Recently in Terminology Management Category

Providing education on the business value of global information through our research is an important part of our content globalization practice. As we know however, the value of research is only as good as the results organizations achieve when they apply it! What really gets us jazzed is when knowledge sharing validates our thinking about what we call “universal truths” – the factors that define success for those who champion, implement and sustain organizational investment in multilingual communications.

Participants in our 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains told us that eliminating the language afterthought syndrome in their companies-- a pattern of treating language requirements as secondary considerations within content strategies and solutions -- would be a “defining moment” in realizing the impact of their efforts. Of course, we wanted more specifics. What would those defining moments look like? What would be the themes that characterized them? What would make up the “universal truths” about the remedies? Aggregating the answers to these questions led us to develop some key and common ingredients for success:

• Promotion of “global thinking” within their own departments, across product content domains, and between headquartered and regional resources.
• Strategies that balance inward-facing operational efficiency and cost reduction goals with outward-facing customer impacts.
• Business cases and objectives carefully aligned with corporate objectives, creating more value in product content deliverables and more influence for product content teams.
• Commitment to quality at the source, language requirements as part of status-quo information design, and global customer experience as the “end goal.”
• Focused and steady progress on removing collaboration barriers within their own departments and across product content domains, effectively creating a product content ecosystem that will grow over time.
• Technology implementations that enable standardization, automation, and interoperability.

Defining the ingredients naturally turned into sharing the recipes, a.k.a. a series of best practices profiles based on the experiences of individual technical documentation, training, localization/translation, or customer support professionals. Sincere appreciation goes to companies including Adobe, BMW Motorrad, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Mercury Marine, Microsoft, and the New York City Department of Education, for enabling their product content champions to share their stories. Applause goes to the champions themselves, who continue to achieve ongoing and impressive results.

Want the details?
Download the Multilingual Product Content report
(updated with additional profiles!)

Attending Localization World, Silicon Valley?
Don’t miss Mary’s presentation on
Overcoming the Language Afterthought Syndrome
in the Global Business Best Practices track.

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

Recently we had an opportunity to catch up with Suzanne Mescan, Vice President of Marketing for Vasont Systems. Vasont is a leading provider of component content management systems built upon XML standards. Suzanne spoke with us about the global content value chain (GCVC) and important findings from the research.

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

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 -- 11:00 to 12:00 (GMT -5:00) Eastern Time

* To check the webinar time in your local area, go to: www.timezoneconverter.com.

The challenges facing FICO, a leading supplier of decision management analytics, applications and tools, will sound familiar to global organizations: the need to streamline product and content development lifecycles, support global expansion with accurate and timely localization and translation processes, and satisfy customers worldwide with consistent, quality experience. What makes FICO’s story unique is its strategic and proactive approach to addressing them.

With a successful business case based on reuse as a “first principle,” FICO is building an enterprise content infrastructure that includes XML and DITA, component content management, translation memory and terminology management, and automated publishing. Learn how FICO is aligning global content practices with the company’s business goals and objectives. If you need to spark that “aha!” moment within your organization, you won’t want to miss this webinar event. Topics:

• Reuse as the tipping point: the synergies of component approaches to product and content development
• Implementing an end-to-end global information strategy
• The value of content agility in FICO’s global business strategy

Speakers:

• Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
• Carroll Rotkel, Director, Product Documentation, FICO
• Howard Schwartz, Ph.D., VP Content Management, SDL Trisoft

Registration is open. Sponsored by SDL.

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.

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

When applying the "one word" phrase to translation or localization processes, the "it" can be either accuracy or complete gaffe. Given the velocity of the Internet, an offensive or comical translation of just one word can proliferate faster than the designers of the age-old Faberge commercial could have imagined.

In fact, just one skewed word changes meaning, invites misinterpretation, and erodes quality. One inaccuracy; many consequences. Terminology Management (TM) should be a no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, we've seen TM listed toward the bottom of the priority list -- or not at all -- when discussing imperatives for the global content lifecycle within the content management community.

When I read SDL's report on the TM benefits realized by the European Institute of Romania (EIR) during their accession process, I thought it was an impressive story. 158,000 pages of translation; 54,000 terms covering more than 8 languages; 23,000 validated terms submitted to the EU's terminology database, Inter-Active Terminology for Europe (IATE). Hmmm. A collaborative, jointly-managed, and centralized terminology database with more than 8 million terms? Even more impressive.

Intrigue led me to SDL's Christie Fidura, Senior Product Marketing Manager, which led me to Karl-Johan Lönnroth, the Director General of The European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (DGT). The Faberge commercial in action.

Described as one of the largest translation services in the world, the DGT provides translation services for all 23 of the European Union's official languages, has a permanent staff of 1,750 linguists and 600 support staff, and currently translates over 1.7 million pages per year. If that's not impressive enough, my interview with a very cordial Lönnroth provided even more insight in the EU's commitment to citizen expectations for translated content, the value of TM, and the impact of cross-country collaboration.

Lönnroth began the interview with a simple, but compelling statement: "The support of 23 languages equates to 506 possible language combinations. Managing this is impossible without terminology management." In managing the DGT as a service provider based on supply and demand, he also noted the continuing rise in expectations for translated content and with it, Web access to that content. Echoing the theme of the Globalization Track at Gilbane Boston 2007, Lönnroth's message was that EU citizens are less and less tolerant of institutional and legislative information that is not in their native language.

So how does the IATE fit in? Lönnroth sees the multi-year effort as both a government and public service in "reinforcing the EU's global interest in providing quality translations." Over the last year, the merger of all European term banks resulted in a remarkable -- and free -- knowledge repository comprising 50 years of work. The repository is essential for candidate countries seeking accession and faced with the requirement to translate the EU's Acquis Communautaire into their native language according to mandated deadlines. Such was the case for Romania and Bulgaria, which became Member States on January 1st, 2007.

As the Director-General of the DGT since 2004, Lönnroth is steadfast in promoting the EU principle of "unity in diversity" as well as the fact that multilingualism is essential. His focus on translation management is a critical part of the DGT blueprint for a multilingual European Union.

As we close our first year of the Gilbane Globalization blog, we looked back at our initial goals to help readers meet the challenges of multilingual business communications. Three conversations stood out as emerging themes that we felt were critical then -- and now:

• Understanding the impact of globalization on customer experience and brand management


• Viewing the global content lifecycle as a strategic business practice


• Closing the gap between content and translation management processes

Our conversation wish list for 2008 is very "PPT"-driven. In fact, we can't think of any theme that does not require a collaboration of people, an interoperability between processes, and an integration of technologies:

• The power of single-sourcing to redefine "multi-channel" as more than device-driven outputs.


• The impact that human + machine translation combinations can have on the availability and quality of multilingual content.


• The value of terminology management in combating the proliferation of insulting translations.


• The potential of multilingual social networking.

The Globalization Track's "Understanding the Globalization Standards Landscape" session provided a trio of experts to content management professionals wading through the industry's "alphabet soup" of authoring, translation, and integration standards. Moderator Kaija Poysti deftly led the audience on a road trip through a multi-dimensional standards landscape with more than a few controversial roadblocks.

The mission was to understand how a standards-driven strategy provides an impact on customer experience, provide expert guidance on which ones really matter, and take-away advice on what to ask when evaluating solutions. Panelists Don DePalma from Common Sense Advisory (CSA), Andrew Draheim from Dig-IT!, and Serge Gladkoff from GALA delivered on the mission and then some, with commentary on which are practical, which are simply theoretical, and most importantly, which have a positive impact when adopted. Highlights:

• On a "standards reality check": "You have no choice on some; Some are about good hygiene, but little used; and others are not ready for prime time in their current form. However, the code and content ecosystems definitely need an injection of globalization DNA." Don DePalma, CSA.
• On standards benefits: "Adoption can decrease the internal cost of doing business, decrease typical business risks, facilitate business interactions, increase the value of services to clients, save on R&D and business development, and save on internal personnel training. However, there are too many private standards and too few generally-adopted public standards. Standards are notoriously difficult to develop and upon completion, they compete; be warned though, the "winning" standards not always the best ones." Serge Gladkoff, GALA Standards Committee Chair.
• On synergies between content and translation management: "When these technologies work together, it streamlines processes, reduces duplication and errors, and makes publishing easier. Which standards will be around tomorrow? Take a look at Translation Memory eXchange, Segmentation Rules eXchange, XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF), and TermBase eXchange." Andrew Draheim, Dig-IT!.

Many thanks to our panel for guiding our audience through the globalization standards landscape with candor and real-world advice.

The Globalization Track's "Quality at the Source: Creating Global Customer Experience" provided advice from those in the trenches striving to do just that: bake in quality from the "get-go." From Gilbane's perspective, delivering customer experience is one thing; delivering global customer experience is quite another.

Our presenters understood this perspective from a "been there, doing that" frame of mind. Mary and I would like to thank Dee Stribling, Project Manager at SAS, Lori Kegel, Manager Technical Communications at Boston Scientific, and Richard Sikes, Senior Consultant & Advisor at The Localization Institute for demonstrating that global customer experience is not yet another industry phrase designed to bolster new marketing campaigns. Putting the global in customer experience is a necessity, critical for those with multinational revenue profiles, and presents tangible challenges for organizations to view the content lifecycle from a totally different perspective.

When perspective morphs to reality, organizations often unearth champions with a range of specialties that define the pillars for "going global." Consider the following quotes from our presenters that epitomize some of the success factors for globalization in organizations that clearly get it:

• On terminology management: "Words are the building blocks of an organization’s conceptual framework. The quality of terminology directly relates to an organization’s presence in the global community – words are an essential corporate asset!" Dee Stribling, SAS.


• On source inconsistencies: "The whip cracks loudest at the farthest end. Follow the creative process back along the whip to minimize fluctuations at the source." Richard Sikes, Localization Institute.


• On globalization issues within an M&A environment: "The overall end goal is the same for both business units. There are nuances specific to each business unit based on their internal goals and objectives (portfolios are different and cultures are different). These differences are largely due to where in the translation, memory management, and content management processes a business unit is functioning; one can be at the infancy stage and one can be much further in the growth within these processes." Lori Kegel, Boston Scientific.

Many thanks to our panel for sending the message that a satisfying customer experience happens only when communication is clear, consistent, error-free, and in the customer's native language.