Recently in Globalization, localization Category

We've added a 6th pre-conference workshop:

F: Making the Business Case for Content Globalization
Instructor: Andrew Draheim, Principal, Kidd & Draheim

In tough economic times it is tempting to over-emphasize cost savings. A better approach is to consider cost savings if necessary, but to develop a strategy to grow your revenues first if you can. This may mean some re-deploying rather than cutting. One important path to growth is to ensure your products are available and appealing to a broader, international market. Below is a sample of what we are covering in our track on managing global content next week at Gilbane Boston to help you learn how, or how to do it better.

GCM-1: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Product Content
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2:00pm, Westin Copley, Boston

Product content includes technical documentation as well as the content that lives with a product or service in many formats and contexts, including pre-sales, post-sales, aftermarket, training, and service. The global economy adds languages as yet another output to the traditional multichannel formula, increasing content volume due to the nuances of dialect and culture. This session discusses how to design GCVCs that integrate content and localization/translation technologies to support single-sourcing, simultaneous product shipment programs, and alignment with product lifecycle management or product data management systems. Speakers share current best practices and provide insight into what's coming in the next wave of people, processes and technologies for multilingual product content.

Moderator: Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, Gilbane Group
Speakers:
* Fred Hollowood, Director Language R&D, Shared Engineering Services, Symantec Corporation
* Natasja H.M. Paulsen, Partner, Ordina Consulting
* Sophie Hurst, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SDL

This is the title of the presentation I was asked to give at the Kites Symposium of Multilingual Communication and Content Management in Finland this week. The main point I will be making is that multilingual content will only become easily and widely available when multilingual technology is deeply integrated in information technologies. I doubt that this will be considered controversial by anyone, but both the market demand and the technology has reached a point where companies are looking for slow steady growth to be accelerated. Although this demand is naturally higher in Europe, the potential for reaching new, or deeper into existing, markets ensure that even small to mid-size U.S. companies will be looking to incorporate multilingual technologies as soon as the cost and ease of doing so allows for it (abstract appended below). For more on how companies are thinking about this, see the recent report by our Content Globalization practice Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Organizations Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain.

As Leonor says, machine translation, which has been around for years, is going to play a large role in multilingual applications in spite of its limited capabilities. For example, you may have noticed the Google translate feature at the top of this page and a couple of our other blogs. This was free, took no more than 5 minutes to install, and is very useful - try it out.

Here is the abstract for my presentation:

Language technologies are becoming integral to content and information technologies. This is a slow process, but inevitable. There is no question of the requirement for multilingual functionality. Those who might have thought or hoped that we would be a monolingual world in the foreseeable future must re-adjust their view when looking at the behavior (good and bad) across the globe today. Even in the U.S., where most of the population has always had a narrow view of language, organizations are awakening to the need for multilingual capability. This awakening is sure to continue because of global commercial opportunities. And because of the inexpensive global access provided by the Web, multilingual requirements are increasingly important for even very small businesses. Meeting the full market demand for multilingual requirements at the scale necessary won't be possible without multilingual technologies becoming an integral component of mainstream information technologies.

While language technologies are not new and processes for managing translation and localization are well established, there is still much to learn about how to integrate language and other information technologies. First, the number of organizations, and people within organizations, with deep experience in translation processes and technologies is still relatively small. Second, there is fragmentation in the supplier market, within customer organizations, and along the "Global Content Value Chain", that together contribute to slower growth. Third, development of all information technologies continues to accelerate, challenging even forward thinking organizations with large IT budgets.

Because of the central importance of multilingualism, all organizations need to understand as much as possible, what and how language technologies are being used today, how they are, or are not, integrated with other technologies and applications, and how and when emerging language and information technologies will affect commercial and information dissemination strategies.

The information technologies most immediately relevant to multilingual applications are content management technologies, including authoring, editing, publishing, search, and content management. Recent research on the use of language and content technologies by organizations with deep experience using both kinds of technologies, reveals that there is insufficient integration and interoperability across authoring, content management, localization/translation, and publishing. Much can be learned from analyzing how some organizations have successfully dealt with this constraint.

Language and semantic technologies continue to improve, both organically because of a renewed interest in their possibilities, and because of increases in readily available computing power. In addition to small expert niche companies, very large developer organizations such as Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in language technologies. Machine translation is one example, and one that is increasingly seen as having a serious role to play in many, if not all, translation applications. However, to fully achieve pervasive multilingual capability technology integration needs to progress from the integration of individual software applications, to the incorporation into large mainstream enterprise applications, widely deployed client tools, and software infrastructures.

Technology integration is not the only barrier to market growth. Yet, as more of these technologies are integrated, it will become easier to implement multilingual solutions, they will be less costly, easier to use, and procurement will be simplified.

I am happy to announce that Karl Kadie has joined us officially as a Senior Analyst. Karl has actually been working with with Leonor and Mary in the Content Globalization Practice for 6 months as a Contributing Analyst, and was a co-author of our recently released report Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Organizations Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain. Karl has been a great addition to the team, and will continue to focus on content globalization.

Karl's bio can be found at http://gilbane.com/consultant_bios.html#kkadie, and his email address is: kkadie@gilbane.com and his phone extension is
210.

Welcome Karl!

Attention: technical writers! In the spotlight next week: the availability of authoring assistance technologies that bring a living, breathing corporate Style Guide into content creation environments. Creating team-authored product support content with consistency and globalization in mind has come a long way. More on that over on the Globalization blog.

Join me on April 9th to discuss the value of translation-oriented authoring with technology provider across Systems, language services provider Argo Translation, Inc., globalization consultant Richard Sikes, and QuadGraphics, a customer reaping the benefits of authoring assistance technology in a FrameMaker environment.

SDL continues to execute its growth and expansion strategies with today's announcement that it has acquired Idiom for approximately $22 million US. The current plan is to operate the Idiom business as an autonomous unit under the direction of Idiom CEO Mike Iacobucci.

The acquisition raises all kinds of questions, of course. Idiom is one of the companies with big potential to bring innovation to the language services industry, which has been ripe for change for some time now. More resources to execute could mean more value for customers sooner. Will the Idiom technology (and SaaS offer) reach its full potential as an agent of change under SDL? What about the impact on buyer choice -- how will the acquisition affect companies coming into the market? Stay tuned for analysis of these and other key questions coming out of today's news.

The deadline for proposals for panel participation or presentations for:
Gilbane San Francisco 2008 at the Westin Market Hotel, San Francisco, June 17 - 19, 2008 is January 15.

Visit http://gilbanesf.com/ to see the topic areas we are focusing and then see how to submit a proposal.

If you've never been to one of our events and want see what we have been covering in our conference programs you can view the programs from Gilbane Boston 2007 and Gilbane San Francisco 2007.

If you have additional questions about speaking, send them to speaking@gilbane.com.

In the Global Information Age, mere information availability no longer suffices. Today's customer expectations demand relevant information that is culturally acceptable, appealing, and most important, understood. Delivering contextual, multilingual information - communications that make sense in the customer's language of choice - is fundamental. Translation is a corporate requirement.

However, any company with a multinational revenue profile knows that fusing quality and translation is a significant challenge. Our take? Quality translation within the global content lifecycle can be elusive, but it is achievable. To learn more, download our latest whitepaper, "Quality In, Quality Out: The Value of Technology in the Global Content Lifecycle" and listen to the recording from the companion webinar hosted by Sajan.

We'll also continue the quality discussion throughout Gilbane Boston's Globalization track, particularly in the session, "Quality at the Source: Creating Global Customer Experience."

Note: Originally posted on the Gilbane Group Globalization Blog.

Attention, buyers and users of content and globalization management solutions! Wondering about the right integration approach for your company?

The globalization track at Gilbane Boston 2007 includes a session entitled "Integrating Content and Translation Processes: Managing Global Customer Experience." The panel brings together two content management vendors, two providers of translation technology and services, and one middleware company that connects multiple CM and GM systems. Our goal is to explore the different options that you have when integrating the two technologies to create solutions supporting the global content life cycle.

In the session description, we promise to use "real world scenarios" to drive the panel. We're issuing an invitation to our readers to submit suggestions for the scenarios that we'll use for discussion. Do you have CM and GM practices that need to be streamlined? Are you planning to acquire and deploy CM/GM in the future, but not sure how to best fit the technologies together? Need fresh ideas for outmoded processes? Then think about proposing a scenario for the integration session at Gilbane Boston.

We'll arrange a call with you to discuss your scenario and its context. If your scenario is chosen for use in the session, you'll help us write up a description that we'll share with the panel participants prior to the conference. Whether we choose your scenario or not, you'll have the benefit of a little free advice from the Gilbane Group in the course of discussing your situation, constraints, requirements, etc. Please note that you need not register for Gilbane Boston in order to submit a scenario for possible use in the session. But if you do plan on attending the conference, you'll have the option of presenting your own scenario to the panel.

Send scenarios or questions about the session to me or to my colleague Leonor. We'd welcome the chance to speak with you about this unique opportunity.

Activity for our 4th Gilbane Boston conference at the Westin Copley November 27 -29 is ramping up quickly. The conference schedule and session descriptions have been posted. The early list of exhibitors and sponsors is also available. And, online registration is open. We'll be updating the site on a regular basis from now on, usually daily, so bookmark the pages that interest you to keep up-to-date.