
- promote training and professional development and to provide stakeholders in its fields of competence in general and its members in particular, the material means to achieve this goal, including through studies, meetings, lectures, debates and discussion;
- engage in research activities in its fields of competence;
- set up and maintain websites, forums, discussion groups and mailing lists in its fields of competence.
Translating and the Computer
Upon its inception, ASLING took over the long-running conference series, Translating and the Computer, established in 1978 by the former UK not-for-profit professional association Aslib, under whose management the 1978 conference and subsequent annual conferences were held from 1980 through 2013. ASLING successfully carried out the 2014 through 2016 conferences and will host the 2017 conference, TC39, on 16 and 17 November 2017.
Honorary Members
ASLING’s statutes provide for the awarding of Honorary membership to natural or legal persons nominated as eminent in one or more of the fields of competence of the association, whom the Executive Committee wishes to invite to strengthen the Association, or in recognition of past services. ASLING has awarded honorary membership to the following persons:
2014 — John Hutchins – for his invaluable work in establishing and maintaining the Machine Translation Archives ( http://www.mt-archive.info/ ) which, among other contents, is a repository for talks and papers given at all past Translating and the Computer conferences (1978-2016).
2015 — Alan K. Melby – for his work to establish standards for terminology and translation which are a key bedrock upon which the (computer) tools supporting the translation of texts between languages depend. Alan is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Brigham Young University (USA), and a member of the Council of FIT, the International Federation of Translators. He has been involved in the development of translation and interpreting-related standards since the 1980s and is currently part of the team that is updating the ISO TBX (TermBase eXchange) standard. Alan co-authored the first version of the TMX standard for exchanging translation memories. He is also a member of the development teams revising two major international translation process standards, incl. ISO 17100, and part of the team developing a new American standard that will facilitate the assessment of translation quality.
2016 — David Chambers – for his work in structuring and formalizing the interorganisational cooperation among the language services of international organisations and multilateral bodies to share information and experiences about tools for translation, terminology and interpretation and to assist these organisations to work with the academic and research communities. David worked for over 20 years with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialised agency of the United Nations in Geneva, initially as Head of the Patent Translation Section and subsequently as Head of the Language Division responsible for the Organization’s translation and interpretation activities. He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) in the United Kingdom.
All three also have been associated with the Translating and the Computer conference series over many years.