Category Archives: cApStAn updates

Article by Steve Dept – Founder, cApStAn If Quality Matters, Define It Each year, under the banner of Multilingualism, translation and language-based AI services, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation organizes a high-level conference known as the Translating Europe Forum (TEF). Last year’s theme was “Words Matter”, this year’s conference theme was “Quality Matters”. When …

“If Quality Matters, Define It | Translating Europe Forum (TEF)”

What is Toledo? Toledo is a REST API that enables an end-to-end workflow from a content repository or platform to a translation environment and back. cApStAn’s translation technology team (TTT) designed Toledo for autonomous integration of translation, translation quality estimation and optional further processing. Main Features Effortless, Accurate, and Scalable Localisation What can a user …

“Toledo: cApStAn’s End-to-End Translation Solution”

IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is a digital assessment of fourth- and eighth-grade students’ mathematics and science achievement conducted every four years since 1995. For over three decades, TIMSS has been at the forefront of monitoring global trends in student achievement. TIMSS data have enabled countries around the world to make …

“cApStAn to verify translation quality of TIMSS instruments for the 7th time”

Every five years since 2001, the IEA has assessed the foundational skill of reading in 4th-grade students: PIRLS, the Progress in International Reading Literacy, provides internationally comparable data on how well children read and offers policy-relevant information for improving learning and teaching. The study has now completed its transition from pencil-and-paper tests to fully digital …

“cApStAn to work with IEA on cross-language comparability of PIRLS instruments”

The European arm of the Association of Test Publishers (E-ATP) held its annual conference in Dublin this year. The venue was ideal, the turnout was better than in 2024, though the proportion of vendors, and the content was definitely engaging. One takeaway for the cApStAn team was that the assessment localisation challenge has shifted towards …

“E-ATP25 Conference, Dublin | Building European Assessment for All”

We are thrilled to announce that funding has officially been secured for the Multilingual Answer Scale Repository to the Cross-cultural Research Community  (ScaleRep), a groundbreaking initiative born from a collaborative effort between GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany and cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control. This achievement is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Deutsche …

“ScaleRep – Multilingual Answer Scale Repository to the Cross-cultural Research Community: A Milestone for Multilingual Survey Research”

We’re thrilled to share that cApStAn’s founder Steve Dept was invited to speak at Google’s internal Survey Conference last week, where he shared insights on the latest trends and best practices in survey translations. Abstract from the session: The blueprint for high-quality questionnaire translations using sophisticated workflows was developed at a time when data collection …

“Survey Translation in 2025: is expertise still needed with today’s toolkit?”

Speakers: AI is an umbrella term. AI includes ML, auto-complete, GenAI, NMT, predictive AI. 1. What AI-powered tools are relevant/suitable for translation, localization? – By professionals (closed LLM API, licensed MT, AIQE) • Combining language assets and automated translation • Risk management – By laypersons (public MT providers, LLMs) • Limitations and risks 2. What …

“On-Demand Webinar | Different Types of AI and their Role in Test and Survey Localization”

The first European Conference of the Association of Test Publishers (E-ATP) at which cApStAn was present was set in Dublin, ten years ago, in 2015. Our founder Steve Dept recalls that his arrival in Dublin (during the Rugby World Cup) coincided with a surprise victory of the Japanese rugby team over the South African Springboks. …

“cApStAn Team at the E-ATP Conference in Dublin”

By: Steve Dept, Founder – cApStAn Despite an erratic Eurostar service on July 14th, arriving in Utrecht Central Station on a summer afternoon puts one’s mind to rest: the students know how to chill in troves, sipping drinks on terraces or on flat barges that ease along the water, cruising the streets on bicycles – not …

“ESRA 2025 Conference Update | The Evolving Landscape of Survey Methodology”

While cApStAn’s founder Steve Dept is more of a field practitioner than a researcher, he has collected a wealth of empirical data in his work on survey questionnaires. He has learned a lot from sharing the data with researchers and academics, as they identified patterns and contributed to the conceptual frameworks that underpin cApStAn’s work. …

“ESRA 2025 Conference | cApStAn | Utrecht, The Netherlands | 14th July to 18th July”

Translation and localisation has traditionally been a cost centre, and the work performed by professional translators was mostly paid by word, by line, by page. Today, this model has become meaningless: translating half a million words or generating 100 pages directly in a foreign language can be done faster and cheaper than crafting two or three …

“Leveraging Translation Technology with Discernment | The Keys to Smart Localisation unveils on August 27, 2025”