Globalization Blog

Web Globalization Management: Got Certification?

2008-11-09T13:46:07Z

We were recently introduced to the Executive Certification in Web Globalization Management by our friends Nitish Singh and Ulrich Henes during October's Localization World conference. We're thrilled to have both Singh and Henes as participants in the Globalization track at Gilbane Boston 2008, December 2-4.

A new venture within the executive education arm of John Cook School of Business at St. Louis University, it is quite an impressive program! And beyond compliments such as well-designed and timely, the program's message of "why invest now?" -- or more pointedly as the program describes, "why supercharge?" -- is a mini-lesson in and of itself.

Consider the megatrends that answer these questions: (full text available here)

Megatrend-1: Web will be critical to achieving global expansion.
Megatrend-2: Innovation in the new economy will be driven by blurring of disciplinary boundaries.
Megatrend-3: Hyperconnectivity will redefine how people and organizations communicate.
Megatrend-4: Value systems will compete globally.
Megatrend-5: Smart organizations will harness the power of "Collective Intelligence."
Megatrend-6: Economies of China, India and Brazil will be future engines of growth.

Powerful food for thought and incentive to check it out -- and register for Spring 2009. No travel required!

Gilbane Speaks on Multilingualism

2008-10-20T22:18:19Z

Readers of this content globalization blog will be interested in hearing about Frank's adventures in Finland this week at the Kites Symposium. Check out the entry on our main blog. About Kites:

Kites Association develops and promotes multilingual communication, multi-cultural interaction and their technical content management to improve the competitive edge of the Finnish economic life and the public administration.

The World is Curved

2008-10-08T22:24:15Z

The announcement of this new book caught my attention for a number of reasons, many obviously due to the state of the financial markets. More attuned to the Globalization practice is that we noted in our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report that:

A common observation made during industry discussion of Internet-driven opportunities is that the proliferation of the worldwide web has made the business world "flat." In other words, companies of all sizes can compete on a level playing field wherein everyone has the same access to technology and information. While our study respondents acknowledge the "flattening world" as Thomas Friedman has described it, they also recognize that different geographies and cultures have varying and distinct expectations. Thus, generalized information access does not equate to generalized information delivery. From this perspective, a flattening world requires far deeper levels of content relevancy, localization, and personalization than ever before. From this perspective, "one size fits all" is hardly the recipe for success in the global economy.

Risking the wrath of Friedman'ites, we contend that as far as multilingual communications are concerned, the world is most definitely not flat. Giving Friedman his due, David Smick contends that as far as global financial markets are concerned, the world is most definitely curved, where one "can't see over the horizon and sight lines are limited." Describing globalization as the great paradox of our time, this review quickly convinced me to put it on the "must read" list.

Off to Localization World in Madison, WI

2008-10-06T12:42:10Z

Here's where Mary and I are headed next week, participating as both educators and students. The full grid is here.

Wearing our student hats, we're looking forward to gauging a trend we introduced in our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report:

Emerging enterprise expectations for high-value services that support Global Content Value Chain (GCVC) strategies.

Our premise is based on lots of talks with operational champions that are succeeding in garnering executive support for multilingual communications initiatives as part of corporate globalization programs. As part of that executive commitment, it is inevitable that infrastructure focus becomes broader, scope extends, and organizations look to augment internal expertise with external guidance and tactical assistance.

In our "Looking Beyond the Research" section we noted that Language Service Providers (LSPs) are uniquely positioned to meet a number of these expectations, but we also wondered whether LSPs consistently communicate their value as strategic enterprise resources as opposed to cost control advocates. We'll be checking on our premises at Localization World, but we've already received a strong response from one LSP that debunks our speculation on readiness.

Language Solutions commented on our "sneak peak" research blog in August, noting their development of the Client Mentor program, with a focus on HR communications and a solid global readiness assessment offering. They've followed up with a blog launch focusing on Metrics for Multilingual Communications, an interesting read.

Machine Translation (Finally) Comes of Age

2008-09-30T16:35:37Z

In our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report, we noted the fact that machine translation (MT) has long been the target of "don't let this happen to you" jokes throughout the globalization industry. Unpredictable results and poor quality allowed humor to become the focus of MT discussions, making widespread adoption risky at best.

On the other hand, we also noted that scientists, researchers, and technologists have been determined to unlock MT potential since the 1950's to solve the same core challenges the industry struggles with today: cost savings, speed, and linguist augmentation. Although the infamous report on Languages and Machines from the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) published in 1966 discussed these challenges in some depth (albeit from a U.S. perspective), it sent a resounding message that "there is no emergency in the field of translation." Research funding suffered; researcher Margaret King described the impact as effectively "killing machine translation research in the States."

Borrowing from S.E. Hinton, that was then, this is now. Technology advancements and pure computing power have made machine translation not only viable, but also potentially game-changing. A global economy, the volume and velocity of content required to run a global business, and customer expectations is steadily shifting enterprise postures from "not an option" to "help me understand where MT fits." Case in point -- participants in our study identified MT as one of the top three valuable technologies for the future.

There's lots of game-changing news for our readers to digest.

An excellent place to start is with our colleagues at Multilingual Magazine, who dedicated the April-May issue to this very subject. Don Osborn over at the Multidisciplinary Perspectives blog provides an excellent summary, posing the question: "Is there a paradigm shift on machine translation?"

Language Weaver predicts a potential $67.5 billion market for digital translation, fueled by MT. CEO Mark Tapling explains why.

SYSTRAN, one of the earliest MT software developers provides research and education here.

And finally (for today), there's no way to deny the Google impact -- here's their FAQ about the beta version of Google Translate. TAUS weighs in on the subject here.

Mary and I will be at Localization World Madison to provide practical advice and best practices for making the enterprise business case for multilingual communications investments as part of a Global Content Value Chain. But we're also looking forward to the session focused on MT potential, issues, and vendor approaches. The full grid is here. Join us!

Multilingual Communications Report Resonates

2008-09-17T12:42:31Z

We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report, for which we're grateful - and thrilled! I can summarize the response as "peer sharing works!" And not only works, but spurs conversation, new ideas, and without a doubt, more sharing. For the Globalization Practice team, it's true validation of the people perspective of Web 2.0.

It would be a long list to point out all the countries represented through report downloads and additional conversations we've had since July, but here's just a sample. We've heard from content and translation management professionals from all across the USA in addition to:

Austria

Belguim

Canada

Chile

China

Finland

France

Germany

India

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Japan

Korea

Netherlands

New Zealand

Russia

Singapore

Slovenia

South Africa

South Korea

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

United Kingdom

What resonates most? Unwaveringly first is the need to look at multilingual communications creation, management, and delivery in a new way; as less a cost center and more an integral part of business value. Next - the inherent connection readers have with our definition of operational champions and the stories told by those that shared challenges and strategies in the report's Best Practices Profiles section. Of course those links have pros and cons; the former obviously cementing the growing need for community sharing and the latter validating the struggles of educating senior management and making the business case for focused investment.

Those "on the ground floor" clearly want more - and we aim to provide it. As Frank documented in our Events blog on Fall Speaking Gigs, we're focused on sharing our experiences and more importantly, learning from yours. Particularly exciting for our team is the Content Globalization track we've put together for Gilbane Boston, December 2-4. The full conference schedule is here. Join us!

On Multilingual Communications and Open Source: An Interview with Jahia's Emmanuel Garcin

2008-08-29T16:30:31Z

Recently, we had an opportunity to catch up with Emmanuel Garcin, Vice President at Jahia, a Swiss-based vendor of open source solutions for web content and portal management. Jahia is a sponsor of Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative," a report released by Gilbane's Globalization practice in July.

KK: What have been the biggest roadblocks to companies in demonstrating value for multilingual communications initiatives?
EG: We've found that web content management systems often need to be customized - in a big way - before they can be integrated with authoring tools, translation management systems, and other enterprise applications. This can result in big-ticket licensing and implementation costs as well as IT departments that become concerned with "overloading computing platforms. Open source technologies can help with these obstacles, but companies are often challenged to adopt and rollout new business models that go hand in hand with the open source context.

KK: What is the "tipping point" that compels companies to move forward with your solution as part of the infrastructure for multilingual communications
EG: The key business driver is a burning need to broadcast both local and global messages for brand management. We also have customers that must address language-based government regulations. Since there are three official languages in Switzerland, Jahia's Swiss origins naturally focused us on the implementation of adequate business logic to provide flexible language management tools to accommodate this need. Other customers have a need to mix languages when they publish a particular country or regional site. One example is a large international institution that publishes in over a hundred languages who found that Jahia provided the vitamins (enterprise & portal capabilities) and the painkiller (globalization capabilities) needed to implement its content globalization strategy.

KK: What do you do to educate, prepare, and enable customers to be successful? EG: There's a lot of back and forth. Companies often want to shape new solutions around existing business rules, but they also need to plan intelligently about how they're going to communicate globally, and determine which processes should continue to evolve. We educate and train organizations on how to get the best results and can help with planning, installation, and configuration. At the end of the day, it's all about technical details. Companies want to manage content in any language, decide for themselves which languages are mandatory and which are optional, and even publish web sites that mix languages on the same screen. In addition, they want to give their customers the ability to select a new language through a simple, easy-to-use interface.

We spend a lot of time communicating a vision of successful web communication. We talk about how content repositories are the new databases, that all content should be dynamic, and how successful enterprise applications need to be function and feature-rich. We make sure companies are fully aware of industry trends that affect global communication practices and common standards, such as JSR-170/283.

KK: What have been your customers' best practices in building a global content value chain?
EG: You can't overlook the significance of having a globalization strategy in the first place! Examples of success that I'm familiar with include a large international agency, a GPS vendor, and a global glass manufacturer. The most successful companies are equally concerned about which solutions for multilingual communications they choose, and how they roll them out; about a single source of content, along with information that is customized or added to meet regional needs. They have a globalization strategy that strikes the right balance between centralized and regional content management.

What is most important, however, is to define how that strategy relates to business needs. A good example of this is a pan-European government agency that we work with. A particular document may be mandatory for certain countries and languages but irrelevant for others. To address this challenge, they prepare source content in a single language, deliver translations up to 25 languages, and publish local language sites with different, additional or custom content for a variety of regions and countries.

CMS Wire on Gilbane's Globalization Study

2008-08-25T19:18:17Z

Marisa Peacock gives our Multilingual Communications report a nice thumbs-up review over on CMS Wire. Marisa writes: "Gilbane has released a report that any organization catering to the global community needs to have a look at."

You can download the study from our site, or visit our sponsors: Jahia, Jonckers, RedDot, Sajan, Sitecore, SDL Tridion, and Systran.

Gilbane Group Releases New Report on Multilingual Communications

2008-08-20T10:53:01Z

Cross-post from the Gilbane Events Blog

For Immediate Release

Pioneering research combines content and localization/translation management market perspectives to present unique insight into current state of content globalization

Cambridge MA, August 20. Gilbane Group, Inc., the analyst and consulting firm focused on content technologies and their application to high-value business solutions, today announced the publication of its latest research report, Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Companies Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain.

The study is backed by in-depth qualitative research on how global businesses are creating, managing, and publishing multilingual content. Given that many companies expect growth from multinational revenues, 92% of respondents are concerned about the risks of not improving content globalization processes. The research identifies key challenges, including a gap between strategic business goals and investments in multilingual communications, difficulties in balancing centralized and regional operations, and the lack of integration and interoperability across authoring, content management, localization/translation management, and publishing components. Moreover, the study reveals how industry leaders are addressing these challenges, and provides Gilbane's recommendations on best practices.

"Global businesses recognize the need to address localization and translation in tandem with content creation and management, but they are often stymied, even overwhelmed, by how to achieve this," commented Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group, and study director for Multilingual Communications. "Our research points to the emergence of what we define as the Global Content Value Chain, a strategy for meeting these challenges. Organizations embracing this strategy are leading the development of much-needed best practices, as we describe in the report."

Gilbane's study methodology included in-depth interviews with 40 content and localization/translation management practitioners in multinational organizations. The result is a unified perspective on the full spectrum of multilingual content processes, previously viewed as isolated activities. "Gilbane's study will educate both language professionals as well as content management professionals," said Donna Parrish, editor, MultiLingual magazine. "The report should be required reading for any company needing to integrate, automate, and streamline domain-specific processes that are often self-contained today."

Availability

Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Companies Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain is available as a free download from the Gilbane Group website. The report is also available from study sponsors Jahia; Jonckers; RedDot, the Open Text Web Solutions Group; Sajan, Inc.; SDL Tridion; Sitecore; and Systran.

About Gilbane Group, Inc.
Gilbane Group, Inc., is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of content and information technologies since 1987. Clients include organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. Gilbane works with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other consultant and analyst firms. The firm has organized over 50 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Its widely read newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies and analyst blogs are available at http://gilbane.com.

For More Information

Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst
+1.617.497.9443

On Crowdsourcing and Social Media: An Interview with Plaxo's Regina Bustamante

2008-08-12T20:09:55Z

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Regina Bustamante, Director of Globalization with Plaxo, to discuss the company's content globalization strategy and how Plaxo users are integral to its success. Plaxo offers a suite of online solutions for social networking. Top services are the address book and calendar applications in addition to Pulse, a sharing and networking tool.

KK: How has the growth of global web access affected the adoption and development of your social networking solutions?
RB: Plaxo's user base continues to grow steadily since we reached the 15 million user mark back in October 2006. As a result, our product release cycles have accelerated from two or three months to just one week. At the same time, Plaxo's non-English base of users and users with international connections is growing rapidly. Shorter product cycles coupled with user demand for multilingual products made it necessary for us to explore new ways to release products to major markets in local languages.

KK: What model did Plaxo use for its initial localization/translation efforts?
RB: We localized our address book and calendar tools into French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Simplified Chinese over a year ago, using LSPs for the initial translations. We then provided early release versions to specific "power users" in each international market who reviewed everything, including the UI and suitability to local cultures.

KK: So Plaxo users provided quality assurance in this effort?
RB: Yes, users were even willing to test and report on features such as sorting, name and address formatting, etc. When Pulse was released with localizations into the same languages, non-English users continued to send suggestions, comments, and to act as informal quality control agents. The involvement of the user community improved the quality of local versions of our software.

KK: The Dutch version, released in July, increased the role of longtime power users, correct?
RB: Absolutely. The Netherlands has quickly become one of the largest markets for Pulse and we expanded the involvement of the user community, relying on a group of long-time Plaxo members for the development of the Dutch glossary.

KK: What's in store for the future of Plaxo's localization/translation efforts?
RB: For future product releases, we will move to a crowdsourcing model based on a translation portal we are developing that will enable any Plaxo community user to submit and comment on translations. To ensure high levels of quality, this portal includes separate roles for a language moderator and project manager.

KK: What will be the key to success for this model?
RB: Plaxo's position as a provider of no-charge consumer software helps us to engage users for localization/translation assistance. The key is to only ask users to help with things that directly benefit them. Our crowdsourcing model is not intended to entirely replace LSPs. For example, we have no plans to use crowdsourcing to translate the corporate website or documents such as the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

Research Sneak Peak: The Role of the Operational Champion

2008-08-08T16:37:59Z

As Mary noted previously, globetrotting has been just one reason for our blogging hiatus. The more interesting interrupter has been the development of "the report," aka our research and analysis for Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Organizations Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain.

It has been an intense period to say the least, as the result comprises the stories of 40 content and localization/translation management professionals as told to myself and colleague Karl Kadie over 60+ hours. We are indebted to this community of experts for their knowledge sharing and deeply impressed by their dedication to improving processes in their areas of expertise.

It feels right then, to dedicate this first blog on our research results to these passionate and meticulous professionals, trained to understand the power of the word and its effect on content consumers. Way back in 2005, I coined an informal term for folks such as these: the glue people -- a rare breed who manage to bridge gaps between various organizational units through education, facilitation, and coordination focused on "the bigger picture."

In this case, painting that picture requires color mixing that supports corporate global expansion goals without compromising the needs and expectations of multinational customers for multilingual content. Thus the demise of the informal term in favor of one that more aptly describes the efforts of today's content and localization/translation management professional -- enter the operational champion.

Focused squarely on the inherent relationship between successful globalization and multilingual communications, our study's operational champions are savvy customer advocates and marketeers. They have designed internal educational campaigns with titles such as "Content Matters," "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Not Just for Energy," and "Do You Know Who's Not Reading Your Content?" They have titles such as "Content Management Practice Leader," "Director, Global Language Services," and "International Marketing Manager." They have produced inspiring results:

"We've raised the level of awareness of content value in our organization."

"We can build one web template and replicate it 25 times for various regions within in six months."

"We can show savings of over $900 per document and reduction of translation time by five days."

"We have achieved a 68% reuse rate for our content."

Impressive indeed -- and just a sample of what's inside the report to help speed results for those working toward similar goals. More to come!

Globetrotting, Spring/Summer 2008

2008-07-09T01:57:07Z

Well, our blogging hiatus is over. No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth, as some loyal readers might have thought. Quite the contrary. We've been criss-crossing countries and continents since April, speaking at industry events, user group meetings, and our own conference in San Francisco.

What's really keeping us busy, though, is new original research and analysis on content globalization within multinational organizations. Gilbane Group'sMultilingual Communications as a Business Imperative: Why Organizations Need to Optimize the Global Content Value Chain will be published this summer. The report provides an in-depth look at the current state of content globalization initiatives and emerging best practices. Highlights include profiles of companies with worldwide brands who are bringing together people, process, and technology to align multilingual content initiatives with strategic global business goals.

You may have gotten a sneak peek at preliminary results if you attended Gilbane San Francisco, Localization World in Berlin or the STC annual meeting in Philadelphia, or Sajan or SDL customer events in May. In the weeks ahead, the research will be featured in several webinar events, such as the July 24 event with study sponsor RedDot, and in our blog entries (so check back often).

In addition to RedDot, sponsors are Jonckers, Sajan, Sitecore, SDL Tridion, Systran, and Jahia.

We're very excited about the insights we uncovered in the research, and we look forward to sharing them with our readers. Stay tuned.

Webinar Recording Available: Translation-oriented Authoring

2008-04-24T19:37:10Z

Our April 16th webinar on translation-oriented authoring hosted by across Systems was an excellent 360 degree view of its value from a consultancy, language service provider, and end-user perspective. Thanks to Richard Sikes from LocFlowTech, Inc., Peter Argondizzo from Argo Translation, Inc., and Amy Karls from QuadTech for and a job well done! Access the recording here.

As Sikes noted in his opening remarks, decisions that get made in one part of an organization often show up as costs in another area. This is particularly true of translation and localization costs. Those who create and translate product content (user guides, operator manuals, quick start guides, online help, and the list goes on...) understand the downstream effect of decisions made under pressure all too well.

According to Karls, demand for multilingual product support content consistently is increasing, but timelines and resources are most assuredly not. Isolated story? We think not. Check out the webinar poll on the number of language outputs required from our audience, largely technical documentation folks.

Now check out the range of tools our audience is using to create product support content.

I believe there is not a single technical writer who intends to create inconsistencies or confusion for their translator counterparts. But stuff happens. Like "hurry up" pressure. Like "we lost our editor" pressure. Like "who's got the latest version of the Style Guide pressure."

According to Argondizzo, translation-oriented authoring has numerous advantages, among them:

Unlocks never before utilized value of translation memory database for writers

Strengthens partnership with language service provider and writers

Provides content creators with a different perspective of translation memory usage

Easy to understand and track savings

Time saved by author not rewriting text

Consistency for additional reuse in other channels

Regulatory concerns in rewriting text that already exists

I wholeheartedly agree. Check out the webinar recording. The advantages of "assistance" is demonstrable and impressive, whether one calls it authoring assistance, translation-oriented authoring, or controlled authoring.

Multilingual Social Computing: Questioning the Wisdom of the Crowds

2008-04-23T14:03:09Z

The holy grail in translation is the speed versus quality dilemma. That creates controversy. Here's what we've noted after posting our Multilingual Social Networking Alert citing Facebook's crowdsourcing effort:

Article: Facebook asks users to translate new versions for free

Video: Facebook's Spanish Translation Misses the Mark

Blog: No, Getting Users To Translate Facebook Into Other Languages Isn't Exploitation

Article: Facebook's Community Translation: Savvy or Just Cheap?

No doubt that these references are the tip of an iceberg. How to say "poke" in different languages is clearly not the only conversation going on. And BTW, here's Facebook's Translation Application.

Resources & Opportunity: W3C's ITS Interest Group

2008-04-18T17:01:59Z

At the end of March, the W3C announced the launch of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Interest Group (IG) as a forum to foster a community of users that promotes the tag set's adoption and further development. Like Unicode's CLDR initiative, the emphasis on community interaction and collaboration underscores the ever-increasing, Web-driven impact of cooperative spirit.

As the Web nears its 20th birthday, we would imagine efforts such as ITS IG continue to be music to the ears of its inventor and W3C founder, Tim Berners-Lee. This particular interest group is certainly not the first nor the last of the educational and outreach efforts the W3C has launched since 1994.

It is also not the first nor the last of the activities from W3C's Internationalization (I18n) Activity, known worldwide as simply I18n. The mission? "To ensure that W3C's formats and protocols are usable worldwide in all languages and in all writing systems." The goals? Ensure universal access, support the internationalization and localization of documents, and help reduce the time and cost associated with internationalization and localization projects. Consistent and admirable objectives, described eloquently by Richard Ishida, Activity Lead for the I18n Core Working Group in his article, It's All About Customer Focus.

I18n accomplishments include a treasure trove of information from specifications and recommendations to educational materials to the newest initiative, hosting the Planet I18n Blog aggregator. Worth checking out; give yourself time to stay a while.