25 years of experience on business, industrial, academic and government-sponsored projects in natural language processing, technical writing, controlled language authoring software, machine translation and Translation memory software development and implementation, documentation workflow tools, datawarehousing, business intelligence softwre, enterprise performance management systems, Decision Support Systems (DSS), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), telecommunications software, SAP Finance software, speech technologies, and localization.

Expert in Haitian Creole and several other French Creole languages for past 25 years

Expert in Automated translation, speech technologies, and translation memory systems for 20 years

See the video of my invited open public talk The successes and challenges of making low-data languages available in online automatic translation portals and software presented at Microsoft Research Headquarters in August 2010

Professional Experience:

since 2008: various roles at SAP France (formerly Business Objects) Advisor for Speech technology projects (since 2015) Member of Customer Advisory Board of SAP MediaShare platform (YouTube-like) + Speech Technologies (since 2015) Expert Advisor for Computer Generated Translation and Computer Assisted Authoring (since 2014) Key Expert of Internal Strategic Consulting for MT Steering Committee (since 2013) Lead of WordShare Project (customer glossary consumption project) (since 2014) ISO9001 certification Coach and internal auditor (since 2009) ISO9001 Quality Management Representative at SAP Labs France office (2010-2015) Senior Expert, Engineering Tools & Methodologies (2011-2014) Engineering Tools/Processes Expert (2010-2011) Engineering Cross-Functions Deputy Lead (2009-2010) Validation Project Lead (2008-2009)


2010-2011: Volunteer Language Technology Expert for Haiti/Haitian Creole Disaster Relief projects (SAP/Microsoft/Google/CrisisCamps/etc). Click on link to watch video of the story



2007-2008: Director of Business Development at Translations.com / TransPerfect



2006-2007: EMEA Director of Professional Services and Corporate Technical Account Management at SYSTRAN Software (SYSTRAN Machine Translation software)




2001-2006: Various roles (starting up new depts almost every year) at Mycom France / Mycom International ISO9001 Quality Management Manager (2005-2006) Software Program Manager (2002-2004) Software Training Manager (2004-2005) Quality Assurance/Testing Manager (2002-2003) Technical/Marketing Documentation Manager (2001-2002)



2001: Project Director at Softissimo (PROMT-based Reverso Machine Translation software)



1998-2000: Technical Director at European / Evaluations & Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) (includes evaluation of various natural language processing systems and training data sets)




1995-1998: Carnegie Mellon Univ - 2 follow-on roles:
1995-1996: 2 years as Onsite Software/systems Trainer and linguist of Controlled Language Authoring, Translation Systems, Authoring/Translation Workflow, SGML at Caterpillar Inc - customer site of Center for Machine Translation/Carnegie Mellon University 1997-1998: 2 years as Research Linguist Scientist and Lab Supervisor onsite at Language Technologies Institute/Center for Machine Translation/Carnegie Mellon University



1988-1994: lecturer and professor positions in language and linguistics / Professional Translator


Full-time positions:

1994: Associate Instructor/Lecturer in French at Indiana University, Dept of French and Italian (short-term fellowship) 1993-1994: Course Coordinator, Business Language Professor, and Translator Executive Language Services 1991-1993: Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Université Lyon 2, in collaboration with the Oregon University System 1991-1992: Graduate Teaching Assistant + Translator at the Centre Oregon d'Etudes Françaises Student Exchange Program run by the Oregon University System 1990-1992: Lecturer in French and Applied Linguistics at Portland State University (PSU) , Dept of Foreign Languages & Dept of Applied Linguistics of the Oregon University System 1989-1990: English teacher at the Lycee La Martiniere, Lyon, France, (1 year teaching fellowship through the Oregon University System) 1988-1989: French Teaching Assistant at Portland State University (PSU) , Dept of Foreign Languages & Dept of Applied Linguistics of the Oregon University System Note: the Oregon University System (OUS) is composed of Portland State Univ (PSU), Univ of Oregon (UO), Oregon State Univ (OSU), Southern Oregon Univ (SOU), Western Oregon Univ (WOU), Eastern Oregon Univ (EOU), Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT)



Guest positions:
Summer 1992: Guest Dept Head & Professor of Linguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics European Training Programme (ETP): taught seminars on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics Summer 1992: Guest Professor of French Language at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lyon (Graduate Business School of Lyon)
Advisory roles: 2001 to 2012: Advisory Board member for MultiLingual Computing & Technology magazine March 2005 to present: Advisory Board member for the LINGUIST List 2013 to present: Board member of the eLinguistics association October 2013 to present: Key Expert of Internal Strategic Consulting for the MT Steering Committee at SAP (SAP Language Services -- SLS) September 2014 to present: Advisory consultant for Speech Technology projects at SAP June 2015 to present: Member of Customer Advisory Board of SAP MediaShare platform (YouTube-like)
Professional Certifications:

December 2004: obtained official certification as trainer of all of the following courses for the Mycom NIMS-PrOptima Telecom Business Intelligence solution suite for software versions: 1.9, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30, 1.40:
Standard User course (user course, Call Trace, Geographic Information System, Network Element Profiling) System Administration Importation Control Manager and Importation Engine


June 2005: obtained official certification as a PROMT Dictionary Developer - (covers versions for PROMT XT v6, v6.5, v7, and PROMT/Reverso 4 & 5)

September 2005: obtained official certification as a Quality Internal Auditor based on the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Standard by AFAQ/AFNOR Standards organization in France


Education: 1987 & 1988: Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Languages & Literature/Theology (+ minors in World History & Music) 1989: Bachelor of Arts in French Linguistics 1991: Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics / TESOL 1992: Maîtrise des Sciences du Langage (MA in Theoretical Linguistics) 1994: Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies (DEA) de Sciences du Language (1st level doctorate in Theoretical Linguistics)
Machine Translation expertise: LinkedIn profile

Software Reviews:

See my Language Technology Evaluation (LangTechEval) web page downloadable at: Go to "files" section > Software Reviews subsection
Publications (Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Translation Software, Technical writing, Translation, Authoring/Translation workflows)

List of Creole languages and technologies at:
Creole technology publications list

List of all technology-related talks and publications (last updated on 12 Aug 2013) at:
Full list of technology publications

All articles and case studies downloadable at the Files section of my LinkedIn profile at:
LinkedIn profile - go to Files section


My input on debates on MT from the Language Service Provider and Freelance translator perspective on LinkedIn:

How-MT-affects-rate-schemes-translators-Automated-Translation-LinkedInGroup-23March2010.doc MT-PE-practices-rates-LocalizationProfessional-LinkedInGroup-23March2010.doc JeffAllen-MT-allies-and-enemies-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-2009.doc JeffAllen-translation-quality-from-LSP-translator-perspective-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-6March2010.doc JeffAllen-translation-quality-items-QA-QE-QM-process-product-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-12March2010.doc JeffAllen-MT-PE-practices-rates-LocalizationProfessional-LinkedInGroup-2March2010.doc JeffAllen-Is-MT-dict-worth-effort-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-Oct-Dec2009.doc JeffAllen-26Feb2010-MTengines-put-to-test-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-news.doc JeffAllen-project-size-stats-AutomatedTranslation-LinkedIn-2009.doc JeffAllen-MT-PE-stat-no-MT-dict-2005.doc

(some statistics from and MT postediting without MT dictionary building; this one is not in the other LinkedIn group thread)

Experience on over 20 European Commission and USA Government-funded Human Language Technology (IST, MLIS, LE4, etc) and Telecommunications projects as well as corporate-funded projects