Recently in Translation Category

Our new year's resolution is to get back to regular blogging. We'll start with an easy but time-sensitive post.

After three years in Berlin, Localization World moves to Barcelona this year. The event takes place 14-16 June.

The theme of this year's conference is innovation. Based on what we saw happening with content globalization practices throughout the second half of 2010, innovation is top-of-mind for all industry constituents. Services business models are evolving, driven by strategic collaboration among buyers and sellers of translation services. Technologies for automating the manual tasks associated with content globalization are maturing rapidly. Gilbane's research shows steady progress towards overcoming language afterthought syndrome, as more and more companies realize that one or two key investments can stem the money drain caused by redundant processes. Innovation, indeed.

The call for papers closes 21 January 2011. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Second 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 Joan Lasselle, President of Lasselle Ramsay. Lasselle Ramsay is a service provider that designs solutions for content and learning that align how users work with the information needed to achieve business results. We talked with Joan about her company, why they supported the research, and what surprised her about the results.
 
Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product content? (i.e., what does your company do?) 
 
Lasselle: Lasselle Ramsay is a professional service provider, not a reseller or technology integrator. We focus on helping companies develop new product content. Our work spans the value chain, ranging from engineering (at the point of origin), to technical marketing and technical documentation, to learning organizations and support teams. We also look at the extended value chain, which includes partners, suppliers (like translation service providers), and customers.
 
We encourage our clients to operate in both the strategic and tactical domains, providing them with a strategic vision, and helping implement an infrastructure that can deliver structured and unstructured multilingual content.
 
Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research?
 
Lasselle: One of our goals as a service provider is to add value at each stage across the chain. This research study enables us to discover and share the experience and perspective of industry leaders with Lasselle Ramsay clients. We chose this particular study because of the in-depth research, as well as Gilbane’s domain expertise and independence.
 
Gilbane: What, in your opinion, is the most relevant/compelling/interesting result reported in the study?
 
Lasselle: Gilbane’s report sheds light on two key issues that our clients face: the need to address content within the context of larger business trends [referred to as megatrends in the study], and the importance of process improvements. First, companies today are challenged repeatedly to address adverse economic pressures at the same time they respond to the megatrends, such as the evolving basis of competitive advantage. The report makes clear that companies must take measures to address these megatrends in their content practices, or risk being left behind. Even in the face of negative economics and an endless and escalating flood of new data, they cannot sit back and wait. Second, the report illustrates how organizations can benefit from improving cross-functional processes. In many companies, for example, engineering and tech pubs each have their own authoring, content management, translation, and publishing, and neither group shares any processes or tools. What a lost opportunity! Just think of how much they could lower costs and speed time to market if they coordinated processes and collaborated on process improvements.
 
For insights into the megatrends that are shaping content globalization practices, see "Market Context" on page 9 of the report. You can also read about how Lasselle Ramsay contributed to global content value chain development at Hewlett-Packard. Download the study for free.

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.

At the recent Worldware Conference in Santa Clara, California, I was delighted to learn about how a high-tech company was achieving great success in internationalizing their software through crowdsourcing. The story gets more interesting. This was not back-room software plumbing but an innovative application, none other than Second Life, a virtual world and a social-networking MMORG (Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game).  Launched by Linden Lab in 2003, Second Life enables its users, called residents, to interoperate with a virtual world  through software called a Second Life Viewer. Residents can socialize, participate in group activities, and create and trade virtual property.  According to Google, there are over 9 million residents currently on Second Life.

I attended the presentation, “Brave New (Virtual) World,” and had an opportunity to catch up with Danica Brinton, Director of International Strategies and Localization at Linden Lab.  Here’s what she had to say.

Kadie:  When did Linden Lab realize the importance of internationalization?

Brinton: Around the middle of 2008, Linden Lab realized some discrepancies between U.S. and international business.  While 60% of the residents and twice the new registrations were from outside the U.S., revenue and retention numbers, while still healthy, indicated a gap in the localized  user experience.

Kadie: What happened when you entered the scene?

Brinton: I joined the company in June.  When I checked things out, I was stunned.  I discovered that we were paying $40,000 per quarter to LSPs.  What were we getting?  The viewer was translated only partially into 3 languages, and was nearly incomprehensible.  The website was translated partially into 2 key languages.  In both cases there were a lot of localization bugs.  On the flip side, hundreds of wiki-based Help pages were translated quite well into 8 languages, which was pretty darn good.  An interesting trend…

Kadie: So what did you do?

Brinton: Although we were a small company, when I showed my management the opportunity they were very supportive…but with limited funding.  So we had to get creative.  We enlisted the help of power users to translate the application and website.  To ensure quality control, we set up a repeatable localization framework, with translation, editing, testing, and end user review.  We established a tier system of resident translators, drawing on our super-users.   We built and acquired localization tools to manage translation memories and the localization process, and installed a locale-based ROI calculator to manage costs.  Finally, we hired 3 in-house linguists.  So you can see, it was a hybrid of crowdsourcing from the Second Life community on the one hand, and our in-house linguists and contracted translation agencies on the other.

Kadie: How did you divide up the work?

Brinton:  Who did what depended on the language tier.  Let’s look at the viewer, for example.  For tier-1 languages, we developed the glossary, did the translation, and collaborated with the Second Life community on the editing, QA, and some of the glossary.  For tier-2 languages, the Second Life community did nearly everything. 

Kadie: What kind of results did you achieve?

Brinton: Less than a year later, I can truthfully say that we achieved some dramatic results.  We now translate the viewer and the website into 10 languages, and expect to reach 16 in May.  The active residents from outside the U.S. grew to 64% of the user base, and new registrations are now more than 2.5 times the U.S.  Even better, international revenues have surpassed U.S. domestic revenues.  Between the Viewer, the website, and the knowledge base, we now regularly localize over 150,000 words per language.

Kadie: What’s next for localization at Linden Lab?

Brinton: Strangely enough, past is prologue.  This new localization program is helping to increase customer satisfaction and bolster an affinity group.  You can even say that community-driven translation is building brand advocacy.  Some of the elite power users are evolving into business partners.  Localization is not only supporting our business, it’s helping to grow it.

The Content Globalization practice at the Gilbane Group closely follows and  blogs on the role of multilingual communication in social networking (see interview with Plaxo).
 

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.

• 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.

In July of this year, WeLocalize launched the GlobalSight Open Source Initiative, offering the industry's first open source version of enterprise translation management software. WeLocalize plans to release open source GlobalSight in January, 2009, and is committed to supporting LISA standards Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) and Segmentation Rules eXchange 2.0 (SRX). GlobalSight also recently announced a partnership with ClayTablet Technologies to enable connectivity with content management systems.

Is this just another marketing initiative searching for a way to differentiate common technology? Early indications are that there's a real movement afoot. Over 200 people from 147 companies have joined this open source community, and the steering committee contains many high-tech leaders, including Cisco, EMC, IBM, Autodesk, NetApp, and Sun Microsystems. Sun, for example, has a long history of embracing open standards and open source. Sun has staked its future repeatedly on open standards and open sources, ranging from the early days of UNIX and Java to today's OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, Java, and, now, Open Translation centering on XLIFF standards.

To be sure, this is an impressive list of companies. But the basis of these companies' interest is not entirely clear, and the adoption history for open source solutions across the value chain of content technologies has been fragmented at best. Open source content management software is still in the early stages of acceptance and open source authoring software has yet to take significant market share.

In the end, global corporations and organizations determine value and standards. So we put the question to you: WOULD YOU CONSIDER ADOPTING OPEN SOURCE TRANSLATION, AND WHY? Please comment on this blog or send me email with your ideas. Let's continue this conversation...