Specialist terminology taxonomies from Cologne Technical University

Click and thou shalt go there!

Early in the last decade when I lived near Düsseldorf and began translating full time, the nearby technical university in Cologne had an excellent terminology studies program run by Prof. Klaus-Dirk Schmitz, who also had a long history in Saarbrücken back in my exchange student days there. I had the pleasure of meeting this gentleman at various professional events for Passolo (before it was swallowed by SDL) or other occasions, and I remain impressed by the professional qualities of some of the colleagues he helped to educate. At some point he or one of his students pointed me to an interesting online collection of specialist terminologies created by students at the university as part of their degree work. While student work must be viewed carefully, on the whole I found these collections to be of better quality than quite a few put together by "professionals", and their structured taxonomies were also interesting to people like me who enjoy such things. And occasionally the terminologies were rather helpful for certain technical topics I translate.

But over the years I simply forgot about them for the most part, and when they did come to mind I assumed that the old MultiTerm engine used to handle the data on the site would no longer work. That latter assumption may be partly correct; I found the collection again, noted that the most recent addition to the term library was a bit over a decade ago and that the search functions don't seem to work with Chrome, though I am able to browse the structured taxonomies without difficulty.

Looking through the list of term collections, I saw one that would be particularly useful for a current personal effort: beekeeping. One of my projects for the year ahead is to add some hives to the garden to see if I can improve some of the vegetable, fruit and nut yields. A local Portuguese beekeeper and I have been trading poultry, and he kindly provided me with a copy of his thesis on apiculture and offered assistance to get me started. So I am reading up on the subject in several languages, thinking to put together a good terminology to make cross-referencing the concepts between English, German and Portuguese a little easier.

One thing I never tried to do before was to extract data from the FH Köln (Cologne Technical University) site into any sort of terminology management tool. I don't think they were ever intended to be used that way, and at the time most of the collections were put together, translation environment tools were much less widely used by professionals and university study programs than they are today. But after a little thought and experimentation, mining the pages proved to be quite simple.

Here's how I did it:

1. Opened a collection of interest and expanded the folder tree for a particular language completely, then selected and copied all the text in that frame:
   
   
   
   
2. Pasted the copied content as plain text (no formatting) into Microsoft Word. The numerical codes were followed directly by the text entries.
3. Removed parentheses by searching and replacing with nothing.
4. Inserted a tab between the number codes using search and replace with wildcards (regex of a sort):
   
   
   
   
5. Switched to the other language in the term collection and repeated steps 1 through 4.
6. Transferred the contents to Excel (various ways to do this).
7. Imported the Excel file with the specialist terms into a term base in my translation environment tool of choice.
   

Translating in the trenches....

The other day I was chatting with a colleague about snarky communications with clients and vendors, and she reminded me of a delightful gem of a blog which, though it only had a run of five months, provided a lot of smiles and laughs to fellow translators, most especially those involved in some way with German translation. This was in the days before all the foolishness of "branding" and style over substance.

For a good time, check out https://trenchtranslation.blogspot.com/

Deutsche Kommandos für „Hey memoQ“

Mit der memoQ Version 8.7 hat memoQ Translation Technologies Ltd. (ehemals „Kilgray“ – „mQtech“ unten) eine kostenlose, integrierte Spracherkennung eingeführt, die für die Arbeit in vielen Sprachen eine wesentliche Effizienzsteigerung verspricht. Für die Arbeit in deutscher Sprache soll es von vornherein klar gestellt werden: Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) ist und bleibt für die vorhersehbare Zeit die bessere Wahl. Das gleiche gilt für alle Sprachen, die von DNS (in der aktuellen Version 15) unterstützt sind: Deutsch, Englisch, Spanisch, Französisch, Italienisch und Niederländisch.

Aber für die slawischen Sprachen, nordischen Sprachen, sonstigen romanischen Sprachen, Arabisch u.v.m. sind andere Lösungen gefragt, wenn man mit Spracherkennung arbeiten will. Vor etwa 4 Jahren, als ich angefangen habe, solche Lösungen zu erforschen, waren diese für „exotische“ Sprachen wie Russisch oder europäisches Portugiesisch als Teil der Übersetzungsarbeiten kaum gedacht; heute gibt es vielfältige halbgute Möglichkeiten, zu denen jetzt auch „Hey memoQ“ gehört. Noch warten wir auf Lösungen auf der Ebene von DNS für die sonstigen Sprachen und noch lange werden wir sicher warten, bis gute Erkennungsqualität mit einfach erweiterbarem Wortschatz und flexiblen, konfigurierbaren Kommandos für die Systemsteuerung für Sprachen wie Dänisch oder Hindi allgemein verfügbar sind. Zur Zeit sind wir nicht mal so weit mit Englisch, wenn man z.B. die Diktierfunktion auf Handys betrachtet. Spracherkennung ohne eigenständig erweiterbarem Wortschatz ist und bleibt eine Technologie auf Krücken.

Aber die Krücken bei Hey memoQ sind erstmal nicht schlecht für eine aufkommende Technologie. Die mit der 8.7er Version von memoQ freigegebene App ist m.E. noch „Beta“ – was kann man sonst sagen, wenn nur für Englisch die Steuerungskommandos standardmäßig konfiguriert sind? – aber für den Stand der derzeit zahlbaren Technologie ist die von mQtech eingeführte Lösung die beste in der Klasse, sogar mit einem tauglichen Umgehungslösung für das Problem des nichterweiterbaren Wortschatzes, nämlich die Möglichkeit, sprachgesteuert die ersten neuen Treffer aus der Ergebnisliste der Terminologie, Korporasuche, Nontranslatables usw. in den Zieltext einzufügen. Wenn man sowieso vernünftige Terminologiearbeit leistet und ein memoQ-Glossar mit den nötigen Sonderbegriffen ausstattet, kann man schon ziemlich gut arbeiten. (Und wer eventuell eine Einweisung in die statistisch basierte Erfassung der häufigen Begriffe aus einem Dokument bzw. einer Dokumentensammlung benötigt, kann sich hier informieren.)

Hey memoQ hat auch andere Alleinstellungsmerkmale, u.a. einen Wechsel der Erkennungssprache, wenn man den Cursor im Textfeld für die andere Arbeitssprache setzt. Also wenn ich z.B. Englisch als Zieltext diktiere, will aber einen Tippfehler im deutschen Ausgangstext korrigieren oder vielleicht den gesamten Text nach einem bestimmten Wort im Ausgangstext filtrieren, wechselt die von Hey memoQ verstandene Sprache von Englisch auf Deutsch, wenn ich bloß auf Zieltextseite klicke. So geht das auch bei jedem unterstützten Sprachpaar. Nicht schlecht.

Wer bereits meckert, dass diese derzeit auf Apple iOS basierende Lösung nicht für die beliebten Android-Handys verfügbar ist, begreift die Realität der Softwareentwicklung bzw. Produktentwicklung einfach nicht. Schon vor mQtech mit der Entwicklung dieser Lösung begonnen hat, habe ich selber aus persönlichem Anlass die möglichen Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) untersucht, und bei den meisten war die Kommandosteuerung, wie sie bei Hey memoQ zu finden ist, nicht verfügbar. In den meisten Fällen nur die Übertragung eines gesprochenen und transkribierten Textes. Aber das hat wir bereits. Bei myEcho zum Beispiel. Oder auch die Lösung für Chrome-Spracherkennung in jedem Windows- oder Linux-Programm. Was wir dringend brauchen ist nicht das Bier von gestern. Wir brauchen zukunftsweisende Prototypen, die die Entwicklung der branchenüblichen Technologien wie memoQ, SDL Trados Studio, WordFast und andere in eine bessere Richtung treiben, und das macht schon Hey memoQ. Also ein dickes Lob an das memoQ-Team und seinen deutschen Entwicklungschef :-)

Aber auch mit einem deutschen Entwicklungschef, ist der Zeitdruck manchmal so, dass man vorläufig keine konfigurierten Steuerungskommandos mit der ersten Release-Version freigibt, wahrscheinlich weil das eigentlich aufwändiger ist, als die meisten Leute sich glauben würden. In jeder Sprache. Wer zum Beispiel Polnisch diktieren will und nicht nur die gesprochenen Phrasen ins Textfeld transkribiert haben will, sondern auch sprachgesteuert den Text editieren oder Filterkommandos oder Konkordanzsuche ausführen will, muss erstmal polnische Kommandos im Programm einrichten. Und da stoßt man oft unerwartet an die Grenzen und Merkwürdigkeiten der individuellen Erkennungstechnologie. Eine gewählte Phrase kann, zum Beispiel, einer sehr häufigen Phrase ähneln, so dass oft diesen anderen Text geschrieben wird, wenn man eigentlich ein Kommando ausführen lassen wollte. Also sind ungewöhnliche aber erkennbare Texte oft die beste Wahl für Kommandotexte. Meine erprobten Kommandotexte für Deutsch sind unten als Screenshot angegeben. Wie man gleich merkt, ist das zu konfiguriende Dialog noch nicht für die deutsche Benutzeroberfläche lokalisiert. In kommenden Versionen wird das natürlich der Fall sein. Aber ob irgendwann aus Ungarn die Bearbeitungskommandos für Griechisch vorkonfiguriert kommen werden, kann ich nicht raten. Selber konfigurieren kann man sie aber heute schon, wenn man Geduld hat.

Noch zu bemerken: die iOS-Spracherkennung benötigt gute Internet-Bandbreite, da der Erkennungsserver im Cloud liegt. Datenschutz, Datenschutz, ja, ja. Sparen Sie mir den Vortrag bitte und lassen sie diese Technologie sich erstmal weiter entwickeln. Die Fragen zum Datenschutz waren schon vor einigen Jahren ausreichend von deutschen Vertretern der Firma Nuance beantwortet, und sogar die verrückten US-Behörden haben den Einsatz solcher Technologie intern freigegeben. Aber in Deutschland dreht sich die Welt anders, und gut so :-) Übrigens erlebe ich mehr Erfolg, wenn ich in kurzen, sogar dramatischen Phrasen spreche, und nicht in langen, wortreichen Sätzen. Eine ganz andere notwendige Vorgehensweise als mit DNS, zum Beispiel. Wer zu schnell spricht, merkt auch schnell, dass Wörter ausgelassen werden. Nichts mit Hey memoQ zu tun, sondern Bestandteil des Standes der Technik bei iOS-Spracherkennung sowie bei manchen anderen Technologien dieser Gattung.

Und jetzt die Ansicht meiner selbstkonfigurierten Hey memoQ Steuerungskommandos für Deutsch. Wem sich meine Wortwahl nicht gefällt, kann sich was Besseres aussuchen und hoffentlich testen und danach in den Kommentaren unten allen deutschsprachigen Kollegen mitteilen.

Die iOS-Kommandos für Interpunktion u.v.m. habe ich auf Basis der von Apple publizierten MacOS-Kommandos erforscht; es gibt in einzelnen Fällen leichte Unterschiede (d.h. man muss ein wenig experimentieren, bis man auf das richtige Kommando stoßt - falls es tatsächlich existiert), aber hiermit hat man einen guten Anfang für Sonderzeichen usw. wie ich neulich in einem englischen Blogbeitrag erklärt habe. Für fehlende Informationen kann man mQtech keine Schuld zuweisen, wenn nicht mal der iOS-Hersteller Apple die vollständige und richtige Liste mitteilt. Aber mit viel Zeit wird der Kuchen sicher gut gebacken!

memoQ Web Search examples for Portuguese

This week I'm in Lisbon teaching a 24-hour Boas Practicas (best practice) evening course for translation technology with David Hardisty and Marco Neves. Tonight we're covering web search with various sites and tools, including memoQ Web Search.

Unfortunately, Kilgray provides examples of configuring the web search only for English and German, and many of the site configurations are defective. And if you have other languages as your working pairs there isn't much you can do with those examples.

In tonight's class we had students working in the following pairs:

• Portuguese to English
• English to Portuguese
• Portuguese to Russian
• French to Portuguese
• Spanish to Portuguese
• German to Portuguese

So we created some example configurations to do web look-ups in all these pairs. And they are available here.

I was a bit surprised to find that I never blogged the chapters of my books that dealt with configuring the web search - I'll have to get around to that one of these days - but the memoQ Help isn't bad for this if you need a little guidance on how to add more site searches or change the configurations of these.

Anyone is welcome to do with the configurations provided here as they please; I hope they will help friends, colleagues and students in the Lusophone world to go a little farther with a great tool.

On a TEUR with German financial translation

Currency expressions occur in great variety in German financial translation, and it is often a great nuisance to type and check the corresponding expressions, correctly formatted, in the target language. One group of such expressions are those involving thousands of euros, typically written in German as "TEUR". However, depending on the proclivities of the source text author, other forms such as T€, kEUR or k€ may be encountered.

On the target side, clients might want to see figures like "TEUR 1.352" rendered in a number of ways: perhaps EUR 1,352 thousand, perhaps €1,352k, perhaps something else.

I have described before how to map out source and target equivalents for developing auto-translation rules or regex-based quality checking instruments to use as the basis for development specifications and case testing as well as how to document the structure and reasoning of the respective rules.

Here you can download an example of possible solutions to the specific problem described above. The downloadable ZIP archive contains two different rulesets for each of the English target text formats cited above; these may be adapted to fit the particular requirements of a client as needed.

There are, of course, quite a number of other currency expressions one routinely encounters when translating financial texts or other business documents, and the diversity of client preferences for target language formats can be considerable. In many cases, it is worthwhile to document which rulesets correspond to which client's preference, perhaps even including client names in the filename to keep things straight. Thus "KPMG_TEUR-to-English" might be the  ruleset name for the client KPMG's preference for how to translate those particular expressions to English.

Busy financial translators who use memoQ and who have discovered the benefits of rulesets like these tell me time and again how many hours or days of effort are saved routinely by using tools like these in translation and subsequent quality checks. They are a "secret weapon" in an often competitive environment with a lot of short, stressful deadlines.

Those who wish to have rulesets of their own to handle the specific requirements of their clients can turn to a number of sources for help. Kilgray's Professional Services department can develop custom rules, as can competent consultants such as Marek Pawelec or yours truly. One caveat: in hiring development experts for memoQ tools based on regular expressions (regex), it is generally a good idea to work with consultants whose primary focus is memoQ. Regular expressions are used in many other environments, such as Apsic Xbench and SDL Trados Studio (as well as many others having nothing to do with translation), but without an intimate, daily working acquaintance with memoQ, developers are often unable to understand the best approaches for working with the memoQ environment and it is all too possible to spend a lot of money on custom work which proves to be unusable, for example because the complex rules take many minutes to load each time a project or document is opened, because the developer did not break the problem down efficiently into its component parts. But done right, these rulesets are an investment which can pay enormous dividends for many specialist translators.

Drunken monkey needs German to English translator to translate from medieval Czech!

You can always count on ProZ.com, The Translators' Workhouse, for a good laugh. Here is yet another #FAIL by staff to screen job postings properly, with a clueless agency desperately seeking a German to English translator to work on a 9th century Czech document. Best rates only, please!

Such competence speaks for itself and further makes the case for disintermediation. If you want a job done right, go straight to a qualified translator; don't put a put a monkey in the middle.

A funny thing happened on the way to learning Portuguese....

When I first moved to Portugal, I stayed in one of the better parts of town, a suburb with some rather good fields and hills to walk my dogs and a lot of nice people with whom I have some things in common. I had been greatly worried by the dire warnings of German friends about what a tick-infested, dangerous place the Med countries are for pets, and how there is naught to be done. The first part is true of almost any country these days, but usually the local vets have a good understanding of how to prevent and treat local pet diseases, and just one day after my arrival I was fortunate to meet a vet in the park across from my house who gave me exactly the advice I needed and took me on a whirlwind tour of the local Neolithic archaeology sites. Can't imagine a better start for me in a new place, really.

But the house there was only available for a month, and the back yard was not well suited to containing my Deutsch Drahthaar, a hunting companion who is a sweetheart with people who likes to jump over 2 meter fences, go on tour and bring back cats as souvenirs. So I went on to another place closer to the university in the historic center of Évora. The back yard was as dog-tight as a maximum security kennel could be with walls and fences at least 5 meters high. But a black cat still managed to drop by as an impromptu snack. His bad luck in this case. The cactus which decorated the edges of the yard also meant a few difficult sessions extracting spines from the bodies of two robust dogs who like to knock each other around rather hard in play. And after the Drahthaar went sailing out a second story window to express his love to the serenading tomcat below and landed a bit hard on the cobblestones I figured it was time to move on.

One of the other problems with the first two addresses was that the neighborhoods presented too many opportunities to speak English or, occasionally, German. If the majority of people I encountered every day were not university educated with a reasonable command of one of the languages I mastered there was usually someone nearby who could serve as social methadone for someone with a lazy addiction to using the wrong language in the right place.

So I moved to the part of town where the other form of methadone is more commonly found. A place where for the first two months the only ones I met with much command of English at all were the local drug dealer and a housekeeper I knew from my favorite hotel, who is also the neighborhood's bootlegger. Aguardente caseira was quickly added to my vocabulary and kitchen shelf. German is not an option here; when the local crime lord introduced himself at the neighborhood's revolution party (celebrating the ouster of Salazar in 1974 and the political reforms which remain incomplete) he was so amused by the fact that I claimed to know the language that he called up one of the addicts who buy from him (an orderly at the local hospital if I understood correctly and a German refugee) and asked me to talk to him and confirm that I really could speak the language.

On several occasions I have had the the opportunity to use the phrase não sou alemão!!! to sooth social tensions which persist here despite the best attempts of German banks to drain the country's sometimes too-hot blood. And using the phrase with my private Portuguese tutor's mother last week transformed me in short order from persona non grata and an object of some dark speculation on a street populated by siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles to a likeable eccentric and for all I know possibly a candidate for legal induction into the family. (My Portuguese isn't quite up to the level of understanding this point, and sometimes it's better not to try.)

The recent brainstorm which resulted in The Great American Cookie Project, sharing the theory and practice of snickerdoodles, soft jumbles and every kinky kind of chocolate chip cookie one might imagine, took my crappy command of the local Alentejo dialect from nearly zero - unable to form a sentence most of the time if it involved more than "I'll have a coffee" or "Six eggs, please" - to conversing in pidgin Portuguese for more than 8 hours on many recent days and has done wonders for my physical condition and blood sugar levels. It's also given me a rapidly improving command of the techniques to cook like my local friends do. Cold cut sandwiches with too much cheese, good bye.

Moving to the sort of place my respectable, educated friends warned me to avoid has been a great experience and also shown that the place is far better than its reputation among my peers, knife-wielding tendeiros who want to break bottles over my head for not having cigarettes for them notwithstanding. A quick smile and a question about how much bigger the puny faca was than the fellow's caralho usually suffices to sooth the tensions.

As temperatures rise, tempers can get short as last night's unplanned visit to a local pub to watch the soccer game (Germany versus Portugal at the World Cup in Brazil) proved. It's been ages since I had to practice disarms, and usually that was with sticks or knives. A beer bottle is a new experience for me, as well as the creative variations of puta I learned which were expressed to my patient tutor for keeping company with the German. How many times do I have to that explain to people here that eu não sou alemão? I think there is a rematch of the discussion planned for Thursday, though to be honest I'm not fluent enough to have caught all the details. Maybe I'll be able to explain them on Friday. Let's hope.

The certified rates they are a-changin' in Germany

As a sworn translator for the German courts, for many years, I have provided those outside Germany who have asked for cost estimates for certified translations with an English translation of the law governing such services to official bodies. The government never bothered to have the JVEG translated into English, but I found it useful to do so as a guideline. While the law was only binding for certain clients, it offered useful benchmarks for quotation, which were very much in line with the usual rates charged by qualified, experienced translators. And in fact these rates were a bit low - lower than the prior law I'm told, and certainly too low for some of the hassles involved in the process of certifying documents. (I occasionally found myself working rivets with a hammer and anvil. I'm a translator, not a damned blacksmith.)

After long negotiations and delays, the German federal government has now updated the rates for compensating language services. Some information I received by e-mail is given below (in German), and there is a link to the current law. I will get around to making this available soon in English for my clients and prospects.

The base rate has increased  by about 25% - which in fact does not keep up with the inflation rate in the period during which the old law (JVEG) applied. It is now € 1.55 per 55 characters. Texts not provided in editable electronic form in common languages are subject to a 20 euro cent surcharge per line. For more details, read below or check the link.

*******

Das Zweite Kostenrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz wurde am 23.07.2013 vom Bundespräsidenten unterzeichnet. Das Gesetz ist im heutigen Bundesgesetzblatt Nr. 42 vom 29.07.2013, S. 2586 ff. veröffentlicht worden (http://www.bgbl.de/Xaver/text.xav?start=%2F%2F*[%40attr_id%3D%27bgbl113s2586.pdf%27]&skin=pdf&bk=Bundesanzeiger_BGBl&tf=xaver.component.Text_0&hlf=xaver.component.Hitlist_0).

Danach ergeben sich ab dem 1. August 2013 für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer, die für die Justiz tätig sind, insbesondere folgende Änderungen:

Vergütungssätze Übersetzungen:

Das Honorar für eine Übersetzung beträgt 1,55 Euro für jeweils angefangene 55 Anschläge des schriftlichen Textes (Grundhonorar).

Bei nicht elektronisch zur Verfügung gestellten editierbaren Texten erhöht sich das Honorar auf 1,75 Euro für jeweils angefangene 55 Anschläge (erhöhtes Honorar).

Ist die Übersetzung wegen der besonderen Umstände des Einzelfalls, insbesondere wegen der häufigen Verwendung von Fachausdrücken, der schweren Lesbarkeit des Textes, einer besonderen Eilbedürftigkeit oder weil es sich um eine in Deutschland selten vorkommende Fremdsprache handelt, besonders erschwert, beträgt das Grundhonorar 1,85 Euro und das erhöhte Honorar 2,05 Euro.

Vergütungssätze Dolmetschen:

Das Honorar des Dolmetschers beträgt für jede Stunde 70 Euro und, wenn er ausdrücklich für simultanes Dolmetschen herangezogen worden ist, 75 Euro.

Maßgebend ist ausschließlich die bei der Heranziehung im Voraus mitgeteilte Art des Dolmetschens.

Ausfallhonorar:

Ein ausschließlich als Dolmetscher Tätiger erhält eine Ausfallentschädigung, soweit er durch die Aufhebung eines Termins, zu dem er geladen war und dessen Aufhebung nicht durch einen in seiner Person liegenden Grund veranlasst war, einen Einkommensverlust erlitten hat und ihm die Aufhebung erst am Terminstag oder an einem der beiden vorhergehenden Tage mitgeteilt worden ist. Die Ausfallentschädigung wird bis zu einem Betrag gewährt, der dem Honorar für zwei Stunden entspricht.

Bitte beachten Sie, dass für die Rechnungslegung nach neu oder alt das Datum der ursprünglichen Beauftragung (für Übersetzungen) bzw. des Termins (für Dolmetschleistungen) maßgeblich ist.

...
 

Für den Bundesvorstand

André Lindemann

Präsident des BDÜ

International dates and English

Time and again I encounter problems with texts or translations because of dates. This is something we as translators and quality reviewers for languages products and services must keep in mind.

After a recent patent translation, my agency client was asked to provide translations of my appointment as a translator for the German courts and of my examination certificate for the state exams in Berlin in which I qualified as a specialist for natural science. The agency principal is a decent translator himself, and since translating my own certificates would be a conflict of interest, he undertook the task and sent me the results for approval. As expected, the translations were OK except for one thing... the dates. At the top of one translation, I did a double-take at the revelation that I was born in July, rather than October. The date stood clearly as 07/10/1961, and it took a minute before I remembered that Brits, Australians and some others write their dates differently than Americans do. The German way of writing the same date as numbers (07.10.1961) at least has the virtue of using a different separator than Americans use, and it's a different language, so it's hard to be confused there if you know the German custom. But in English, well... the trap is there.

A day later an English friend fell into the same trap in memoQ. She wanted to export some TMX data from a rather large memory - just the work of the last few days for a particular client. The export was made on the second day of March, and when there were some questions regarding the exported data and I was asked to look at the TMX file, I was surprised to see data going back to the third of February. Fortunately, the TM from which the export was made contained only data for that client, so no breach of confidentiality occurred, but in a general TM this would have occurred. What was the problem? She was thinking in "UK mode" and confused 02/03 and 03/02.

One way to avoid this problem is to use the International date format, as Kilgray does in memoQ's filter for the TM and termbase editors, for example:

I am fond of using the international YYYY-MM-DD format wherever appropriate. I expect technical people anywhere in the world to be able to deal with it. However, this numeric format has its limitations too, because there are quite a number of people who simply aren't familiar with the format or who may be a bit dyslexic with numbers. The best solution in most cases is to use dates which include the month written as a word or a least an abbreviation thereof. For English, I would use a specifically American or British number format only if one is very, very sure that wider distribution will never be required.