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Apple recently unveiled its new iPad device with a flourish of global PR. iPads will go on sale in the U.S. around the end of March this year, and in other countries in the following months. Press and analysts have had a field day praising and condemning the iPad's capabilities and features, predicting (depending on who you listen to) that the device will be either a terrible flop or another runaway success for Apple.

My analysis predicts that Apple will sell millions of units of its new "universal media device," as analyst Ned May of Outsell Inc. describes it, but Apple's success is not my subject today. Instead, it's a warning: People who generate content for global markets need to know how the iPad might make their work more difficult.

The problem is caused by a technical gap the new iPad shares with its older siblings, the iPhone and the iPod touch. None of them can use Adobe Flash. (For more on Apple's deliberate omission of Flash and its consequences, see this New York Times story and this one.)

Thousands of global businesses use Flash movies with captions or voiceover narration as quick, relatively low-cost ways to present marketing videos and user guides over the Web to multilingual audiences. For these businesses and the agencies that work with them, the Flash gap is a growing problem. Instead of Flash movies, millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users see blank white spaces. The iPad boasts a larger screen, with display capabilities that will be attractive for business tasks. But all those millions of Flash animations and interviews and guides and other videos will be invisible. Just blank white spaces, no matter what language you speak. That is the Flash gap, which the iPad will make worse.

The alternative is to deliver videos using HTML5. But not all web browsers work with HTML5. Neither do all devices, especially mobile devices. This means Web video providers need to research what specific devices their target audiences use, and what video technology those devices will support.

So if you provide multilingual video content, you have one more detail to pay attention to when you plan your schedules and budget.

Sixth in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

We spoke with Kent Taylor, VP - Americas for acrolinx, a leader in quality assurance tools for professional information developers, The acrolinx information quality tools are used by thousands of writers in over 25 countries around the world. We talked with Kent about the growing importance of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies across the global content value chain (GCVC), as well as acrolinx’s interest in co-sponsoring the research and what he considers the most relevant findings.

Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product support?

Taylor: Our information quality management software provides real-time feedback to authors and editors regarding the quality of their work, enabling quality assurance in terms of spelling, grammar, and conformance to their own style guide and terminology guidelines.  It also provides objective metrics and reports on over 90 aspects of content quality, therefore delivering quality control.  The value of formal information quality management across the information supply chain is reflected in reductions in translation cost and time of 10% to 30%, and reductions in editing time of 65% to 75%.

Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research?

Taylor: To help build awareness of the contributions that Natural Language Processing technologies can bring to the global product content value chain.  Natural Language Processing is no longer just a laboratory curiosity; it is in daily use by many of the world's most successful global enterprises.

Gilbane: What is the most interesting/compelling/relevant result reported in the study?

Taylor: The fact that "quality at the source" is now being recognized as a critical success factor in the global information supply chain.

For more insights into the link between authoring, quality assurance, and multilingual communications, see the section “Achieving Quality at the Source” that begins on page 28 of the report. You can also learn how acrolinx helped the Cisco Leaning Network with their quality assurance service, which now projects cost savings of 28% for Cisco certification, beginning on page 59 of the study.  Download the study for free.

 

Fifth  in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

We spoke with David Smith, president of LinguaLinx Language Solutions, a full-service translation agency providing multilingual communication solutions in over 150 languages.  David talked with us about the evolving role of the language service provider across the global content value chain (GCVC), their rationale for co-sponsoring the research, and what findings they consider most relevant from the research.

Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product support?

Smith: As a translation agency, we’ve realized that our involvement with global content should be much earlier in the supply chain. In addition to localization, we support clients in reducing costs and increasing efficiencies by providing consulting services that revolve around the content authoring process – from reuse strategies and structured authoring best practices to maximizing the inherent capabilities of content management and workflow systems. Rather than just adapting content into other languages, we assist with its creation so that it is concise, consistent and localization-friendly.

Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research?

Smith: Of the many organizations and associations we belong to, we find that the research and topics of Gilbane studies and conferences alike most closely align with our interest and efforts to diversify our services and become a turn-key outsourced documentation consultancy as opposed to a traditional translation agency.

Gilbane: What is the most interesting/compelling/relevant result reported in the study?

Smith: The findings present two major points that we feel are relevant. First, there is definitely wide-ranging recognition of the benefits derived from the creation of standardized content in a content management system integrated with a localization workflow solution. 

Secondly, there are many, many different ways of approaching the creation, management, and publishing of global content.  There’s often a significant gap between the adoption of global content solutions – such as authoring software, translation management software, workflow linking different technologies – and the successful implementation of these solutions among those responsible for day-to-day content creation and delivery.  A major manufacturer of GPS technology is actually authoring directly in InDesign to a great extent even though it utilizes an industry-leading translation workflow tool – which provides an example of the lengths to which internal processes must be changed to realize truly efficient global content processes.

For more insights into the link between authoring and translation and localization, see the section “Achieving Quality at the Source” that begins on page 28 of the report. You can also learn how LinguaLinx helped New York City Department of Education communicate with 1.8 million families across 1,500 schools in which 43% of students speak a language other than English at home. Download the study for free.

 

Fourth in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

We spoke with Karl Darr, an independent consultant working with STAR Group.  STAR Group is a leader in information management, localization, internationalization, and globalization solutions that address the entire lifecycle of technical communications. Karl talked with us about the importance of addressing the global content value chain (GCVC) in a comprehensive way, STAR Group’s role in delivering such solutions, and what he found compelling about the research.

Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product content? (i.e., what does your company do?)

Darr: STAR Group’s mission has been to enable companies to build a single product that they can sell, ship and support anywhere in the world, along with all of the appropriate technical and end-user support literature in the native tongue for any target market. In every case, we find that the customer’s satisfaction and their perception of a quality purchase are directly related to understanding their new product in their native language. 

Early on, STAR understood that a comprehensive, integrated solution could increase efficiency, while improving data quality and consistency.  So, rather than acquire and integrate third party solutions that were not designed to work together, STAR Group developed a seamlessly integrated, end-to-end solution suite that included tools to accelerate SGML/XML authoring productivity with increased quality, integrated with Terminology Management, workflow, content management, Translation Memory, and publishing – all subject to monitoring and leaving a complete audit trail. 

All of STAR’s technologies can be purchased as stand-alone products. They integrate and interoperate very well with other vendors’ products to provide a complete solution in mixed technology environments.  However, as you might expect, STAR’s complete suite affords uncommon degrees of added efficiency, accuracy, quality and operational cost reductions.

Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research?

Darr: STAR Group co-sponsored this research because the GCVC concept speaks directly to the sweet spot on which STAR has focused for 25 years. STAR Group has provided technologies and services to support every step along the GCVC, from information engineering, creation, and cross-functional synchronization to translation, localization, management, and static and dynamic publication along with dialog management and reporting. 

Gilbane: What, in your opinion, is the most relevant/compelling/interesting result reported in the study?

Darr: The most relevant/compelling/interesting result reported in the study is that 70% of respondents claimed that the process of integrating their GCVC technologies was difficult at best.  What is even more surprising is that, according to the research, only 20% of respondents claimed they had API-level integration between their translation management and CMS tools.

In other words, respondents are suffering from the fact that the people responsible for globalization efforts are dealing with limited vision, scope and fragmented tool sets.  This causes ambiguities, duplications and errors that unnecessarily waste time, energy, resources and corporate profitability – while damaging product and corporate images, and at the same time weakening customer affiliations with the company.

I believe that this situation can only happen when top corporate management is more focused on getting product out the door than they are on optimizing the customer experience, which is critical to increasing profits.  When customer experience is a top priority, these companies will recognize that globalization (or the GCVC) is a manufacturing process in its own right that needs to be prioritized right along with design, engineering, production and customer support. The GCVC is not a ‘bolt-on’ solution because it needs to be intimately involved in all of these processes. As such, GCVC efforts need to start as soon as the product planning process begins, be fully engaged as customer specifications become requirements, and continue in a collaborative manner throughout the process of a project becoming a product.  But, they don’t end there either.  Ongoing multilingual product support is critical for delivering an optimal customer experience, one that results in repeat or recurring business.  Because all GCVC solutions will require ongoing maintenance and support, end-user companies need to ensure that whoever is providing support can cover the full spectrum of GVCV functions. 

Often, our discussions with companies have only begun when organizations understand the depth and breadth of the GCVC. In some cases, they end up relying on us for nearly everything – from their technical writing to translation, workflow, content management and publishing, to spare parts order management with optimized diagnostics delivery and dialog management.  Many of these organizations – some among the most successful global companies – have relegated the notion of a “document” to be an artifact of a by-gone era. 

For insights into technology integration across the GCVC, see the section on “Content Management Integration” that begins on page 32 of the report. You can also learn how STAR Group helped BMW Motorrad implement an end-to-end infrastructure for global technical communication. Download the study for free.

Third in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

We spoke with Kelli Kohout, global marketing manager for Jonckers Translation & Engineering.  Jonckers is a global provider of localization, translation, and multilingual testing services, with operations across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Kelli talked with us about Jonckers’ role in the global content value chain, why they supported the research, and what she found compelling about the results.

Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product content? (i.e., what does your company do?) 

Kohout: Ultimately, Jonckers is helping clients develop content that earns understanding, adoption and loyalty from global customers. 

Sometimes clients come to us with original content that will not localize well – in other words, that is not easy to turn into localized versions that achieve the desired response from audiences.  We provide best practices for improving the quality of their source content, asking additional questions regarding their organizations’ goals for their global clients, in order to improve the success of global adoption.  In doing so, we prove Jonckers’ philosophy that resulting translations can even improve on the source (in-country translators with longevity, institutional knowledge, up-to-date cultural knowledge, commitment).  We also help clients save time and money by delivering content that is flexible enough to be used for more than one purpose. 

Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research? 

Kohout: Our clients no longer compete solely on the basis of a better product or service – it’s about customer experience.  And in today’s economic environment, our clients are struggling with how to generate revenue by increasing innovation and global reach, which means increasing the amount and accessibility of multilingual content.  Simultaneously, they need to decrease expenses, like the costs associated with providing customer service. 

This all points to the increasing need to localize effectively and efficiently.  Jonckers sponsored this study for the common good – the more we share trends, best practices and lessons learned, and the more we know what challenges our clients are facing, the more effective and valued localization services will be.

We also hope this study will raise awareness of some important localization best practices that will make companies more successful.  For instance, we see clients beginning to realize the importance of involving localization planning early in the product development lifecycle, but there’s still room for improvement there.  When localization is an afterthought, the outcome is not as good, there are extra costs, and bigger picture timelines can be adversely affected. 

Similarly, more clients are recognizing the value of integrating the localization effort more closely with other functions.  As the study points out, there are more cross-functional champions within organizations who understand the big picture and have the mindshare with executives.  These champions can advocate for the needs of the localization function and help demonstrate its value.

Gilbane: What, in your opinion, is the most relevant/compelling/interesting result reported in the study?

Kohout: We’re seeing an increase in our clients’ global business objectives, but the study confirms that – on the whole – we’re still in the early stages of understanding the global content value chain.  For example, one of the top corporate objectives related to localization is customer satisfaction, which is important, but few are fully utilizing localization to manage their brand globally.  So there’s still room to evolve.  In addition, there’s a focus on generating revenues from emerging markets, but very few have yet tapped the potential from established geographies. 

For insights into customer experience as a new basis for competitive advantage, see “Content Utility as the Value Proposition” on page 15 of the report.  You can also learn how Jonckers contributed to Adobe’s effort to build a globalization infrastructure that improves customer satisfaction, raises quality, and saves costs.  Download the study for free.

Positioning content practices as strategic, making business cases that get funding, and selling up within the organization are among the most common challenges presented to Gilbane Group analysts in conversations with users, adopters, and buyers of content technologies. Our advice to clients always includes aligning the target investment with the strategic goals and objectives of the business. By placing content practices and infrastructures directly in the path of promises to customers and shareholders, managers improve their chances of securing financial and sponsorship support. In some cases, they can effect innovative change that not only advances their domain’s capabilities but also results in new value creation for the enterprise.

Gilbane believes that true innovation delivers new value to organizations that are willing to take the risks associated with fundamental, qualitative change. The innovations resulting from FICO's alignment of product and content development practices with business strategies are object lessons for any organization that needs to compete effectively in global markets.

Download the FICO story here: Innovation³: The FICO Formula for Agile Global Expansion

Listen to the webinar archive here: Innovating for Agility: Global Content Practices at FICO

Almost, but not quite. However, I can attest to submerging myself at the end of December, and just now feeling like I am at a balancing point re: projects, speaking gigs, maintaining Twitter, diving a bit into Facebook for personal connections, remembering to check in with LinkedIn, and plain 'ol but never quiet email.

I can say with confidence that I have not reached Twitter addiction, and never considered myself a "crackberry". But... I can see how the road winds toward the seemingly endless forums devoted to this subject.

OTOH, there's a twist to this pending information overload, and it is so much more about being engaged than about being bombarded. Thus, the allure of social media. That engagement thus far has put me back in touch with old friends, spawned new ones (who I'll likely never meet), and business-wise -- helped to further a brand around the investment we've made since 2007 in raising the awareness of and best practices for content globalization.

So here's a few things I've learned. TweetDeck's been integral to my social media overload tendencies (and has a translate feature.)  Twibs is a great way to find businesses making the most of Twitter. "Getting 1000 followers," although certainly exciting in a kinda addicting way, is not really my ultimate goal. But Mr. Tweet seems to think otherwise.

And here's a few more related to "why social media in the enterprise?" This is the stuff I find intriguing and pass on here, there and everywhere. Hmmm, is there a mantra there? There's more than a few resources that stand out. Of course, our own 2008 Collaboration and Social Media and perspective on social media impact in our 2008 Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative reports.  I also find Ed Yourdon's free Using Twitter in the Enterprise slideshare a great summary. And on the subject of branding, find @GabrielRossi, @problogger, and @brandingexpert spot on and intriguing. And of course our good friend and researcher extraordinaire, Nora Barnes from the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

So my road continues -- and given my passion, I'm building a list of references and stories on the multilingual impact in social media. Got one? DM me @lciarlone on Twitter or comment here...

How effectively are you linking product engineering and multilingual product documentation processes? What kind of returns are you getting?

To learn about a real-world manufacturing success story, join us for our latest webinar : Broadening Product Lifecycle Management: A Strategy for Multilingual Product Documentation.

Tuesday, Febuary 3rd, 2009
11am EST / 10am CST / 8am PST

You'll hear first hand experiences from Club Car, the world leader in golf cars and a division of manufacturing giant Ingersoll Rand, and learn how this company:

• Speeds time to publishing in international markets.
• Increases global content volumes without raising costs.
• Attains greater accuracy and consistency for multilingual product documentation.

Club Car estimates they will save $450,000 over three years! Could these savings and advances in multilingual product communications be yours? Come and find out.

Register today. Moderated by Gilbane Group. Hosted by Sajan.

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.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Arle Lommel, LISA OSCAR Standards Chair, to discuss the importance of Unicode's Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) project, which collects and provides data such as date/time formats, numeric formatting, translated language and country names, and time zone information that is needed to support globalization.

LC: What is the CLDR?
AL: The Common Locale Data Repository is a volunteer-developed and maintained resource coordinated and administered by the Unicode Consortium that is available for free. Its goal is to gather basic linguistic information for various "locales," essentially combinations of a language and a location, like French in Switzerland.

LC: What does the resource encompass?
AL: CLDR gathers things like lists of language and country names, date formats, time zone names, and so forth. This is critical knowledge to know when developing projects for the markets represented by specific locales. By drilling down past the language level to look at the market level, CLDR data is designed to be relevant for a specific area of the world. Think of the difference between U.S. and British English, for example. You would clearly have a problem if British spellings were used in a U.S. project or prices appeared like "£10.54" instead of "$10.54." Problems like these are very common when product developers don't think through what the implications of their design decisions will be.

LC: What other issues does CLDR address?
AL: Other problems addressed by CLDR include the numeric form of dates, where something like "04.05.06" could mean "April 5, 2006," "May 4, 2006," or even "May 6, 2004," depending on where you live. Clearly you have to know what people expect.

LC: What is the advantage of using CLDR?
AL: It makes resources available to anyone, at no cost. Without something like the CLDR, one would need to investigate all of market issues, pay to translate things like country names into each language, and so forth. Activities such as this can add significantly to the cost of a project. The CLDR provides them for free and provides the critical advantage of consistency.

LC: Why should content creators care about the CLDR?
AL: At LISA we have heard time and again that not taking international issues into consideration from a project's earliest phases doubles the cost of a project and makes it take twice as long. While many issues relate to decisions made by programmers, some of the issues do relate to the job of technical authors and other content creators. While it's unlikely that a technical writer will need to use a CLDR list of language names in Finnish directly, for instance, the content creator might design an online form in which a user fills out what language he or she would like to be contacted in. If there is insufficient room to display the language name because it is longer in Finnish (a common problem when going from English to Finnish), the end user may have difficulty, something that could have been prevented by the content author if he or she had been given the resources to test the design early on. The CLDR makes the information available that allows authors to prevent basic problems that create issues for users around the world.

LC: How can professionals contribute to the CLDR?
AL: Right now the biggest need of the CLDR is for native (or very good) speakers of non-English languages to (1) supply missing data, and (2) verify that existing data points are correct. Because the CLDR is volunteer driven, people of all levels of competence and ability are able to contribute as much or as little as they want. Unicode welcomes this participation. The real need is for people to know about and use the CLDR. In my experience even the savviest of developers often don't know about the CLDR and what it contains, so they spend time and money on recreating a resource that they could have for free.

LC: How is LISA supporting CLDR?
AL: We are committed to supporting Unicode and the CLDR, so we have launched an initiative where people who sign up with LISA to contribute to the CLDR and who spend ten or more hours working on the project are eligible to receive individual LISA membership for a year as a token of our appreciation for their contribution. So if any readers have the needed language/locale skills to supply data missing from the CLDR or to review existing data, they can contact me to get started.