Author: Leonor Ciarlone (Page 2 of 13)

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!

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 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.

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!

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!

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!