April/May 2010

Language | Technology | Business April/May 2010

Industry Focus: Project Management Practical survival guide for globalization project managers Case study: TM economics in project management Project management and machine translation Beginning a career as a localization project manager Collaboration and localization

Getting Started Guide: Language Technology

01 Cover #111.indd 1 4/5/10 9:18:01 AM All in One.

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02-03 Ad-TOC #111.indd 2 4/5/10 9:17:25 AM MultiLingual Language | Technology | Business April/May 2010 #111 Volume 21 Issue 3

n Up Front n Feature Articles n 4 www.multilingual.com n Industry Focus n 5 Post Editing 27 Practical survival guide for n globalization project managers News n 6 News — Kenneth A. McKethan, Jr. n 12 Calendar 30 Case study: TM economics n in project management Reviews — Brad Orfall 13 Plunet BusinessManager 34 Project management — Reviewed by Richard Sikes and machine translation Up Front n — Ana Guerberof Arenas Columns and Commentary 39 18 Beginning a career as a Off the Map — Tom Edwards localization project manager 20 World Savvy — John Freivalds — Paul Cerda 22 Perspectives — Kirk Anderson n Business 24 Perspectives — Shelly Priebe & 43 Collaboration and localization Daniel Goldschmidt — Kirti Vashee & Michael W. Cox 54 Takeaway — Alessandro Agostini n 47 Buyer’s Guide 53 Advertiser Index

About the cover

This welded metal sculpture brings to life three-dimensional language characters outside the Chinese Cultural Center, lower Tiergarten District, Berlin, Germany.

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02-03 Ad-TOC #111.indd 3 4/5/10 9:17:26 AM on the web at www.multilingual.com

Careers MultiLingual LooKing for a neW STarT in The inDuSTry? Look no further #111 Volume 21 Issue 3 April/May 2010 than the careers section at www.multilingual.com/careers Editor-in-Chief, Publisher: Donna Parrish Managing Editor: Katie Botkin There you will find up-to-the-minute job listings with descriptions Proofreader: Jim Healey and contact details. At press time, there were listings ranging from News: Kendra Gray translator to sales professional for North America. Check soon because Production: Doug Jones, Darlene Dibble the jobs are quickly filled. Good luck in your search! If you are reading Cover Photo: Doug Jones MultiLingual and browsing www.multilingual.com, you are obviously well- Webmaster: Aric Spence informed and will find something in the near future. Technical Analyst: Curtis Booker Data Administrator: Cecilia Spence On the other side of the equation, do you need to find just the right Assistant: Shannon Abromeit person to fill the new opening in your company? Get your job listing Circulation: Terri Jadick published right away on www.multilingual.com/careers and within two Special Projects: Bernie Nova weeks in the newsletter, MultiLingual News. Savvy employers return Advertising Director: Jennifer Del Carlo again and again to this resource — because it works! Advertising: Kevin Watson, Bonnie Hagan Editorial Board Jeff Allen, Ultan Ó Broin, Arturo Quintero, Jessica Roland, Lori Thicke, Jost Zetzsche Advertising Subscriptions [email protected] www.multilingual.com/advertising Don’t let a whole year of good ideas escape. Subscribe now and keep 208-263-8178 new issues of MultiLingual on your desk. Subscriptions, back issues, customer service The print magazine is mailed nine times [email protected] a year (eight issues plus an annual www.multilingual.com/ subscriptionInformation resource directory/index) for just US $58, Submissions, letters international $85 per year, and includes [email protected] full access to MultiLingual, the digital Editorial guidelines are available at magazine — delivered in a new interactive www.multilingual.com/editorialWriter format. A digital subscription is available Reprints: [email protected] for only $28. MultiLingual Computing, Inc. 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2 Subscribe today online at www.multilingual.com/subscribe and start Sandpoint, Idaho 8386-195 USA keeping up with one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet. [email protected] www.multilingual.com © MultiLingual Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. For reprints and e-prints, please e-mail [email protected] or call 208-263-8178. MultiLingual (ISSN 1523-0309), April/May 2010, is published Stay in touch monthly except Jan-Feb, Apr-May, Jul-Aug, Oct-Nov for US $58, international $85 per year by MultiLingual Computing, Inc., 319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, ID 83864-1495. Periodicals Keep up to date with all the news, thoughts and trends with postage paid at Sandpoint, ID and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to MultiLingual, 319 North MultiLingual. Current news is available at www.multilingual.com/news, First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, ID 83864-1495. and the free biweekly newsletter, MultiLingual News, delivers this information to your inbox. Want to hear the latest ruminations from our editorial board and staff? Blogos (www.multilingualblog.com) is the place to look. And, newest on the list, you can follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/multilingualmag MultiLingual is printed on 30% post-consumer recycled paper.

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04-05 Masthead & PostEditing #114 4 4/5/10 9:19:17 AM Katie Botkin Post Editing

Managing microculture

It seems that in order to talk about localization we do the very with three best-of-breed translation memory (TM) products. Tom Iopposite of what we do in the small group of ourselves and our Edwards then offers his third installment on geocultural testing. friends — we lump together, rather than parse out, individuals; John Freivalds speaks on Western lingo in his column, and then or, rather, we take the average or norm for a group of individuals Kirk Anderson shows us four industry faces in Haiti recovery and parse out their differences in relation to another group. We efforts. Shelly Priebe and Daniel Goldschmidt round out the look at us, our solid familiarity, not versus them (that’s clearly columns with a Perspective on crowdsourcing, proving that, xenophobic), but in relation to them, artistically, linguistically, over-exposed though it may be, the concept still offers many culinarily, industrially, psychologically and so on. We add some unanswered questions — such as, perhaps, where is it going and business sense to this parallel psychology, some common sense, how do we get there? a few content tools, a few time-saving concept buzzwords (such Kenneth A. McKethan, Jr., starts the focus with a look at as agile or scrum currently), and we have a working theory of globalization project management (PM), followed by a case study localization project management. on TM economics from Brad Orfall. Ana Guerberof Arenas takes Sort of. Localization itself, and the localization department on PM and machine translation, and Paul Cerda has some advice of a particular place, can have its own microculture. This for those wanting to get started in the localization PM ﬁeld. as well as the broader cultures of origin and target needs Next, Kirti Vashee and Michael W. Cox give an overview to be taken into account. (An aside: can “microculture on collaboration, and in the Takeaway Alessandro Agostini management” be shortened to “micromanagement”?) admonishes Italians to speak more Italian. Depending on what you’re managing, where, and with what, Because you’ll certainly want some tech with whatever the rules can change. management style you’re going for, there’s an all-new Getting Richard Sikes helps to prove this with a review of the soon- Started Guide on Language Technology inserted into the to-be-new-again Plunet BusinessManager and its capabilities magazine. W

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04-05 Masthead & PostEditing #115 5 4/5/10 9:19:18 AM Worldware, round 2 Conference addresses ROI of software internationalization The second Worldware conference took place March 16- 18, 2010, in Santa Clara, California. With a theme of “The ROI of Software Internationalization,” the conference highlighted new trends as well as historical insight. Leading off the first day of the main conference, Cliff Miller outlined the development of his first internet busi- News ness in 1992, through its development into TurboLinux. Many of his first efforts were tailored to Japan and other parts of Asia. Bill Sullivan, IBM’s globalization executive, reflected on the changes and evolutions in the 34 years he has seen at IBM, emphasizing that the company has a his- Speaker Bill Sullivan tory of being “international” and first localized a product in (top) explains IBM’s 1914. In reference to return on investment (ROI), Sullivan global success mod- stated, “If you start by questioning the ROI for globalizing indi- el, and Henk Boxma vidual products, you have already missed the point.” He elaborated (left) participates in on this by stating that competition, company image, future growth an audience discus- and legal considerations must also be brought into consideration. A sion at Worldware panel of representatives from Cisco, Google and IBM delved into the 2010. conference theme even further. The second day was keynoted by Konstantin Guericke, cofounder of LinkedIn, who was followed by a lively continuation of the ROI discussion by representatives from EMC, Intel and Yahoo! Other security, in-house internationalization, international domain names, conference highlights included discussions of corporate acquisi- semantic technologies, marketization and bidirectional challenges. tions and internationalization, the process of globalization, testing, Plans are currently underway for Worldware 2011.

Eighth Conference of the Israel Translators Association

The annual conference of the Israel Translators Association took Armenian, Jewish and Muslim quarters of the Old City. place February 8-10, 2010, in the heart of Jerusalem, just a few The next day, Jost Zetzsche gave a keynote address titled “Language minutes’ walking distance from the spectacular Machaneh Yehu- Technology: Tools at or for Our Disposal?” describing the technology dah market and not far from the magnificent walls of the Old City. used to translate the Bible into Chinese in the nineteenth century: Unseasonably warm weather provided the perfect setting for the the branch of an apple tree, as the translator was paralyzed and could conference. The program dealt with the impact of tools and technol- move only a single finger of his body. The talk also covered technology ogy on the day-to-day work of translators, as well as their effect on development and how the translation community should leverage it. the delicate status quo of the translation industry. Two panels addressed crowdsourcing and machine translation In the preconference workshops, a full-day session on concepts, and their impact on the translation environment. The panelists tools and processes for the language industry was given. At the included translators Pascale Amozig-Bukszpan and Leah Aharoni, same time, practical workshops took place on topics such as migrat- scientist Shay Ben David from IBM Research, and crowdsourcing ing tools and financial translation. leaders such as Dror Kamir from the Israeli Wikipedia branch, who The first keynote session was given by Oren Nahari, a journalist described how and why Wikipedia works, and Asaf Bartov, the and the foreign news editor at a major Israeli television network. founder of Ben-Yehuda project, the Hebrew Gutenberg project. On the second day of the conference, Ephraim Sidon, an Israeli author The final day included several business-oriented workshops, and satirist, together with Danny Karman, an Israeli satirist and designer, such as “First Aid for Translators and Editors” by Nina Rimon Davis gave a plenary talk about humor in the Bible (there is more than you and “Your Greatest Marketing Tool Is Right Under Your Nose” by might think). They described the way that biblical humor is employed Danny Verbov. ATA-TCD administrator Rina Ne’eman presented to in modern times, providing many amusing examples. a standing-room only audience on “50 Things That You Can Do to That evening, conference participants toured the Western Wall Succeed as a Freelancer.” Tunnels, one of the most fascinating archeological sites in a land of Altogether, there was exceptional content and outstanding historical excavations. Starting at the Kotel (Western Wall) Plaza, organization on the part of conference organizers Inga Michaeli, translators from around the world explored the subterranean tun- Ester Halac, Sarah Yarkoni and Perry Zamek. Kudos to all for a beau- nels and experienced the Jerusalem of thousands of years ago. The tifully orchestrated conference in the ancient city of Jerusalem. evening concluded with a walk through the beautifully illuminated — Daniel Goldschmidt and Rina Ne’eman

| MultiLingual April/May 2010 [email protected]

06 NewsOpening#111.indd 6 4/5/10 9:20:25 AM News

Business London office to Hove near Brighton, Eng- ■ MultiCorpora R&D Inc., a provider of land. Access to resources and operational software language technology, has hired Keywords International changes motivated the move. Richard Sikes as solution specialist. opens Tokyo operations center Partnertrans UK Ltd www.partnertrans.com ■ Folio Online, a translation company, Keywords International, a provider of out- has hired Paul Roberts as part of its mar- sourced video game localization and testing Win & Winnow Communications keting team. services, has opened a new operations cen- relocates Buenos Aires office ■ Globalization Group, Inc., a language ter for East Asian languages in Tokyo, Japan. Win & Winnow Communications, a lan- solutions provider, has hired Adam Wooten Christopher Kennedy, previously of Square guage service provider, has moved its offices as vice president of strategy and business Enix Co., Ltd., will be the business develop- to a larger building located in Palermo in development. ment manager, Asia. Buenos Aires. The company has also added ■ Commit, a language services provider, Keywords International several staff members to its production and has hired Nadia Pandes as business devel- www.keywordsintl.com business development departments. opment executive for its US operations. Win & Winnow Communications Milengo Ltd. www.milengo.com Kilgray updates image, www.winandwinnow.com MultiCorpora R&D Inc. www.multicorpora.com opens Texas office Folio Online www.folio-online.co.za Kilgray Translation Technologies, a devel- Open Text acquires Nstein Globalization Group, Inc. oper of translation productivity tools, has Open Text Corporation, a developer of web www.globalization-group.com updated its corporate image and published content management software, and Nstein Commit www.commit.gr a brand new website to reflect a more Technologies, Inc., a software development professional and innovative brand. Kilgray company, has entered into an agreement by Resources has also opened its first US office in Austin, which Open Text will acquire all of the issued Texas. Patricia Bown has been named direc- and outstanding common shares of Nstein. ENLASO Healthwise case study tor of sales, Americas. The transaction is expected to close in the ENLASO Corporation, a provider of enter- Kilgray Translation Technologies second calendar quarter and is subject to prise language solutions, has released a case www.kilgray.com customary closing conditions. study examining how the company supported Open Text Corporation www.opentext.com Healthwise, a provider of consumer health Eriksen adds office and staff Nstein Technologies www.nstein.com information, in meeting difficult quality mea- Eriksen Translations Inc., a language ser- sures and localization issues. vices provider, has opened a new office in Financial ENLASO Corporation www.translate.com San Diego, California. It has also hired two business managers. Mark Bockhold joins the 2009 SDL preliminary results GlobalVision offers e-book company from Logoscript. Santiago Cuartas SDL, a provider of global information GlobalVision International, Inc., a transla- was previously at Tek Translation Interna- management solutions, has announced its tion and localization services provider, has tional and Translations.com. unaudited preliminary results for the year announced the availability of its e-book Eriksen Translations Inc. www.eriksen.com ending 31 December 2009. The company Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using reported a revenue of £171,878m. Localization to Penetrate International Mar- Milengo opens Rosario office SDL www.sdl.com kets. The e-book draws on the experience Milengo Ltd., a provider of localization, gained while working with clients in indus- engineering and testing services, has opened ALS secures investment funding tries such as software, information technol- a new Global Project Management Center Applied Language Solutions (ALS), a pro- ogy, medical and media. in Rosario, Argentina. The office will provider of translation services, has secured a GlobalVision International, Inc. vide localization engineering, testing and £1.4m investment from Maven Capital Part- www.globalvis.com desktop publishing services for clients in the ners. The investment has been announced Americas. as part of a government-backed Capital for Milengo Ltd. www.milengo.com Enterprise Fund to help small and medium- size enterprises in the United Kingdom. Binari Sonori opens California office Applied Language Solutions Binari Sonori S.r.l., a provider of localiza- www.appliedlanguage.com tion services and production of interna- www.star-group.net tional content for digital entertainment, has People opened an office in Los Angeles, California. In addition to recent office openings, the Recent industry hires company has also updated its website. ■ Milengo Ltd., a provider of localiza- Binari Sonori S.r.l. www.binarisonori.com tion, engineering and testing services, has hired Britta Izadi to head its sales activity Partnertrans relocates office in Germany and greater Europe. The com- Computer assisted Partnertrans UK Ltd, an interactive enter- pany has also hired two new salespeople translation

tainment localization agency for the video — Petra Nelson and Rosilene Martins — for Transit with Translation Memory and mobile games industry, has relocated its its California ofﬁce.

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07-12 News #111.indd 7 4/5/10 9:21:55 AM News

‘Marketing Language Services Online’ Association de l’industrie de la langue/ of SDL OpenExchange, inviting the devel- Common Sense Advisory, Inc., an inde- Language Industry Association www.ailia.ca oper community to make use of standard pendent market research firm, has published open application programming interfaces “Marketing Language Services Online.” The 2010 Web Globalization Report Card to increase the functionality of SDL Trados report presents the results of a survey of Byte Level Research, analysts of the art Studio. 300 language service provider websites. It and science of web globalization, has pub- SDL www.sdl.com answers many questions about how lan- lished the sixth edition of the 2010 Web guage services firms market their services Globalization Report Card. More than two VoxOx Universal Translator on the web. months were spent analyzing the world’s TelCentris, a communications and tele- Common Sense Advisory, Inc. leading websites, noting languages used on communications provider, has created the www.commonsenseadvisory.com every website, as well as studying naviga- VoxOx Universal Translator, offering real- tion and localization. time language translation for short mes- GLS publishes tip sheet Byte Level Research www.bytelevel.com sage service, chat, social media and e-mail for working with interpreters in one interface. The translation service is Global Language Solutions (GLS), Inc., Products and Services built into the communications software a translation and interpreting company, enabling real-time conversations. has published a tip sheet called “Working TermWiki TelCentris www.telcentris.com with Interpreters in a Multilingual Busi- CSOFT International, Ltd., a provider ness or Event Environment.” The tip sheet of multilingual localization, testing and GPI adds DITA/XML is intended to answer questions related to software development, has announced consulting services working with interpreters. the international release of TermWiki, a Globalization Partners International (GPI), Global Language Solutions, Inc. collaborative and wiki-based multilingual a provider of website, software and documen- www.globallanguages.com terminology management system. tation translation services, has announced CSOFT International, Ltd. www.csoftintl.com that its documentation globalization team AILIA certification scheme for has added consultation, content analysis interpreting service providers New SDL releases and custom workflow design services for Association de l’industrie de la langue/Lan- SDL, a provider of global information companies moving to structured authoring guage Industry Association (AILIA), recently management solutions, has released a new and publishing processes using DITA (Darwin launched the certification scheme for inter- subscription level of its SDL Trados Studio. Information Typing Architecture). preting service providers. The scheme is based The release also includes additional produc- Globalization Partners International on the National Standard Guide for Com- tivity tools for translators such as Service www.globalizationpartners.com munity Interpreting Services (NSGCIS). The Pack 2, enabling translators to plug in to NSGCIS is a national standard developed by multiple automatic translation tools. Langmates the Healthcare Interpretation Network. The company has also done a beta launch Advanced International Translations, Ltd., a translation agency and localization and software development company, has created Langmates (www.langmates.com), an online social network for translators and translation agencies. Advanced International Translations, Ltd. www.projetex.com

XTM Suite 5.1 XML-INTL, a developer of XML authoring and translation tools, has released XTM Suite 5.1, a set of web-based translation tools designed to aid translator/buyer interactions. The suite can be a standalone product, or selected modules can be integrated with existing in-house systems via open application programming interfaces and web services. XML-INTL www.xml-intl.com

XLOC 4.0 XLOC, Inc., a provider of global localization solutions for video games, has introduced XLOC 4.0. The latest version of the localization system incorporates multiple enhancements, such as XLOC API

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07-12 News #111.indd 8 4/5/10 9:21:56 AM News

for integration of developers’ tools and Multilizer 2010 — 501 locales in all. To develop the new ver- processes; translation memory features and Multilizer, a developer of localization and sion, the Unicode Consortium partnered with support; and increased historical data for translation software, has introduced Multi- ANLoc, the African Network for Localization, translations. lizer 2010. Enhancements include improved a project sponsored by Canada’s Interna- XLOC, Inc. www.xloc.com project maintenance features, translation tional Development Research Centre. reuse, and XML and software support. The Unicode Consortium www.unicode.org WordPress plugin Multilizer www.multilizer.com SpeakLike Inc., a provider of internet- Wordbee Translator based language translation chat technolo- Wordfast Pro 2.3 for Windows Wordbee S.A., a translation software gies and services, has released a WordPress Wordfast LLC, a provider of translation company, has created Wordbee Translator, plugin for bloggers to publish their blogs memory software, has released Wordfast an online computer-assisted translation in multiple languages. Translations for the Pro 2.3 for Windows, designed for corpora- and management platform available in plugin are available in 35 languages. The tions, translation agencies and freelance three editions: Freelancer Edition, Team plugin was created in partnership with The translators. New features include PDF, MIF Edition and On Site Installation. and TTX support; Wordfast Aligner (beta Worldwide Lexicon. Wordbee S.A. www.wordbee.com version); machine translation (TM) inte- SpeakLike Inc. www.speaklike.com gration; and a built-in TM administration Author-it Aspect module. Anzu expands staffing services Author-it Software Corporation, a devel- Wordfast LLC www.wordfast.com Anzu Global LLC, a globalization staffing oper of software for authoring, content services company, has expanded its staff- Rosette 7 management, publishing and localization, ing services to include sales and business Basis Technology Corp., a provider of has launched Author-it Aspect — a web- development for language service provid- multilingual text analytics, has introduced based application that delivers content to ers. The company provides globalization the latest generation of the company’s users based on their profile settings. production resources to technology clients linguistics platform, Rosette 7. The latest Author-it Software Corporation worldwide. version includes expanded language cover- www.author-it.com Anzu Global LLC www.anzuglobal.com age, new name matching and translation modules, and native integration with ACP Traductera adds Kazakh TeaM Server Apache Lucene/Solr. ACP Traductera, s.r.o., a translation and ATRIL, a computer-assisted translation Basis Technology Corp. www.basistech.com localization company, has added Kazakh to technology developer, has introduced TeaM its range of target languages. Services are Server, a solution that allows translators Unicode CLDR 1.8 provided by native speakers experienced in using Déj à Vu Workgroup to work on mul- The Unicode Consortium has developed using computer-assisted translation tools tinational and multisite translation projects version1.8 of the Unicode Common Locale and with several years of translation expe- in the same office. Data Repository (CLDR). CLDR 1.8 contains rience in the various fields of expertise. ATRIL www.atril.com data for 186 languages and 159 territories ACP Traductera, s.r.o. www.traductera.com

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07-12 News #111.indd 9 4/5/10 9:21:57 AM News

Clients and Partners professionals navigate the complex structure McElroy Translation Company, a language of international drug and device approvals. service provider, as its central business and ForeignExchange selected by RAPS ForeignExchange Translations, Inc. translation management system. ForeignExchange Translations, Inc., a spe- www.fxtrans.com Plunet GmbH www.plunet.de cialized language services provider, has been McElroy Translation Company selected by the Regulatory Affairs Professional IFL selected by Oracle www.mcelroytranslation.com Society (RAPS) to translate its Fundamentals Idea Factory Languages, Inc. (IFL), a trans- of Japanese Regulatory Affairs handbook. lation and localization services provider, Nuance software featured RAPS publishes books that help regulatory has been selected by Oracle Corporation’s in 2010 Audi A8 models Worldwide Product Translation Group. The Nuance Communications, Inc., software initial project will include new content has been featured as part of the 2010 Audi Since 1994 translation as well as the adaptation of A8 models. Nuance’s One-Shot Destination existing translations. Entry and multilingual media command Idea Factory Languages, Inc. www.iﬂang.com and control speech technology have been integrated into the Audi MultiMedia Inter- Plunet and SDL Passolo interface face Touch in-car infotainment system for TURKISH Plunet GmbH, a provider of business navigation, media and phone. management software for translation ser- Nuance Communications, Inc. ARABIC vices and agencies, in partnership with SDL, www.nuance.com GREEK has developed an SDL Passolo interface, available as an add-on for all editions of Albert Einstein Healthcare and more... BusinessManager. Network selects LSA Plunet GmbH www.plunet.de Language Services Associates (LSA), a lan- SDL www.sdl.com guage services provider, has been awarded a three-year contract by Albert Einstein Proven Gordon Training Healthcare Network to provide over-the- Proven International chooses ENLASO phone interpreting (OPI) services. LSA will Experience ENLASO Corporation, a provider of enter- provide on-demand OPI services, in over 200 Quality prise language solutions, has been chosen language offerings, to non-English-speaking by Gordon Training International to localize patients. the Leader Effectiveness Training program, Language Services Associates a skills-based training program focused on www.lsaweb.com Proven developing interpersonal communication and conﬂict resolution competencies in Corporate Translations Reliability managers and supervisors. chooses Across technology ENLASO Corporation www.translate.com Across Systems GmbH, a provider of cor- Long-term porate translation management software, Commitment Verztec chosen by Yara has been selected by Corporate Transla- Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd., a provider of tions, Inc., a translation service provider Cost multilingual communication services, has specializing in the life science industry. The Effective been chosen by Yara International ASA to Across Language Server will act as a central Service translate and localize its ethics guide into repository of linguistic assets, customizable eight languages. Yara is a global supplier of by Corporate Translations’ clients. Blue-chip agricultural products. Across Systems GmbH www.across.net Verztec Consulting Pte. Ltd. www.verztec.com Client Base Announcements Ben Gurion airport hires Tiqua Tiqua Translations was selected to pro- Call for participation vide Hebrew, English and Russian transla- in DARPA program tion services for the Ben Gurion airport The Defense Advanced Research Projects outside Tel Aviv, Israel. The company pro- Agency (DARPA) is launching a program to vides translation services for a wide variety develop speech transcription, translation of industries. and speech signal processing technologies Tiqua Translations www.tiqua.com that function effectively in noisy places to support intelligence gathering. DARPA has Plunet selected by issued a broad agency announcement for a McElroy Translation human language technology research and www.estr.com - [email protected] Plunet GmbH, a provider of business development program called Robust Auto- +90 216 3268764 management software for translation ser- matic Transcription of Speech (RATS). vices and agencies, has been selected by Companies interested in participating in

10 | MultiLingual April/May 2010 [email protected]

07-12 News #111.indd 10 4/5/10 9:21:58 AM News

the RATS program should contact Joseph regulatory compliance platform for deliver- Argo Translation, Inc. www.argotrans.com Olive ([email protected]) at ing quality assurance for medical translation Eurasia Translations, Inc. DARPA no later than July 29, 2010. and medical device localization has received www.eurasia-usa.com Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ISO 9001:2008 certification. Siens Translation S.L. www.darpa.mil ■ Eurasia Translations, Inc., a provider of www.sienstranslation.com translation, interpretation and localization AD VERBUM www.adverbum.lv AIT launches additional website services, has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 Global Lingo Ltd. www.global-lingo.com Advanced International Translations, Ltd. certification by Global Certification-USA, MAart Agency Ltd. www.maart.pl (AIT), a translation agency and localization LLC, a training, registration and certifica- Global Language Solutions, Inc. and software development company, has tion organization. www.globallanguages.com launched a new website — www.transla ■ Siens Translation S.L., a translation, tionmanagementsystem.com — focused on localization and interpreting company, has providing more information about three achieved ISO 9001:2008 and EN 15038:2006 Interested in more news of the company’s main products: Projetex, quality certification. Translation Office 3000 and AnyCount. ■ AD VERBUM, a language services pro- about the industry? Advanced International Translations, Ltd. vider, has received EN:15038:2006 certifica- Subscribe to our free biweekly www.projetex.com tion. The company also provides localization electronic newsletter at of multimedia content, including voice-over www.multilingual.com/news CELI website redesigned and subtitling services for Eastern and Cen- CELI s.r.l., a provider of solutions integrat- tral European languages. Not receiving your ing technologies for natural language com- ■ Global Lingo Ltd., a language services prehension and text analysis, has redesigned provider, has been awarded the ISO 9001 free newsletter? its corporate website. The renovated website Quality Management and ISO 14001 Envi- If you have subscribed to the has also been localized in Italian, English, ronmental Management standards. newsletter but aren’t receiving Polish, Russian, French and German. ■ MAart Agency Ltd., a language services your copy, make sure that you CELI s.r.l. www.celi.it provider, has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 have added the e-mail address and EN 15038 certificates of translation, [email protected] UNDL Foundation call for localization and project management. to your address book and/or cleared ■ participation in UNL Programme Global Language Solutions (GLS), Inc., it through your company’s firewall. The UNDL Foundation, a global network a translation and interpreting company, of computer developers and linguists, is has achieved EN 15038:2006 certification. Newsletters are archived at seeking students, translators, interpreters GLS services include document translations, www.multilingual.com/ and language specialists to join the global website localization, conference interpret- mlNewsArchive.php effort of creating language resources for ing and voice-overs. the Universal Networking Language (UNL) Programme. Candidates are not required to have any previous experience in natural language processing but are expected to have some acquaintance with descrip- Plunet BusinessManager tive linguistics and a good knowledge of It´s more than a software...it´s your business English. Candidates must register in the UNLweb (www.unlweb.net) and pursue the Plunet BusinessManager is the integrated business and workflow management solution for translation companies. Whether you work in CLEA450 certificate issued by VALERIE, the project management, sales, controlling or at the senior management Virtual Learning Environment for UNL. level – Plunet‘s web-based BusinessManager platform is the complete UNDL Foundation www.undlfoundation.org solution for successful translation management. All around the world, hundreds of companies are already using Plunet BusinessManager to Janus celebrates 14 years optimize their business and translation processes. Janus Worldwide Inc., a language ser- Score for your business success too! vice provider, is celebrating its fourteenth anniversary. The company offers a range of translation and interpreting services, software localization, linguistic consulting, instruction, desktop publishing and design. Plunet Americas Region Want to know more? Janus Worldwide Inc. www.januswwi.com 1 888 758638 1 (toll-free) Contact us for a Plunet [email protected] www.plunet.net Awards and Certifications BusinessManager demo and get your free process optimization Plunet Worldwide consultation! +49 (0)30 3229713 40 Standard certifications [email protected] www.plunet.de ■ Argo Translation, Inc., a website translation company, has announced that its

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07-12 News #111.indd 11 4/5/10 9:21:59 AM May June STC 57th Annual Conference and EXPO Localization World Berlin 2010 May 2-5, 2010, in Dallas, Texas USA. June 7-9, 2010, in Berlin, Germany. Society for Technical Communication Localization World Ltd., www.localizationworld.com www.stc.org/edu/conference.asp 1st North American Summit on Interpreting Languages and Business 2010 June 17, 2010, in Washington, D.C. USA. May 3-5, 2010, in Düsseldorf, Germany. InterpretAmerica, LLC, www.interpretamerica.net ICWE GmbH, www.sprachen-beruf.com/pages/en/index.php Localization Certiﬁcation Program

Calendar memoQfest June 21-23, 2010, in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. May 5-7, 2010, in Budapest, Hungary. CSU, Chico Continuing Education and Research Foundation Kilgray Translation Technologies, www.memoqfest.org http://rce.csuchico.edu/localize GALA 2010 Localization Project Management Certiﬁcation May 10-12, 2010, in Prague, Czech Republic. June 24-25, 2010, in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Globalization and Localization Association CSU, Chico Continuing Education and Research Foundation www.gala-global.org/conference http://rce.csuchico.edu/localize International Search Summit LISA Forum Asia 2010 May 13, 2010, in London, UK. June 28-July 1, 2010, in Suzhou, China. WebCertain, www.internationalsearchsummit.com LISA, www.lisa.org/Suzhou.1340.0.html Gilbane San Francisco 2010 May 18-20, 2010, in San Francisco, California USA. July Lighthouse Seminars/Gilbane Group, http://gilbanesf.com MLAC10 2010 LRC Summer School — July 5-7, 2010, in Salamanca, Spain. Open Source Localisation Marathon University of Salamanca, CELE Research Group May 17-21, 2010, in Limerick, Ireland. http://campus.usal.es/~tradotros/MLAC10 Localisation Research Centre, Centre for Next Generation Localisation ACL 2010 www.localisation.ie/resources/courses/summerschools/2010/index.htm July 11-16, 2010, in Uppsala, Sweden. LREC 2010 Association for Computational Linguistics, www.acl2010.org May 17-23, 2010, in Valletta, Malta. The European Language Resource Association, www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2010 Hong Kong Translation Research Summer School July 12-23, 2010, in Hong Kong. TAUS Executive Forum Centre for Translation, Hong Kong Baptist University May 19-21, 2010, in Copenhagen, Denmark. www.researchschool.org/index.php?module=content&task=view&id=26 Translation Automation User Society www.translationautomation.com/events/events.html Third Annual Research Symposium July 16-17, 2010, in Penrith, Australia. ALC 2010 Annual Conference Interpreting and Translation Research Group May 19-22, 2010, in Miami, Florida USA. www.uws.edu.au/itrg/interpreting_and_translation/symposium Association of Language Companies www.alcus.org/education/2010_conference.cfm Found in Translation July 23-25, 2010, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2nd International Interpreting Conference (JOININ) University of Malaya, MACLALS May 25, 2010, in Porto, Portugal. http://english.um.edu.my/anuvaada/main.html Porto Polytechnic Institute, http://joinin2010.wordpress.com/english International Conference on EAMT 2010 Multiculturalism and Global Community May 27-28, 2010, in Saint-Raphaël, France. July 24-27, 2010, in Tehran, Iran. Euoropean Association for Machine Translation Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, www.icmcgc.org/index www.softconf.com/a/eamt2010 .php?service=109159_1_0645f86218e69e09757732cc59c9e3ec International Technical Translation Conference 6th International Critical Link Conference May 28-29, 2010, in Lisbon, Portugal. July 26-30, 2010, in Birmingham, UK. TRADULÍNGUAS, www.tradulinguas.com/conf-tech/ Aston University, www.aston.ac.uk/cl2010

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Reviews 4/5/10 9:23:38 AM MultiLingual MultiLingual April/May 2010 Because the Plunet solution focuses on focuses the Plunet solution Because load needed to be spread out, and the way load needed to be spread became clear: The BusinessMan- to do this make To ager had to be commercialized. and possible, Eurotext commercialization EDV-Konzepte that formed a joint venture founded Plunet as an independent business and with the mandate to further develop solution. Today, market the BusinessManager base that extends Plunet has a customer acknowledged the generally worldwide and is leader in its market category. management Pricing great has been there as a business, translation and apply on flexibility to record emphasis and pricing information to projects granular allows BusinessManager analysis. project lists. These lists can contain any number of These lists lists. users to define an unlimited number of price users And, third, the solution needed to focus on the focus the solution needed to And, third, management as of translation aspects business and because many of their translation resources resources many of their translation and because a web-based distributed, geographically were any solution that allowed easy access from cor- location was essential. Second, all project needed to be stored and materials respondence manner. repeatable and easily in a consistent

During the first year, primary among the lessons learned was that primary among the lessons year, During the first freely definable line items, and they may be associated with any definable line items, freely Then, when assembling process. participant in the translation for services out of the individual component a quote or order of manager can easily calculate the profitability the project jobs, but certainly a powerful feature, is the service as a whole. This in the automated It is there. power only begins BusinessManager’s opposed to the management of TMs. Thus, BusinessManager was BusinessManager Thus, opposed to the management of TMs. solution imple- as a proprietary its toddler days born and spent mented solely at Eurotext. function- BusinessManager’s needed to extend the the investment that one the level exceeded vision Eurotext’s ality to fully satisfy the financial development, continue LSP alone could finance. To Figure 1: Price matrix. Plunet BusinessManager 5.0 BusinessManager Plunet Price varies with number of licenses and additional modules. strengths System Scalable and powerful business and connections to all leading translation tools. process management solution with Plunet BusinessManager Plunet Sikes Reviewed by Richard MultiCorpora’s Trados, SDL with Interaction Server Language Across and MultiTrans

Richard Sikes has been immersed in technical 25 years. translation and localization for over His current focus is on translation technologies and industry best practices.

When we think of software solutions solutions When we think of software Eurotext envisioned a solution that featured a solution that featured envisioned Eurotext From the beginning, the Plunet perspective the beginning, the Plunet perspective From nearly universally jumped on the bandwagon and ac- jumped on the bandwagon nearly universally These solutions. of the best-of-breed one or more quired in the vary typically TM-centric, and they are solutions to projects, and manage depth of their ability to create and communica- resources assign and monitor project tion, and to analyze proﬁtability. service providers (LSPs), we tend to service providers memory about translation think ﬁrst that can be no dispute (TM), and there are and usage persistence TM creation, translation. to cost-effective central and LSPs have TM products, many excellent are There that have been designed for language that have www.multilingual.com quantitatively based business principles. based business quantitatively the because First, primary attributes. three extensively company management travelled in managing TM solutions, but had found that in managing TM solutions, as a projects the management of translation depended on a potpourri of homegrown business limited that were applications and off-the-shelf This in their ability to connect with one another. inefficiencies and ham- in operational resulted management of the company on sound,pered has been different. The product had its genesis The product has been different. ago when the Würz- eight years approximately was EDV-Konzepte house system burg-based AG. Like Eurotext a local LSP, by approached had attained sophistication Eurotext many LSPs, W 13-17 Reviews.Sikes #111.indd 13 Reviews

Trados TM Server, a pre-translation can be inserted into the project file system in TTX format. Several settings can be chosen as appropriate, for example, whether or not to insert a pre-translation into the project file system for later download by the translation resources, and whether or not to make use of ContextTM. After the user chooses desired settings, the Figure 2: The MultiTrans ProcessManager. ProcessManager is launched. Progress is indicated in a new page that is similar regardless of which TM server application is running in association of the granular pricing model with a word count and a calculated total the background. Figure 2 shows the Process- with TM analyses of new projects that price. If desired, the user can at this point Manager for the MultiCorpora MultiTrans BusinessManager really shines. This review override the default prices by entering implementation, the functionality of which explores how this association works in different amounts for the particular line is analogous to that of the TradosManager. connection with three best-of-breed TM item units. The adjusted price list remains After the ProcessManager has finished its applications. associated with the The key to associating prices with word quote or job; it does counts lies in BusinessManager’s price not flow back to the matrix. Figure 1 shows the matrix for a default list. sample price list that is associated with Tra- Because there are dos fuzzy match bands. The green check no constraints on the marks indicate where a specific price is number and appli- assigned to a particular band. For example, cation of price lists, note the two green check marks in the BusinessManager second row. These indicate that the price administrators $0.18 per word, which is defined in a table can set up a wide that appears when the user clicks on the variety of lists. Indi- grey “Prices” tab, is to be used for both the vidual lists can be 50%-74% range and the 75%-84% range. associated not only Users can easily activate or deactivate with different service the connections between prices and fuzzy types and TM applica- bands by clicking on the squares that con- tions, but also with tain either a red “x” or a green check mark. translation resources Default price associations are defined in this such as internal em- Figure 4: Preparing a quote for the Across Language Server. manner in the administrative section of Busi- ployees, freelancers, nessManager. Then, when BusinessManager subcontracted agen- reads a log file that has been generated by cies or other peripheral suppliers, as well as run, the line items on the Quotes page for the analysis function of a TM application, individual customers. In this way, as a quote the project become automatically populated these default prices are displayed in line is assembled, a complete price structure is with the results. At this point, the quote can items for the appropriate bands together automatically generated. The salesperson be returned to the customer for approval or, assembling the quote or the project manager if there is a service level agreement in place assembling resources for a project can easily that allows the translation project to com- monitor the profitability of the project as it mence without specific customer response, comes together and, if appropriate, swap the quote and its line items can be auto- out assigned resources to adjust profitability matically transformed into an order that to comply with company targets. moves out into the translation production infrastructure. Automated analysis In Plunet parlance, both Quotes and Orders In its original and simplest form, then, consist of component Items. These generally BusinessManager reads TM application log correspond to language pairs that enter into files, but BusinessManager is capable of the translation process, for example, move much more. If a TM serving application is through the phases of translation, editing present within the system, BusinessManager and proofing. Items contain Jobs whereby, can automatically run an analysis and pre- in North America, a Job might be considered populate a quote or order with the resulting a Task that some individual contributing numbers. It can also create a pre-translation resource performs as part of the larger Order by applying the TM to the uploaded source or project. For new Plunet users who are Figure 3: A job placement template. document. In conjunction with the SDL native US-English speakers, this terminology

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Figure 5: The project as displayed in the Language Server projects list.

can be somewhat confusing in the beginning; pre-translation of the Figure 6: Language Server sends data back to BusinessManager. however, one gets used to it after a while. documents, which will then be made available Templates to the chosen translators. TradosManager workflow component, the BusinessMan- BusinessManager ships with a set of tem- works in an analogous manner, although ager approach must be somewhat different. plates for Word and for e-mail that can be the analysis and leveraging are performed Here we have considerable overlapping of applied to communications that are gener- against TM as opposed to the TextBases and functionality, so it is of utmost impor- ated by the system for various activities dur- TermBases that characterize the MultiCor- tance that the two solutions elegantly ing the translation project life cycle. These pora solution. “talk” with one another in order to keep templates are automatically populated with their partner solution continually updated project data that are appropriate for the par- Workﬂow integration on project progress. It is also necessary to ticular phase or task or recipient. Thus far, we have looked at how the have a clear separation of which applica- Figure 3 shows a job placement template Plunet BusinessManager solution works tion does what and where the handoffs in which a number of fields have been popu- with SDL Trados TM Server and the Multi- between them are. For example, consider lated by BusinessManager. These include Trans server, best-of-breed products that that both the Across Language Server and address data, the order number, the contact do not have their own intrinsic workflow the Plunet BusinessManager store customer name plus telephone, e-mail and date. Also component. But the BusinessManager also and resource data, and neither one is included are a number that specifically iden- integrates with the Across Language Server. fully functional without that content. If a tifies the job itself, the subject of the job, Given that the Language Server has a richly project for a particular customer requires the rules, a comment (blank in this case), the featured project management (PM) and certain resources, one application must tell job deadline and the fee. A template such as this that is generated in Word by the system will be converted to PDF format if it is Belgium Bulgaria attached to an e-mail. The BusinessManager Czech Republic also stores every piece of project correspon- Estonia Germany dence including all automatically generated Desktop publishing Hungary Latvia e-mails and Word documents. These include Lithuania China quote requests, quotes and confirmations of with an eye for detail Slovenia Russia various types, job placements, invoices and Slovakia Poland delivery notices. USA BusinessManager, in conjunction with either the MultiCorpora or the SDL server, provides automation right from the cus- Individual needs call for individual solutions. tomer request stage. For example, if a client We customize our approach to meet your is designated within BusinessManager as a multilingual desktop publishing requirements MultiTrans customer and if a representative in a cost effective way. of that client requests a translation through . Typesetting in 100+ character and alphabet the BusinessManager customer portal by based languages . Multilingual team of technical and linguistic specifying a project and uploading some specialists source files, the BusinessManager will then We deliver languages. Worldwide. . Technological expertise in all applications automatically call the MultiTrans server to for both PC and MAC . Experience with complex layouts, graphics analyze the uploaded source files against and drawings the existing TextBases and TermBases and +1 212 858 75611 then populate the quotation page with the [email protected] results of that analysis. The vendor project www.skrivanek.comm manager can even then run an automated

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the other that those resources have been allocated, for whom and for what period of time. This implies a much deeper integration than is the case with the MultiCorpora or SDL TM systems. Figure 4 shows the initial setup for creating a quote that will be relayed to the Language Server. A standard price list for Across has been chosen. This can be automatically assigned from the system — analogous to the implementations for MultiTrans or Trados — or manually assigned by the project manager. An additional radio button labeled “Check in documents in Across” is present in the Figure 7: The Workﬂow Resource Manager suggests Allan Miller. user interface (UI). If this is chosen, the uploaded documents will enter the Across solution universe in addition to being BusinessManager Quote page and then it is also available to MultiTrans and Trados stored within the BusinessManager direc- initiate a search within Plunet that would users. To be fair, it should also be pointed tory structure. After initiating the action return resources that are appropriate for out that custom workflows can be used in BusinessManager, Across’ process man- the project language combinations and job with other TM server solutions, including ager springs into action, checking the files types that are contained within the chosen both MultiCorpora’s and SDL’s. to be translated into the Language Server workflow. Although the BusinessManager’s The job is ready to be assigned, and and running an analysis, again analogous Workflow Resource Manager can be used to the project manager can now do so by to the functionality of the other two solu- create custom workflows of many types, in clicking the “Assign Job via Across” icon. tions. At this point, though, the imple- connection with Across these are specific to Across’ process manager once again springs mentation differs from MultiCorpora and the partner application. into action and sends the job assignment SDL, and we move into the Across world. In this case, the Workflow Resource to the Language Server. Simultaneously, In Figure 5, we see that the project has Manager has suggested Allan Miller (Figure a job placement order is automatically appeared in the Language Server project list. 7) among other resources, and the project created and sent to the translator by The Language Server analyzes the docu- manager has accepted this suggestion. We e-mail. As before in other analogous ments against relevant TMs and returns the are also provided with more Across specific cases, the order document is populated results to BusinessManager as the numerical information, including the Across task automatically by the BusinessManager, basis for a quote (Figure 6). template and the user type that is and the user can manually override the Assuming that the quote is approved by assigned to Miller within the Language Server pre-populated document to make any the customer, the next thing to do would environment. As part of the job assignment, desired changes. be for the project manager to assign the BusinessManager can also identify Meanwhile in the Language Server, the resources to carry out the various tasks (or specific work instructions. These form a assigned resources are logged and monitored Jobs in Plunet lingo). For this, the pro- checklist of items that the resource must in the Task view. The translation task has ject manager could first choose an Across mark off before returning the translated automatically been assigned to Allan Miller. workflow type from a list of predetermined text back to the BusinessManager. This is In this particular example, we also have workflows from the Across section in the standard BusinessManager functionality, so the Default Supervisor and a user named Paul Leiter listed (Figure 8). They could be assigned to the proofing stage of the project because they meet the prerequisites for the work. Once the project is returned from the workflow phases, the project manager needs to check the finished version out of the Language Server (Figure 9). Once again, this is done from the BusinessManager user interface, which causes the ProcessManager to retrieve the relevant document from the Language Server and move it back into the BusinessManager environment. Now, all that is left for the project manager to do is to place the retrieved document into the “[!_Out]” directory within the BusinessManager’s directory structure, which is the place from which the customer

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can pick it up through the BusinessMan- ager’s built-in web portal (for customers, only the “[!_In]” and the “[!_Out]” fold- ers are visible). Placement of deliverable materials in the Out folder is not unique to the Across implementation but, rather, is a standard part of working with Business- Manager, regardless of which TM technology is used on the back-end phases of the translation process. Also, customers do not have to use the portal. Project managers can easily send deliverables to customers by e-mail or other means. Figure 8: The Language Server task view shows the BusinessManager job. Project analysis At this point, the interaction of the BusinessManager and the associated TM product, whether it be SDL Trados, MultiCorpora’s MultiTrans or the Across Language Server, is finished. The power of the BusinessManager is not finished here, however. Standard practice at this point is automated creation of a delivery notice that informs the customer that there is something to pick up from the Busi- nessManager portal and the initiation of Figure 9: The translated content is checked out of the Language Server. invoicing procedures. The BusinessManager also has powerful query functionality that While we have examined the interac- systems via Clay Tablet products plus allows users to monitor and display project tion between the BusinessManager and incorporation of support for ErrorSpy and data in many ways. Creation and tracking SDL Trados, MultiCorpora’s MultiTrans, PractiCount. The Plunet BusinessManager of invoices as well as reminder notices for and the Across Language Server, other 5.0 featuring a rework of the UI to simplify aging receivables can be handled within options are available. These include and enhance usability as well as to provide the BusinessManager. Cost analysis and connectors to the memoQ Server by additional functionality, will be released profitability can be detailed by project, by Kilgray and also to content management in mid-2010. M customer, or by numerous other views of the data at various stages of project completion. Financial data also can be exported to several popular accounting programs for further usage there. Because it has been designed from the ground up to offer powerful and automated interaction with a variety of third- party, best-of-breed TM solutions and because it does so via a browser-based UI that requires no additional, superfluous desktop software, the BusinessManager offers a maximum of flexibility and appli- cability within many LSP and corporate environments. Although its primary raison d’être is to serve the language industry, there is no reason why the BusinessMan- ager cannot be used in a more generic context that requires resource and PM combined with e-mail communication and file management. Plunet itself uses the BusinessManager to handle all of its customer contact and implementation information. This is yet another case where “German engineering” has gotten it right!

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13-17 Reviews.Sikes #111.indd 17 4/5/10 9:23:43 AM 18-19 Edwards#111.indd 18 18 | issue toenactthedesired change.However, astraightforward speciﬁc actionsrequired, andthenitsimplybecomesalogistical you mayconfront canalmostsolvethemselvesintermsofthe fairly obviousandsometimesthat canbethecase.Manyissues through theprevious twostages,theﬁnalresolution wouldbe ate solutions.You maythinkthatbythetime you’veworked we arriveattheequallycriticalstepofdeterminingappropri- cal andfundamentalaxes:bycontenttheme type. delved intotheimportanceofresearching issuesacross twocriti- built intothesystem,aslongpeopleuseit,ofcourse. Ialso employs. Thiswillensure thataccountabilityfor suchissuesis bug typeinwhatevertracking systemyour company starting withthecriticalstepofcreating anew “Geocultural” actions totakeduringthecore contentdevelopment process, risks, whichare notship-critical.InPart 2,Italkedfurtherabout will guarantee anegativelocalreaction from thereasonable and cultural issuesandthenseparating the“overtoffenses”that early stages:identifyingthepresence ofpotentialgeopolitical W

Column MultiLingual As wenowdiscusstheﬁnalstageofgeocultural testing, Part 1discussedtwoaspectsofgeocultural testinginthe beyond justlanguagequality. core cultural valuesbymeetinglocalexpectations to successandshowmore respect toeachlocale’s international revenue, minimizelocalroadblocks that are criticaltoanyglobalbusiness:maximize such testingcanbesummarizedbydirectives the discussionuptothispoint,rationale for addressed itdirectly inanyreal detail.To recap the topiconnumerous occasionsbuthadnever series waslaunchedbecauseIhaddancedaround column’s exploration ofgeocultural testing!The Welcome tothethird andﬁnalpartofthis Off the Map Geocultural testing,Part 3 April/May 2010

solution maynotalwayspresent itself.Infact,itusuallydoesn’t. Microsoft asageographerand its seniorgeopoliticalstrategist. and contentstrategy. Previously, Tom spent over 13yearsat Englobe, aSeattle-basedconsultancy forgeoculturalintelligence Tom Edwards isageographerandtheprincipalconsultantof and actions.Amoviemaybereleased without muchincident, viewed aspotentiallyinfectingyouthwithundesirable ideas and givenawiderleewayofsensitivitywhereas gamesare scrutiny thanmoviesbecausethelatterare perceived as“art” same thing.Inothermarkets,however, gamesare givenhigher James Bond movieinstallment trayed NorthKorea asavillain,were notapproved. Norwasthe So, thevideogames don’t wanttheirnorthernneighborportrayed insuchamanner. universally problematic tothe SouthKorean government;they For example,theissueofportraying NorthKorea asavillainis another medium;sometimesthishappensandnot. fine inonemediumreleased inthatmarket,itwillbefine careful nottoassumethatjustbecauseaspecificissuewas fairly easytoresearch anddeterminehowamarketreacts. Be your content?Forexample,withvideogamecontent,it’s often of dealingwithyourtypecontentandthegeneral themeof in placesthataffectyourplans?Whatisthislocale’s history consumers inthislocale?Whatcontent-related lawsmightbe consideration. Whatissensitivetothegovernmentandlocal ties, regulations andpractices. Asinglelocalmarketistheinitial because youmustnavigateaspecificlocale’s uniquesensitivi- a strictcountry-by-countrybasis,andthismakesperfectsense many companiesplanforcontentdistribution,ittendstobeon distribution modelforyourcontentwhenmakingchoices.When parties, andI’dliketodiscussthoseinmore detail. towards afixthatwillhopefullybemutuallyacceptabletoall There are afewfactors youhavetoweighthatwilllead First, it’s criticaltobemindfulofboththelocalandregional Mercenaries Die AnotherDay Tom Edwards and Ghost Recon2 [email protected] , whichdidthe , whichpor- 4/5/10 9:24:49AM Column

whereas the video game will how you arrived at your content be banned and undergo more choices; in fact, shorter is better, intense backlash. but it must be very clear. Don’t Beyond the initial country- fall back on the “freedom of specific analysis of your distribu- © Metro-Goldwyn Mayer 2002 speech” argument, since frankly tion is how your actions being in many places around the world tailored to one specific market that really doesn’t sway the gov- may affect the perceptions in ernment much. Instead, focus other locales in the region. This on the fact that you conducted is a consideration that is often careful research, perhaps even overlooked by many companies talked to people in-country for as they nervously work through © LucasArts 2009 © Sony 2007 advice, explored your options, the details of a solution for one and reached a decision that you market, only to find out later that felt was proper for both your this solution is incompatible for several business and the local consumers. Such nearby markets. For example, in Asia it’s a document won’t necessarily save you no secret that China’s more strict content that it’s all about massive changes from repercussions because you should policies can have far-reaching influence. and rethinking the entire project. This always know the risks of your content If Taiwan prefers for you to display it as is actually one reason why many don’t choices, but I’ve seen such an approach an independent country in your content, confront the geopolitical and cultural greatly help in diminishing or diffusing this will definitely not work for China. aspect at all, as they think it’s going to government and consumer backlash. And even if you don’t intend to sell your be too disruptive. However, the reality Why? Because it shows that you were product in China, the Chinese govern- of geocultural testing is that, at its best, careful and conscientious about your ment may find out about your version it’s a very precise surgical operation. All choices, rather than following the oft- for Taiwan, get upset and then threaten the previous steps of identification and expected model of a foreign company sanctions. In some cases this may require research that I’ve already mentioned coming in and showing carelessness rethinking just one minor aspect of your here can be compared to how a doc- and disrespect, whether intentionally or software or service, but in others it could tor performs triage, collects evidence, unintentionally. cause a domino effect of cascading and runs tests and determines exactly what As I close this three-part discussion, expensive changes. In situations like this must be fixed or removed. In the end, I fully realize how many details I had to where a company is caught between doctors usually do not remove the skip due to space limitations, and I know two or more governments, the company entire skeletal system just to repair that what I’ve provided isn’t necessarily might have to make painful and difficult a broken ankle; they focus only on a “turn-key” approach. However, I do business decisions to trade off one mar- what really needs to be fixed. So, too, hope that the basic structure of a geo- ket for another. How much is it worth to it goes in geocultural testing, where cultural testing program is now evident. keep one market happy while five others the ultimate goal is to make the most While it’s not something that happens cannot use your product? What are the minimal changes to the least amount overnight, nor without some commit- short-term and long-term gains of selling of content. If there’s anything I hope ment of resources, the benefits to your in one market over another? In the Asia that people take away from this series company’s content quality, improved example, many companies almost auto- on geocultural testing, it’s this one government relations, and respectful matically default to appease China above axiom: only change what really must image among local consumers can prove all others, given its long-term potential, be changed in order to ensure distribu- to be an invaluable return on invest- but some companies are proving more tion in your target market, while also ment in the long run. M recently this may not be the best-case being mindful of the effects on sur- scenario. An example of this would be rounding locales. Google’s statement about potentially Lastly, let me stress that whatever shutting down its search engine in China geopolitical and cultural issues you may in order to avoid the extreme censorship find in your content, you do have a of the Chinese government and in turn choice as to whether or not you change taint Google’s own corporate values by your content. Most companies choose www.star-group.net continuing to comply. to do so because it means preserving a While you’re pondering the issue of key market or opening up a new one for market distribution, another component business. However, there are times when of determining a suitable resolution it may not make sense to make even a is being able to preserve the overall surgical content change and you may purpose, utility and creative vision of choose to release as planned. In cases your content. Many times when I’ve such as this, it becomes absolutely criti- given lectures about geocultural testing, cal to document your decision-making in Process automation in

at least before I get to this part, people the form of a solid defensive explanation. information handling CLM STAR bring with them a preconceived notion This doesn’t have to be a long treatise on

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18-19 Edwards #111.indd 19 4/5/10 9:24:52 AM 20-21 Freivalds#111.indd 20 20 | culture anymore. Mustang, Taurus, Laredo, Bronco —it’s hard tofindreal Western the tornbluejeansandnames ofcars andtrucks—Ranger, Country” andallthephysicalimages oftheWest. Butapartfrom good feelingofbeingyourown boss.”Thenwehad“Marlboro the lifeofarancher .amanfeelslike outhere .the my ranch from oneendtothe othereveryday.Ilike “I’m arancher andIgrew up in thispartofthecountry.Iride Man playedtotheWestern ethosofspaceand independence: only befoundinJapantoday. InUScommercials theMarlboro appeared in1954tomarketfiltered Marlboro cigarettes; hecan Bonanza advertising inthe1950sandearly1960s,asseen cleaned andironed withadistinctpress lineshowing. Western-style shirtandbluejeansthathave been washedordry- Texas panhandle,thebusinesscasualdress codeisacowboyhat, up toUS$200.However, ifyougotoAmarillointheheartof blue jeansthatare nowsoldalready rippedandworn,foreasily culture oftheUnitedStates.Theultimateperversion, ofcourse, is have longagosuccumbedtobeingpartofthetext-messaging vocabulary anddress. MostplaceswethinkofastheoldWest Of theselocales,fewreally haveaWestern culture withaseparate less horizons,spectacularsunrisesandsunsets,herds ofcattle. places intheUnitedStatesthatlooks“Western”— flatwithend- area thatjutsintoOklahomaandNewMexico.Thisisoneofthe cattleman wholivesintheTexas panhandle,a25,000square mile W

Column MultiLingual The West wasoftenthecenterpieceofUStelevision and During thepastyear, IhavebeenwritingabookonTexas true West seldomcomesup. in Minneapolis,theIranians inLosAngeles—the City, Poles inChicago,theHmongandSomalis bans insouthFlorida,PuertoRicansNewYork Mexicans insouthernCaliforniaandTexas, theCu- Chinese inSanFrancisco, theCajunsinLouisiana, a separate multilingualadvertisingmessage—the tinct cultures intheUnitedStatesthatshouldget While manyacceptthatthere are pocketsofdis- World Savvy World ; Have Gun,WillTravel Parlez-vous Panhandlese? April/May 2010 ; andsoon.TheMarlboro Man

Gunsmoke ; firm JFAandthemarketingrepresentative forhisnativecountry, Latvia. John Freivaldsismanagingdirector ofthemarketingcommunications the onewithaccent,notlocals!Thenyoufaceacultural thick andtangyWest Texas dialect.Butsoonyourealize youare ferently. SinceIamanurbanyuppie,immediatelynoticedthe are inadifferent country. Thepeoplelook,dress andtalkdif- became rich in conquering and plundering the Aztecs, they lacked became richinconqueringand plunderingtheAztecs,theylacked land where cattlewere herded onfoot.AlthoughtheSpanish the colonialUnitedStateshadonlysmallfarmers inNewEng- he hasaranch, butthatdoesn’tsoundright— aranch inIowa? I liveinIowa,andafellowwhoraises cattlenearbysays warned! someone a“cattle farmer”rather thanarancher. You were fore- land dedicatedtocattle.It’s abigsininthepanhandle tocall American Englishuses round) usedfortheannualroundup. The term bonanza the Spanishwords thathavebecomepartofWestern lingoare of northernMexico. the Spanishcowboy. Cowboysarose from the where there are lotsofgrazing cattlebeingherded by The Good,theBadandUgly Remember allthoseClintEastwoodmovies— the mid-1960sdirected bySergio Leone,were filmedinSpain. the bestWestern movies,theso-called”spaghettiwesterns”of of theTexas panhandle—endlesssemi-aridplains.Someof traveled around Spain,itstopography inplacesissimilartothat then partofSpain’s colonialempire. Forthoseofyouwhohave come from? Often,from theSpanishwhofirst colonizedMexico, indeed partofthenamethiscolumn,where inturndidthey using words thatoriginateinthetrueWest (Table 1). you usethelocalaccentandvocabulary?Perhaps both,ifyou’re dilemma. Doyoucontinuetospeakinyourtrueaccentordo But asIhinted,whenyouarriveinAmarillo,realize you The Spanish perfected the art of herding cattle with horses as as horses with The Spanishperfectedtheartofherdingcattle In Spanish, The listofcowboywords from Spanishisfairlylong;someof But ifwords andphrases suchasthisare incommonusageand , rodeo bronco rancho cameaboutfrom theSpanish , canyon canbeafarmorranch asneeded,but ranch , coyote todescribealarge sectionof John Freivalds —allfilmedinSpain.Andevery- , macho [email protected] , mesa vaquero Fistful ofDollars rodear and vamoose (tosur- traditions vaqueros . 4/5/10 9:25:59AM , , Column

Original Term Original Meaning Modern Meaning marking horses or cattle with a hot iron that imprints branding giving a product or service a distinct identity the symbol of the owner on the animal’s hide earmark distinctive cut in a cow’s ear to show ownership legislation enacted to favor a US congressman’s district youngsters too young to ride whippersnapper impertinent, aggressive young person but who cracked whips to make cattle move lingo language local language, slang howdy contraction of How do ye do? hello half-cocked gun with cylinder not in place premature action cowboy a person who tends cattle on horseback a rough-and-tumble person not given to orders savvy knowledgeable, from Spanish saber (to know) wise, knowledgeable Table 1: Cowboy origins of everyday words.

something, and that was meat. Cattle was you blame McDonald’s for excessive language. The word for friends was The- brought from Spain, and we were off to hamburger eating, look back at how those chas, which the Spanish wrote as Tejas the races. The Mexican territories needed land grants were written. and used as the name for the natives. The settlers, and they welcomed immigrants. The name of Texas itself is adapted Spanish version of Tejas was converted The deal was each immigrant would get from an eastern Texas native American into Texas by the Anglo immigrants. 277 acres if he declared he was a farmer, tribe. According to legend, they had Sometimes, words arise from these sorts but an additional 4,338 acres if he de- announced their peaceful intention to of misunderstandings and become fact, as clared that he raised livestock. So, before the Spanish by shouting friends in their in a cross-cultural game of “telephone.” M

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20-21 Freivalds#111.indd 21 4/5/10 9:26:00 AM 22-23 PerspectivesAnderson#111.i22 22 22 L | translation ofjournalism,law, international tradeandwine. into English,andEnglishSpanish, hespecializesinthe Florida. ATA-certiﬁed intranslation fromFrenchandSpanish Kirk Andersonisafreelancetranslator basedinSurfside, lows isbasedonconversations Ihavehadwith peoplewhohave .tsf-twb.org). Others volunteered withtheRedCross. Whatfol- provided ways tohelpHaiti. that provides oneofthemostcompletelistings oflinguistic (http://galahaitirelief.pbworks.com/GALA-Haiti-Relief-Information) tion andLocalizationAssociation,whichsetupawiki Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA),andtheGlobaliza- tion ofJudicialInterpreters andTranslators, theInternational the AmericanTranslators Association,theNationalAssocia- Science. Professional associationsalsolentahand,including Institute ofCarnegieMellonUniversity’s SchoolofComputer York madecontributions,asdidTheLanguageTechnologies Translation companiessuchasEriksenTranslations ofNew on Facebook Together wecanfind100,000 translators andinterpreters dented humanitariancrisis.EffortssuchasNicholasFerreira’s world rallied quicklyandpledgedsupportforthisunprece-

Column MultiLingual But whatdidindividualtranslators do?Many, myselfincluded, I wasn’talone.Translators andinterpreters around the But Iwantedtodosomethingmore. or anotherintherelief andreconstruction efforts. some ofmyclientswouldbeinvolvedinoneway I feltmyskillscouldbeofuse,andknewthat homeless. Asatranslator ofFrench andSpanish, ing another300,000,andleavingoveramillion Haiti’s capital,killinganestimated230,000,injur- moved whena7.0-magnitudeearthquakerocked Like many, onTuesday, January12,2010, Iwas pro bono Perspectives grew toover1,000members injustamonth. Haitian recovery Interpreterssupport April/May 2010 servicestoTranslators WithoutBorders (www quake. Aboutaweeklater, hehadhisorders tojointheeffort unteered forthe Haitimissionimmediatelyaftertheearth- While workingaboard the in Port-au-Prince andcurrently livesinHampton,Virginia. eran professionals, whileothers are heritagespeakers whowere Haitian earthquake,bothinHaitiandelsewhere. Someare vet- been workingastranslators andinterpreters withvictimsof the and theyallvolunteered fortheassignment on the All oftheNavyinterpreters interviewed are ofHaitiandescent, stopped themfrom usingtheirlanguageskills tohelpsavelives. much —oranyformaltraining ininterpreting. Butthathasn’t experience doingsuchwork,nonedoitfull-time,and have ment facilityoftheUSNavyoffcoastHaiti,haveprior US Navyinterpreters aboard the ground inHaitiare notprofessional linguists.Whilesomeofthe that lefthisbelovedHaitiinruins. professional interpreter tohelp thosehurtmostbythedisaster is genuinelyhappytobeusinghisexperienceandskillsasa sion thathethrivesonhisgruelingvolunteerschedule.King bar.impres- the Hewasquiteimpressed,”gives saysKing.He and pointedouttohimthatmyname(King)waswrittenonthe disposition. Ibrought himaking-sizeHershey’s Chocolatebar from anexplodinggasstation.Allthestaffloveshisattitudeand Health isaheart-catchingindividual.Hereceived severe burns of Verbatim Languages,Inc.,inOrlando.“OnepatientatOrlando Health medicalfacilities,aneffortspearheadedbyMyrnaAguirre for severely injured earthquakevictimsairliftedtoOrlando 12, hehasvolunteered countlesshours ofhistimetointerpret interpreter. Healsodoestranslations occasionally. SinceJanuary Border Protection andhasreceived formaltraining asacourt in Port-au-Prince. Heworkedfor20years withCustomsand based inOrlando.HewasbornLesCayes,Haiti,andraised to contributesometimeaworthycause. the volunteerexperiencerewarding andurge others tostep up moved tousetheirlanguageskillshelpothers. Allhavefound Logistics Specialist1stClass Weekend Guillaumewasborn Many —ifnotmostofthevolunteerinterpreters onthe Bill KingisaFloridastate-certiﬁedHaitianCreole interpreter USS Theodore Roosevelt Kirk Anderson Kirk USNS Comfort, [email protected] a medicaltreat- Comfort , hevol- . 4/5/10 9:26:50AM Column

aboard the USNS Comfort off the people.” In less than 24 hours, she Haitian coast as a Navy interpreter. was ready to go and help. Jean Mary Guillaume hadn’t been back to finds the work extremely rewarding Haiti in 11 or 12 years, but was and doesn’t want her deployment thrilled to have the opportunity to to end. “I would come back and do help his homeland. He also came to it again in a heartbeat.” She does, the job with some prior experience however, acknowledge that it can as a translator and interpreter for his be overwhelming emotionally at church in Newport News, Virginia, had times. She remembers a little girl completed Department of Defense who had her leg amputated, who language testing in Haitian Creole and told her that she was glad that God French, and had also done some work saved her, because now she knew translating in French while on a naval how important she was because she mission in France. Even so, he never had almost died. “The people are so had any formal training as a translator Aviation Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Ann Jean Mary. strong. I actually got to know my or interpreter. photo by Mass Communication Specialist people better, how strong they are, Since being deployed to Haiti not 2nd Class Chelsea Kennedy how motivated they are.” long after the earthquake, Guillaume These are just a few of the stories has worked as a translator and inter- him, “the smile on the patients’ faces of the many interpreters and translators preter both on the USNS Comfort and makes it all worthwhile. As a Haitian working to contribute to relief efforts on the ground, helping to set up medical myself, this work makes me proud.” on Haiti. As I write this, there have also wards in tents. His working and living Joseph notes that “having interpret- been recent major earthquakes in Chile conditions have varied, since he’s been ers on the mission is very important” and Turkey. As professional interpreters housed in tents on the ground and on both to determine the medical needs and translators, we can play vital roles board the Comfort. of patients and inform them of their in showing how valuable our services The days are long, the food is not bad, treatment, and also to comfort the can be. and the work means a lot to him. He is patients. He has loved what he has grateful to be able to use his “knowledge been doing from the start. Melanie, a Thinking about volunteering? to save lives. Being here helping people patient he worked with, is a 28-year-old Every person I talked to who has been has been a great thing.” In his experi- mother of three children who suffered a involved in the Haitian relief effort in ence, they have had a 98% success rate spinal injury. After she was treated and any way has had nothing but positive in terms of saving the people brought on discharged, she sat crying and refused things to say about the Haitian people board, but he’s also had the sad duty of to leave the ship until Joseph was called and the experience as a whole. They all having to tell parents that their child has in so she could thank him for all he had encourage others to step up and use not survived. done. “They only have us, the interpret- their Haitian Creole skills to benefit the He has also been struck by many of ers, to talk to,” he noted. “We are not country. Advice for potential volunteers the patients he’s had to interpret for. One doing this for ourselves.” to work on the ground in Haiti includes example was a woman in her 60s who Aviation Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class bringing plenty of personal hygiene sup- was asked if she had a history of health Ann Jean Mary grew up in Port-au- plies and sufficient changes of clothes, problems and whether she had any aller- Prince and came to Miami five years insect repellent, reading material and gies. She replied that she didn’t know ago for college. She enlisted in the Navy positive energy. Being able to hold your because she had never been to a doctor a year and a half ago and is pleased to emotions in check is also a crucial skill before. Guillaume couldn’t help but have the opportunity to help her country. for this kind of work. wonder how many people like her there Another French and Haitian Creole According to Izabel Arocha, president are in Haiti. speaker, she acts as a bridge between of IMIA, there is a great need for profes- Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class nurses, doctors, corpsmen and patients. sional interpreters to volunteer (www Bernard Joseph is stationed in Virginia. The living conditions on board the .imiaweb.org/basic/HaitiRelief.asp). He was raised in Haiti and moved to USNS Comfort are “not as bad as [she] Apparently the vast majority of cur- Miami in 1989; he is a big soccer and thought,” but with her parents, who are rent volunteer interpreters has no US football fan. Although he has no Port-au-Prince residents, living in tents, formal training or experience in the training or experience in interpreting, and many more friends and family in far profession. “We are hopeful that relief his knowledge of French and Haitian worse circumstances, she is really grate- organizations will see the difference Creole allowed him to volunteer for the ful for what she has. between working with ad hoc help mission on the USNS Comfort, and he Jean Mary remembers the moment to communicate, and working with is excited to be there. Working 12 to she heard about the earthquake. “The professional interpreters.” Arocha 14-hour days, he interprets between earthquake happened on a Tuesday, and adds that “while at first we were told patients and doctors, but also tries to I wasn’t able to talk to my dad until interpreters of several languages were go the extra mile and, with the doctor’s Friday night after work. When I heard needed, the reality is that the majority permission, of course, gives patients that everybody in my family was fine, I of the ‘interpreting’ need is in Haitian coffee, bread and fruit for breakfast. For decided that I had to come and help my Creole.” M

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22-23 PerspectivesAnderson#111.i23 23 4/5/10 9:26:52 AM 24-26 PriebeGoldschmidt.indd 24 24 C | Daniel Goldschmidt, principal consultant and cofounder of RIGI Daniel Goldschmidt,principalconsultantandcofounder ofRIGI ment andstrategicplanningwithintegratedlocalizationexpertise. tive coachingandconsultingﬁrmofferingorganizationaldevelop- localization ﬁeld,ShellyPriebefounded&Associates, anexecu- Following twodecadesofexecutiveleadershipinthetranslation and enterprise applicationsandprojects. experience ininternationalization andlocalizationoflarge-scale in theglobalizationofsoftwareand contentwithextensive Localization Solutions, isaseniorsoftwareengineerandprofessional nity volunteered uptheirgoldenearringsfor itsconstruction. Calf inExodus24wascrafted byAaron aftertheIsraelite commu- several examplesofcrowdsourcing, evenintheBible.TheGolden around foraverylongtime.Inthehistoryof humanitywehave new,” accomplishingtasksthrough crowd involvementhas been crowd. DespiteJeffHowe’s claimin2006that“crowdsourcing is had bettergettheattentionoflanguagesolutionproviders. Crowdsourcing inlocalizationhastheattentionofclients,andit that technologyenableswhichcreates thedisruptiveimpact. disruptive innovation term in1995;subsequently, Christensenreplaced thetermwith competition. ClaytonM.ChristensenandJosephBowercoinedthe the leaders ofexistingmarketsbecausetheyrepresent unexpected precisely becauseitisdisruptive.Disruptivetechnologiesthreaten discussed thefuture ofcrowdsourcing inthelocalizationindustry. iel Goldschmidt,cofounderofRIGILocalizationSolutions,recently ing in2010. ShellyPriebe,founderofPriebe&Associates,andDan- whole needstotakeamore sophisticatedapproach tocrowdsourc-

Column MultiLingual Goldschmidt: Priebe: While thedebatecontinues,itiscertainthatindustryasa would itdestroy them? Could languageserviceproviders harnessitor industry. Would itkill professional translation? tered around crowdsourcing andthelocalization conferences, articles,blogsandtweetswere cen- Crowdsourcing issolastyear. Orisit?In2009, Perspectives Crowdsourcing isahottopicthatinvokesemotion crowdsourcing a conversation on Disruptive innovation: Iagree. Itistimetowakeupthereality ofthe April/May 2010 becauseitisthestrategy orbusinessmodel

Shelly Priebe & Daniel Goldschmidt testing engineers andtranslators allaround theworld. which issupportedbyasignificantcommunityofdevelopers, velopment oftheLinuxoperating systemisyetanotherexample, interface into18languagesbyusingitsusercommunity. Thede- had otherexamplessuchasPanoramio, whichtranslated itsuser simply anewdefinitionforold-fashioned managingoftranslation bilities. Thesemanticswirlofideas ponders whetherornotthisis subset categoryofprofessional crowdsourcing hasdistinctpossi- mercially viable formostcommercial businesslanguageneeds, a and, maybethemostinteresting, whatthecompensation modelis. and whentousecrowdsourcing, whatthetechnicalchallengesare, sourcing isnot.There are three importantthingstoconsider:where accurately defineitor, maybeevenbetter, explainwhatcrowd- ing andmanyactivitiesreside underthisumbrella. We needtomore maybe oneofthemostinteresting andmostefficient ones. talk, Irealized thatcrowdsourcing wasoneofthewaystodoso, localize forthebroader communityandhow. Whilepreparing the — howtoempowertheconsumerwithdecisionaboutwhat in Ireland togiveatalkabouttheconsumerlocalizationdecision Then in2008IwasinvitedbytheLocalisationResearch Centre applications tomanylanguages—up116, includingKlingon. in itsearlydaystotranslate themainsearch pageandlaterother by theGIYL(GoogleInYour Language)initiativethatGoogleused working ontheGoogleinternationalizationteam,Iwasfascinated shaping anddesigningit.Google“gotit”sometimeago.While are activenotonlyinthedevelopmentofproduct butalsoin rawest form.Ilikedtheideaofendusers andcommunitiesthat initiatives,whichare crowdsourcing practices inthe open-source the gameforsometime.Formanyyears Iwasabigfanof to thecrowd inattendance. conference inSeptember2009,Irealized thatthetopicwasnew crowdsourcing attheGlobalizationandLocalizationAssociation until lastyear. WhenIacceptedaninvitationtopresent on coined, thoughforourindustry, theimpactwasnotreally felt In themodernera, before FacebookandWikipediatriedit,we Priebe: Getting pastsemantics We needtounderstand thatthere are manytypesofcrowdsourc- Priebe: Goldschmidt: Whilecrowdsourcing initspurest formisnot com- Crowdsourcing wasaround longbefore thetermwas Yet, truegloballeaders havebeenontopof [email protected] 4/5/10 9:27:50AM Column

teams. Yet, the new term adds significant enhancements, includ- to decide what needs to be translated and to manage the transla- ing tapping the true potential of the crowd to join the team, ap- tors. On the user side, there is a sophisticated mechanism to view plying new concepts of quality assurance through emergence of the strings within context, to translate, to vote, to rate and more. experts in the crowd, and leveraging project management of the Some vendors offer platforms to support the management crowd through tools developed for crowd management. of crowdsourcing and virtual teams of translators and review- Goldschmidt: Howe defined crowdsourcing as “taking a job tra- ers. CrowdSight of Welocalize is a fresh component that helps, ditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) together with GlobalSight, to manage both the content to be and outsourcing it to an undefined entity, generally a large group translated and the teams of translators. of people, in the form of an open call.” I would modify this defini- Priebe: My direct experience with building a platform for tion. I believe that the entity is always well defined — the commu- managed crowdsourcing taught me the importance of a seamless nities of users or people who share the same interests. In the case system to handle crowdsourced material from the original source, of Facebook, the entity was well defined. Another example is the through the hands in the crowd and back to the original provider localization of Moblin (mobile Linux platform, promoted by Intel). of the information. Because potentially more people touch the Moblin is an open-source initiative, and the community of trans- material when it is crowdsourced, it is critical that technology is lators is a subset of Moblin developers. They know the product the in place to ensure smooth transactions from one place to another. best, so the thinking is that they will provide the best translation as well. While checking where crowdsourcing can be used, we Pay to play need to think about the community involved in the project. One Priebe: It’s a myth that crowdsourcing equates to free trans- must consider whether the content and the cause are appealing lation. It is in the interest of leaders in the translation industry to the targeted community. to dispel this misconception. Harnessing this technology means Crowdsourcing has developed so quickly in recent years because great productivity, but it also requires the industry to rethink the technology both creates the need for crowdsourcing and enables how we compete and are profitable. When crowdsourcing for the us to do so. Technology that enables user-generated content helps translation industry is managed, it can increase throughput, and us, the individual, to express ourselves and cross barriers. Think about translators are valued and respected. But the challenge is to bring blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Digg and others. Ten years ago we couldn’t translators on board and reevaluate compensation models to even dream of such applications and movements. Today, we can cre- make crowdsourcing profitable and fair to the translator. Engag- ate content, share it with others easily, comment and more. ing, recruiting, motivating and rewarding translators in this brave In the context of translations, crowdsourcing is even clearer. If new world is a worthy challenge. the content is generated by the crowd, why not translate it by the Some even question whether there is a place for professional crowd for the crowd? Adobe, for instance, is using crowdsourcing translators — can’t it all be volunteer? The nature of linguis- to translate user-generated content, but crowdsourcing transla- tic knowledge is that vocabulary tends to be shared in a very tion needs to be managed, too. It is not enough to post on the predictable fashion. Apart from some technical jargon, which is, web the content to be translated. In GIYL, Google had a minimal of course, important in translation, most people with a work- management support and a rating system based on quantity and ing vocabulary of any given size knows almost exactly the same not quality. In today’s platform, the management is much more words. This means that only the more highly skilled translators sophisticated. For example, the platform being used by Facebook will be able to handle the more difficult aspects of any particular includes heavy back office components to manage the translations, translation, and that may still require time-consuming research.

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Meanwhile, there may be many in the model, with one main benefit or gain: The making a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner “crowd” who can handle relatively large openness and broadening of the bidding is part of a social norm. You could buy volumes of “routine” translation. The process.” your mother-in-law a nice gift to thank industry’s current per-word compensa- Goldschmidt: Indeed, we may be creat- her for the lovely dinner, but the minute tion model essentially motivates the ing a cyclical movement. In that case, we you pay her, you have shifted from social best translators to spend time on the will have the extremely beneficial byprod- to market norms. They cannot be mixed, easiest tasks because that is where they uct of reaching the best professional to do and for that reason, you are going to have can generate more volume. To legitimize the work. a frozen dinner next time. professionally managed crowdsourc- The compensation model is tricky. We The same applies for crowdsourcing. The ing, the industry is compelled to design need to remember that what drives compensation needs to be based on the compensation models that encourage businesses is the bottom line. Businesses right norm being used in the project. In the most highly qualified translators to need to generate income. Facebook is not Mechanical Turk, the market norm is usu- attack only the most challenging por- a philanthropic organization. Neither is ally applied, so the payment is in money tions of the translation, while leveraging LinkedIn, but you have to find a compen- and/or tokens. In Facebook, for instance, their expertise, not merely individual sation model that works. Dan Ariely ex- the social norm is applied: “Come and translated segments, in order to allow plains in Predictably Irrational that we act join us conquer the world!” In that case, less experienced translators to deliver either by social norms or by market norms. Facebook cannot and should not use the routine portions of the work in col- It is hard to mix them. Ariely describes market norms to compensate the crowd of laborative fashion. someone pulling out his wallet after a volunteers (yes, volunteers!). Volunteering Jean-Luc Mazet, localization program sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner and say- is a social norm, so social norm compensa- manager and information developer for ing, “For all the love you’ve put into this, tions should be applied. Hewlett-Packard, offered this insight on how much do I owe you?. . . Do you think LinkedIn has messed up with its crowd- the changes: “We harness the ‘power three hundred dollars will do it? No, wait, sourcing initiative because it tried to mix of the crowd’ and as a result we may I should give you four hundred!” Once we two norms. You do not ask translators who be creating a cyclic movement that will shift from social norms to market norms, translate to put food on their tables to lead us back to the ‘original’ contractor it is hard to go back. Your mother-in-law translate a business initiative for free. This is, of course, different from the outpour- ing of offers from professional translators to help in Haiti. Again, a social norm was applied in that case. So what is the best way to compensate (IILFLHQF\ translators and/or volunteers? We need to ask ourselves, project by project, what 2XWZLWKWKHROGLQZLWKWKHQHZ6RXQGSURFHVVHVDQGVPDUW the purpose of the crowd is. Save money? WHFKQRORJ\DUHDWWKHKHDUWRIDQ\WUXO\HIàFLHQWORFDOL]DWLRQHIIRUW Engage the community? Get the commu- 6XERSWLPDOSURFHVVHVPHDQZHOO\RXQHYHUJHWWRRSWLPXP nity involved in the globalization of the SHUIRUPDQFH8VHRXU3URFHVV2SWLPL]DWLRQ3UDFWLFHWRDGGUHVV \RXUODQJXDJHWHFKQRORJ\FKDOOHQJHV%HLQJVPDUWDERXW product? Get real feedback from the users HIàFLHQF\LVDOZD\VWKHVPDUWRSWLRQ in real time? Ensure professional content worldwide? Once we have the answer for PRUDYLDZRUOGZLGHFRPHIêFLHQF\ those questions, we can go ahead and build a compensation model. In many cases, recognition will be the best compensation. But as Shelly mentioned, there are many cases not yet explored where using the crowd for part of a market- based translation would be appropriate in conjunction with a professional translator who handles a more difficult part of the translation. Priebe: In his 1916 poem “The Road Not Taken” Robert Frost suggests that the rewards of individualism are satisfying independence and personal freedom: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/ And sorry I could not travel both/. . . I took the one less traveled by/ And that has made all the difference.” Is nonconforming the literary equivalent of disruptive innovation PRUDYLDZRUOGZLGHFRP$0(5,&$6(8523($6,$ in business? If so, the rewards are likely to be market share and profit. M

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Industry Focus 4/5/10 9:29:10 AM MultiLingual April/May 2010 refers to standalone functional software elements that refers to standalone functional software Globalization complexities introduced in this instance might Today’s software products are more often than not impacted software products Today’s a project manager From my experience, regardless of whether While componentization directly compounds the scope of As a further complicating factor, personnel changes are com- As a further complicating factor, view of the entire product, impacts to workload are understandable up the slack to ensure that noas the project manager must take added from outside the par- communication gap results. Teams ent corporation due to mergers or acquisitions can naturally be expected to have even less in common with the core teams. different and perhaps conflicting concepts, as well include new, expertise, including familiarity with product, project and pro- expertise, including familiarity with product, manager has carefullycesses. For example, a globalization project contact regardinggroomed and “indoctrinated” a development off the team. Butglobalization only to see that contact rotated PM challenges do not end here. in this article, the termby the trend to componentization. As used component product offering.can be combined with others to form a composite of multiple subprojects,Thus, a software project might be made up deployableeach of which can be self-contained, independently This means that aand entailing all the attendant PM overhead. from the overallproject manager can end up managing anything consumer product to only a subset, a component. represents the individual component or the consumer side of the equation, product componentization invariably complicates with different, perhaps PM by adding even more stakeholders conflicting, priorities and focuses. This means more people to for milestones to align, more opportunities more key satisfy, things to fall through the cracks and more tasks to juggle, as well as what I refer to as increased assumption exposure. communication, it often also compounds the constellation of cultural differences within the overall project. These can also impact Of course, various differences can be communication indirectly. present within any team, but these are much more the case with componentized projects. Since subteams rarely possess an over- customer requirements. This means managing the inevitablecustomer requirements. This means managing that result. changes to content, schedules and budget development managersmon in today’s corporate environment, as can mean loss of specificjuggle already challenged resources. This

Practical survival guide forguide survival Practical managers project globalization Jr. A. McKethan, Kenneth Kenneth A. McKethan, Jr., is a project Jr., A. McKethan, Kenneth 30 years’ manager for IBM with over language industry experience, starting as a translator and interpreter.

A few months ago, I was able to lend my pro- A few months ago, I was able to they will forgive me! PM in the software development environment presents some prise relationship riffs that required intermediaryprise relationship riffs that required a venue,communication. In the end, securing decorations and cleanup all proved to be caterer, In spitemanageable. Not so with communication. of my best efforts to communicate, some kinsmen still failed to receive various notifications. I hope planners; the family’s geographical spread overplanners; the family’s geographical States; the lackmuch of the continental United tracking downof e-mail accessibility for some; photo scan-long-lost relatives; on-site heirloom sur- and, finally, ning; CD burning and labeling; ject management (PM) skills to plan a long over- ject management (PM) skills to plan task wasdue family reunion. The most immediate coordinating whonotifying everyone, followed by and variouscould attend, who was to bring what, included lim-other logistical details. Challenges ited time on the part of us happily-still-employed A www.multilingual.com market requirements are constantly in flux, the product con- market tent ultimately delivered might bear scant resemblance to the original plan. Thus, the software typically has to juggle evolving special challenges that have a direct bearing on communica- a challenges that have special software development environment tion workload. Today’s tends to be fast paced and high pressured as teams scramble as quickly as possible. Because to get their products to market 27-29 McKethan #111.indd 27 Industry Focus

as product terminology, priorities and technologies. In all this communication, and contingency plans. An important piece of any mix, it is probably safe to say that globalization may well be the communication plan is to identify a single point of contact (SPOC) last thing on the minds of newly acquired teams. to manage technical communication with the various teams. It should also come as no surprise that some mergers add yet I once served as project manager for a componentized a further impediment to communication, namely a psychologi- product comprising ten different development teams, some cal factor that can be expressed in the form of fear, hostility, of which experienced multiple personnel changes during the transition information overload or corporate culture shock. All project. None of these siloed teams had much understanding these manifestations can translate into passive resistance. of anything beyond their own immediate piece of this complex And as if all this were not already enough, many projects have product. Thus, after initial frustrations in trying to collect com- gotten away from the traditional colocated team model in favor of plete, consistent and current technical planning input from the virtual teams, which are often widely dispersed across the globe. individual teams, I finally went back to the release manager to In spite of their prevalence and undeniable practicality, virtual insist that a SPOC be named. My request had earlier met with teams clearly add additional challenges for project communica- resistance. Now, thanks to the assigned SPOC, communication tion. According to Karen Sobel Lojeski in “Going the (Virtual) worked much better, and churn was minimized. A major plus Distance” (www.projectsatwork.com/content/articles/252975.cfm), was the elimination of risk that vital information would go miss- innovation typically falls by over 90% in these circumstances. ing. Just imagine the heartburn that would result from failure to Trust and job satisfaction decline by over 80%, while time and localize some graphical user interfaces or messages, or from our budget project performance suffer by over 50%. being blindsided at the eleventh hour by an unsupported file type. Implementation of a formally approved communication Pecking order: know thy place! plan is basic to sound PM practice. Make sure the plan addresses Let’s face it: in many corporate development environments, globalization concerns and that it is communicated to, is under- globalization faces an endemic acceptance problem. Truth be told, stood by and will be followed by all players. This diligence pays it is not an immediate priority, either to development teams or off handsomely in the form of fewer assumptions, as well as less to overall development management. In fact, a release manager guesswork and finger-pointing. once challenged me, “Why don’t you guys just go away and let The approved plan should be posted for ready access. Proac- us do the real work?” Later, a respected second line manager put tively, it should also be cited periodically to refresh the team’s me on the spot during a status meeting, “Why are we even doing memory. The only safe assumption then is that mere dissemina- this?” Such attitudes are clearly rooted in the Anglocentric heri- tion of information without disciplined follow-up does not equal tage of computer programming. Oddly, the fact that the average communication. software development team these days in the Occident is already Be proactive to identify any real or potential mismatches quite multicultural seems to have little effect on this silo mental- among the components and their teams. This is especially true in ity. The market imperatives of globalization are just not always the case of mergers and should always be undertaken at the earliest understood or appreciated at that level. possible juncture, preferably during the acquisition due diligence Such feeble support can be downright demotivating and defi- phase. It may require insistence on the part of the globalization nitely compounds the communication effort as the project manager representative to ensure inclusion of a high-level assessment of must shoulder the additional burden of evangelizing to justify the internationalization and localization coverage. existence of globalization in the minds of many stakeholders. In The assessment should target technical concerns, tools, termi- the management confrontations described above, corporate policy nology, personnel and remediation. On the technical side, as early served as my first line of defense. I then sought to gain audience as possible, a detailed engineering assessment should be conducted buy-in by citing revenue figures for software sales outside North on the acquired product or planned component to determine the America from IBM and from a major competitor. Why indeed! level of internationalization product design, compliance with cor- All these factors contribute to longer, more complex com- porate standards, degree of integration with the parent product and munication chains. As we have seen, the main impact here is so on. These findings will help quantify the extent of retrofitting to communication workload. Increasing the number and diver- and reengineering that might be indicated to bring the new acqui- sity of people, subproducts, subcultures, time zones, process sition into synch with the parent product family. In turn, this will requirements and teams inevitably complicates communication. help determine how soon the acquired product will ultimately be Thus, while workplace diversity can be a positive thing, for the able to earn its keep in terms of revenue generation. project manager there is a price to pay: more work! For example, is each component fully able to be bidirectional, including mirroring? If so, will bidirectional features actually Practical survival skills function seamlessly across the overall product offering once the First, if communication is the project manager’s first job, then components have been integrated? Are all the components talking steps must be taken proactively to ensure that your stakeholders are to each other on the same level? Bidirectional support became an aware of the effort you must expend just for communication. As issue in one project I managed for a small component that was to we have already observed, this is not exactly obvious to others. be subsumed into a much larger product. Though our component Next, especially when dealing with a team of mixed cultures, was relatively straightforward per se, it included some open- be careful about assuming anything. The more complex the team source software that was only partially internationalized: this structure, the greater the “assumption exposure.” It is imperative piece had not been bidirectionally enabled. Since the product did to start with a formal communication plan agreed to by all stake- not feature the full range of localized languages represented by holders. This plan should define basic definitions and team com- our component’s language set, we had a mismatch. The fact that munication structure, including players, roles, lines and media of we had no control over when or even if the open-source owners

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would ever make up this difference com- and processes. Any such differences must This meant that the component would plicated our planning and multiplied the be addressed systematically with the teams not be globalized by the release date of workload, including interaction with our in order to bring everyone to a common record, and thus no simship was possible consuming product offering. level of understanding. Again, it cannot be for our first joint product release, in spite In much the same way, components overemphasized here that more positive, of heroic efforts by everyone involved. In spanning different organizations of the proactive steps are needed beyond just pas- our company, imminent failure to meet same corporation can uncover hidden sive dissemination of information. Avoid simship must be covered in a timely time and communication-intensive in- the temptation in the heat of the battle to fashion by a formal plan deviation with compatibilities in tools and processes. merely toss it over the wall and assume high-level executive approvals. Just the Such was the experience of our interna- that communication has occurred. Many prospect of the communication nightmare tionalization engineer for a component times it has not, especially in the case of unleashed by such a deviation is a great being delivered to a large-scale project virtual teams. For instance, I often follow motivator for avoidance, except as a last owned by another corporate division. up e-mail communications with an instant resort. Impacts were further compounded We were blindsided by an odd problem. message or phone call to reinforce my mail as a completely separate project — with It took an unplanned extra four days of communication. Instant message chat logs all requisite paperwork — then had to intensive interaction with the consumer also provide a convenient written record for be put into place to deliver the missing team to finally get our standard pseudo- future reference. Other social networking globalization on a split-release cycle. translation tool to function within the media such as Twitter are likewise handy In another example, acquisition may combined product environment. This was for such follow-up. reveal fear as a direct impediment to com- due to unforeseen additional restrictions The ultimate goals here are homog- munication. In addition to the discussed imposed by the consuming product fam- enization of the overall project team as steps toward team homogenization, our ily regarding use of their environment well as harmonization of product and newly acquired colleagues from Company by others. By combining hard work, task processes. These can be easily neglected B were faced with the usual steep learning juggling and planned schedule buffer, we in the push to integrate the new product curve with all attendant unknowns, but still managed to meet our delivery date and team. Once problem areas of diver- especially exacerbated in this case by fear in the end. Who could have guessed that gence have been identified, formulate of layoff in the wake of the acquisition. In testing our modest component within the and implement a reasonable plan of the event, a healthy dose of credible reas- large composite product would prove to corrective steps to provide any needed surance had to be applied before training be so problematic, especially within the remediation for the overall project team. could be meaningfully implemented to same company? integrate these folks into our development When it comes to terminology, do not The real world and support teams. assume that components really speak the Let’s look at some examples of this. In both cases of the mentioned acquisi- same language. Besides the obvious issue Prior to acquisition, Company A had tions, money and effort diverted for face- of cross-cultural verbal and written com- outsourced its globalization as a black to-face transitional meetings proved a munication, communication management box and had localized only a subset of sound investment in terms of motivation must also include synchronization of ter- our standard nine Tier 1 languages. For and morale boosting, as well as integra- minology. In deference to known customer unavoidable reasons of practical priority tion training. quality perception dependencies on termi- in this case, globalization received only Whatever the specific challenges, com- nology consistency, an early assessment cursory attention during due diligence. ponentization is here to stay, at least until must absolutely be conducted to ensure We had no access to the internationaliza- the next silver bullet. Whatever the future smooth meshing into the main product tion design data or localization materials, may hold, a return to the “simpler times” glossary. The project manager should allow including glossaries from the vendor. As of neatly discrete projects with relatively for schedule and budget impacts here. the company’s development team lacked straightforward PM is highly unlikely in Finally, terminological differences can all hands-on experience with globaliza- the software industry. M be of a less technical nature as well. I tion, acquired colleagues would have to constantly encounter developers, oth- be given remedial training so that they erwise experienced with globalization, could do their job to internationalize who still confuse such basic terms as their component within our corporate translation and localization. Sometimes, environment. the term internationalization is not even So in addition to team training, we www.star-group.net in their vocabulary. There is a lingering planned to conduct our own assessment notion that they can just develop code of the product and then implement any and toss it over the wall to translation. needed fixes in concert with the newly For this reason, I never pass up an oppor- trained colleagues. This all had to be bud- tunity to squeeze in a mini-lesson about geted and scheduled within a very con- these basic concepts during regular status strained release schedule and with travel Conquer the challenges meetings. funding virtually frozen. In this case, of global markets Similarly, it is important to identify the reality was that the team could not with information

other critical differences, such as in team possibly turn its attention to globaliza- GRIPS management member experience, expectations, priorities tion until after the planned release date.

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27-29 McKethan #111.indd 29 4/5/10 9:29:11 AM Case study: TM economics in project management Brad Orfall Industry Focus Industry

Life has not been the same since our new pro- and had TMs for most of them on file. Because this project has ject management (PM) system went online. Now, been updated multiple times over the past three years, we did everyone in the company sees immediately when not have TMs for three of the nine languages. The files were a translator’s or editor’s invoice threatens a pro- analyzed using SDL Trados and showed a moderate level of L change (Figure 1). ject’s profitability. In this case, it was only a mat- All the translators received the same instructions. We pro- ter of time before our managing director —and vided the original English files, the updated English files, a former banker — would take a closer look at the comparison showing the changes, as well as the numbers from nine-language XYZ Company project. What went the Trados analysis. In the languages for which we had TMs, we wrong? After all, it was a standard multilan- provided bitext files (SDL Trados calls them “uncleaned files”) from the previous version with instructions to use TM software. guage project that seemed perfect for translation In the prior project, the bitext files had been edited; the edited memory (TM), which we all know is promoted ad file was sent back to the original translator; and the translator, nauseam as a great productivity tool. after implementing the editor’s suggested changes, then provided us the final file for delivery to the client. This workflow TM software is often touted by vendors for efficiency and cost ensures that TMs are always kept up to date and should prevent savings. Translation of similar versions of the same documents the recurrence of errors. or updates is supposed to be greatly simplified and much faster, The project was completed without incident. Later, when which results in savings for all involved. Translators benefit we received the invoices from the translators, we noticed a from increased productivity; translation agencies can pass along problem. The invoices we received varied a great deal. Some lower rates to their clients; and clients get lower prices. translators with comparable rates charged more than double The XYZ Company project was a classic. Four Microsoft what their colleagues did. The translators all had the same Word files containing user guides and tip sheets for an online task to complete and access to the same materials. So, why performance management and evaluation system needed to be was there such an extreme variation in the invoices from the updated in nine languages. One of the four files contained about service providers? half of the text, with the remainder evenly distributed among the other three files. We had translated the files a year before Rate of pay difference The first task in analyzing the rates was to find a way of comparing the disparate prices of the languages on an equal footing. Since per-word translation prices varied among the Brad Orfall is translation and technology translators from US$0.10 to US$0.265 per word, it wouldn’t manager at Inline Translation Services, Inc., be fair to compare the invoices against one another directly. in Glendale, California. He has 13 years of It may be interesting to note, however, that the Portuguese, experience in the translation industry Chinese, and German translators billed for 100% matches at and speaks fluent French and Spanish. rates about half of their “No Match” rate (that is, per word

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Percent similar Number Percent of price TM software to the previous of Percentage Language for completely Language used? version words new translation Canadian French Yes 100% 8,875 72% Canadian French 28.6% Simpliﬁed Chinese Yes 95% - 99% 251 2% Simpliﬁed Chinese 62.7% Dutch Yes 85% - 94% 563 5% Dutch 23.8% French No 75% - 84% 334 3% French 22.8% German 52.6% German Yes Italian Yes 50% - 74% 200 2% Italian 28.1% Japanese 19.0% Japanese No No match 1,986 16% Portuguese 56.1% Portuguese Yes

Total 12,209 100% Spanish 38.6% Spanish No

Figure 1: Analysis of the text Figure 2: Chinese and Figure 3: Nine languages and performed using Trados TM software. Japanese rates include editing. whether TM software was used.

translation rate for new text). In con- Strangely, the word counts developed double those for Canadian French and trast, the Italian, French (Canada), and by several translators were different, Italian. The languages are similar enough Dutch translators either billed nothing probably due to settings in each software that it’s fair to compare the amount of at all for 100% matches or used a very that can shift words from one category time needed to complete the work, which low rate. That aside, the solution was to to the other based on formatting, author wouldn’t be the case for a language compare the invoices against the esti- and a host of other factors. The differ- such as Chinese that has vastly different mated price of a complete new transla- ences in word count were ultimately word-processing requirements. Since we tion (Figure 2). minor and didn’t really affect the pricing assume the translators billed an amount In the translation industry, the com- much, but it can be disconcerting to find that they believe fairly compensates the mon thinking is that an update project several sets of numbers, none of which labor involved, it seems odd to find such like this one is tailor-made for TM soft- match those we provided. a disparity. We also can’t discard out of ware. Various vendors advertise this fact, Since for a variety of reasons some hand the pricing for any of the languages and at first glance it would seem to be of the translators did not use TM soft- as excessive, since other languages seem so. The software is adept at identifying ware, this project also presents a unique to have similar pricing. There is no changes, presenting similar sentences opportunity to compare approaches to “outlier” that points to overcharging or from memory and then storing the new translation. Each translator has his or her undercharging. text in a database for the next time the own workflow, but this project essentially file changes. boiled down to a choice between using the Least expensive, most puzzling The idea of TM sounds good, but we TM and doing an “old-fashioned” manual The two languages in which costs know there are costs to this approach that update of the materials (Figure 3). were lowest (French and Japanese) did must be recovered. The software itself is Hence, if TM software is supposed to not even use TM. Japanese, surpris- expensive and changes frequently to keep make updates of existing translations ingly, registered the lowest overall cost, up with the evolution of other related easier, it would follow that the pricing software on the market. Users must spend for translators using the software should time and money learning to use the soft- be lower. However, that is not the case. In ware. After editing, it is critical to update fact, all of the languages with the highest the TM databases to ensure that the TM charges were the languages that made doesn’t keep reproducing the same errors. use of TM software. However, a couple Like any other software, it’s “garbage in, of the languages where TM was used www.star-group.net garbage out.” The output is only as good were priced lower than a comparable as the input. language that completed the project via All of the translators working with TM an “old-fashioned” edit. software used a tiered billing system in Let’s concentrate for a moment on the which the word counts developed from blue shaded rows of Figure 4: Canadian the TM’s analysis of the files are used. French, German, Italian and Portuguese. New text is billed at the full per-word All of the translations were done using rate, with similar text billed at various TM software by highly-experienced The delta principle percentages of the full per-word rate, and Trados users, and yet the prices for Ger- in technical authoring

exact matches billed at the lowest rate. man and Portuguese are approximately MindReader

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30-33 Orfall #111.indd 31 4/5/10 9:30:42 AM Industry Focus

Percent of price another, but it is critical to check all of Language TM software used? for completely new translation the text against the English. So, with TM, there really are no savings in terms Canadian French Yes 28.6% of editing and review of a document. In Simplified Chinese Yes 62.7% fact, use of TM may make editing more difficult by introducing subtle errors or Dutch Yes 23.8% missing slight changes in meaning. TM French No 22.8% software also complicates the editing German Yes 52.6% process somewhat due to the software and knowledge required to edit transla- Italian Yes 28.1% tions and keep the TM up to date. Japanese No 19.0% The project started out with a client Portuguese Yes 56.1% sending us four documents that were 80% unchanged. The client’s realistic Spanish No 38.6% expectation was that we could reuse most of the text and provide a sig- Figure 4: Comparison of prices for new translations by language. Chinese and Japanese rates include editing. nificant discount (50% or more) over the cost of a completely new translation. That is certainly possible in several despite the fact that the rate included invaluable in a future update project with of the languages, where total costs are editing by a second independent pro- many more changes than this one. significantly less than half that of a new fessional. A third language, Spanish, Our experience over the past ten years translation. We are faced with a problem, also did not use TM and yet registered in the translation industry has mostly been though, when it comes to at least three costs that were significantly less than that use of TM is economic only in certain of the languages: Chinese, German and users of TM software such as German, circumstances. This particular case seems Portuguese. Because of the high costs Portuguese and Chinese. So, a good case to fall somewhere on the uneconomic side in those languages, giving the kind of could be made for skipping TM entirely of the fence in several languages. discount the client expected resulted in a and simply updating the files the “old- The costs shown, however, only reflect net loss for us, as shown in Figure 5 with fashioned” way — by hand. After all, the part of the cost for the project. Any qual- blue highlighting. three languages that used this approach ity translation should be edited by a were lower in cost than three other lan- second professional prior to client sub- Findings guages that used TM. mittal. Since only portions of the docu- As a result of the pricing problem for At first glance, it might seem that TM ment changed, one could argue that only Chinese, German and Portuguese, we software therefore introduced unneces- the changed portions need to be edited started digging into the details behind sary cost and complexity to the project. against the English document to check the pricing. The idea behind TM software While certainly true, that view can be for accuracy. Our experience, though, has is that it allows users to recycle previous shortsighted. Given the enhanced abil- been that TM software frequently intro- translations from the TM. It has always ity of TM software to identify changes, duces errors into the text that weren’t been our opinion that those recycled the possibilities for improved translation there before. It could be as simple as a translations are far from free. After all, quality are obvious. TM may also be translator mistaking one sentence for a user must purchase the software, learn

Translation cost expressed Editing cost expressed Language as a percentage of the cost as a percentage of the cost Gross of a completely new translation of a completely new translation margin

Canadian French 28.6% 10% 47.2% Simpliﬁed Chinese 62.7% 0% -13.2% Dutch 23.8% 9% 57.1% French 22.8% 10% 55.1% German 52.6% 7% -3.4% Italian 28.1% 10% 43.2% Japanese 19.0% 0% 56.8% Portuguese 56.1% 15% -21.7% Spanish 38.6% 10% 49.1%

Figure 5: The economics of TM from the project manager’s view. Chinese and Japanese rates include editing.

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Project Management Showcase

Mastering your Processes? English Language Plunet BusinessManager is the integrated Specialists business and workflow management solution for Release Your Potential Atalaya Global provides specialized translation translation companies. support to the largest localization companies What our customers say about us: • Management of all business-related and in the industry. We translate exclusively into project management processes English — both US and UK — and work from “We chose Plunet BusinessManager for its most major languages. Our linguists are native complete management solution, covering • Communication with partners — speakers of English with decades of experience projects from request to invoicing. As well, our integration with technology in our core fields of expertise: management team has access to financial and • Life sciences operating reports that are unmatched in the • Flexibility toward market challenges • Medical/pharmaceutical industry. The efficiency savings and staff • IT/computer resources returned to the company have been • Comfort in everyday work • Technical tremendous.” • Legal James Carmazzi, Vice-President Atalaya Global adheres to and promotes the Carmazzi Global Solutions ASTM International Standard Guide for Quality XTRF™ Translation Assurance in Translation. Plunet GmbH Management Systems Atalaya Global Berlin, Germany • New York, New York USA Krakow, Poland Santa Fe, New Mexico USA [email protected] • www.plunet.net [email protected] • www.xtrf.eu [email protected] • www.atalayaglobal.com

how to use it, and maintain the database been far better to simply make the few and it is up to them to determine how they of translations — none of which is free. changes the “old-fashioned” way and go about their work. However, the translators who provided skip the TM entirely. Of course, if TM ■ Manage editors closely, especially the lowest prices didn’t charge us for is essential for future updates as in when they are charging on a per-word recycled text. Thus, the only way for the this case, the translators could simply basis. Use of hourly rates can be quite use of TM to be economic on this project update their TMs to include the few cost effective, especially when only was to break one of the basic pricing changes in the file. selected parts of a document need to be rules and not charge for repeat text. reviewed and/or when a very high qual- Hence, on two counts, the use of For the future ity translation is involved. If the editor TM fails for this project. First, the costs There are a few precautions that could is supposed to edit everything on a per- are too high when a reasonable pricing help with similar projects: word basis, make sure you have a budget model — one that doesn’t give away ■ Don’t leave it up to the translators for it. recycled text — is followed. At the same to determine if use of a TM tool is cost- ■ Project managers should evaluate time, the only way to have reasonable effective or not. You may have to pay each file separately in order to determine costs is to give away the recycled text. the price! if use of TM software is appropriate for It’s a real conundrum for both the trans- ■ Certain projects are more profitable that particular file and then direct translation company and the translator. when they are done by “old-fashioned lators to use the best method for that Looking further into the project, we editing” followed by manual changes file. Use of TM does not decrease editing noted that the changes made to the files to TM if one exists. Such an approach costs at all and may, in fact, increase were not evenly distributed. In fact, the merits serious consideration the more the them. Sometimes, project managers largest of the four files had only 20 translator charges for 100% matches and should direct translators to do things the or so changes in almost 5,000 words. when the word count is significant. “old-fashioned” way. It might just save Clearly, the largest file was a problem, ■ If translators insist on using a TM some money. It’s funny how a project since we were being charged in some tool when you know it is not cost effec- that looks to be a textbook demonstra- languages based on the text recycled tive — especially if they charge for 100% tion of the superiority of TM software from the TM. In fact, the largest file matches — give them a specific budget. turns out to be just the opposite. That’s had so few changes that it would have After all, they are independent contractors, what makes PM an interesting job. M

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30-33 Orfall #111.indd 33 4/5/10 9:30:44 AM Project management and machine translation

Industry Focus Industry Ana Guerberof Arenas

The use of machine translation (MT) together Variables in MT with human post-editing seems to be discussed in It is useful, albeit not essential, to find out whether the writers almost every training, publication or conference of the source documents or software have used specific writing in the localization industry these days. In a recent guidelines or controlled language — in other words, if the source T language is written in a standard way to avoid ambiguity and survey provided by the Translation Automation complex grammatical structures. If this is the case, the chances User Society (TAUS), 52% of the 67 companies of having a decent quality output will increase, and this will consulted were providing post-editing services be valuable information when negotiating discounts with cus- to their customers. One important reason for this tomers or writing guidelines for post-editors. When available, managers should use these guidelines to better understand the increase is the pressing need to lower costs in the structure of the source text and to create, together with their localization cycle when internationalizing new team, sound post-editing guidelines. If project managers work products. in the same company as the writing team, they might provide feedback to the writers to optimize the text for MT usage. If the service is so broadly provided, it is logical to assume There are basically two types of MT engines: rule-based that project managers will sooner or later be confronted with a (RBMT) and statistical (SMT). There are also hybrids that com- project using MT. The customer, on the other hand, will want to bine both technologies. The European Association for Machine obtain a reasonable price discount for completing the project. Translation website (www.eamt.org) offers related articles, and It is, therefore, of crucial importance for managers to be famil- it is also a good source of information on this topic. iar with an array of new variables. Precisely because there are In general, with RBMT engines there is an initial process of so many variables to consider when dealing with this type of dictionary creation that a linguistic team would need to imple- projects, the risk of possible issues and errors increases. ment in order to train the engine. If project managers work in Of course, some might argue that using MT and post-editing a company that owns the engine, they might have to coordi- is exactly the same as using translation memories (TMs) and nate or liaise with this linguistic team at different stages of the reviewing fuzzy matches. While it might be true that after a dictionary creation/update process. If they work in a company certain learning curve managing this type of project becomes without a proprietary engine, they might be asked to make sug- easier, there are many initial considerations. gestions for engine performance improvement. With SMT, the process involves training the engine with large TMs and/or glossaries, normally from one million words upwards. This data should be as clean as possible in order to increase the quality of the output. The manager might need to provide and prepare this type of content and make sure it is up Ana Guerberof Arenas has over 18 years’ to standard. Feedback and changes are provided thereafter. experience in the localization industry and is Managers need to fully understand the customer’s quality currently operations manager at Logoscript. expectations for the final project, as post-editing can be superficial

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or thorough depending on the purpose. As in general revision towards using MT. Another is how technical the translator might terms, there are different types of expected quality levels. Post- be. The information and training translators receive to complete editing is typically classified as full post-editing (post-edition to the task as well as the amount of time given can also affect human quality) or rapid post-editing (post-edition with minimal performance. Even if translators are extremely dedicated profes- corrections for text “gisting”). Between these two options, there is sionals, we cannot forget that all these factors, together with the a wide range of alternatives. Establishing the quality expected by price paid to perform the task, might influence the final quality. the customer will help determine the price as will writing specific In brief, the manager of a localization project using MT could instructions to post-editors. If this is not done, some might cor- potentially contact the existing pool of professional translators. rect only major errors, thinking that they are obliged to utilize the However, in order to minimize the risks, complaints and e-mails, MT proposal as much as possible, while others will correct major, translators should receive an initial training and detailed post- minor and even acceptable errors because they feel the text has to editing guidelines. be as human as possible. The best way to discuss this issue with the Training in localization does not tend to be extensive because customer is using the actual MT output with samples. In general of obvious time constraints. Consequently, the manager should terms, customers know their readers and the type of text they want consider a kick-off training of approximately three to four hours to produce. If they haven’t thought about it, the discussion will in a live training session or an on-line presentation covering the help them define the quality criteria to follow. expected quality, output quality, description of the post-editing More often than not, the manager will not receive clear infor- guidelines, project-specific characteristics, and a time for com- mation about the quality of the output. Depending on who is ments and questions. This should help minimize the anxiety the the source of information, the quality feedback could be overly translators might experience when working on this new task. enthusiastic or extremely negative. It is rare to receive a seri- Sometimes managers might not be involved in the training, but ous analysis of the output with samples and scores. Some MT they should make sure that translators working in the project output providers might send project managers an automatic have received basic training and instructions before starting. score (BLEU, Meteor, NIST or TER) that gives information on There is a pronounced learning curve when post-editing, so how close the output is to human quality with a single number. translators might initially show a low productivity that will rap- Unfortunately, this number might mean little in practical terms, idly increase to acceptable levels. They should be informed that and generally a human evaluation with scores and samples is the this learning curve exists and that their productivity will increase best possible quality assessment to establish prices and transfer as they get familiar with the type of errors and the process involved information to post-editors. However, it involves time and is in MT projects. rarely done. My advice would be to assess the output for each It is crucial for translators to feel they are involved in the pro- language combination using different parameters — for example, ject and that their comments and suggestions are considered. This grammar, terminology, format — in a randomly selected set of will improve their attitude towards MT, and therefore quality and strings extracted from the overall content that could be classified productivity will increase. The manager does not need to have all according to segment length and where a post-editor can then possible solutions to translators’ problems, but should be able to classify the quality of the segment (Excellent, Good, Poor, or provide answers according to what can and cannot be expected in even from 4 to 0, or any other classification). Even though time a project involving MT. is required for this assessment, it will give a clear idea of the There cannot be a post-editing project without specific post- productivity savings the team of post-editors might be expected editing guidelines. These guidelines are not the same as style to obtain during the project. If managers do not have this infor- guides, project briefs or localization kits. The manager needs to mation, they are working pretty much in the dark in terms of send post-editors language-specific guidelines created for the prices and might be overwhelmed by the number of e-mails sent actual post-editing task. by post-editors complaining about the quality of the output with What should the document cover? Obviously, it is difficult to little data available to discuss the matter. answer this question, as it will depend again on the quality of output, language combination and the usual variables. Besides, Post-editors and training we need to consider that post-editors cannot be burdened with a The first two questions that spring to mind are “What is a post- whole book on post-editing, as time is of essence and their work editor?” and “How is this job really different from translation?” needs to be profitable. The guidelines should be short and precise, In the TAUS survey, 74% of the resources doing post-editing were and they should include: “regular” translators, and 26% were specially trained. The data ■ description of the type of engine does not explain if the 74% were somewhat “trained” beforehand ■ description of the source text (type and structure of source in this activity nor does it reveal the final result when not using text) trained post-editors. ■ brief description of the quality of output for that language In my experience, most of the post-editors currently working combination in localization are “regular” translators. However, that does not ■ quality expected by the customer mean that all the translators make efficient post-editors or that ■ scenarios when to discard a segment (post-editors should they know, initially, how to perform the activity. By an efficient have an idea of how much time to spend in order to “recycle” a post-editor, I mean a post-editor who can edit the text accord- segment or discard it altogether) ing to the quality standard set in the post-editing guidelines ■ typical errors to be corrected for that language combina- in a desirable time frame. Why are all professional translators tion, including reference to tagging and links not efficient post-editors? There are different reasons. One that ■ changes to be avoided according to the customer’s expec- is frequently mentioned is the positive versus negative attitude tations (for example, certain stylistic changes)

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■ how to deal with terminology (accord- developers will claim that their engine and specific templates to keep a record of ing to output analysis and customer’s dramatically increases the translator’s their activity. expectations — the terminology provided productivity without necessarily making ■ Averages can be misleading. Remem- by MT could be perfect or it could be their methodology available. ber, if I drink two beers and you drink zero obsolete) There is definitely uncertainty about the beers, the average is one beer, but you are Even though time is needed to create gains when using MT and post-editing. A still very thirsty! guidelines, managers will need to invest, figure that is normally used when discuss- ■ When providing data to the cus- in turn, less time in answering e-mails ing productivity in post-editing is 5,000 tomer, it should be explained clearly or dealing with frustrated post-editors words per day, but the reality is that each giving possible reasons for the resulting who were not told how to proceed with project will have different productivity productivity. a given segment, error or terminology according to the different variables. ■ The quality of the post-edited text issue. Again, managers do not need to Nonetheless, it might be necessary, if should be considered when calculating create the guidelines on their own, but the customer requests it, to measure pro- productivity. A fast post-editor might they do need to make sure that they are ductivity during the project. I would not leave many errors uncorrected, and a slow in place before starting the project. advise doing this in a live project, as all post-editor might overcorrect the text. the factors involved will distort the results. A word of caution: the productivity Productivity measurements Time constraints, using TM mixed with data obtained in one particular project Productivity constitutes one of the big MT segments, different files, or having cannot be extrapolated to the productivity unknown factors in projects involving translators measure their own time can gain for all translators, all language com- MT and post-editing. This is partially due be factors of distortion. However, many binations, or all MT projects. However, to the fact that using MT in localization customers will ask for some kind of pro- it can serve as an indication for future projects is relatively new, and, therefore, ductivity estimation. If this is the case, I projects with similar characteristics. standard metrics do not exist yet. This is would recommend the following: If the project manager has planned the mainly due to the amount of variables to ■ The group of post-editors should be project correctly, the post-editors should consider, however. At any rate, we have representative. start working on the text after a brief little information on the productivity of ■ It is better if MT post-editing is training. However, post-editors will most translators’ work in general. The indus- compared with human translation to likely face challenges not reflected in the try uses standards — for example, 2,000 measure the post-editing productivity of training or guidelines as it is virtually to 2,500 translated words per day — but a translator against his or her own pro- impossible to foresee all possible issues we all know these standards are hardly ductivity when translating from scratch in such short periods of preparation time. applicable to all translators. Moreover, and not against an average figure. Therefore, it is advisable to open commu- there are also agreed metrics on TM ■ TM fuzzy matches should not be nication channels specific for post-editing. editing — percentages paid according to mixed with MT segments and new seg- This could be achieved through an on- fuzzy match level — but most translators ments, as it will be impossible to know line query management tool or through would agree that these percentages hardly where the productivity increase or decrease e-mail. It is of the essence, therefore, to represent the amount of work they need is coming from. expect queries and to have one individual to perform on each proposed segment. ■ Different files with different fields of assigned to solve these fairly quickly. Studies dealing with productivity when content will affect the result, as it would Towards the end of the project it is also post-editing MT segments — such as be hard to determine if errors are due to advisable to gather general impressions on Krings 2001 and O’Brien 2007 — do not MT or to the different types of content. the post-editing experience in the form of show pronounced productivity increases ■ Post-editors will need specific instruc- a questionnaire. This is not always done, when using MT. Frequently, however, MT tions on how to carry out the measurement again for time and budget constraints, but I believe it is essential if dealing with the first post-editing experience. The questionnaire could cover the perceived quality of MT — excellent, good, medium and poor, for example; most frequent errors found; perceived productivity when using MT (increase, decrease or equal); and if the price matched the work carried out. The more information managers obtain from post-editors, the more data they will have to work on future projects and to negotiate with their customers. As we have seen earlier, MT could be introduced in the cycle to save costs. It would not make much sense then to review post-edited text. However, on certain occasions revision might be necessary, either to obtain very high quality

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34-38 Guerberof/ToolsShow. #111i36 36 4/5/10 9:32:07 AM

Tools & Services Showcase

Medical Translations AlignFactory MediLingua is one of Europe’s few companies specializing in medical translation. We provide all European languages (36 today Complement your existing TM and and counting) and Japanese as well as the full-text search software with this powerful How to Be usual translation-related services. Our 250-plus alignment tool. translators have a combined medical and World Savvy language background. Start aligning with speed and accuracy and increase the performance of your International Marketing Communications We work for manufacturers of medical existing tools. devices, instruments, in-vitro diagnostics and Market Research software; pharmaceutical companies; medical Marketing publishers; national and international medical • AlignFactory organizations; and medical journals. • AlignFactoryLight Call or e-mail Simon Andriesen or visit our • AlignRobot website for more information. MediLingua BV Terminotix Inc. JFA Marketing Leiden, The Netherlands Ottawa, Ontario Canada Dubuque, Iowa USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.medilingua.com www.terminotix.com www.jfamarkets.com

Europe’s No. 1 Greek Localizer Your Polish More Than Quality Professional globalization requires experi- Since 1986, EuroGreek has been providing high- Production Center quality, turnkey solutions, encompassing a whole ence. Over the past two decades, we have Since 2000, Ryszard Jarza Translations has developed into a top international company range of client needs, for the following language been providing specialized Polish translation, combinations: specializing in the precise tuning of your localization and DTP services, primarily for life documentation and texts to the standards and • English into Greek sciences, IT, automotive, refrigeration and other mentalities of the German-speaking world. • Greek into English technology sectors. • German into Greek Our strength lies in our work for well-known • French into Greek We work with multilanguage vendors and software and hardware manufacturers. Furthermore, we also offer traditional transla- All EuroGreek’s work is produced in our Athens directly with documentation departments of tion services for the business, technology, legal production center and covers most subjects: large multinational customers. We have built a brilliant in-house team made up of experienced and medical sectors. Our team of competent • Technical linguists and engineers, who guarantee a employees provides the very best quality • Medical/Pharmaceutical within the respectively agreed time frame, • IT/Telecommunications high standard of quality while maintaining even if matters are a little more urgent. • Economics/Legal flexibility, responsiveness and accountability. All EuroGreek’s work is fully guaranteed for quality and on-time delivery. Ryszard Jarza Translations Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, EuroGreek Translations Limited Wrocław, Poland Ursula Steigerwald London, UK • Athens, Greece [email protected] Cologne, Germany [email protected] • www.eurogreek.com www.jarza.com.pl [email protected] • www.rheinschrift.de

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34-38 Guerberof/ToolsShow. #111i37 37 4/5/10 9:32:09 AM Industry Focus

or to determine post-editors’ competence. This communication will help the man- the quality of the output and agree on The reviewer should receive the same ager establish a good channel to discuss the expected quality before agreeing on information as the post-editor. Most pricing or productivity at a later stage. a definite discount with the customer. localization companies use review forms It is necessary, however, to give some This is not always possible, and the man- that comply with LISA, J240 standards or figures and point to possible reasons ager will need to gamble. If this happens, similar ones. However, my suggestion is when discussing post-editing issues. It being conservative will help, offering up to create specific post-editing categories is not advisable to communicate to the to a 10% discount over the word rate. It encompassing accuracy (to what extent customer how unhappy all translators is also advisable to transfer the discount the post-edited version contains the same are with the task of post-editing without to post-editors. Bear in mind that train- information as the source text), language providing hard data. ing, creating guidelines and providing and terminology. There could be a rating Prices will normally be agreed either feedback also constitute cost. (from 0 to 4) or an error count in order to by establishing a fuzzy match equivalent With a project that involves MT and provide a final result. Post-editors should for MT or an hourly rate. According to post-editing, the manager faces new receive this feedback to accelerate their the TAUS survey, 40% of the companies challenges. The success of such projects learning curve. apply a fuzzy match rate, 34% an hourly will depend on how aware the manager This is only a sample, and other review- rate and 26% apply “other.” and indeed the whole production team ing aspects can be considered (readability, The level of fuzzy match assigned to is of the constraints surrounding MT clarity, transfer, and logic) as there are mul- MT segments could vary between 50% to and post-editing. The best advice is to tiple ways of assessing quality. It is crucial, 90% of the full word-rate. That is, the cost obtain as much information as possible; nonetheless, to establish a relation between savings could be between 50% to 10%. to prepare and train the team before the the speed and the quality of post-editing Sometimes even the full rate might apply project starts in order to avoid unneces- because, as I mentioned earlier, there is no if the quality of the output is poor. This sary risks; and to communicate with the point in having post-editors who report is too wide to be helpful, but the truth customer on a regular basis to establish high productivity gains but who do not is that the different variables do affect common expectations and feasible out- correct up to the expected level of quality. the price considerably and each project comes. Finally, it is critical to gather as can be dramatically different. The hourly much data as possible in order to prepare Communication and pricing rate could assume a productivity of 5,000 and learn for future projects. M During the lifetime of the project, it words per day or more, or simply just pay References is advisable to inform the customer of for the hours done, which could prove to the general issues encountered during be risky when updating the budget. Krings, Hans. Repairing Texts: Empirical the post-editing phase rather than wait- If the manager works in a company Investigations of Machine Translation Post- Editing Processes. Kent, Ohio: Kent State ing for a post-project review to give a that owns the engine, establishing a price University Press, 2001. long list of complaints from the team. is relatively easy, as she or he will have O’Brien, Sharon. “Eye-tracking and For example, certain language combi- access to previous data on quality of the Translation Memory Matches.” Perspectives: nations or types of documents could output and productivity. However, if this Studies in Translatology 14.3 (January 2007): perform worse than initially planned. is not the case, it is advisable to assess 185-205.

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Industry Focus 4/5/10 9:33:31 AM MultiLingual April/May 2010

Not all the same Not all the the success or emphasized that Sikes In a recent interview, nication between the project manager on the client side and the project manager on the vendor side.” He continued by stating that the “localization manager looks across the corporate matrix in so many ways” and “spans from product concept, through development, localization, budgeting, billing, wrap-up” and so on. Though this is true, the responsibilities of project managers can be very different depending on which part of the process found a few outdated books on localization practices, but were found a few outdated books on localization they still relevant? In my for courses I search found mention of Washington of a defunct program offered by the University been restarted), but extension program (this program has since interest to offer the when I called, I was told there wasn’t enough and blended courses, program again. I found classroom, online countries; and though but these were offered in other states or localization groups, I they were approved by well-recognized I needed to become an wasn’t sure that I would learn the skills so I continued learning on adept localization project manager, for found an advertisement would have it, I my own. As luck The confer- in Seattle a few months later. Localization World to be exactly what I needed to better understand ence looked localization and localization PM. At the conference, I was able to meet CEOs, hiring managers, project managers and many other individuals who provided me with ﬁrsthand knowledge of The people I met at the conference were willing to the industry. train and mentor me. At a session on “Introduction to Localiza- about localization PM and skills, I spoke tion” Richard Sikes was given the list that appears in Figure 1. It has been essential in my education. failure of a localization project “depends largely on the commu-

Beginning a career asa manager project localization Cerda Paul

Paul Cerda is a former English Paul embarked professor who has now on a career in localization.

Almost two decades of rapid development inAlmost two decades of rapid development sible because I worked in an industry that has not sible because I worked techniques.yet adopted common localization up as a Spanish Through a series of strange events, I ended tools and techniques have made localization atools and techniques have made language skillshighly structured profession, and as a localiza-are no longer enough to find work My story tion or international project manager. skills weremay be one of the last where bilingual and it was only pos- enough to enter the career, A www.multilingual.com courses. But where I had trouble getting adequate training was in localization. Even self-education was difficult because there was no clear indication of what I needed to know to succeed. I position for bilingual and eventually multilingual software. position for bilingual and eventually multilingual software. I realized how woefully underprepared I was to successfully complete multilingual projects as my responsibility for the I knew nothing of project management (PM), so projects grew. I took a certificate in it. I knew little about HTML, Flash, audio testing, content databases, quality assurance editing, relational management systems and XML, so I taught myself and took web content editor for a major educational publisher’s software development group. That job grew into a project manager 39-42 Cerda #111.indd 39 Industry Focus

they are responsible for completing and title, exactly what do employers look for users for “managed” translations or are who pays their salary. Leo Brenninkmeyer, in a job candidate? Since the majority of seeking open input from general users. CEO of Compass Languages, emphasized localization jobs are in software develop- Facebook, LinkedIn and Microsoft are that the “size of the project, languages ment, standard software PM and software probably the best examples of this strat- involved, and the culture and structure engineering skills are usually desirable egy. Microsoft is paying specific expert of the company will all be deciders in the — as are an understanding/experience users and computer science students to localization project manager profile you with Trados, CATALYST or other tools. work on primary translations or MT edit- will seek for a project.” So with such a But beyond that, specific skills will vary ing. This trend will grow. Corporations diverse skill set required for the same job depending on the localization tasks the will continue to utilize their customer manager will perform. Multiple language base to translate support documents and vendors generally require a broad set of other content to increase their preva- skills, including data management skills. lence in small or growing markets. The And games are a world unto themselves. largest problem looming on the horizon Whether you are a manager for a game for these companies is the quality of developer or a service provider for games translations and control of their con- developers, you will need to have a set of tent. Many companies are addressing skills not usually required by the other this problem as they scale their efforts. employers. Though these experiments can probably lead to acceptable translations, user Client participation and commitment to the Localization PM for a client is usu- brand are major driving factors for this ally most concerned with ensuring that trend. the product is globalized and localizable, Much of the actual localization work and ultimately localized. These manag- is now done by outside vendors, so your ers will work on user interface (UI) and job will be to facilitate quality interna- user education (UE) components of the tionalized code and ensure that the final project prior to translation and release localized products are of an acceptable of the localized product. They will be quality. You will orchestrate the process, most concerned with upstream tasks. evangelize for best practices, and ensure They are actively involved with the core that the final product can be sold world- software team ensuring a foundation for wide in local markets. localization during the development and pseudo-localization stages of the process. Vendor LSPs Their focus shifts towards the localized Localization service providers (LSPs) are build process during the translation and concerned with translations and finished closeout process as the localized product file formats, so their domain is usually is prepared for launch. related to translation memory and term- Current trends include moving towards base management. LSP project managers more targeted translations, especially for are responsible for managing translations, UE materials. This “extent of localization” tracking files, post-processing and deliver- process is, of course, lowering costs and ing finished files for input into the clients’ driving translation efforts towards the build process. Many LSPs have also moved most economically viable markets. Iden- into linguistic and functionality testing, so tifying essential translations and markets their scope is expanding and their margins where this process can be applied is a are decreasing. These shops deal in high responsibility of the localization team in volumes and have many clients. conjunction with international market- More and more LSPs are delving ing, and core teams. The cost of trans- into MT, but they don’t necessarily lation is prompting clients to examine have people trained in the post-editing where they can earn time-savings. process or individuals that are knowl- Though machine translation (MT) is far edgeable about the management of such from perfect, some client corporations large-scale projects. Larger clients are

Your Vision. Worldwide. are examining its efﬁciency for “gist- becoming heavily dependent on global ing” of forum, knowledgebase and other management systems (GMS), so this is less crucial materials. Though requesting another area newcomers should learn translations from users is common for about. Adam Bell of Welocalize states open-source products, some major cor- that his company manages both large porations are turning to crowdsourcing and small batches of content sent by to lower their costs. It appears that com- an organization’s regional ofﬁces from panies are either targeting their expert across the globe. Welocalize utilizes

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39-42 Cerda #111.indd 40 4/5/10 9:33:31 AM Industry Focus

Language service providers, Clients multiple language vendors Game developers

Heavily focused on the pre- Broadest skill set desired but focus is Audio and cinematic compression, translation phases of UI and UE. on asset translation and ﬁnal ﬁle prep frame rates, ratings board issues. Includes localization, vendor process: DTP, audio, video, server- Knowledge of geopolitical and cultural Desired skill sets management, development and test side CMD, single-source authoring, restrictions on gore, violence and issues of localizability, globalization linguistic testing, large-scale data- other issues. Understanding language analysis, pseudo-localization testing, management, ability to prioritize tasks compatibility issues for server-client bug triage, marketing and release. and objectives. setup in MMOs.

PM processes used Waterfall, agile Mostly waterfall Waterfall, agile

Machine translation, global Working with creative people, gaming Risk assessment, evangelist skills, Special skills desired management systems, business skills, an understanding of geopolitical UI and UE understanding. development skills. and cultural context for games.

Project management skills needed for client, LSP and game project developer.

clients’ GMS, and even though it has its “many game companies lack the under- basis. Besides standard PM best prac- own open-source GMS product called standing of how localization can be more tices, game managers must have other GlobalSight, they are just as likely to proactively used in game development important skill sets to deal with many use WorldServer or SDL Workflow. All and the reality of the value-add of local- more creative professionals. Edwards of these systems provide large-scale file ization. Effective localization can often states that they have to be able to use a management capabilities and a workflow account for 30-70% of game company “cooperative or soft-handed approach.” automation feature. Bell asserts that a revenues (and roughly 50% on average This ensures that artists feel heard and “lot of key accounts are built around data as an industry). With this kind of influ- that any localization changes consider management, data tracking, and large- ence, it’s surprising that game localizers the creative vision of the artist. Work in scale information management. And aren’t given a higher place in the game the games industry is most distinguished one of the things we’ve found is that not development hierarchy.” Though this is by the group of people you will work all traditional localization managers are changing, it is still common for games among. You will normally be a part of good at operating in that paradigm. The companies to hire localization project a development process that is as much skill set we’re looking for is focused on managers on a contract, non-permanent an artistic and creative process as it is large scale information management.” Thus, LSPs are as likely to look for new project managers with experience in large database management as they are to look for localization skills. Vendor project managers tend to have the longest hours and largest workloads. As the intermediary responsible for the quality of the files, they deal in large volumes and tight deadlines. However, they usually offer a chance to gain the broadest skill set in the shortest amount of time. Their expertise or management of such an array of file types, translators and mediums will surely be great exposure for anyone who wants to obtain a solid base in localization skills. Game developers For game localization, the skill set is more specialized in audio, video and subtitling. Games derive a large portion of their revenue from localized releases. Ironically, it is also the industry that is most likely to consider localization as an afterthought. As Tom Edwards states,

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a programming process. Hence, experience writing in film work or in art is Checklist: Localization project management skills good to have in the games industry. The more you can relate to your coworkers Interest in and awareness of foreign cultures. Pragmatic, realistic approach to problem solving; adaptable/versatile Generic and understand the balance between the thinker; technically inclined; and with research skills for artistic and commercial endeavors of the determining potential cultural sensitivities games industry, the better positioned you will be to succeed in PM. A localization Detail-oriented, excellent verbal and written project manager in this industry needs to Project management communication skills; has knowledge of Microsoft office, of team management and of budget management have a deeper knowledgebase about audio and video development processes, such as Localization/ Localization software, best practices and problem-solving constrained audio recordings, NTSC and internationalization skills. Need working knowledge of XML (particularly XLIFF) PAL standards, and issues of subtitling, engineering and international keyboard-mapping issues lip-synching, and voice-over for anima- Comfort with diverse language software versions and tion or live action cinematic sequences. Localization quality assurance ability to distinguish one language from another An understanding of game engines and how they render in-game audio and text Screenshot creation and bitmap editing. Native HTML/XML Localization documentation coding; online help compilation; evangelism of localization is also important. Another major con- and desktop publishing concerns as related to documentation; and layout proofing sideration is the restrictions game rating (pagination, formatting fonts) skills boards for many different countries. Some companies are rereleasing older titles in Apache, IIS, and AOL server technologies; web emerging markets. According to Edwards, Server-side technologies technologies; global management systems; and relational databases a “company like Electronic Arts might look back in its library of titles and find a title Linguistics Glossarization, editing and proofreading skills that is past its prime in the US or western Europe, but they invest in some localization into emerging markets like Russia, Figure 1: Adapted from Richard Sikes’ presentation on project management. India or southeast Asia and find themselves generating significant profit from an old different locales to make the game more realize that different employers require title.” The effect of motion sensing gam- palatable to players. different skill sets from their localization ing (such as those made for the Nintendo Those desiring a career as a localiza- project managers. As practitioners and Wii Remote) on localization is still unclear, tion project manager must realize that employers, we must also ask ourselves: but there will be cultural and geopolitical entry into the field is much more diffi- What expectations do we have of begin- considerations and alterations needed for cult than in the past, and they must also ners in localization project management? Have we as an industry been proactive in making those expectations explicit? Have we created methodical processes DO MORE WITH THE POWER OF for their training and growth? And if we have not been explicit or provided a clear path for newcomers, isn’t it time SYSTRAN to do so? The future of our industry depends on highly skilled localization professionals. We must make a concerted Enterprise Server 7 effort to train newcomers appropriately and convey our collective expertise and standards to them if we hope to advance Translate more for less with a powerful hybrid MT as an industry. M Reduce costs engine combining the strengths of rule-based and References Improve effi ciency statistical MT. Bell, Andy. Personal interview. 22 January Achieve quality ›› 52+ language pairs 2010. translations ›› Self-learning techniques for users to train the Brenninkmeyer, Leo. E-mail software to any domain correspondence. 4 January 2010. ›› Customization tools to manage dictionaries and TMs streamline post-editing Chandler, Heather M. The Game Localization Handbook. Hingham, ›› APIs for easy integration with enterprise applications Massachusetts: Charles River Media, 2004. Edwards, Tom. Personal interview. 16 Viisiit us onlliine att www.ssysttransofft.ccom January 2010. Sikes, Richard. Personal interview. 8 January 2010.

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Business 4/5/10 9:34:44 AM MultiLingual April/May 2010 open collaboration. Some of the fears and obstacles associated with open collaboration are avoided by working exclusively with others who are bound by the same rules and organizational culture. How- many are realizing that no matter ever, how smart or numerous their employees, company is a natural step towards more Collaboration terminology Collaboration particular are often Social networking and collaboration in Collaboration can happen either synchronously or asynchro- Internal collaboration refers to intra-company interactions In our own industry there are collaboration groups and In our own industry there are collaboration associations such as TAUS, LISA and even LinkedIn groups. and even LinkedIn LISA associations such as TAUS, functions, we will While these organizations serve important demonstrate that there is also need a for a peer-to-peer network community and that where experts are voted into place by the sharing and the qual- authority is earned based on contribution, ity of interactions. Social networking is concerned with confused with each other. getting people together creating and maintaining relationships, is concerned and coordinating their activities. Collaboration goal. Of course, accom-with accomplishing a task, project or plishing anything usually requires people, and any time people interactions. There-are involved there is a social aspect to their fore, collaboration solutions usually include social networking features to help the work along. Phone calls, meetings and webinars are examples of nously. synchronous collaboration where everyone is working together at the same time. E-mail, blogs, wikis, lists, documents and workﬂows are examples of asynchronous collaboration where people participate at different times depending on their location, availability and priorities. or working with other employees of the same organization or Organizing the knowledge of people “owned” by the company. that are more interactive, higher quality and less expensive ifthat are more interactive, higher quality not free. , Thomas Friedman divides Michael W. Cox, a project management professional, has Cox, a project management professional, has Michael W. manager, localization strategist and GMS/TMS integrator. manager, Collaboration Collaboration localization and Cox Michael W. & Kirti Vashee worked as a Chinese translator, localization engineer, resource localization engineer, worked as a Chinese translator, Kirti Vashee, VP of enterprise translation sales VP of enterprise translation sales Kirti Vashee, Online, is a sales executive and for Asia statistical machine translation expert.

, 2006 was the year when Flickr beat Webshots, , 2006 was the year when Flickr beat Webshots, The World Is Flat The World

In The growth of open source illustrates this change. Open- is, things were generally accomplished within ais, things were generally accomplished concerned withnational scope, and people were how their country fit into the world. to Globalization 2.0,Between 1800 and 2000, we graduated modern history into three periods. Globalizationmodern history into three periods. Columbus’ 14921.0 occupied the years between 1800s. It is char-voyage to the Americas and the level. Thatacterized by collaboration at a country www.multilingual.com months. By 2012, according to Gartner, 90% of companies with according to Gartner, months. By 2012, a IT services will use open-source products of some type. Clearly, lot of energy is associated with collaborating to provide products so than their traditional counterparts. According to the book so than their traditional counterparts. According Wikinomics Wikipedia beat Britannica, Blogger beat CNN, Epinions beat Consumer Reports, Google Maps beat MapQuest, and craigslist About half of all web servers are now powered beat Monster. by Apache, and 1.2 million people download OpenOffice every week. The number of open-source projects doubles every 14 rienced the world. More recently, we progressed to Globalization rienced the world. More recently, work and collabo-3.0 and now have the ability to experience, from the companies orrate with the world as individuals apart change and is greatlycountries to which we belong. This is a big lives. influencing both our personal and professional even more source solutions are becoming increasingly popular, where companies became the primary vehicle by which we expe-where companies became the primary vehicle I 43-46 Vashee #111.indd 43 Business

ideas and opportunities exist outside desktop sharing and telephony usually the platform providers are working to their companies. To avail themselves of requires using multiple services. While include the goodness of the smaller ven- this external knowledge and creativity, this is an obvious gap for many platform dors into their own products. companies have begun collaborating on providers, plenty of vendors specialize While social networking is often free, specific initiatives with select partners — a in these services. Some even offer free collaboration tools usually are not. There few companies that share similar goals, internet meetings for small numbers are many ways vendors can charge for and rules and culture. Many choose to con- of people. Knowledge management is provide these features, including software tinue collaborations after the initiatives a newer area to emerge and includes as a service, hosted service, on-premise that instigated them have ended and are expert location, knowledge networks, installations as well as pay-per-use or turning increasingly towards more open idea management, talent development pay-per-user subscriptions. The commu- or external collaboration. and information organization. nities using these platform tools are often With Facebook, MySpace and Twit- internal to a specific company. This is Collaboration features ter, we have become familiar with social because the collaboration platforms have In the past, if you asked people what networking and its associated features of been cost prohibitive for external, grass collaboration tools they used, most would finding people and establishing networks. roots communities. However, free, open mention e-mail and the telephone. Though Some platforms emphasize these features and less expensive options are available these tools still reign supreme, blogs, while others emphasize collaboration and improving all the time. microblogs and the like are becoming features. The large platform vendors have more common. It seems almost everyone seen the need for both and are moving to Why do we collaborate? has a blog now. Many of us are tweeting, shore up weaknesses in both areas. First, there are internal, self-motivating and wikis are prevalent as well. Who are the major collaboration reasons for collaboration. For example, we Today, robust collaboration platforms platform vendors? According to research enjoy the recognition and validation we contain a growing list of features including conducted by Gartner, of the hundreds receive from peers for our ideas and our blogs, microblogs, wikis, versioning, alert- of providers, only three are considered work. After all, our peers are often more ing, rating, RSS, metrics, user manage- to be leaders in the platform space for capable of appreciating and valuing our ment, security, podcasting, search, mobile the workplace: Jive Software, IBM Lotus accomplishments than our employers. So, support, chat, polling, user profiles, dash- Connections and Microsoft SharePoint. collaboration fills an emotional need. It boards, workflows and calendars. Integra- Most of the smaller vendors focus also provides an outlet for our causes or at tion with e-mail, online services and the on niche areas, such as WordPress does least a vehicle through which to accom- ability to add external widgets from sites with blogs or Zoho does with online plish them. Most of us have our causes such as Flickr is important. Project man- meetings. Though many of these services — special topics or issues we are passion- agement features such as task tracking and provide plug-ins or APIs to offset their ate about and want the world to better sharing are becoming more important. For weaknesses, putting them together in a understand so that others will value them example, Microsoft is strengthening the tie coherent way that provides security and more as well. Collaboration provides a between Microsoft Project and SharePoint interoperability is nearly impossible. way of accomplishing that — a way to get for its 2010 release. That’s why most companies opt for a the word out, educate people and gather The better platforms can also man- collaboration platform that provides like-minded people. Once gathered, these age web pages, documents, graphics and the most desirable features along with a people can be mobilized to aid the cause. videos along with their source files. They framework that ties them all together for These causes might be anything from also integrate with content creation tools. security, search, maintenance and so on. helping people with rare forms of cancer Unfortunately, the ability to schedule, While small vendors work to make their to organizing an industry to better tackle host and document web meetings with products integrate with the platforms, its challenges and fulfill its purpose. Current trends toward increased collaboration are at least partially due to gen- erational differences. Generation X, those people born between 1961 and 1981, tends to value loyalty, seniority, security and authority. However, Generation Y — also known as the “Next” or “N Generation” — values creativity, social connectivity, fun, freedom, speed and diversity. These values make Generation Y more collaborative by nature. There are also external reasons for increased collaboration, as noted earlier. Consumers benefit by getting software for free or at a much-reduced cost. A motivator for companies is profit, especially profit via cost savings. Companies that have switched to open-source software

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such as Apache, Linux and OpenOffice in many ways better than any subset of this formula of community, open collabo- claim to have eliminated most of their people could create. Wikipedia, Apache, ration platform and a common purpose costs in these areas. Some companies OpenOffice and Linux have proven this. appears to be gaining momentum, and it with competing products have switched behooves us to try to learn how to best from duplicating competitors’ efforts to Current industry collaboration leverage these emerging models to further joining open-source communities and We have seen the first few examples of our professional objectives. contributing to foundation code that is crowdsourcing translation in the last two Once a functioning and active commu- shared by all. They then create software years. Common Sense Advisory defines nity is assembled and organized, there are to enhance the foundation code and sell collaborative translation as an emerging significant benefits for all. We are begin- that as a new way to generate revenue. approach to translation in which compa- ning to see several examples from outside nies use the elements of crowdsourcing in the professional translation industry that Collaboration opponents a controlled environment for working on are now driving the development of col- Here are some common issues and large corporate projects in short periods laborative communities and platforms. fears relating to collaboration in the of time. Common Sense also talks about It is not improbable that these outside Globalization 3.0 world along with their an experience that mixes community, initiatives could eventually bring about common counterpoints. crowdsourced and collaborative transla- fundamental and enduring changes to the First, it is increasingly difficult to tion to offer a translation that is quick, professional translation industry as well. monitor all the communications, tweets, of good quality and in tune with users’ Some examples clarify this and show conversations, Facebook statuses and experience. It can involve professional that this combination of community text messages of employees. Companies translators or not. We see that the lines (paid and/or volunteer), collaboration fear employees may compromise their between internal and external get much platform, increased automation and intellectual property, disclose release less clear, and collaboration and coopera- common purpose can exist both inside dates or disclose other confidential tion become an imperative. Recently, we and outside the enterprise. information. However, this risk can be have seen success at Facebook and many ■ The TED Open Translation Project mitigated by educating participants and others, and some uproar at LinkedIn. But has translated over 4,200 talks into 63 other means. Also, some of the less confidential information companies protect might be exchanged for knowledge that is more valuable to them, such as something they don’t already know. Second, increased collaboration, especially in regard to open-source initiatives, will result in more things becoming free. This is great for consumers but not for developers who are unable to secure rewards for their creativity and hard work. On the other hand, these efforts often serve to standardize platforms that minimize the duplication of platform work and integration issues. Developers can make money building and supporting add-ons to the standard platform. Third, collaboration fosters a sort of collectivism that places the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. While this is how some cultures operate, some Western cultures fear anything that hints remotely of socialism or commu- nism. This may be answered by taking it slow. Though it is difficult to predict the future or to assuage political fears, we can take one step at a time. Fourth, you can’t be sure of what you will get from strangers or crowds as they contain experts as well as opinion- ated non-experts. It’s a mixed bag. The counterpoint to this is that with the right process, technology and oversight, you can corral the efforts and knowledge of the crowd to produce a quality product,

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languages in just six months after build- chat communication easier and more industry were present at this conference, ing a platform and issuing an open call effective. and it is yet to be seen if the initiatives for volunteers. Another 4,000 more are ■ Yeeyan in China has steadily trans- from it will gain real momentum. in progress, and new languages are lated whole issues of the Economist and Some in the professional translation added constantly. the Guardian on a regular basis into Chi- industry are waking up to this chang- ■ IBM is using bilingual employees nese, using a network of 8,000 volunteer ing model. Lionbridge, GlobalSight and to develop and improve the quality of translators and a larger community of Lingotek come to mind, and hopefully statistical machine translation (SMT) reviewers around a collaboration plat- we will see others embrace openness systems designed to make cross-lingual form. In spite of occasional skirmishes and standards. Already, the open-source with censors, it continues today. They do Moses-based statistical engines are out- not use translation memory (TM). performing machine translation avail- ■ Adobe, Cisco, Symantec and others able from Google and other vendors. are similarly exploring translating high- These emerging trends present an value customer support content. opportunity for the most agile translation ■ EMC, Symantec, Facebook and oth- industry companies, which will lead the ers are expanding their localized language change rather than resist it. It is impor- coverage using the community in carefully tant for us as a community to begin to managed and administered collaboration collaborate and explore how to leverage platforms. these trends. We need to understand how ■ Meedan regularly translates news to evaluate and use collaboration plat- content between Arabic and English to forms, when and how to expand our use promote understanding and are even of automated translation technology and giving away a one-million-word TM to when, where and how to engage invested amta2010.amtaweb.org anybody who wants it. and willing communities whenever pos- ■ Microsoft is having highly moti- sible. These are the needs that new plat- vated Most Valuable Professional partners forms such as the L10NCafe are hoping edit and improve its machine translated to fill. knowledge base content to continue to Clearly, our industry is in the early improve the customer support experience. stages of organizing itself for productive Machine collaboration. The suggested model to Implications develop this is to implement a collabo- Translation We can expect that the processes and ration and communication platform to tools will get better. The forces that are improve and multiply our interactions. driving these initiatives are not based The community using such a platform in the on cost savings, as many believe. LISA could be much larger than any single recently conducted a survey showing that organization, company or group. This Production increased language coverage and deeper seems unlikely today with the large engagement with customers motivated number of associations, conferences and many global enterprises into exploring fractured interests that we see, but our Pipeline community collaboration projects. industry perhaps more than many others The global enterprise faces an explo- is actually well-suited to develop effec- sion of content. It is increasingly recog- tive collaboration models in an online nized that product-focused community community. In an open and trusted com- content often has higher value in terms munity, experts would emerge over time of building customer loyalty and is use- for all to see and consult with. Many of ful to translate. Some say the increase in these experts would be people you will the volume of translation-worthy content never meet at a conference. is at least tenfold and possibly as much Business author Peter Drucker has his as a hundredfold. Clearly, the old model own way of reconciling the past and future. cannot be the foundation for all of this He believes the acquisition of knowl- new content in future, either in terms of edge will supplant the acquisition and process or cost. distribution of property and income that Last summer, the Open Translation dominated recent centuries. That pursuit Tools Summit held in Amsterdam was is all about who can assimilate and make attended by tool builders, translators and use of the most relevant information the publishers motivated to make more infor- fastest. Collaboration, especially the open/ mation available across languages. Open- external type, provides an efficient way to source initiatives and tools now exist for assemble, filter, validate and disseminate many linguistic data management tools. knowledge. We can therefore expect to see Few from the professional translation much more of it in our future. M

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43-46 Vashee #111.indd 46 4/5/10 9:34:46 AM Buyer’s Guide AssociAtions 47 AutomAted trAnslAtion 47 conferences 47 major breakthrough in computer-aided translation. Without educAtion 47 AssociAtions human interaction, NoBabel creates new translation memories (TMs) as well as cleans, grades and increases leveraging enterprise solutions 47 of existing TMs. Automatic and accurate, the easy-to-use NoBabel Suite maintains a familiar work environment. With internAtionAlizAtion tools 48 NoBabel you lower costs and increase productivity. locAlizAtion services 48 KCSL Inc. 150 Ferrand Drive, Suite 904, Toronto, Ontario, M3C 3E5 Canada, 416 -222-6112, Fax: 416-222-6819, E-mail: customer_info multilinguAl softwAre 50 Globalization and Localization Association @kcsl.ca, Web: www.kcsl.ca See ad on page 38 peech echnologies Description The Globalization and Localization Association s t 51 (GALA) is a fully representative, nonprofit, international onferences trAnslAtion mgmt systems 51 industry association for the translation, internationalization, c localization and globalization industry. The association gives trAnslAtion services 51 members a common forum to discuss issues, create innovative solutions, promote the industry and offer clients unique, trAnslAtion tools 53 collaborative value. Globalization and Localization Association 23 Main Street, World on the conference map. Andover, MA 01810, 206-329-2596, Fax: 815-346-2361, E-mail: Localization World Localization World Ltd. 319 North 1st Avenue, Sandpoint, ID 83864, [email protected], Web: www.gala-global.org 208-263-8178, Fax: 208-263-6310, E-mail: notify@worldwarecon Description Localization World conferences are dedicated ference.com, Web: www.worldwareconference.com to the language and localization industries. Our constituents are the people responsible for communicating across the boundaries of language and culture in the global marketplace. enterprise solutions International product and marketing managers participate in Localization World from all sectors and all geographies to Translation Automation User Society meet language service and technology providers and to net- Description TAUS is a think tank for the translation industry, work with their peers. Hands-on practitioners come to share undertaking research for buyers and providers of translation their knowledge and experience and to learn from others. See services and technologies. Our mission is to increase the size our website for details on upcoming and past conferences. Localization World Ltd. 319 North 1st Avenue, Sandpoint, ID 83864, Across Systems and significance of the translation industry to help the world Multiple Platforms communicate better. To meet this ongoing goal, TAUS sup- 208-263-8178, Fax: 208-263-6310, E-mail: info@localizationworld .com, Web: www.localizationworld.com See ad on page 55 Languages All Description Across Language Server is the ports entrepreneurs and principals in the translation industry world’s leading independent linguistic supply chain tech- to share and define new strategies through a comprehensive nology. It provides a central software platform for corporate program of events, publications and communications. language resources and translation processes. The all-in-one Translation Automation User Society Oosteinde 9-11, 1483 AB De Rijp, enterprise solution includes a translation memory, a termi- The Netherlands, 31-299-672028, E-mail: info@translationauto nology system, and powerful PM and workflow control tools. mation.com, Web: www.translationautomation.com It allows end-to-end processing so that clients, LSPs and translators collaborate seamlessly. Open interfaces enable Worldware Conference the direct integration of CMS or ERP solutions, among oth- AutomAted trAnslAtion Description The Worldware Conference illuminates the ers. Across clients access the Language Server via LAN, WAN “why” and “what” of internationalization in a two-day or web, or as a hosted service. Across customers include conference setting. Subject matter experts from leading Volkswagen, HypoVereinsbank, SMA Solar Technology and companies offer indispensable insights into key topics for hundreds of other leading companies. any company delivering software to a global audience. The Across Systems GmbH D-76307 Karlsbad, Germany, 49-7248-925- formal conference is followed by a third workshop day for 425, E-mail: [email protected] hands-on inclined attendees who just can’t live without a Across Systems Inc. Glendale, CA 91203, 877-922-7677, E-mail: little bit of guidance in the “how.” The Worldware Confer- [email protected] Human Language Technologies ence is produced by the same team that placed Localization Web: www.across.net See ads on pages 2, 56 Multiple Platforms Languages Arabic, Bahasa, Dari, Dutch, Egyptian dialect, English, Farsi/Persian, French, German, Hebrew, Iraqi dia- educAtion lect, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu Description AppTek is a developer of human language technology products with a complete suite for text and speech (voice) processing and recognition. AppTek’s product offerings include hybrid (rule- based + statistical) machine translation (MT) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) for a growing list of more than 23 languages; multilingual information retrieval with query and topic search capabilities; name-finding applications; and integrated suites providing ASR and MT in media monitoring of broadcast and telephony speech, as well as handheld and wearable speech-to-speech translation devices. AppTek 6867 Elm Street, Suite 300, McLean, VA 22101, 703-394-2317, Fax: 703-821-5001, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.apptek.com

KCSL Inc. Languages All Description KCSL has developed many successful commercial products, including international spell and grammar checkers, electronic references, and multilingual search engines. Licensing to hundreds of entities, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and the Canadian government, has created a worldwide user base of over 200 million people. Integrating natural language processing, multilingual search, and statistical methods, NoBabel™ Translator is a

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internAtionAlizAtion tools

Lingotek Collaborative Translation Platform Beijing E-C Translation Ltd. Multiple Platforms Languages Asian Description Beijing E-C Translation Ltd., Languages Supports all language pairs Description Lingotek one of the largest localization and translation companies in is a software company in Salt Lake City, Utah. We have Advanced Leveraging Translation Memory China, focuses mainly on software and website localization; developed the world’s first Collaborative Translation Platform. Multiple Platforms technical, financial, medical, patent and marketing transla- The software platform incorporates translation memory Languages All Unicode languages Description MultiCorpora, tions; and desktop publishing services. We use TRADOS, storage and retrieval, terminology management, machine celebrating ten years as the language technology experts, is SDLX, CATALYST, TTT/PC, STAR Transit, Robohelp, translation, project management and workflow engine, all dedicated to providing language technology solutions to FrameMaker, PageMaker, InDesign, QuarkXPress, MS Office sitting on top of a massive data warehouse of centralized lan- enterprises, language service providers and governments. Its and other graphic and DTP tools. Having more than 150 full- guage data. We deliver our software to our customers in a tra- flagship product, MultiTrans, pioneered the advanced lever- time employees located in Beijing, Taipei, Singapore, Seoul, ditional enterprise software install and software-as-a-service aging TM concept that features hassle-free document pair Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenyang and Chengdu, we can han- (SaaS) model via the web. In many ways, we’re enterprise alignment, recycles past translations with context at a granu- dle English/German into and from Simplified Chinese/Trad- software with a social twist. We’re focused on delivering com- lar level and provides an on-the-fly view of how ambiguous itional Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Thai. We guarantee that mercial grade productivity software to companies to engage terms were previously translated. MultiTrans is an innova- clients’ projects will be handled not only by native speakers, their social and customer networks. tive client-server application with a best-in-class terminol- but also by topic specialists. Clients can expect and will ogy management system, designed to transform translation Lingotek 15 Scenic Pointe Drive, Suite 325, Draper, UT 84020, receive high-quality services, on-time delivery and low cost. 877-852-4231, 801-727-1580, Fax: 801-727-1581, E-mail: sales expenses into a growing repository of reusable assets. The Beijing E-C Translation Ltd. 2nd Floor, Hua Teng Development @lingotek.com, Web: www.lingotek.com See ad on page 5 Translation Bureau of Canada, UNESCO, Toys “R” Us, Kraft, Building, No. 23, Xi Huan Bei Road, BDA, Beijing Economic- HSBC and many others have selected MultiTrans as their Technological Development Zone, Beijing 100176, P.R. China, 86- multilingual asset management solution. 10-67868761, Fax: 86-10-67868765, E-mail: service@e-cchina MultiCorpora 102-490 St. Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, Quebec, .com, Web: www.e-cchina.com J8Y 3Y7 Canada, 819-778-7070, 877-725-7070, Fax: 819-778- 0801, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.multicorpora.com See ad on page 21 Advanced Leveraging Translation Memory Multiple Platforms Languages All Unicode languages Description MultiCorpora, locAlizAtion services celebrating ten years as the language technology experts, is Binari Sonori dedicated to providing language technology solutions to Description Binari Sonori is a leading provider of interna- enterprises, language service providers and governments. Its tional media localization services since 1994, with a unique flagship product, MultiTrans, pioneered the advanced lever- team of project managers, studios, engineers and selected lin- aging TM concept that features hassle-free document pair guists spread over 30 countries worldwide. Solid procedures and transparent relationships with clients guarantee high alignment, recycles past translations with context at a granu- quality of text, audio and video, timeliness and flexibility. lar level and provides an on-the-fly view of how ambiguous terms were previously translated. MultiTrans is an innova- ADAPT Localization Services tive client-server application with a best-in-class terminol- Languages More than 50 Description ADAPT Localization ogy management system, designed to transform translation Services offers the full range of services that enables clients expenses into a growing repository of reusable assets. The to be successful in international markets, from documen- Translation Bureau of Canada, UNESCO, Toys “R” Us, Kraft, tation design through translation, linguistic and technical HSBC and many others have selected MultiTrans as their localization services, pre-press and publication management. multilingual asset management solution. Serving both Fortune 500 and small companies, ADAPT has gained a reputation for quality, reliability, technological MultiCorpora 102-490 St. Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, Quebec, J8Y 3Y7 Canada, 819-778-7070, 877-725-7070, Fax: 819-778- competence and a commitment to customer service. Fields 0801, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.multicorpora.com of specialization include diagnostic and medical devices, See ad on page 21 IT/telecom and web content. With offices in Bonn, Germany, Stockholm, Sweden, and Barcelona, Spain, and a number of certified partner companies, ADAPT is well suited to help clients achieve their goals in any market. ADAPT Localization Services Clemens-August-Strasse 16-18, 53115 Bonn, Germany, 49-228-98-22-60, Fax: 49-228-98-22-615, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.adapt-localization.com STAR Group See ad on page 45 Multiple Platforms Languages All Description STAR Group was founded in Switzerland 26 years ago with the exclusive focus of facili- tating cross-cultural technical communications in all languages. The company has grown to be the largest privately held multilingual information technology and services company in the world with 42 offices in 32 countries. Its Alliance Localization China, Inc. (ALC) advanced technology developments have propelled STAR to Languages Major Asian and European languages Description its current market position. Core services: information man- ALC offers document, website and software translation and agement, translation, localization, publishing, on-demand localization, desktop publishing, and interpreter services. printing, consulting. Core technologies: Transit (translation We focus on English, German and other European languages memory), TermStar/WebTerm (terminology management), to and from Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian GRIPS (product information management), MindReader languages. We use TRADOS, CATALYST, SDLX, Transit (context-sensitive authoring assistance), STAR CLM (corpo- and other CAT tools, as well as DTP tools including Corel- rate language management), STAR CPM (corporate process Draw, FrameMaker, FreeHand, Illustrator, InDesign, Page- management), i-KNOW (competence management), and Maker, Photoshop and QuarkXPress. Our customer-oriented SPIDER (Interactive Electronic Technical Manual). approach is supported by strong project management, a team STAR Group Wiesholz 35, 8262 Ramsen, Switzerland, 41-52- of specialists, a large knowledge base and advanced method- 742-9200, 216-691-7827, E-mail: [email protected], Web: ologies. We always provide service beyond our customers’ www.star-group.net See ads on pages 7, 19, 29, 31 expectations at a low cost and with high quality, speed, dependability and flexibility. Alliance Localization China, Inc. Suite 318, Building B, Number 10 Search industry events at Xing Huo Road, Fengtai Science Park, Beijing 100070, P.R. China, 86- 10-8368-2169, Fax: 86-10-8368-2884, E-mail: customer_care@ www.multilingual.com/calendar allocalization.com, Web: www.allocalization.com

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We are accustomed to working for global companies that e-learning solutions and online applications. Other globaliza- need to reach a broad range of markets with their media and tion services include quality assurance testing (hardware and entertainment products. Specialized support for any media software), integration of content management solutions, inter- localization activity, from effective audio localization to pretation (170+ languages), cultural training and assessment, international content creation. Highly professionalized one- and internationalization consulting. Lingo Systems has never stop shop supporting today’s media localization projects. Interpro Translation Solutions caused a late release. No other firm makes this claim. For a free Binari Sonori S.r.l. Viale Fulvio Testi, 11, 20092 Cinisello Balsamo, Languages All modern languages Description Since 1995, copy of our award-winning book, The Guide to Translation and Milano, Italy, 39-02-61866-310, Fax: 39-02-61866-313, E-mail: Interpro Translation Solutions has been providing world- Localization — Communicating with the Global Marketplace, [email protected], Web: www.binarisonori.com See ad on class language translation, software and web content lo- visit www.lingosys.com or call 800-878-8523. page 41 calization, desktop publishing and project management Lingo Systems 15115 SW Sequoia Parkway, Suite 200, Portland, OR solutions, enabling our clients to deliver multilingual prod- 97224, 503-419-4856, 800-878-8523, Fax: 503-419-4873, E-mail: ucts to their global audiences. Adapting products, services [email protected], Web: www.lingosys.com See ad on page 25 and corporate messaging to each potential target market’s language requires an experienced team of professionals in order to get it done right the first time because you don’t always get a second chance. Our mission is to assist our cli- EuroGreek Translations Limited ents in gaining revenue, market share and user satisfaction Language Greek Description Established in 1986, EuroGreek by providing the highest quality and most comprehensive LinguaGraphics — Multilingual DTP; Web, Translations Limited is Europe’s number one Greek local- language services available in the market. Flash and Software Localization; Engineering izer, specializing in technical and medical translations from Interpro Translation Solutions 4200 Commerce Court, Suite 204, Languages All, including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Farsi, English into Greek and Greek into English. EuroGreek’s aim Lisle, IL 60532, 630-245-7150, Toll-free: 877-232-3277, Fax: 630- 245-7155, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.interproinc.com Greek, Hindi, Hebrew, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, is to provide high-quality, turnkey solutions, encompassing a Punjabi, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese whole range of client needs, from plain translation to desk- Description LinguaGraphics is a leading provider in the top/web publishing to localization development and testing. area of multilingual desktop publishing and web/soft- Over the years, EuroGreek’s services have been extended to ware/Flash localization engineering. Our seasoned DTP cover most subject areas, including German and French into professionals and localization engineers are working with the Greek localization services. All of EuroGreek’s work is pro- latest tools on top-of-the-line equipment to produce a wide duced in-house by a team of 25 highly qualified specialists The Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Turkish partner range of projects in InDesign, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, and is fully guaranteed for quality and on-time delivery. Languages Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Turkish, French, Photoshop and Flash. We specialize in typesetting high-end EuroGreek Translations Limited Italian, German, Spanish, English Description Intertrans- marketing and communications-type material in difficult London 27 Lascotts Road, London, N22 8JG UK lations Ltd is a leading Greek translation and localiza- and rare languages at very competitive rates. For a quote on Athens EuroGreek House, 93 Karagiorga Street, Athens 16675, Greece, 30-210-9605-244, Fax: 30-210-9647-077, E-mail: production@ tion service provider, established in 1995, with extensive your next project, please visit us at www.linguagraphics.com. eurogreek.gr, Web: www.eurogreek.com See ad on page 37 experience in medical and pharmaceutical products and You have our word that we will never compromise on quality equipment, legal, financial, mechanical, automotive, engi- and do the utmost to make your project a success. neering, electrical, technical, software, media and market- LinguaGraphics, Inc. 194 Park Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238, 718- ing, tourism, health and nutrition, the food industry and so 623-3066, 718-789-2782, E-mail: [email protected], Web: on. Among the tools used to ensure the quality of our pro- www.linguagraphics.com jects are TRADOS, Transit, SDLX and other CAT tools and for DTP, InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop, QuarkXPress, Illustrator, CorelDraw and FrameMaker. We proudly have ES Localisation Services Ltd. acquired the following certifications: ISO 9001:2000, DIN Languages Turkish, Arabic and other regional languages EN 15038:2006-08 and are members of ATC, GALA and Description Since 1994, ES has provided full-fledged local- LISA. We provide free samples upon request. ization services to industry leaders mainly in software lo- Logrus International Corporation Intertranslations Ltd 4 El. Venizelou Street, 176 76 Athens, Greece, calization, translation, DTP, engineering, QA and voiceover Languages EE, EA, ME, WE, rare languages Description 30-210-92-25-000, Fax: 30-210-92-25-500, E-mail: a.arvanitis@ Logrus offers a full set of localization and translation services areas. ES has managed to increase its capacity, workload and intertranslations.gr, Web: www.intertranslations.gr number of customers every year, has a solid customer base for various industries, including top-notch software engi- and is proud of its successful past assignments. ES has pro- neering and testing and DTP for all languages, including duction offices in Turkey and Egypt for Turkish and Arabic bidirectional and double-byte ones. The company is proud languages and currently has 49 permanent staff. The most of its unique problem-solving skills and minimal support requirements. The company offers all European and Asian important asset of ES is its human resources. ES is a reliable, New markets for your experienced, value-added regional supplier for direct clients products and solutions languages as well as many rare languages through its offices and MLVs worldwide. Janus Worldwide Inc. and established long-term partners. With its production site ES Localisation Services Ltd. Cenap Sahabettin Sk. No: 29, Kosuyolu Languages Russian, ex-USSR and Eastern European lan- in Moscow, Russia, Logrus provides a winning combination 34718 Istanbul, Turkey, 90-216-3268764, Fax: 90-216-3254859, guages Description Janus provides translation, localization, of quality, experience and affordability. With over 14 years E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.estr.com See ad on page 10 DTP and linguistic consulting for Russian, Ukrainian and in business, the company has received multiple awards for other European languages. Our deep expertise, flexibility, excellence from its long-time customers, including IBM, diversity and exceptional value of services are recognized by Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and others. many industry-leading customers and partners worldwide. Logrus International Corporation Suite 305, 2600 Philmont Ave- Our uniqueness is a solid team of the best professionals in all nue, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006, 215-947-4773, Fax: 215-947-4773, relevant areas — localization engineers, language specialists, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.logrus.ru QA officers, DTP and software engineers, and more. We do it iDISC Information Technologies end-to-end — from servers to handhelds, from ERP to auto- Languages Spanish (all variants), Catalan, Basque, Galician motive solutions and from interface specifications to legal Description iDISC, established in 1987, is a privately-held notices. Janus is ISO 9001:2000 certified. Company activities translation company based in Barcelona that focuses on including translating, localizing, DTP and linguistic consult- localization into all variants of Spanish (European, Latin ing were subjected to audit. Loquant Localization Services American, USA and Neutral) and the other languages spoken Janus Worldwide Inc. Derbenevskaya nab., 11B, Ofﬁce 113, Moscow Languages English, Brazilian Portuguese Description Loquant in Spain (Catalan, Basque and Galician). Services range from 115114, Russia, 7-495-913-66-53, Fax: 7-495-913-66-53, E-mail: bases its operations on the experience of its founders and translation and localization to engineering, testing, DTP and [email protected], Web: www.janus.ru See ad on page 8 collaborators, professionals who closely follow the ongoing consulting. Specialization fields are software localization, evolution of technology and the latest processes in interna- technical and telecom documentation, ERP, automotive and tionalization and localization of information. Adhering to related marketing material. We have all commercially avail- rigorous processes that were developed by the software local- able tools and experience using many different proprietary ization industry during the last few decades, Loquant is able customer platforms and solutions; internal workflow portal- to prepare the most diverse products for the primary world based tools to reduce management costs and increase quality, markets. To do this, Loquant counts on the best project man- consistency and on-time deliveries; and continuous support Lingo Systems, Translation & Localization agers, native translators, engineers and desktop publishers to to the client PMs and process optimization to achieve the best Languages 170+ Description Lingo Systems, powered by guarantee a quality control recognized internationally by the project results and establish long-term honest partnerships. Language Line Services, provides customer-focused sole-source main international standards organizations. iDISC Information Technologies Passeig del progrés 96, 08640 solutions for global companies in 170+ languages. We special- Loquant Localization Services Rua Luís Carlos Prestes, 410/114, Olesa de Montserrat, Barcelona, Spain, 34-93-778-73-00, Fax: 34- ize in the translation and localization of technical documen- 22775-055, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 55-21-2104-9597, Fax: 55-21- 93-778-35-80, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.idisc.es tation, software, multimedia applications, training materials, 2104-9597, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.loquant.com

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creative and proactive to meet tight time frames with a high- quality level and a cost-effective budget. Customizing its processes, Ushuaia assures project consistency and technical and linguistic accuracy, thus reducing clients’ time-to-market. Ushuaia combines state-of-the-art technology with top-notch MO Group International Promova experienced native translators, editors and software engineers. Languages 40+ Description MO Group International is a Languages Major European languages into Russian and Our mission is to work together with our clients, thereby cre- Brussels-based company with many years of experience in Ukrainian Description Promova is a translation and local- ating a flexible, reliable and open relationship for success. translation, localization and testing in 40+ languages. We are ization company based in Ukraine providing a full scope of Ushuaia Solutions Rioja 919, S2000AYK Rosario, Argentina, 54- dedicated to achieving high-quality translations for all your language-related services including translation, localization, 341-4493064, Fax: 54-341-4492542, E-mail: info@ushuaia multilingual needs in a wide range of fields such as video QA check, DTP, linguistic testing, copywriting and consult- solutions.com, Web: www.ushuaiasolutions.com See ad on page 44 games, software, automotive, medical and marketing collat- ing. We focus on large-scale, long-term projects for clients eral translation. With our streamlined localization and QA with unique requirements. We offer professionalism and ISO processes, experienced project managers, and native transla- 9001-certified quality, integrate best-technology solutions on tors, testers and QA professionals, your translation/localiza- the market, and ensure effective management and best time- tion projects will be a success on budget and on time every frames while adhering to even the tightest budgets. time. We strive to become a strong and proactive partner Promova Velyka Goncharivska 9, 18, Kharkiv 61052, Ukraine, 38-057- VistaTEC 760-14-13, Fax: 38-057-372-89-27, E-mail: [email protected], Languages All Description VistaTEC is a leading provider with all our clients. Web: www.promova.com.ua MO Group International Gulledelle 94, 1200 Brussels, Belgium, 32- of globalization services and specializes in the localization 2-771-19-12, Fax: 32-2-772-20-97, E-mail: [email protected], and testing of enterprise, mobile and desktop applications. Web: www.mogi-translations.com VistaTEC provides translation, technical consulting, engineering and testing during the design, development and marketing cycles of software products. VistaTEC has headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, and satellite offices in the United PTIGlobal States. Additional information on VistaTEC is available at Languages All commercial languages for Europe, Asia www.vistatec.ie and the Americas Description PTIGlobal is committed to VistaTEC Moravia Worldwide Europe VistaTEC House, 700 South Circular Road, Kilmainham, Languages All Description Moravia Worldwide is a lead- developing ongoing, long-term partnerships with its clients. Dublin 8, Ireland, 353-1-416-8000, Fax: 353-1-416-8099, E-mail: ing globalization solution provider, enabling companies This means a dedication to personal service, responsiveness, [email protected], Web: www.vistatec.ie in the information technology, e-learning, life sciences high-quality output, and sensitivity to clients’ cost goals and USA East 2706 Loma Street, Silver Spring, MD 20902, 301-649-3012, and financial industries to enter global markets with high- timelines. Backed by over 30 years of experience in techni- Fax: 301-649-3032, E-mail: [email protected] quality multilingual products. Moravia’s solutions include cal translation, PTIGlobal provides turnkey localization USA West 131 Shady Lane, Monterey, CA 93940, 831-655-1717, localization and product testing services, internationaliza- services in 30 languages simultaneously for software, web Fax: 831-372-5838, E-mail: [email protected] tion, multilingual publishing and technical translation. applications, embedded devices, wireless applications and See ad on page 36 Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems gaming technology. Projects employ our expertise in end-to- and Symantec are among some of the companies that end project management; internationalization consultation; depend on Moravia Worldwide for accurate, on-time local- glossary development; native language translation; multilin- ization. Moravia Worldwide maintains global headquarters gual web content management; translation memory mainte- in the Czech Republic and North American headquarters nance; localization engineering; linguistic and functionality in California, with local offices and production centers in testing; desktop publishing; complete multilingual video and WhP International Ireland, China, Japan and throughout Europe. To learn more, audio services; as well as onsite managed services. Languages All European and major Middle Eastern and Asian please visit www.moraviaworldwide.com PTIGlobal 4915 SW Grifﬁth Drive, Suite 200, Beaverton, OR 97005, languages, including local variants Description Established Moravia Worldwide 503-297-2165, 888-357-3125, Fax: 503-352-0729, E-mail: info@ in 1994, WhP offers a wide range of linguistic and techno- USA 199 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360, ptiglobal.com, Web: www.ptiglobal.com logical solutions, designed to match each client’s needs. WhP 805-557-1700, 800-276-1664, Fax: 805-557-1702, E-mail: info@ has over several years become a renowned player in the local- moraviaworldwide.com, Web: www.moraviaworldwide.com ization world, with a yearly average growth rate of 20% since Asia 86-25-8473-2772, E-mail: [email protected] 2005. By committing huge efforts and best practices, WhP Europe 420-545-552-222, E-mail: [email protected] Ireland 353-1-216-4102, E-mail: [email protected] has gained the loyalty of international accounts in the fields Japan 81-3-3354-3320, E-mail: [email protected] of IT and telecom, industry, business and web applications, See ad on page 26 TOIN Corporation training and e-learning, video games and more. WhP has its headquarters in France with local offices and production Languages Japanese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese and European languages centers in China and Slovakia. Description TOIN is a solidly established Asian MLV with WhP Espace Beethoven BP102, F06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, Your Vision. Worldwide. France, 33-493-00-40-30, Fax: 33-493-00-40-34, E-mail: enquiry more than 45 years’ experience. Our services encompass trans- @whp.net, Web: www.whp.net lation, localization engineering, DTP, MT post-editing, workflow/process consulting and project management. TOIN offers Worldwide Localization and Translation global reach and exceptional strength in Asia, with headquar- multilinguAl softwAre Languages 60+ Description Net-Translators specializes in ters in Tokyo and additional operations in the United States, software localization and translation into more than 60 lan- Europe, China and Korea. The company has been helping guages. Our localization, internationalization and multilin- Global 1000 companies in industries such as automotive, IT, gual testing services instill the confidence that the product is telecommunications, life sciences, e-learning, computer soft- accurately and consistently localized, translated and tested. ware/gaming, semiconductors and consumer products. Our translators are industry specific and have amassed a TOIN Corporation wealth of experience in their particular areas of expertise. Japan Shiba 1-chome Building, 1-12-7 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo Unitype Multilingual Software — We have a proficient in-house multilingual staff of project 105-0014 Japan, 81-3-3455-8764, Fax: 81-3-3455-6514, E-mail: Type a World of Languages managers, QA professionals and DTP specialists who provide [email protected], Web: www.to-in.co.jp Languages Over 100 languages Description Unitype multi- world-class service to our customers. Our staff remains on the North America Minneapolis, MN, 612-926-0201, E-mail: aki-ito@ lingual products — Global Writer, Global Office and Global cutting edge of CAT, QA and DTP technology. Net-Translators to-in.co.jp, Web: www.to-in.com Suite — run on Microsoft Windows and include over 100 Europe London, UK, 44-20-8644-8685, E-mail: michael-stephenson is ISO 9001:2000 certified, and we maintain branch offices in modern and ancient languages — Middle East, Far East, the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. @to-in.co.jp, Web: www.to-in.com China Shanghai, 86-21-3222-0012, E-mail: [email protected], India, other Asia, Africa, Europe and more. Unitype Global Net-Translators Worldwide Web: www.to-in.com Writer is a standalone multilingual word processor; is fully USA 1250 Oakmead Parkway, Suite 210, Sunnyvale, CA 94085- bidirectional; creates Unicode-compliant documents; and 4037, 408-501-8839, Fax: 408-212-8956, E-mail: salesusca@ imports/exports international encoding standards. Unitype net-translators.com Global Office is a plug-in product allowing the user to type Europe 44-20-3393-8385, E-mail: [email protected] Israel 972-3-5338633, Fax: 972-3-5336956, E-mail: salesil@net- Unitype languages directly into Microsoft Office Word, Excel, translators.com, Web: www.net-translators.com See ad on page 40 PowerPoint and Outlook. Unitype Global Suite includes both Ushuaia Solutions Global Writer and Global Office. See www.unitype.com for Languages Spanish (all varieties), Portuguese (Brazil) Des- more information and a complete language list. Stay current. Stay informed. cription Ushuaia Solutions is a fast-growing Latin American Unitype, LLC 116-A Mockingbird Lane, Lockhart, TX 78644, 512-620- www.multilingual.com/news company providing solutions for translation, localization and 0384, Fax: 512-233-0094, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www globalization needs. Ushuaia Solutions is focused on being .unitype.com

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team is able to handle projects of any complexity. We guar- speech technologies trAnslAtion services antee a professional and personal approach to our clients’ needs, the use of state-of-the-art industrial technology, quality management at all stages of a project, on-time delivery, competitive rates and flexibility. We have extensive expertise in the following industries: IT, software, hardware, telecommunications, medical equipment, medicine, pharmacology, accounting, finance, automotive industry, electronics, legisla- Arcadia Translations tion, and EU documents. AppTek Diskusija Seimyniskiu g. 1A, Vilnius LT-09312, Lithuania, 370-5- Languages Arabic, Bahasa, Dari, Dutch, Egyptian dialect, Languages English, Spanish (all variants), Brazilian Portu- guese Description Arcadia Translations, a translation agency 2790574, Fax: 370-5-2790576, E-mail: [email protected], Web: English, Farsi/Persian, French, German, Hebrew, Iraqi dialect, www.diskusija.lt Italian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, based in Argentina, provides translation and localization Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog, Traditional Chinese, services from English into Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu Description AppTek is a developer We value quality, words and communication, and we offer of human language technology products with a complete integral linguistic solutions that include a wide range of ser- suite for text and speech (voice) processing and recognition. vices such as translation, editing and proofreading of docu- AppTek’s product offerings include hybrid (rule-based + sta- mentation, software localization, web solutions, voice-over tistical) machine translation (MT) and automatic speech rec- and DTP services. We have an experienced in-house staff ognition (ASR) for a growing list of more than 23 languages; who guarantees our high standard of quality. Our values as Eriksen Translations Inc. multilingual information retrieval with query and topic search a company are cost-effectiveness, responsiveness, customer- Languages All Description Eriksen Translations Inc. is a capabilities; name-finding applications; and integrated suites oriented service, reliability and fast turnaround. leading provider of multilingual services, including transla- providing ASR and MT in media monitoring of broadcast and Arcadia Translations Avenida Corrientes 2032 1º E, CP 1045, Buenos tion, interpreting, typesetting, project management, web telephony speech, as well as handheld and wearable speech- Aires, Argentina, 54-11-4954-3973, Fax: 54-11-4954-3973, E-mail: localization and cultural consulting. For over 20 years, [email protected], Web: www.arcadia-t.com to-speech translation devices. Eriksen has helped a broad range of organizations in both AppTek 6867 Elm Street, Suite 300, McLean, VA 22101, 703-394-2317, the public and private sectors excel across print, desktop and Fax: 703-821-5001, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.apptek.com web environments in the domestic global marketplace. With a worldwide network of over 5,000 linguists, a commitment to leading technologies, and an in-house staff dedicated to tai- trAnslAtion loring our proven project management process to the individ- Biro 2000 — Your partner for Eastern ual needs of each client, Eriksen is your globalization partner. mAnAgement systems European Languages Eriksen Translations Inc. 32 Court Street, 20th Floor, Brooklyn, NY Languages Eastern European languages Description Biro 11201, 718-802-9010, Fax: 718-802-0041, E-mail: [email protected], 2000 is located in the heart of Europe (Slovenia). We’ve been Web: www.eriksen.com in business since 1992. Our clients come from all areas of industry, but for the past few years our work priorities have concentrated on the following areas of expertise: life sciences, legal, IT, cell phone, automotive and technical industries. Our Plunet BusinessManager work has focused on Eastern European la nguages. We work according to the EN 15038 standard. We utilize the following Multiple Platforms Languages All Description Plunet BusinessManager is the programs in our work: MemoQ server, Trados SDL Synergy, Across Language Server and Transit XV. Follow-Up Translation Services complete management solution for the translation and Languages English, Brazilian Portuguese Description Our documentation industry. On a web-based platform, the sys- Biro 2000 d.o.o. Jerebova ulica 14, 1270 Litija, Slovenia, 386-1-513- 18-20, Fax: 386-1513-18-21, E-mail: [email protected], Web: company was founded in 1989, with the purpose of offer- tem includes business management as well as process and www.biro2000.si See ad on page 9 ing pure translation work in technical and scientific areas. document management and integrates translation software, Along the way, we have developed several other skills in the financial accounting systems and existing software environ- translation world, which involve specialized knowledge of ments for LSPs, translation and documentation departments, IT resources and localization tools. We also master patent organizations, institutions and government agencies. Plunet translations in fields such as biochemistry, mechanics, medi- BusinessManager impresses with its significant time and cine, pharmaceutics, oil and gas, and telecommunications. money savings, unrivalled high adaptability to individual Today, we are capable of taking on virtually any translation/ workflows, optimal quality control and effective project, CETRA Language Solutions localization project from English into Brazilian Portuguese, time and contact management. Functions include quotation Languages All Description CETRA gives you peace of mind and we treat each and every customer with the maximum costing, order/job/workflow management, schedule manage- because it delivers high-quality, on-time, cross-cultural com- care and attention. Our clients’ trust is our greatest asset and ment, document management, invoicing, financial reports, munications and professional, friendly, responsive service. our greatest pride! contact management and customer acquisition. CETRA follows the ASTM Quality Assurance in Translation Follow-Up Rua Visconde de Pirajá, 351, Sala 815, Rio de Janeiro, Plunet GmbH Prenzlauer Allee 214, 10405 Berlin, Germany, 49-30- and Language Interpretation Services standard guides. As RJ 22410-003 Brazil, 55-21-3553-7223, Fax: 55-21-3553-7223, 322971340, Fax: 49-30-322971359, E-mail: [email protected], Web: E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.follow-up.com.br www.plunet.de See ads on pages 11, 33 a member of the US delegation to ISO, CETRA is actively involved in developing an international translation quality standard. CETRA is involved in the language industry at the highest level, with the company president serving in leadership positions at the American Translators Association, American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation, and Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs. XTRF Translation Management Systems CETRA, Inc. 7804 Montgomery Ave., Suites 8-10, Elkins Park, PA ForeignExchange Translations Multiple Platforms 19027, 215-635-7090, 888-281-9673, Fax: 215-635-6610, E-mail: Languages 42 languages and growing Description Foreign- [email protected], Web: www.cetra.com Description XTRF is a global management system for trans- Exchange is the global leader in providing translation ser- lation agencies. With built-in cutting-edge Java technology, vices to life sciences companies. We work with many of the XTRF is a flexible, customizable and web-based software, biggest pharmaceutical companies, medical device manu- enabling web access for a company’s suppliers and custom- facturers, biotech companies and CROs. Our proprietary ers. It’s designed to help translation companies to streamline Multilingual Compliance Process combines expert linguists, all of their daily activities, and it guarantees smooth manage- best-of-breed technology and measurable translation qual- ment of the company while reducing administrative costs. ity in a process that is both robust and completely scalable, Project management, invoicing, quotations, ISO 9001 reports Diskusija – Baltic and CEE languages provider ensuring your projects are finished on time and within bud- and CRM are the main fields covered by the system. Designed Languages Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Bosnian, Bulgar- get. For more information on how we can help meet your by translation and localization professionals and created by ian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slo- translation requirements or for a quote on your next transla- the best IT team, this powerful tool will reduce the time spent venian, Ukrainian Description Founded in 1993, Diskusija tion project, please contact us directly or visit our website at on repetitive tasks and increase a company’s effectiveness. specializes in technical translation and localization services www.fxtrans.com XTRF ul. Walerego Sławka 3, 30-653 Krak´ow, Poland, 48-12-2546- from Western European languages into all Central and East- ForeignExchange Translations 411 Waverley Oaks Road, Suite 315, 126, Fax: 48-12-2546-122, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.xtrf.eu ern European languages with a strong focus on Baltic lan- Waltham, MA 02452, 866-398-7267, 781-893-0013, Fax: 781- See ad on page 33 guages (Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian). Our experienced 893-0012, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.fxtrans.com

www.multilingual.com April/May 2010 MultiLingual | 51

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localization and DTP services, primarily for life sciences, IT, automotive, refrigeration and other technology sectors. We work with multilanguage vendors and directly with documentation departments of large multinational customers. Our in-house team (12 full-time specialists) is comprised of KERN Global Language Services Medical Translations Only experienced linguists with medical, engineering and IT back- Your language partner Languages All European languages and Japanese Description grounds. We guarantee a high standard of quality while main- Languages All Description KERN Global Language Services MediLingua is one of the few medical translation special- taining flexibility, unparalleled responsiveness and reliability. is a leading provider in the area of global communication ists in Europe. We only do medical. We provide all European Ryszard Jarza Translations ul. Barlickiego 23/22, 50-324 Wrocław, with over 35 offices worldwide. With more than 30 years of languages (36 today and counting) and Japanese as well as Poland, 48-601-728018, Fax: 48-71-3414441, E-mail: info@jarza .com.pl, Web: www.jarza.com.pl See ad on page 37 experience, our services include translation and interpreting translation-related services to manufacturers of devices, instru- in all languages; software, multimedia and website localiza- ments, in vitro diagnostics and software; pharmaceutical and tion; terminology management; multilingual desktop pub- biotechnology companies; medical publishers; national and lishing; and individual and corporate language training in all international medical organizations; and other customers in major languages. KERN has established itself as a preferred the medical sector. Projects include the translation of docu- insourcing and outsourcing solution provider for language mentation for medical devices, surgical instruments, hospital services. We serve clients in all industry sectors, including equipment and medical software; medical information for the automotive, medical, pharmaceutical, chemical, IT and patients, medical students and physicians; scientific articles; Skrivanek s.r.o. financial services industries. To learn more about us, please press releases; product launches; clinical trial documentation; Languages All, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe visit www.e-kern.com medical news; and articles from medical journals. Description Skrivanek is a world leader in providing a wide range of language services, specifically translations span- KERN Global Language Services MediLingua Medical Translations BV Poortgebouw, Rijnsburger- USA 230 Park Avenue, Suite 1517, New York, NY 10169, 212-953- weg 10, 2333 AA Leiden, The Netherlands, 31-71-5680862, Fax: 31- ning a multitude of languages and the effective localization 2070, Fax: 212-953-2073, E-mail: [email protected] 71-5234660, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www of products on international markets. Established in 1994, Europe Kurfuerstenstrasse 1, 60486 Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 49- .medilingua.com See ad on page 37 Skrivanek has managed to dominate the European transla- 69-7560730, Fax: 49-69-751353, E-mail: [email protected] tion market, creating a network of 53 branches covering China Right Emperor Commercial Building, Unit B, 11/F, 122-126 14 countries. Its well-stocked staff of professional transla- Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong, SAR China, 852-2850-4455, tors, experienced project managers and dedicated software Fax: 852-2850-4466, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.e-kern.com engineers and DTP specialists has enabled Skrivanek to provide outstanding quality translation and localization services in any conceivable language and volume, creating an enviable clientele representing major leading corporations in various Neotech industries. Skrivanek’s quality of service is backed by EN ISO Languages From major European languages into Russian, 9001:2001 certification. Ukrainian, Kazakh and Azeri Description Neotech is the larg- Skrivanek s.r.o. International Project Management Centre, Na LIDO-LANG Technical Translations est translation company in Russia and CIS countries, offer- Dolinách 22, CZ 147 00 Prague 4, 420-233-320-560, Fax: 420-241- Languages All Description LIDO-LANG Technical Trans- ing a full range of linguistic services to global corporations. 090-946, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.skrivanek.com lations, based in Poland, is one of the leading translation Neotech is the first translation company on the Russian mar- See ad on page 15 companies in Central Europe. Having the capacity to offer ket that has certified its quality management system to inter- services in virtually all world languages, we specialize in national ISO 9001:2000 standards. Neotech’s key areas of Central and Eastern European languages. LIDO-LANG spe- expertise are in the oil and gas industries, auto manufactur- cializes, above all, in technical translation, but, thanks to our ing, medical, information technologies and telecommunica- network of over 2,000 translators specializing in different tions. The business techniques introduced and applied by the branches, we also work in IT and telecommunication; adver- company currently serve as the best practice within the trans- tising and marketing; economics and finance; law; technol- lation industry. Neotech is leading the drive to continuously SpanSource ogy and industry; medicine and science. The quality of our develop translation market standards and to implement new Languages Focus on Spanish and Portuguese, other langu- services is enhanced by over 50 years’ experience in the trans- levels of business and interpersonal communications into the age combinations through partners Description SpanSource lation sector and by the quality certificates of ISO 9001 and translation industry within Russia and abroad. provides translation, localization and related services from EN 15038 standards. Neotech 23/1 Matrosskaya Tishina, Moscow, Russia, 7-495-787- Western European languages into all regional varieties of 3331, Fax: 7-495-787-1189, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www LIDO-LANG Technical Translations ul. Walerego Slawka 3, 30-653 Spanish as well as other language combinations through .neotech.ru See ad on page 17 Kraków, Poland, 48-12-2546-123, Fax: 48-12-2546-122, E-mail: our network of select SLV partners. Our domain focus is on ofﬁ[email protected], Web: www.lidolang.com health care and life sciences, software and IT, heavy machin- ery and automotive, legal and financial, oil and gas, corporate training and educational materials. Our comprehensive service portfolio also includes unparalleled desktop publishing and multimedia localization engineering support for Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, Ursula Steigerwald e-learning materials. Our in-house staff of 25 includes project Language German to/from major European languages managers, senior linguists, desktop publishers, software engi- LinguaLinx Language Solutions, Inc. Description Professional globalization requires experience. neers and graphic designers, which prove to be fundamental Languages All Description LinguaLinx is a full-service trans- Over the past two decades, we have developed into a top in SpanSource’s centralized, customer-centric approach. º lation and localization agency specializing in the adaptation international company specializing in the precise tuning of SpanSource SRL Santa Fe 1264, 1 B, Rosario, S2000ATR Argentina, of marketing and communications materials into most of the your documentation and texts to the standards and mentali- 54-341-527-5233, Fax: 54-341-527-0035, E-mail: info@span source.com, Web: www.spansource.com world’s languages. Our enterprise language solutions range ties of the German-speaking world. Our strength lies in our from glossary development and maintenance to translation work for well-known software and hardware manufacturers. memory deployment and global content management. In Furthermore, we also offer traditional translation services for today’s highly competitive global environment, it is becoming the business, technology, legal and medical sectors. Our team increasingly difficult to differentiate one translation agency of competent employees provides the very best quality within from another. We stand apart by taking the most proactive the respectively agreed time frame, even if matters are a little approach to quality in the industry, utilizing stringent project more urgent. management procedures, offering one of the most aggressive Rheinschrift Übersetzungen, Ursula Steigerwald Rolshover TripleInk Multilingual Communications rate structures available and applying a sincere dedication to Strasse 99, 51105 Cologne, Germany, 49-221-80-19-28-0, Fax: 49- Languages All major commercial languages Description As a providing the best possible service. 221-80-19-28-50, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www multilingual communications agency, TripleInk has provided .rheinschrift.de See ad on page 37 LinguaLinx Language Solutions, Inc. The LinguaLinx Building, 122 industrial and consumer products companies with precise Remsen Street, Cohoes, NY 12047, 518-388-9000, Fax: 518-388- translation and multilingual production services for audio- 0066, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.lingualinx.com visual, online and print media since 1991. Our experience in adapting technical documentation and marketing communication materials covers a wide range of industries, including PDFs of Getting Started Guides biomedical and health care; building and construction; financial services; food and agriculture; high-tech and manufactur- are available at Translation and localization into Polish ing; and hospitality and leisure, as well as government and www.multilingual.com/gsg Language Polish Description Ryszard Jarza Translations nonprofit organizations. Using a total quality management is an established provider of specialized Polish translation, process and state-of-the-art software and equipment, our team

52 | MultiLingual April/May 2010 [email protected]

47-53 Buyer'sGuide #111.indd 52 4/5/10 9:38:25 AM Buyer’s Guide

of foreign language professionals delivers the highest quality facilitate multilingual communications in 52+ language translations in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner. trAnslAtion tools pairs and in 20 domains. SYSTRAN Enterprise Server 7, TripleInk 60 South 6th Street, Suite 2600, Minneapolis, MN 55402, our latest achievement, is powered by our new hybrid MT 612-342-9800, 800-632-1388, Fax: 612-342-9745, E-mail: info@ engine which combines the predictability and consistency of tripleink.com, Web: www.tripleink.com rule-based MT with the fluency of the statistical approach. The self-learning techniques allow users to train the software to any specific domain to achieve cost-effective, pub- Advanced Leveraging Translation Memory lishable quality translations. SYSTRAN solutions are used Multiple Platforms by Symantec, Cisco, Ford and other enterprises to support Languages All Unicode languages Description MultiCorpora, international business operations. For more information, celebrating ten years as the language technology experts, is visit www.systransoft.com The Polish Language Specialists dedicated to providing language technology solutions to SYSTRAN Software, Inc. Languages From major European languages into Polish De- North America 4445 Eastgate Mall, Suite 310, San Diego, CA 92121, enterprises, language service providers and governments. Its 858-457-1900, Fax: 858-457-0648 scription Wratislavia Translation House Sp. z o.o. is a Polish flagship product, MultiTrans, pioneered the advanced lever- translation agency established in Wrocław in 2005, comprised Europe Paroi Nord - La Grande Arche, 1, Parvis de la Défense, 92044 aging TM concept that features hassle-free document pair Paris La Défense Cedex, France, 33-825-80-10-80, Fax: 33-1-46-98- of 15 in-house translation professionals and in cooperation alignment, recycles past translations with context at a granu- 00-59, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.systransoft.com with numerous seasoned, properly selected and prepared lar level and provides an on-the-fly view of how ambigu- See ad on page 42 translators. Our comprehensive service portfolio includes ous terms were previously translated. MultiTrans is an translation, editing, proofreading and project management in innovative client-server application with a best-in-class ter- the following fields: IT, technical, legal, financial and business. minology management system, designed to transform trans- We are experts in SAP translation — SAP systems, documen- lation expenses into a growing repository of reusable assets. tation, training materials — and related services, including The Translation Bureau of Canada, UNESCO, Toys “R” Us, preparation of documentation using SAP Tutor. Graphic Kraft, HSBC and many others have selected MultiTrans as services include DTP, transcreation and graphic preparation. their multilingual asset management solution. Solutions for Translation, Terminology, Our strict quality procedures and usage of CAT tools allow us MultiCorpora 102-490 St. Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, Quebec, Full-text and Bitext Management to deliver high-quality products within tight deadlines. J8Y 3Y7 Canada, 819-778-7070, 877-725-7070, Fax: 819-778- Windows and Web ´ Wratislavia Translation House Sp. z o.o. ul. Powstan´c´ow Sl. 28/30, 0801, E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.multicorpora.com Languages Windows: All Roman alphabet; LogiTermWeb- 53-333 Wrocław, Poland, 48-1-33-50-512, Fax: 48-71-33-50-511, See ad on page 21 Plus: Unicode Description A single software package E-mail: [email protected], Web: www.wth.pl to manage your terminology and databanks. Efficient and effective consultation of terms and texts. The most robust alignment tool on the market. More consistent use of terminology and phraseology in-house and by Participate in discussions freelancers. Internal and external repetition detection about the global and pretranslation. The web version allows access to SYSTRAN your terminology, bitexts and documents by translators, language industry at Multiple Platforms writers and subcontractors from anywhere in the world. Languages 52 language combinations Description SYSTRAN Terminotix Inc. 240 Bank Street, Suite 600, Ottawa, ON, K2P 1X4 www.multilingualblog.com is the market leading provider of machine translation solu- Canada, 613-233-8465, Fax: 613-233-3995, E-mail: termino@ tions for the desktop, enterprise and internet. Our solutions terminotix.com, Web: www.terminotix.com See ad on page 37

compAnies Advertising in the lAnguAge technology getting stArted guide

Across Systems GmbH...... www.across.net MultiCorpora...... www.multicorpora.com ATRIL...... www.atril.com PetaMem GmbH ...... www.petamem.com CSOFT International Ltd ...... www.csoftintl.com Rubric ...... www.rubric.com ECM Engineering ...... www.sysﬁlter.de STAR Group ...... www.star-group.net Kaleidoscope GmbH ...... www.kaleidoscope.at SYSTRAN ...... www.systransoft.com Kilgray Translation Technologies ...... www.kilgray.com TAUS Data Association ...... www.tausdata.org MadCap Software, Inc...... www.madcapsoftware.com Wordfast LLC ...... www.wordfast.com

Advertiser index

Across Systems GmbH 2, 56 Janus Worldwide Inc. 8 Pangeanic 16 ADAPT Localization Services 45 JFA Marketing 37 Plunet GmbH 11, 33 The Association for Machine KCSL Inc. 38 Rheinschrift 37 Translation in the Americas 46 Lingo Systems 25 Ryszard Jarza Translations 37 Atalaya 33 Lingotek 5 Skrivanek s.r.o. 15 Binari Sonori S.r.l. 41 Localization World 55 STAR Group 7, 19, 29, 31 Biro 2000 d.o.o. 9 MediLingua Medical Translations BV 37 SYSTRAN Software, Inc. 42 California State University, Chico 47 Moravia Worldwide 26 Terminotix Inc. 37 E4NET 48 MultiCorpora 21 Ushuaia Solutions 44 ES Localisation Services Ltd. 10 Neotech 17 VistaTEC 36 EuroGreek Translations Limited 37 Net-Translators 40 XTRF 33

www.multilingual.com April/May 2010 MultiLingual | 53

47-53 Buyer'sGuide #111.indd 53 4/5/10 9:38:26 AM 54 AgostiniTakeaway #111 .indd 54 54 | translators. that canoftencauseconfusion amongmother-tongueEnglish In effect,thesewords undergo akindof“Italianisation,”fact meaning ofsometheEnglish termsweimportintoItalian. ing tonotehowoftenweItalians changeormodifytheoriginal into otherlanguagescanbeashigh35%.Itisalsointerest- terms inanItalianmarketingtextorpresentation fortranslation produces thecontent.Sometimespercentage ofEnglish imported Englishtermscanvarygreatly depending onwho mission look most commonlyusedEnglishwords intheItanglese samplewere of content,allthedocumentswere business related, andthe 2000 withasimilarsizebatchofdocumentsfrom 2008.Interms carried outbycomparingaseriesofdocumentstranslated in Italian hasgrown by773%ineightyears. Thisresearch was sociati, thenumberofEnglishtermsemployedinmainstream T Takeaway MultiLingual Further analysisofthedatarevealed thatthe quantityof According toarecent surveyweconductedatAgostiniAs- in Italian. and arbitrary useof[English]termsandphrases“ Hoepli onlinedictionarydeﬁnesasthe”frequent known as of amangledcombinationthetwolanguages acronyms, andthishasresulted inthepropagation the biggestdirect importers ofEnglishtermsand growth, theItalianlanguageseemstobeoneof Whatever thereasons andconsequencesforsuch the greatest numberofwords toothermarkets. tongue) andprobably thelanguagethatexports when thepartiesdonothaveEnglishasamother the mostwidelyusedbusinesslanguage(even guage. Itisthemostcommonlystudiedlanguage, by theinternationalgrowth oftheEnglishlan- , The earlytwenty-ﬁrst century hasbeenmarked

business Alessandro Agostini , buyer , , Itanglese fashion brand For theloveofItanglese April/May 2010 and , performance , whichthehighly-respected switch . , competitor , annual report , than toappearmore modern,more technicalormore elitist. of Anglicismsbyusingthemonlyinappropriate contexts,rather or workaseducators —tobealittlemore sparingintheiruse communicators — particularly thosewhospeaktoalarge audience guide that aimstoencourage Italian short this using by Itanglese with theirnativelanguageandtolimitthegrowing influenceof food restaurants toranti dimoda to talkabout luster, toencourage Italianstosay that haveflowedunabatedintotheItalianlanguage. rules designedtostemthetidalwaveofEnglishtermsandphrases love. To dothis,wedrafted the“ItangleseCode”—aseriesof Italian, traditionally regarded astheinternationallanguageof Associati theselastfewmonthswastoinstigatetherebirth of how modernone’s companyis. consider thistobecompletelynormal,ifanythingasignofjust companies useEnglishtermsonadailybasis,andalmost30% Oftheinterviewees,53%confirmedthattheir company. their in considerable 53% perceived thephenomenonof“anglicization” contribution [email protected] To offeryour own optimization. internet marketingserviceswith anemphasisonsearchengine translation serviceprovider, andofBruceClayEurope,provider of Alessandro Agostini ispartnerofAgostini Associati, leadingItalian Our aim is to give back to the Italian language some of its Our aimistogivebacktheItalianlanguagesomeofits Given thepotentgrowth ofItanglese,ourgoalatAgostini baci rather thantheawkwardly stated . This year we want Italians to fall back in love . ThisyearwewantItalianstofallbackinlove Takeaway rather than terms inspokenandwrittenItalian,a noted ahugeincrease intheuseofEnglish Italian companies.31% ofinterviewees on a language-industry issue, send a onalanguage-industryissue,send a Our nextstepwastotakethisstudy and integrate itwithasurveyonthe the increasing useofItanglesein translation services,whichconfirms Itanglese phenomenon,commis- (GMI) andtargeted atusers of sioned byGlobalMarketInsight kisses Ti amo , tobooktheirtablesat [email protected] rather than fashion lounge fashion lounge I loveyou ris- M 4/5/10 9:39:28AM , Berlin, 7-9 June 2010

Know-how for Global Success Global Business Best Practices Informative sessions on global business best practices, strategies Want to venture into new international markets? for going global, global branding, obtaining venture capital, Experienced business people will provide practical insights and advice to give you conﬁdence on the global playing ﬁeld. global websites, localization and translation management. Large exhibit hall with service and technology vendors. Managing Global Websites Need to take your company’s website global? Learn from companies that have outstanding web presences. Representatives offer their expertise for launching and maintaining Events at Localization World Berlin: your site.

Buy-side Colloquium: Next-generation Advanced Localization Management Localization and the Global Enterprise Are you already involved in localization, but would like to learn more? Global market research firm Common Sense Industry experts provide the latest information on trends, processes, Advisory (CSA) will address how to win localization budget wars, technologies and influences that shape the world of localization. work with suppliers in the global translation marketplace, satisfy customers in many countries, and grow revenues. A special session Localization Core Competencies for service providers on “Marketing best practices of language services industry leaders and innovators“ will round out the CSA Do you know you need to localize, but don’t know where to start? program. This introductory track provides fundamental principles and arms you with the knowledge to take your first steps.

International Search Summit – Innovations Meet professionals from these companies and many more. In collaboration with British global marketing See their presentations. Learn from them. Discuss. consultancy WebCertain, Localization World will offer this one-day program focusing on best practices in • Autodesk • ICANN • Puma managing global websites, with a special focus on international • Bentley • Intel • St. Jude Medical search engine optimization. • Canon • Karlshochschule • Sybase • Cisco Systems International University • Symantec Translingual Europe • Common Sense Advisory • KLM • W3C International conference on advanced • Dell • Lucy Software • WebCertain translation technology for multilingual Europe • The Gilbane Group • Medtronic • Yahoo!

Sponsored by

www.localizationworld.com www.across.net www.milengo.com

55 Loc World #111.indd 55 4/5/10 9:40:33 AM Integrated. Across integrates language technology into your company IT. Open interfaces enable seamless connection of PIM, CMS, and ERP systems as well as smooth collaboration with international subsidiaries and language service providers. Independent. Being a technology specialist, Across does not offer any language services, and is solely committed to the optimization of its software products. This eliminates conﬂ icts of interest and ensures ﬂ exibility and transparency for all involved. Across. Hundreds of leading market players including Volkswagen, HypoVereinsbank, and SMA Solar Technology have already migrated to Across. What about you?

Across Systems, Inc. Info-Hotline +1 877 922 7677 [email protected] Across Systems GmbH Info-Hotline +49 7248 925 425 [email protected] www.across.net

56 Across .indd 56 4/5/10 9:42:22 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY April/May 2010 GETTING STARTED: Guide

Streamlining Internationalization ® and Localization

Evaluating Emerging ® Language Technologies

Corpus Linguistics and ® the Translation Process

Creating Your Own ® Multilingual Technology

01Cover#111GSG.indd 1 4/5/10 9:47:26 AM TermWiki TM Collaborate. Develop. Control.

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02-03 CSoft-TOC.indd 2 4/5/10 9:48:47 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

GETTING STARTED:Guide CONTENTS

Getting Started: Our industry would be at a major loss without Editor-in-Chief, Publisher Donna Parrish Language Technology language technolgies and the updates, improve- Managing Editor Katie Botkin ments, innovations and twists they undergo. Proofreader Jim Healey News Kendra Gray Ian Henderson begins the guide by proposing Illustrator Doug Jones how to work the kinks out of a process made tricky by technology and how it fits into Production Doug Jones, Darlene Dibble worldwide languages. Not surprisingly, this may involve more technology. Vadim Berman Editorial Board then offers some tips on what to look for when buying such technology. Thiana Donato Jeff Allen, Ultan Ó Broin, Arturo Quintero, explores a method of improving language technology, and finally, Dennis Wakabayashi Jessica Roland, Lori Thicke, Jost Zetzsche and Chris Golaszewski explain how they went about creating a new technology. We hope Advertising Director Jennifer Del Carlo these different angles are useful to you! Advertising Kevin Watson, Bonnie Hagan Webmaster Aric Spence The Editors Technical Analyst Curtis Booker Data Administrator Cecilia Spence Streamlining Internationalization and Localization Assistant Shannon Abromeit Subscriptions Terri Jadick Ian Henderson page 4 Special Projects Bernie Nova Ian Henderson is CEO of Rubric, a provider of localization services Advertising [email protected] to the high technology industry for the past 15 years. www.multilingual.com/advertising 208-263-8178 Subscriptions, customer service, back issues Evaluating Emerging Language Technologies [email protected] www.multilingual.com/subscribe Vadim Berman page 8 Submissions [email protected] Vadim Berman is a cofounder and a CEO of Digital Sonata, Editorial guidelines are available at a provider of language engineering products and services. www.multilingual.com/editorialWriter Reprints [email protected] Corpus Linguistics and the Translation Process This guide is published as a supplement to Thiana Donato page 10 MultiLingual, the magazine about language technology, localization, web globalization and Thiana Donato is executive director and founder of All Tasks, international software development. It may be a Brazilian company in the South American multilingual services market. downloaded at www.multilingual.com/gsg Creating Your Own Multilingual Technology Dennis Wakabayashi and Chris Golaszewski page 12 Dennis Wakabayashi, founder and chief online officer of Mojofiti, has handled international business operations for a number of years. Chris Golaszewski is the manager of online development at Mojofiti.

The No. 1 independent technology for the linguistic supply chain.

Across Systems, Inc. Across Systems GmbH www.across.net Phone +1 877 922 7677 Phone +49 7248 925 425 [email protected] [email protected]

April/May 2010 • www.multilingual.com/gsg page 3

02-03 CSoft-TOC.indd 3 4/5/10 9:48:51 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED Streamlining Internationalization and Localization

Ian Henderson

nternationalization is defined as an 30% 28% Ienabling process: Making original con- 25% tent, such as code, ready for markets around the world. Localization is then an adaptation process that prepares content 20% for a specific target market globally. 15% Ideally, the two processes work seam- 13% lessly. Internationalization should ease the process of localization. Many years ago 10% — perhaps after the fiasco of Y2K when countless professionals scrambled to undo two-character year fields — IT and product 0% teams, especially in the software industry, Process/project management Terminology management learned that it is better to design code or content with the intent of presenting it glob- Best in class All others ally than to have to retrofit it after the fact. Yet, the gaps between localization and Figure 1: Solutions integrated with translation management. internationalization often remain wide. In Source: Aberdeen Group, “Translating Product Documentation” 2007, Lingoport conducted a survey of customers and vendors that identified a major around the world is that the internation- as we often undertake these cost- reduction gap between internationalization and alization effort has frequently been com- exercises without passing the cost on to the

LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY localizationLANGUAGE teams, which can adversely pleted without involving an experienced client. Once that relationship is established, impact time-to-market deadlines. internationalization team or any other LSP we work with the client to standardize file Three years later, the significant crev- for that matter. Take Synaptics, for exam- formats, file names, codes and so on. ice between internationalization teams ple — a leading worldwide developer of One of our first recommendations to and localization providers persists. Time- human interface solutions for mobile com- clients is to employ an integrated transla- to-market deadlines have shrunk even puting, communications and entertain- tion management solution that includes further, and expectations for lower inter- ment devices. Previously, this company standardized terminology in one place, nationalization and localization costs had updated its multilingual resource code for both the internationalization and continue to increase. Furthermore, recent (RC) files by adding new English strings at localization teams, which is a big step in research, such as that conducted by Aber- the end of each language section. This was reducing redundancy and encouraging deen Group (see sidebar) points to the a manual, error-prone and time-consuming collaboration. It is not surprising that the value of integrated translation environ- process for the client. An added compli- recent Aberdeen research found that comments. Content providers and code devel- cation was that not all languages were in panies using an integrated solution (see opers who integrate teams from end to end sync, so the added English strings varied Figure 1) were far more successful with will reap sizable benefits as they roll their from language to language. At our end, production and version control. products and services out worldwide. we had to extract the English strings from Within that integrated process, many fac- each section, translate them and patch tors influence overall success. For example, The problem them back into the multilingual files. The it is surprising how many clients believe that Many times when we begin work as engineering process was laborious. if all localizable text is put into Excel or XML a language service provider (LSP), the Ideally, the internationalization and local- files during the internationalization process, internationalization process is fully com- ization teams, whether external or inter- then the problem is solved. Unfortunately, plete. In the client’s mind, it is now just a nal, work closely together. We have found this is not the case. All serious localization question of localizing the files and going that the ability to streamline is directly companies will use translation tools when to market. If localization were as simple correlated to the volume and frequency of localizing files, but these tools will only sup- as that, we would be out of work pretty work. In fact, when we work with a client to port standard file formats, such as RC and quickly. streamline and reduce the effort and cost of XLIFF. If you come up with your own XML The issue we face as an LSP coming up the localization process, it is imperative that schema or Excel spreadsheet, you can be to speed to get a product to local markets there is high volume and frequency of work pretty sure some engineering effort will be

page The Guide From MultiLingual

04-07 Henderson#111 GSG.indd 4 4/5/10 9:51:13 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY GETTING STARTED:Guide

Intelligent Utilities for Smart Terminology Online Translation Language Workers Access and Workﬂow Reviews for CAT Files

• Excelling MultiTerm: bidirectional MS Excel • Make your terminology accessible company- • Upload your CAT translations for online interface for MultiTerm wide and from any application via a hotkey review • Synching Language: automatic synch of • Any user can submit term requests • Reviewers work in full layout or in a tabular server-based or local translation memories • Translators suggest new equivalents while view depending on source file format and termbases they work • TM and terminology information completely • Connecting Content: preconfigured engine for • Terminologists manage term requests and use integrated workflow automation, for example, for CMS them to create new entries in SDL MultiTerm • Splitting TTX: divide and merge TTX files • New entries can be sent for approval • Translators and reviewers collaborate via a • Publishing MultiTerm: from MultiTerm to PDF • Specific users approve or comment on terms track-changes and commenting feature • And many more! online • Final version goes back to CAT tools

Kaleidoscope GmbH Kaleidoscope GmbH Kaleidoscope GmbH Maria Enzersdorf, Austria Maria Enzersdorf, Austria Maria Enzersdorf, Austria [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.experttools.at www.quickterm.at www.globalreview.at

required to separate translatable from non- German (Deutsch) and el for Greek (Ellinika), Within RC files there is usually some lan- translatable text. Fixing file format struc- alleviates that problem. guage-specific content. For example, the ture during the internationalization process Another client uses bs-ID for one of its highlighted text below is not usually pre- speeds localization. languages. This is not Bosnian as spoken in sented to the translator as a translatable Next, we work with clients to ensure the Indonesia, but, in fact, refers to Bahasa Indo- text because translation tools will make file naming scheme follows a recognizable nesia (id-ID in ISO terms). Similarly, bs-BS is these changes automatically. and consistent pattern. Typically transla- neither Bosnian nor Bahasa as spoken in the tion tools retain the name of the source Bahamas, but Bahasa Melayu (ms-MY in ISO //////////////////////////////////// file for the target file, but put the target speak). Straightening out these differences //English(U.S.)resources file in a different folder. For example, a — using the ISO codes from the very begin- #if!defined(AFX_RESOURCE_ source file called /en/resources.rc may ning — streamlines the entire process. DLL)||defined(AFX_TARG_ENU) end up as /fr/resources.rc. Alternatively, Multilingual files add to the workload, as #ifdef_WIN32 translation tools may rename the source they need to be split into monolingual files LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, file by adding or replacing language iden- and reassembled after translation. When SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US tifiers at the end of the file. /res/props we can work with the internationalization #pragma code_page(1252) .properties may become res/props_de- teams, we can limit the impact of multilin- #endif//_WIN32 DE.properties. Handling a mishmash of gual source files on the localization process file naming conventions is not a problem and cost. //////////////////////////////////// in itself, but it adds time and increases //Japanese resources cost as somebody needs to make sure Character, content and context #if!defined(AFX_RESOURCE_ the translated file names conform to the When working with software files, we D L L)||d e f i n e d(AFX_TA RG_JPN) required pattern. often encounter the issue of having to #ifdef_WIN32 LANGUAGE Using standard language and country escape characters. In many cases there LANG_JAPANESE, SUBLANG_DEFAULT codes reduces the risk of errors. We have will be no escaped character in the source #pragma code_page(932) one client using gr to denote German, while phrase, so deciding how to escape an apos- #endif//_WIN32 another client uses the same gr for Greek. trophe character (’) in French, for example, Because of this, in one rushed instance can be a challenge. Should it be: j’ai, j’’ai, RC localization tools are aware of this and we actually delivered the wrong language. j\’ai, j\\’ai or j\\\’ai? We often see multiple will change the content accordingly; how- Using standard ISO codes, such as de for different examples, even in the same file. ever, we have also seen instances where

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04-07 Henderson#111 GSG.indd 5 4/5/10 9:51:14 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED

content needs to be introduced into the Start\ Receipt=Proc\u00e9der master list of all English strings that had translated file. This can be addressed, but \u00e0 la r\u00e9ception been translated in one or more languages. it requires additional effort, time and cost. On\ Case\ Pre\ Receipt=Sur pr\ The cost of translating the complete master u00e9r\u00e9ception de caisse file for every language, even if the strings #The file Contains the property Change\ Shipment\ Status= were not required in a particular language, Values. Please read \ as escape Modification d'\u00e9tat d'exp turned out to be much cheaper than main- characters on the left hand \u00e9dition taining a separate list of English strings side. For example Test\ Literal= Blind\ Return\ Receipt=Re\u00e7u for each language. Once the master files should be read as Test Literal retour sans autorisation have been translated, Synaptics merges #Fri Aug 28 18:32:04 IST 2009 all the languages into multilingual RC files Start\ Receipt=Start Receipt Translating out of context invariably by using automated scripts. Synaptics has On\ Case\ Pre\ Receipt=On Case leads to a lower quality product and is the been open to implementing suggested Pre Receipt biggest challenge facing linguists as clients changes and eliminating wasted effort in Change\ Shipment\ Status=Change try to reduce the localization cost. When all order to streamline the process. As a result Shipment Status contextual information is stripped out and of reducing the overall effort, the transla- Blind\ Return\ Receipt=Blind translated pieces are reduced to an Excel tions are much quicker than before and Return Receipt spreadsheet, the challenge for the linguist cost less. is considerable. What clients do not realize This centralized approach with a reposi- #The file Contains the property is that stripping out context may actually tory of common source language content Values. Please read \ as escape be more expensive, as more time has to worked for Synaptics. According to the characters on the left hand side. be spent testing and fixing the translated recent Aberdeen study, that kind of cen- For example Test\ Literal= should strings in context after translation. tralization, paired with standardized termi- be read as Test Literal In closing, I would like to return to Syn- nology and a closed-loop review process, #Fri Aug 28 18:32:04 IST 2009 aptics, the company I mentioned before. is crucial to achieving higher translation French=Fran\u00E7ais We decided it would be best to create a performance. G

Advanced Leveraging Translation Memory

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04-07 Henderson#111 GSG.indd 6 4/5/10 9:51:15 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY GETTING STARTED:Guide

Aberdeen Research Study Reveals Practices of Top-performing Companies

BetH WalsH

Aberdeen Group’s recently released “Translating Product Documenta- 80% 73% 70% tion” study identifies how top companies effectively manage translation 70% and localization efforts while reducing costs and increasing efficiency. 60% Based on the experiences of nearly 200 companies, the study was done 54% 52% 50% 48% 48% as a follow-up to “Documentation Goes Global,” a report completed in 45% 39% 41% the spring of 2008 that determined most companies were facing trans- 40% 38% 38% 30% lation cost increases from 18% to 32% due to increased volume and 25% language requirements. 20% 16% 12% In the fall of 2009 Aberdeen also conducted research on “Technical 10% 6% Communications as a Profit Center,” which determined that technical 0% Process/project Translation memory Terminology Translation Machine translation communications departments provide significant customer-facing value management management system management system by publishing product documentation online. Aberdeen analysts believed Best-in-class Industry average Laggard it was important, given the two previous studies’ revelations, that they look at how top-performing best-in-class companies were managing to find the right balance between cost and quality in the localization chain. Technology use by best in class. The results of the newest study reveal that companies that are most successful in managing their translation and localization efforts maintain participants, at about 45% of all respondents. However, what stands out consistently lower costs, are more efficient with personnel resources, in best-in-class companies is the process of “incremental translation” or and produce higher quality work than their competitors. Best-in-class creating topic-based authoring in source language content modules; this companies save 240% over their competitors in translation expenses opens up the opportunity of reuse significantly, potentially leading to and 630% more in localization costs. They reduce the time required to tremendous savings. Combined with standardization of terminology avail- complete translation projects by 30% and translate content into 48% more able to all translation workers and a formal “closed-loop” review process, languages than their competitors. In addition, they complete 88% of their it ensures consistency in both quality of translation and operational translation projects by targeted deadlines, and 91% come in under budget. performance of partners. When the review is done by a native speaker, Best-in-class companies translate into about 11 languages on average. in particular, it enables companies to preserve the intended meaning to “Our research clearly demonstrates that top companies, focused on better serve their customers. ROI, effectively manage time and expenses involved with translation and Technology is being used to support internal ownership and account- localization projects,” said David Houlihan, senior research associate ability as well as to gain cost and time savings, leading to higher effi- with Aberdeen’s Product Innovation and Engineering practice. “We found ciencies. Integrated translation management solutions are proving to that leading companies utilize integrated translation environments and be an emerging trend among best-in-class companies. The use of these realize performance improvements more than three times those achieved solutions gives best-in-class performers a considerable advantage by by their competitors. This high level of productivity comes with no sacri- providing them with a centralized repository for translated content and fice to the quality of work and may, in fact, improve quality.” centralized control as well as easy accessibility of approved terminology Quality localization can have significant benefits for the enterprise, by internal and external workers. This single source for all multilingual as the prior Aberdeen research showed that high-quality documentation content further enables reuse, maintains version control and eliminates contributes as much as a 41% increase in customer satisfaction scores redundant rework across the localization chain. Aberdeen advises all and a 41% reduction in inbound calls to customer service organizations. levels to actively assess translation quality through formal ranking and How do they achieve these great results? The capabilities reviewed in asserts that centralized processes will continue to improve results. Aberdeen’s research are divided into five core areas: process, organiza- Across Systems, which was a major sponsor of the research, found the tion, knowledge management, technology and performance management. results confirmed the approach they advise customers and prospects to Significant productivity drivers are increased control and transparency take. “Aberdeen’s research identified that the integration of project and over the entire process, “closed loop” processes that promote internal terminology management into translation management solutions is an and external accountability, and automated reuse of content. emerging practice of best-in-class companies,” said Daniel Nackovski, Leading performers are much more likely than their competitors to president of Across Systems, Inc. “We were gratified to find the study assign a dedicated project manager to manage the total translation supports our strategy to include project and workflow management, process, institute a formal review process for translated documents, a translation memory, a terminology system and more in a unified work and control content with terminology management and the use of environment.” integrated translation management solutions. The highly specialized As reported in the Aberdeen study, about 48% of the best-in-class and irregular nature of translation work prevents many companies companies use translation management software solutions, and 28% from maintaining a standing translation staff, and much of the work have an integration with project management, both of which are emerg- is outsourced. However, transparency facilitated by comprehensive ing practices. However, the difference in adoption is high, with these management solutions is an aid to greater internal ownership over top companies using it more than two times the norm. This means that even outsourced translation and localization resources. Without this even though it is an area where still less than half of companies are transparency it is difficult for companies to understand how to improve taking action, the great majority of those that do is reaching the top their translation processes, either in terms of operational execution or tier of performance, proving it is a highly useful practice. G quality of output. Increased reuse of translated content offers a compelling value proposi- tion. As such, it is the most popular initiative pursued most often by study Beth Walsh is the vice president of Clearpoint Agency

April/May 2010 • www.multilingual.com/gsg page

04-07 Henderson#111 GSG.indd 7 4/5/10 9:51:16 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED Evaluating Emerging Language Technologies

Vadim Berman

ashion is not only for clothing and Usability: capability and desire The same principle applies to a crude Fshoes. Trend following also can be ap- Looking at the exhibits in historical approach in building speech-to-speech MT plied to the world of technology. In the museums, one cannot but admire the systems. Take two reasonably good sys- silicon gold rush, some technologies are craftsmanship of the old masters. Kitchen tems, text MT and speech recognition. Let’s more favored by wanna-be inventors than utensils, furniture and wheel-lock guns assume both have an accuracy of 0.9. When others. YouNoodle.com, a barometer of in- are decorated with complex ornaments linked together, the complete solution has novation, lists 140 startups tagged with the and precious stones. However, more the accuracy of 0.9 times 0.9 = 0.81. If the MT expression VoIP (voice over internet pro- practical and down-to-earth minds may system is rule-based, it will not take kindly tocol), 669 startups containing the word say this is a waste. The gargoyles and the the lack of punctuation in the text input, and communication, 41 startups working on Greek deities don’t add one bit of usability the accuracy is likely to degrade further. surveillance, and a whopping 849 startups to the tool. The best example of an incred- This means that we’ll have a frustrating ten- tagged with natural language processing ible effort with little practical use is the dency to get every fifth word wrong. (NLP). The once-obscure field of language wooden pocket watches of the Russian On the other hand, with st ronger empha sis technology seems to be getting hot. Bronnikov brothers. While magnificent on the underlying algorithms some aspects It makes sense that this is happening and unique in the way they are made, do not have to be scrutinized as much as now. An individual can travel around the these chronographs did not accomplish they are in other software. User interface is world within a couple of days. A global much on the practical side of things: a not that difficult to change, so let it be even communication network has been estab- pocket watch is still a pocket watch, and if you don’t like it. Stability is paramount in lished to capture bits and pieces of real- wood does not last as long as steel. The software, but in the early stages it does not ity in clear video and audio signals that first and simple test, if you are looking to have to influence your decision too much.

LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY canLANGUAGE be stored forever. Business pro- invest in anything, is to ask if it is usable cesses are mostly digitized. Now users and practical. Scalability: from toy data to real world want machines to understand human The recently surfaced semantic search But how should the results be checked language. Buzzword addicts call all this engines seem to be questionable in that when a product is still in development? Lan- Web 3.0. respect. Many critics point out that in prac- guage technologies have a distinctive trait But human languages have their own tice it does not yield much improved experi- that makes them so insanely hard. While a logic, which is nothing like the strict true- ence over the tried-and-true keyword search. normal database application may deal with or-false machine logic, and machines Try to assess the market realistically, and see a small or moderate amount of data, the have their own different ways of making if the complexity and the costs are worth the linguistic applications by definition must sense of human language. While regu- niche they are going to fill. Common sense deal with a potentially infinite set of words lar business logic can manifest itself via applies, as usual. Avoid wishful thinking. comprising a language and endless combi- labels, textboxes and the like, linguistic If you are looking for a tool to accomplish nations within this infinite set. logic is largely invisible. You put text in, a certain task, are you sure that this beauti- A newly born application doesn’t know you get text out. It either matches your ful and intelligent masterpiece can handle much of this infinite set. It starts off with expectations or it does not. But 99.999% it well? Consider the following example. a small portion of data, and this is usually of the inner works of this programming You are building a software package to why the examples are limited. They all may iceberg is under water. Linguistic soft- search content in a foreign language. Some work great, but there are just ten or twenty ware, while not appearing very high-tech people take a straightforward approach: of them. This is normal, but if a technology on the surface, is a mind-boggling array of apply machine translation (MT) to the con- is limited to this toy world, it is not of much wires, cogs, counterweights, pulleys and tent, index it and connect to a plain search use. Most developers understand it. The buttons, designed to run by itself. Like engine. Can it work? Maybe, but MT is yet question is, however, how they plan to all complex mechanisms, it is prone to to become accurate enough to be reliable enlarge the scope of the input. Learning breaking. If you are shopping in this area, for some types of language pairs, such as from corpora? Importing machine-readable you have to either dive into this insanely Chinese › English or Japanese › French. dictionaries? User input? Crowdsourcing? complex world or know the tricks of the With an accuracy of 70% – 80%, nearly There are no good and bad methods, trade. Come to think of it, the tricks of the every third or fifth word is incorrect, which just suitable and unsuitable ones or well- trade are mandatory in any case; no one may result in arcane, unexplainable search planned and not well-planned strategies. has the time to check everything. results. Try to check whether this data acquisition

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method has been tried already. Apply com- and the regionalisms are coming from. Fur- solid results. Experience, successful track mon sense. Does it work? What is required thermore, if a system is good in principle record, social standing, reputation, hard to make it work on a production level? and offers some customization capabili- work — there is no escaping the basics. Finances, personnel, linguistic resources? ties, the support for regional dialects can It might be more difficult with a startup. Does it require 50 expensive highly skilled be added externally. Don’t bother to check Usually, odds are against the gold dig- computational linguists to build a dictionary domains you know you’ll never use or ones gers, so startup people either have a gam- manually or petabytes of high-quality cor- that the system is not built for. I remember bling trait or are not experienced enough pora for a rare language? Try to assess the a customer testing a MT system by trying to to understand how long and difficult the feasibility and suitability of these resources translate a fragment of an Agatha Christie path before them is. Young entrepreneurs necessary for growth. Even if a spaceship thriller. This is not guaranteed to work well, usually have more drive than their more can carry you to the stars, it is difficult to use for good reason. Language engineering is experienced counterparts, but they have its potential if the fuel must be pure gold. meant to handle mundane tasks, not to pro- other traits as well, and only the future This, however, does not mean that if the duce literary masterpieces. According to a (or maybe also YouNoodle.com) will tell developer is unable to meet expectations, classically apt comparison, it is similar to whether it is a winning combination. the requirements are unrealistic. The bud- assessing the performance of an industrial More often than one would have get might be tiny, as creating new technol- robot by making it dance Swan Lake. thought, new technologies are presented ogies is not as glamorous and profitable in by people with questionable honesty and the beginning of a venture. Be understand- Extensibility professionalism. With the abundance of ing, but analytical. What if the system seems to be a good strange characters and plenty of legiti- basis for what you are looking for but does mate hard-working garage inventors, Real-world examples not have the exact functionality that you some “shamans” are successfully posing Did you ever wonder why so many natu- are looking for? Due to the complexity of as real “doctors.” There is no recipe to tell ral language search engines and speech language engineering, the choice of lin- a scam, and even when the technology recognition packages demonstrate their guistic tools is small. There is rarely a wide itself is legitimate, peek under the hood. capabilities by looking either for pizza or array of choices, so an almost-suitable There is no place for impractical “vision- sushi? While these might be just similari- product may be the only option. aries” at the steering wheel. They may ties in the life style and culinary prefer- Then, in addition to other criteria, you contribute to the main idea and maybe ences of the linguistic crowd, the main need to see how fast the product can be even the initial architecture, but they are reason may be quite prosaic. These exam- adapted to your needs. The answer is likely to doom the enterprise no matter ples are perfect to demonstrate systems often “in no time.” In fact, the extension how good the technology or the prospects that claim to be production-ready. is almost there, 95% complete. Don’t fall are. Driving a car or flying a plane does not When humans must strain their brain into that one. Even though the choice allow for chasing birds or stars. to understand or spell long, rare, exotic of products and suppliers is scarce, the Should techies or salespeople run a com- words, the machines have a different language engineering job market is even pany? Normally, salespeople, but I believe problem. The main problem is ambigu- scarcer. These guys may not be so sure language engineering is a bit different. It is ity. Epidermis or uranium do not have too themselves. Feelings of a developer for his a small, tightly-knit community where many many interpretations, and so they are easy brainchild are similar to those of a mother people arrive from other industries. Its idio- for machines. On the other hand, words for her child. Neither is usually the best syncrasies are so distinctive that an external with numerous meanings such as put or address to seek for an objective opinion. observer might doubt these people actually set are a nightmare for every NLP package. Of course, if the extension is trivial and live on the same planet as the rest of the Human readability is not the same and is does not touch on the linguistic parts, mankind. Mainstream salespeople might often the opposite of machine readabil- there are no reasons to worry. However, if not be able to figure out this strange world, ity. However, epidermis is a specialized it touches the core engine or requires imple- let alone explain the small technicalities to term and might not be present in a small menting or modifying some linguistic logic, a potential customer. Imagine that you are dictionary. Pizza and sushi, on the other the feasibility should be carefully analyzed. buying an electric appliance, and the sales- hand, are quite common, yet still unam- Common sense applies, like everywhere person tells you, “Well, the interface is very biguous. These words are targets that are else. Try asking what the plan is and whether intuitive. I know that there are three green quite easy to hit. a similar modification has been done before. buttons, one red bulb, and a lever. I’m not Try tougher tasks. Is this about food? Another useful question is “What can go sure what they do. I think you need to pull Try steak for a speech input, or lamb with wrong?” “Nothing” is not a good answer, the lever, but to make sure, I’ll just catch our sage for MT (yes, the latter often yields especially if replied immediately. main techie and he’ll tell you how to make lamb with a wise man in statistical MTs). it work.” Apparently, with salespeople like See how well the system makes complex Doctors and shamans these, there are no sales. I’ve seen it hap- decisions. On a more advanced stage, Technology might be the heart of the pening, too. don’t forget to introduce noise, either lit- offering, but this is not all. If a person has Finally, as the saying goes, if something erally for speech or figuratively for text. a strong, well-functioning heart but severe is too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t Don’t overdo your attempts to make the issues with other vital organs, one can’t struggle to find overlooked diamonds; system fail, though. Accents and regional- call it perfect health. Similarly, the man- look for more realistic copper, nickel or sil- isms are only relevant if the system is to be agement and other relevant parts of the ver, and you won’t spend your efforts and deployed in the markets where the accents team also must be capable of delivering resources on fool’s gold. G

April/May 2010 • www.multilingual.com/gsg page

08-09 Berman #111 GSG.indd 9 4/5/10 9:52:28 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED Corpus Linguistics and the Translation Process

Thiana DonaTo

he multilingual services market has the majority of MT systems are based on a Vu and Wordfast. These tools, besides con- Treceived a series of innovations corpus comprised of bilingual texts (original sidering grammar, use a TM that enables through computational linguistics or and translated). terms used in a text to be standardized and natural language processing (NLP), a mul- The computational tools used by corpus added to a glossary, making quality con- tidisciplinary area that encompasses arti- linguistics provide a mechanism that col- trol in translation easier. These tools are ficial intelligence, information technology lects, stores and analyzes linguistic data — designed to support the translator’s work, and linguistics, using computer processes the so-called corpus. This data is used as for instance, storing previously translated to handle human language. Artificial intel- research material that can help elaborate segments into a TM so that when the same ligence is the field of research within com- theories about language functionality. segment of text appears again, the soft- puter science that studies how machines Some programs list words according to ware brings up the previous translation can “think,” simulating the human capacity the frequency with which they occur in the used for that phrase. for intelligence and solving problems. As a corpus. Others are called concordancers Each technological advance brings ru- result of the integration of these sciences, and serve to allow specific word searches mors that the days of the professional trans- research has been providing important ap- in a corpus, pulling up a comprehensive lator are numbered. However, the work of plications for translators’ work, such as list of phrases that shows the contexts in human translators continues to be essen- search tools, spell-checkers and voice rec- which the word has been used. The use of tial. Technology is no substitute for human ognition, as well as tools in computer-aid- tagging is also common to automatically work, but is rather a tool to help speed up ed translation (CAT), including translation analyze the corpora and produce codes or certain types of translation work. memory (TM), management terminology tags that contain only data belonging to a Terminology is one of the areas that and machine translation (MT). These pro- particular morphosyntactic and syntactic. may be significantly influenced by corpus jects aim to develop a search mechanism for This area of research has contributed to linguistics, which has been developing the most common terms, by segmentation, improving hybrid MT software, through vocabularies by using its own methodol- thus eliminating repetition and resulting in its theories on linguistic variables, directly ogy. Glossaries are prepared from a corpus,

LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY aLANGUAGE more natural translation. The goal of these influencing the translation so that the final creating a kind of filter so that the vocabu- artificial intelligence researchers is to devel- text is as close as possible to the original lary shows only terms contained in the cor- op CAT tools and MT that can simulate the one. The MT systems are based on a corpus, compiled according to specific criteria. human ability to think and solve problems. pus comprised of bilingual texts (original As a result, the glossary contains the most Corpus linguistics studies language and translated) and a database with sys- commonly used terms for a particular area in use, investigating language through tems of rules and statistics. Technological of specialization. Another characteristic observation of large quantities of authen- innovations can therefore speed up the of glossaries created by corpus linguistics tic data contained in the corpus, which is a translation process, resulting in a better is that they are rich in authentic examples representative set of texts on a particular quality MT, with the human translator act- extracted from the corpus and other infor- area, electronically organized to enable ing as a sort of validator of the MT data. mation that can facilitate the translator’s searches by using specialized search tools. This is a valuable contribution when task. Therefore, the type of translation that Corpus linguistics considers language as we consider that the first technological can benefit most from corpus linguistics a probabilistic system. That is, there are advance used to support translation work is technical translation, which focuses on many possibilities for an expression in lan- was the development of MT, created by the various areas of specialization from a tech- guage, but not all are as frequent. Americans in the 1950s to spy on the Rus- nical or scientific standpoint. This is a type Research in this area advanced in the 1980s sians during the Cold War period. These of translation that involves a high degree with the widespread use of personal com- software components were capable of of terminology research and the develop- puters that led to the increased availability analyzing sentences based on grammar, ment of glossaries to ensure the use of and accessibility of corpora and processing giving rise to very unnatural, sometimes standardized terminology in the document tools, helping to strengthen research in the meaningless translations that had to be in question, and also for any future projects field and reinforcing the fact that this area corrected and validated by a human trans- carried out on the same subject. of research is and always has been closely lator. Today, the most famous MT system Both the reference material and the related to technology. Since then, research worldwide is Google’s, which proves that at research material that have led to the devel- on the subject has contributed to translation least currently the results of MT cannot be opment of computer tools can speed up the in several ways. Using the most commonly satisfactory without human intervention. technical translation process and provide used standards in a language results in a Another technological contribution was gains in terms of quality, by giving the trans- translation that flows more naturally and is the development of CAT tools, which gave lator not only a better knowledge of the more faithful to the native language. Also, rise to software products such Trados, Déjà specialized terminology of the industry that

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10-11 Donato#111 GSG.indd 10 4/5/10 9:53:20 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY GETTING STARTED:Guide

Human Language #1 Provider of Platform- Cost-effective Technology Experts independent TM Technology Filter Software PMLS, the PetaMem Language Server, might be the most versatile and comprehensive HLT solution Wordfast Translation Studio includes: Sysfilter Tools prepare texts that have been you will ever see. • Wordfast Classic, the #1 Microsoft Word- collected in various programs so that they can be processed with your standard software (for example, • ISO639-3 complete multilingual support based TM tool • Wordfast Pro, the #1 standalone TM tool Word or XML-Editor). When the texts are translated, • Currently more than 500 supported for any platform they are returned to their original format. languages. Yes, over 25,000 language pairs. And introducing: Sysfilter Tools are available for • Dictionaries and machine translation ® • Language identification, text categorization • Wordfast Anywhere, the most advanced • Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop free web-based TM tool featuring complete • CorelDraw® • Semantic clustering and inference ® • Discourse engine (Chatbot) confidentiality • Visio and Excel • Academic license available Wordfast also markets server products to address • Compatible with all common translation • Intranet appliances translation management at the enterprise level. memory systems • Server-client, multiuser To learn why Wordfast has become the Translation projects cost savings up to 95% are • JAVA, C#, Perl, PHP API libraries available preferred TM software of over 30,000 possible. • And more professionals worldwide, visit www.wordfast.com Please check our Sysfilter Pack offer. PetaMem GmbH Wordfast LLC ECM Engineering Fürth, Germany Paris, France Breitenbrunn, Germany [email protected] • www.petamem.com [email protected] • www.wordfast.com [email protected] • www.sysfilter.de

the translation is aimed to, but also the sup- characteristics. So far, this project has pro- centers around the world. One of the major port of multifunctional software, like the duced two important reference materials in centers is in Great Britain, with projects programs that have been launching in the the areas of Brazilian cuisine and receiving being carried out at various universities, multilingual services market. guests. What makes this project different in the cities of Birmingham, Brighton, In Brazil, for example, research in corpus is its presentation of a parallel corpus that Lancaster, Liverpool, London and others. linguistics is still in its infancy, but it has makes it possible to compare the original Research in British institutions has con- been gathering strength. Brazilian research with the translation. tributed to the theorization of corpora and in this field is carried out by interest groups Another contribution is CorTec, a tech- other support materials in various areas. In such as the COMET project (Corpus Multi- nical corpus for Portuguese-English that the Scandinavian countries there are also língue para Ensino e Tradução), developed enables terminology comparisons. It is active centers dedicated to this research. together with the modern literature depart- divided into 14 subcorpora segmented Corpus linguistics appears to be more ment of the Faculty of Philosophy, Literature into specialized areas. These studies are widespread in Europe than in other parts and Human Sciences at University of São recent and are still in the initial stages; of the world. In the United States, corpus Paulo (USP). Members are mostly graduate however, they need to have their relevance linguistics exists but is more modest. North students and volunteers. acknowledged. The development of lan- American researchers are more engaged An example of the contribution of corpus guage technology is extremely dependent in projects involving NLP, which, although linguistics is CorTrad, a project developed on these studies, which means that the closely related to computer sciences with by USP, Linguateca and NILC, which applies growth of the translation market depends various characteristics in common with cor- a methodology proposed by corpus lin- on investments in this area of research. pus linguistics, is treated separately. guistics that has new functionalities, such Some TM systems have already received A new trend in the worldwide corpus as new search types, for translation. The new functionalities derived from corpus linguistics scenario is investment by pri- project also enables different versions of linguistics methodology. Although it would vate companies, through partnerships the same translation to be compared and be incorrect to say that statistical MT uses between companies and universities. specific structural components to be con- some type of corpus linguistics, it is true The business world has a great interest in sulted. CorTrad is available on COMET’s that these methods and techniques can studies in this area of knowledge for com- website. One of its main advantages is its help computational linguistics develop mercial purposes such as the automated efficient search mechanism, which refines new mechanisms for TM systems. processing of texts, computerization of the search into three different subcorpora, Currently, corpus linguistics is being databases, and the creation of intelligent including genre, text type and other specific developed in various linguistic research voice and data management systems. G

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10-11 Donato#111 GSG.indd 11 4/5/10 9:53:21 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED Creating Your Own Multilingual Technology

Dennis Wakabayashi anD Chris GolaszeWski

ur global landscape presents oppor- — with all that interaction invisibly trans- webs than anything else, but we believed Otunity everywhere, from business, lated behind-the-scenes so that readers in the potential and the track record of educational, social, local, travel can traverse the landscape of the content. WordPress and so decided to develop it. and humanitarian efforts, just to name a Open-source technology is a kind of During our initial development, we saw a few. If you look around, you’ll find endless goodness that allows ideas to rapidly great leap forward with the release of Bud- communication methods using electronic develop, reusing modular programming dyPress 1.1. language enablement. What’s great about that’s already been done by someone What Buddypress did for us was allow all this opportunity is the vast number of else. It’s like going to an assembly line our multilingual users to link to each other different ways you can manifest technol- and picking all the parts needed for your and share things such as e-mail and short ogy to educate, foster peace or help those creation — for free. format communications called wires. in need. As great as that sounds, those parts We tried a number of ways to language Multilanguage technology falls into still require considerable programming enable our WordPress MU + BuddyPress one of three camps — human translation, and thinking to coalesce into software environment. After several attempts with machine translation (MT) or hybrid solu- that works the way you want. In the case various plug-in technologies, we were tions. Human translation technology is of www.mojofiti.com, getting things to able to get a modified version of http:// handled today by systems that use con- scale consistently became a focus of our transposh.org and Google’s API to work. tact, billing and workflow management to thinking and developmental investment. We chose www.softlayer.com for host- shuffle translation “jobs” to a large group In some cases it’s like coaxing a square ing because it has an ability to scale at of online translators. These systems are peg into a round hole or creating an effi- small incremental levels. This meant often accessible by an application pro- cient custom adapter kit. that we could grow our hosting in small gram interface (API). For the blog publishing system, we steps as we grew, essentially making it

LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY LANGUAGE With an API, you can access the core chose WordPress MU for the following so we didn’t have to pay for much unused translation methods and bubble them reasons: hosting space over the development and up to your own user interface. MT sys- • Search engine optimization (SEO) growth stages. tems are also accessible by API. Hybrid advantage: Over the years WordPress has Our first and favored project man- translation technologies are less common done a number of savvy things to play agement (PM) solution, while not open because many of these are proprietary nice with Google’s Search. Permalinks and source, is Basecamp (http://basecam and/or protected by patents. Hybrid solu- sitemapping, for example, gave us confi- phq.com) from 37 Signals. We began tions allow users to take advantage of both dence that our users would have a first- thinking this would prove as our end-all human translation and MT from within one class chance of experiencing competent solution but found our use of the product application. SEO throughout the world. to be best suited for file management, From these three core technologies any • Worldwide: WordPress is localized high-level PM duties and overall business number of great ideas can emerge — www in over 50 languages worldwide. What goals management. For a nominal fee, we .dotsub.com, for example, allows users this meant to us is that users from around handle graphic source files, requirements to upload video and then work as a giant the world would have access to robust documentation, high-level business goals crowdsource community to translate sub- publishing tools from the onset of our and projects with Basecamp. titles into languages around the world. development. With high-level information being tracked • Open source: WordPress’ philosophy in Basecamp, we wanted a separate solu- Ingredients for a new technology is something we support and were happy tion to track the details of our development In our case, an idea emerged from the to take advantage of. Here’s a link to one efforts — bug fixes and iterative feature void of social networking we observed of the videos that influenced our decision: requests. We decided to use Mantis (www actively connecting members regardless http://wordpress.tv/2009/10/13/matt- .mantisbt.org) for this purpose. The Devel- of natively spoken language. We set out mullenweg-wordpress-gpl opment Manager translates high-level to create www.mojofiti.com, the basis for At the time we were concocting our tech- business goals into digestible tasks for our “how to” explanation. Our goal is to nology recipe, WordPress was developing insertion into Mantis. We then try to group create a place where internet users from this new way to link users together called related requests for assignment to specific around the world can gather to publish BuddyPress. BuddyPress was in beta developers. Each developer sets the tick- blogs, send messages and socially interact and felt more like duct tape and spider ets to “Resolved” upon completion, and

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The Power of Collaborative Translation Focusing on translation project management and collaborative translation projects, memoQ is The Power of Your Insight Global. Unlimited. the best solution for language service providers Déjà Vu X is a computer-aided translation Consistent. Affordable. and enterprises alike. (CAT) system that learns from your own Some reasons why our customers appreciate translations. ATRIL introduces to the translating community and choose memoQ: the most powerful solution for large translation Its unique technology achieves a high level teams working across different locations. • The world’s best client-server translation of translation reuse and controls the use of environment terminology automatically, ensuring consistency By integrating with and extending the • Online documents for effective and quick and saving you valuable time. Intelligent Quality™ technology in Déjà Vu X team translation Workgroup, TeaM Server™ allows translators • Real-time collaboration between translators You can translate many proprietary formats who work on extensive, multinational and and proofreaders directly and import their translation memories multisite translation projects to efficiently and • Extensive integration with other systems and terminology bases. seamlessly share their translations in real time, • Control over translation processes and costs Other tools have users. Déjà Vu has fans. ensuring superior quality and consistency. • Responsive and quick support Change gear with memoQ! Kilgray Translation Technologies ATRIL ATRIL Budapest, Hungary Madrid, Spain Madrid, Spain [email protected] • www.kilgray.com [email protected] • www.atril.com [email protected] • www.atril.com

High-quality MT for International Success SYSTRAN is the leading provider of machine Join Us Today A Better translation (MT) solutions for the desktop, TDA is a nonprofit organization providing a enterprise and internet. Our solutions facilitate neutral and secure platform for sharing language Localization Experience multilingual communications in 52+ language data. Share your translation memories and pairs and in 20 domains. SYSTRAN Enterprise Rubric specializes in globalization services for Server 7 is powered by our new hybrid MT engine in return get access to the data of all other the high-technology industry, providing flexibility, that combines the predictability and consistency members. on-demand scalability, and integrity to guarantee of rule-based MT with the fluency of the statistical TDA is a super cloud for the global translation localization success. Rubric’s refined processes approach. The self-learning techniques allow industry, helping to improve translation quality adapt to the high-tech sector’s need for proactive users to train the software to any specific domain and automation and to fuel business innovation. localization planning, with its anticipation of to achieve cost-effective, publishable quality dynamically changing requirements and its agile translations. SYSTRAN solutions are used by response capabilities. Symantec, Cisco, Ford and other enterprises to support international business operations. For more information, visit www.systransoft.com SYSTRAN TAUS Data Association Rubric De Rijp, The Netherlands San Diego, California USA San Diego, California USA • Paris, France [email protected] [email protected] • www.rubric.com [email protected] • www.systransoft.com www.tausdata.org

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12-14 Wakaba./SHOWC#111 GSG.indd13 13 4/5/10 9:54:37 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Guide: GETTING STARTED

a “Change Manager” closes them once and the proposed schedule. If approved, pushed to our live environment. the resources are allocated and the work begins. Next comes the user interface Human resources design development, where the teams We utilized a senior engineer who was do the design of screens associated with able to strategically lead the holistic the software. Then again come the staff hosting, system administration and pro- review and approval, and the team col- gramming development. Mojofiti at any lectively determines if we are on-target to given time has one manager coordinating meet the business goals. human, software and financial resources Software/programming/development related to a system of production. The is the next logical step. PHP/MySQL pro- production system manages bug tracking, grammers get to work. Business goals are new development and priorities. redefined as digestible and logical devel- Our programming team is comprised opment tasks. The development team of several PHP, MySQL and WordPress- determines the appropriate technical solu- specific developers. Typical duties include tion and executes. Development cycles everything from printing a user’s selected iterate until the business goals are met. primary language to a template creating a Then come quality assurance and testing BuddyPress-compatible plugin, thus allow- of the software from a technical perspec- ing users to request and save crowdsourced tive, which sometimes includes an exter- translations. A few overall challenges faced nal focus group team or service to double at the start of this project include a URL check the functionality and user experi- rewriting override for the default method ence. There’s another staff review and provided by BuddyPress in order for Trans- approval and then the closed beta launch. posh to work as expected; a handful of The closed beta step allows a larger group smaller compatibility issues with Trans- of our teams, both internal and external posh and this WordPress MU/ BuddyPress to test the production. Sometimes we environment; a modification to the default include our public relations teams, adver- Blog creation process in order to pick up a tising agency and investors. A punchlist default set of Transposh settings per Blog; of items to be completed before launch and a link changing of default Transposh is reviewed, prioritized and worked on. output to work within the multiuser setup. Final staff review and approval take place We have designers who contribute cre- before launching the beta to the public. atively to the user experience. Most of these At the open beta step, the public gets people have five or more years’ experience, to test the software and weigh in on any which helps a lot when you want to cycle updates, bugs, modifications or changes through things frequently and continuously. that are to be considered. Feedback from the public beta is then reviewed and pri- Technological development oritized by staff. If all items are done and So after we determined our ingredients, approved, we move to launch. The inter- we set out to manifest the idea. Our pro- nal launch includes contingency planning, cess went something like this. server configurations and release sched- At the Business Requirement Documen- ule. At this time all things move live to the tation stage we gather user experience, public servers. Finally, there’s the public customer benefits and resource availabil- launch, and the files are transferred to live ity information. We evaluate these items servers. Refinements become a version- together and distill a potential combina- ing system where we launch new updates tion that exhibits a strong opportunity for weekly or monthly to sites. the users of the software to benefit. In the Once your software is in a place so that case of www.mojofiti.com, it amounted to users can start working with it, get it online. users publishing blogs, with those users/ We recommend a beta label to inform blogs united into a social network system users that the site is a work in progress. with system-wide communications with- During this period, have users start to tell out language barriers. Costs were to be you what’s working and what’s not, then less than $500,000. identify and fix bugs and improve the site. At the Production Scheduling stage, This process is probably the most efficient the production manager maps out the way to develop as it gives you real world development. Then come staff review insight into how to manage your ongoing and approval. The staff gets together and investments — to get the best results for reviews the work business requirements Iterations of the site from the design team. your users. G

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s hing S r n ke t s m ts r Te 4/5/10 9:56:20AM www.star-group.net 16 Madcap GSG.indd 16 4/5/10 9:57:25 AM LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY GETTING STARTED:Guide An invitation to subscribe to

his guide is a component of the magazine MultiLingual. The promoting your business or for conducting fully international e- ever-growing easy international access to information, ser- commerce, you’ll benefit from the information and ideas in each T vices and goods underscores the importance of language issue of MultiLingual. and culture awareness. What issues are involved in reaching an international audience? Are there technologies to help? Who pro- Managing content vides services in this area? Where do I start? How do you track all the words and the changes that occur Savvy people in today’s world use MultiLingual to answer these in a multilingual website? How do you know who’s doing what questions and to help them discover what other questions they and where? How do you respond to customers and vendors in should be asking. a prompt manner and in their own languages? The growing and MultiLingual’s eight issues a year are filled with news, technical changing field of content management and global manage- developments and language information for people who are inter- ment systems (CMS and GMS), customer relations management ested in the role of language, technology and translation in our (CRM) and other management disciplines is increasingly impor- twenty-first-century world. A ninth issue, the Resource Directory tant as systems become more complex. Leaders in the devel- and Index, provides listings of companies in the language industry opment of these systems explain how they work and how they and an index to the previous year’s content. work together. Two issues each year include Getting Started Guides such as this one, which are primers for moving into new territories both Internationalization geographically and professionally. Making software ready for the international market requires The magazine itself covers a multitude of topics. more than just a good idea. How does an international developer prepare a product for multiple locales? Will the pictures and col- Translation ors you select for a user interface in France be suitable for users How are translation tools changing the art and science of com- in Brazil? Elements such as date and currency formats sound like municating ideas and information between speakers of different simple components, but developers who ignore the many inter- languages? Translators are vital to the development of interna- national variants find that their products may be unusable. You’ll tional and localized software. Those who specialize in technical find sound ideas and practical help in every issue. documents, such as manuals for computer hardware and software, industrial equipment and medical products, use sophisti- Localization cated tools along with professional expertise to translate complex How can you make your product look and feel as if it were built in text clearly and precisely. Translators and people who use transla- another country for users of that language and culture? How do you tion services track new developments through articles and news choose a localization service vendor? Developers and localizers items in MultiLingual. offer their ideas and relate their experiences with practical advice that will save you time and money in your localization projects. Language technology From multiple keyboard layouts and input methods to Unicode- And there’s much more enabled operating systems, language-specific encodings, systems Authors with in-depth knowledge summarize changes in the that recognize your handwriting or your speech in any language language industry and explain its financial side, describe the chal- — language technology is changing day by day. And this technol- lenges of computing in various languages, explain and update ogy is also changing the way in which people communicate on a encoding schemes, and evaluate software and systems. Other personal level — changing the requirements for international soft- articles focus on particular countries or regions; specific lan- ware and changing how business is done all over the world. guages; translation and localization training programs; the uses MultiLingual is your source for the best information and insight of language technology in specific industries — a wide array of into these developments and how they will affect you and your current topics from the world of multilingual computing. business. If you are interested in reaching an international audience in the best way possible, you need to read MultiLingual. G Global web Every website is a global website, and even a site designed for one country may require several languages to be effective. Experienced web professionals explain how to create a site that Subscribe to MultiLingual at works for users everywhere, how to attract those users to your www.multilingual.com/subscribe site and how to keep the site current. Whether you use the internet and worldwide web for e-mail, for purchasing services, for

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