EQHO Communications has revised Chulalongkorn University’s localization syllabus as part of its community development initiative. The syllabus has been adapted to educate Thailand’s new generation of localization professionals on ‘East to West & West to East’ translations in preparation for the AEC.
Prestigious Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok ranks in the top 5 of best Asian Universities. Thailand’s oldest university, it was founded by King Vajiravudh in the early 1900s as a memorial to his father King Chulalongkorn. It was originally a ‘training college’ for royal pages who went on to serve the Interior Ministry. In 1917, the King decided that education should be provided to all people, not just bureaucrats, and it was awarded university status.
Chulalongkorn now prepares students for an exciting future, in anticipation of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2016. Ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will allow the free flow of products and services, investment and capital. This will create a combined population of nearly 600 million and total trade in excess of US$ 1.4 trillion.
These opportunities will also create many challenges. In a 2012 article titled Get ready: AEC is coming, The Nation newspaper reported concerns about Thailand’s readiness for the changes. Members will face increased competition and SME’s will need to expand in readiness. Thailand must ensure it has the language skills to cope.
EQHO Communications Ltd. is a Bangkok-based language service provider. The company has helped major corporations such as IBM, Siemens, Microsoft, and Citrix develop a presence in one of Southeast Asia’s most advantageous countries.
To help bring on the next generation of Thai translation and localization professionals, EQHO is involved with various community-based localization industry development initiatives. These include university classes at University of Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTTC) and Chulalongkorn University.
This year, the company has revised the syllabus for the highly successful Chulalongkorn project. The 17 week course, ‘Fundamentals of Localization’ is conducted by EQHO President Phanitanan Sanitprachakorn and 4 colleagues. It incorporates computer aided translation tools, localization engineering, linguistics, and desktop publishing; covering document, website, software and multimedia translation.
Starting June 1st 2013, the adapted version will focus on ‘East to West & West to East’ business and alignment with the AEC, incorporating some of the latest translation and localization trends such as machine translation post-editing. It aims to educate students on how localization impacts on the successes of organizations, and why this will intensify within AEC. The vision is to bring Thailand to the forefront as a hub for Southeast Asian localization.
About EQHO Communications
EQHO Communications – one of Southeast Asia’s largest independent localization firms, has over 80 in-house staff. Building on a well-educated labor base in Thailand, EQHO has created an internationally recognized localization firm specializing in the rarer Southeast Asian language services, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. EQHO operates from a 1000-square-meter office in central Bangkok. With in-house linguists, multilingual DTP operators, localization & multimedia engineers, and on-site recording studios, EQHO offers an unrivalled level of service and rapid turnaround. Languages like Thai, Lao, Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese and Khmer have character sets that pose unique challenges. For this reason, it is essential to have layout staff and native linguists under the same roof. Clients include: Acronis, SAS, Citrix, ABBYY, AVG, Dow, P&G, Siemens, Transocean, Shell, Michelin, Air France, Sheraton, Unilever, and many more. In addition to its Headquarters in
Bangkok, EQHO has facilities in Vientiane, Lao PDR, in addition to sales offices in Brno, Czech Republic, San Francisco, U.S.A and Sydney, Australia. In 2012, EQHO was ranked as a Top 20 Asia-based language service provider by Common Sense Advisory, the localization industry’s leading research organization.
