Introducing a Translated Reprint Edition of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine

Li Deng, Editor in Chief
Linda Cherry, Publication Manager, IEEE Signal Processing Society

In his recent article in eNews, Prof. Ali Sayed, our society Vice President-Publications, shared the good news with our readers that “IEEE Signal Processing Magazine has ranked first among all IEEE publications (125 in total) and among all publications within the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Category (245 in total), … The magazine’s impact factor is the highest among all these publications and stands now at 4.914.” This is a clear demonstration of the impact of signal processing as a field, and the quality of our work as a community that generates such an impact. Our editorial team would like to thank all of you.

Indeed, signal processing technology permeates the finest details of our lives. Signal processing is a vital core discipline and technology for the modern information age, and has its outreach on a global scale with contributions to the technology from all over the world. In particular, Asia and the Pacific Rim are recognized by the IEEE as a key region for not only developing but also exploiting signal processing, communication, computing, and related technologies at an unprecedented pace. The IEEE developed a specific global strategy to encourage participation among all electrical engineers in Asia and the Pacific Rim. At the IEEE Signal Processing Society, it is part of our mission to inform our members and students in Asia of the cutting edge technological breakthroughs. We hope that sharing this information will inspire future scientists and practitioners and encourage new uses for existing technology and innovation. As the first step, embracing IEEE’s global strategy, SPM has decided to experiment with a translated reprint edition of SPM. The first edition in simplified Chinese is completed as of this writing and the printed version has been distributed to ICIP attendees in Hong Kong, September 26-29, 2010, many of whom are native Chinese speakers. This is the first time that IEEE has translated scientific and technical content from English into Chinese. To view the issue, please click on this link.

The cultural and geographical diversity of IEEE Signal Processing members is widespread. These translated reprints underscore the importance of reaching out to students and practitioners in Asia. They focus on the trends and technological breakthroughs in Signal Processing applications. They also underscore the global interest of signal processing. They are a tribute to the tremendous contributions of Asia to the signal processing field.

Our translation efforts are part of IEEE's global strategy. We hope that these translations will make it easier for our readers to participate who may be more comfortable reading and researching in their native language. In addition, the translations may also facilitate our Asian readers in making useful connections from their native language to English, especially in technical terms.

During our translation process, we made special efforts in providing parallel Chinese-English pairs for major technical terms in signal processing. One of us recently visited a university and a publicly traded signal processing company in China with the first translated reprint edition. The results of the brief survey suggest that the translations are especially useful for 1) undergraduate students or junior graduate students in signal processing for casual reading; 2) students who are beginning research in signal processing; 3) students who are switching from one area of signal processing to another; 4) young engineers who want to implement signal processing algorithms but do not have time to understand the original English version. Some students said they learned most of the technical terms in Chinese, and with the parallel translation pairs in the translated version they can quickly memorize the terms in English. This helps them to read the original English version more smoothly later.

We gratefully welcome your feedbacks on our first translated edition of SPM. Your feedback will help us to produce better future editions.