January 2007 Archives

I really liked this term I saw at TAUS, the Translation Automation User Society http://www.translationautomation.com/index.php. Putting the emphasis on the word "useful" is what discussions on machine translation (MT) has needed.

OK, we all know examples of MT shortcomings. My very old favourite is the MT system which translated the biblical sentence "The flesh is weak but the sprit lasts" into Russian as "The steak is rotten but the vodka is good" on the days before Glasnost. Machine translation is not perfect - but it can be very, very useful. Allowing me to understand what a Chinese web site is about without knowing a single character of Chinese is very useful indeed, especially when I am doing market research on China.

The fact is, there is not enough time - and definitely not enough money - to do human translation on even a fraction of the information that is being produced. So, if MT helps people to become aware of your message, it certainly should be considered as a tool, even if the result is not perfect. Useful is often enough.

Besides, there are quite a lot of MT systems available, both free and commercial ones, more than many might imagine. Several of them already do a good job on a specific topic, and can be improved further with special terminology. The Translation Guide at http://mason.gmu.edu/~aross2/ lists over 520 links to MT systems in 56 languages - sadly, the page has last been updated in 2003. Wikipedia offers a shorter, but more current list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Machine_Translation_software. And for one great resource on MT issues, see Jeff Allen's site at http://www.geocities.com/jeffallenpubs/thematic.htm.

The universal challenge for most companies today is delivering a customer experience that transcends geographical boundaries. And engaging customers regardless of geography and cultural expectations is no small feat. From a content perspective, a significant part of the challenge is defining the relevancy of information provided throughout the customer lifecycle. For non-English consumers, a key facet of relevancy is information in their native language. As Kaija reminds us her blog on Multilingual Terminology, "you can always buy in your own language, but you must sell in your customer's language."

As companies expand multinational revenue goals to include emerging markets such as China, India, and Latin America, providing content “in context” becomes even more important. From this perspective, localization strategies for various markets become much more than a cost burden. Rather, they become a driver of competitive advantage and a strong foundation for global brand management. This clearly extends potential benefits way beyond project and product-specific ROI.

Certainly, most companies cannot afford to "just translate everything." And in fact, mass translation without any prioritization based on geographic market analysis is inevitably a money pit. Think of it this way: geography and culture are both market segments to be evaluated for the revenue, brand presence, and customer base they can provide.

That means a localization strategy should have significant amounts of collaboration between departments such as marketing, sales, operations, technical documentation, and customer support. This enables everyone who "touches the customer" to understand market segment goals and priorities. Then, defining the level of translated content provided and where/how it gets used should match corporate goals (in addition to the expectations of the targeted audience!)

And here's where it gets tricky. We've found that the problem for organizations is less about the act of translation itself, and more about aligning the business processes that support it. The good news is that many companies are sharing their challenges, successes, and best practices on tackling this very problem. Check out our Content Technology Works site to read their stories.

Just a short note: In December Cisco appointed Wim Elfrink as its Chief Globalization Officer http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/ts_120606.html. This certainly brings additional emphasis to globalization in corporations, and will probably result in more CGOs being appointed.

In Cisco's case the CGO came from Cisco's Customer Advocacy group. According to Elfrink, with the new globalization center "we will be able to best serve our customers by creating new ways to deliver information, products and services". Creating and managing content in local languages forms a big part of serving global customers better.

This is re-post from our Main Analyst blog by Kaija Poysti on January 8.

Traveling in Europe during the holidays reminded me again on the importance of languages in the European market. With Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU the size of the European market increased yet again - and made it even more language-intensive. American companies wanting to sell to the European market, or outsource their business processes in the quite interesting former Eastern Europe, need to add yet a couple of more languages to be maintained in materials, web sites etc.

For those interested in reading more about the differences of language requirements in Europe, USA, and Asia, and on the solutions being developed for them, http://www.tc-star.org/pubblicazioni/D17_HLT_ENG.pdf provides an interesting European view. With the rapidly growing requirement for faster and cheaper translations, maximal utilization of automation is the only solution to meet the multilingual needs. This will include a shift towards giving end-users more tools to both understand and produce material in other languages. I believe that some of such new tools will come from outside the traditional translation industry: content management, collaboration tools or similar.

One of the big questions will be: can Machine Translation provide a solution? This will be the topic of my next blog.

• Why globalization as a strategic business practice should be “standard operating procedure” for organizations with multinational revenue goals
• How globalization extends into customer experience and brand management strategies, inevitably impacting far more than content localization processes
• Why a consolidating market forces Language Service Providers to redefine their value proposition
• How translation and content management technologies are closing the gap between fragmented, manual localization processes
• Why globalization compels organizations to rethink traditional content creation methods
• Which standards are helping to integrate globalization processes and meet emerging international requirements