Technical Book Review of "Enabling Globalization"

By: Ugur Akinci, Technical Communication Center

“Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using Localization to Penetrate International Markets” by Nabil Freij, the President of the localization company GlobalVision International Inc. is a must reference for everyone thinking to market products and services globally.

It’s kind of ironic but true – globalization requires localization, and this book has plenty good insights into a process which many times is mistakenly referred to as “translation.”

Localization obviously requires and entails translation but it’s actually a lot more than that.

Even if you read only chapter 2 of this book (“Localization Myths and Missteps”) it’d be worth your modest investment in this unique book. I say “unique” because how many authoritative books you know written on localization? I’ve searched Amazon while writing this post for the keyword “localization” and only one other book came up – written way back in 2000. So this is a very timely contribution indeed.

In the chapter devoted to “Best Localization Practices”, Mr. Freij dives into such important topics as product localization processes, single-sourcing for technical translation, authoring for localization, selecting your in-country reviewers, budgeting the process, and more. That is, Freij approaches the issue not only from the point of view of technical communicators but corporate customers/buyers and project managers as well. That makes this 118-page volume a comprehensive resource indeed.

The cost of localization is also given its own chapter where the author explains best methods to contain budget overruns and ten tips for achieving quality in localization at every budget level.

If you’re not familiar with the technology involved, Freij also explains what a Translation Management System (TMS) is all about.

Overall, this is a great resource for all technical writers and project managers who have a localization project in front of them. Reading this book can get you up to speed in a hurry in a topic that will increasingly confront and challenge us in the hyper-globalized years ahead.

Open a Window to the World

Did you know that if your website is published in 13 languages - English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese (People's Republic of China), Japanese, German, Arabic, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan and the islands), and Turkish - you can target 80% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) producers?

Many companies would love to have that kind of reach, but cannot justify the cost of their full website translation into these languages. So our answer is simple. Don't aim for a grand portal, but don't isolate yourself. Instead, open a window to the world!

Interested? Inquire about GlobalVision's Window to the World website translation package. Our team can help you design a landing page for your company and translate it into 12 languages. The page will be optimized for keywords and languages of your choosing and will link to your main website.

You can have close to 90% of the world's web visitors find you when they search for your keywords in their native language. The Window to the World page will then lead them to the rest of your website.

Ask us also about the benefts that your trademarks will enjoy at no added cost!

Note: As an added bonus, GlobalVision will send you free of charge the latest eBook in the industry, Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using Localization to Penetrate International Markets.

Preliminary Results on Machine Translation Engines

After thousands of votes are cast testing machine translation engines on Gabble On, results seem to start taking shape. Here are some of the findings so far as reported by Gabble On.

As predicted in our blog Machine Translation engines put to the test!, it appears that survey takers prefer Google Translate's results across the board. In a few languages like Arabic, Polish and Dutch, the preference is overwhelming with votes for Google doubling its nearest competitor!

However, once voters that have self defined their fluency in the source or target language as “limited” are removed, the contest became closer in some of the heavily trafficked languages. For instance, Bing Translator led in German, while Babelfish led in Chinese. Google however maintained a lead in Spanish, Japanese, and French.

Limited fluency voters chose Google over Bing by 2 to 1. They also chose Google over Yahoo Babelfish by 5 to 1.

For phrases below 50 characters, Google’s lead in Spanish, Japanese, and French disappeared, while Microsoft’s lead in German widened. Beyond 50 characters, Google’s relative performance seemed to improve across the board.

To eliminate any potential subjectivity toward a solution, on March 4th, Gabble On implemented changes to the survey hiding the brands and randomizing the positions of the results before voting. It will be interesting to see if brand bias played a big part in the results so far and how the new results will shape up.

If you have not done so yet, put the engines to the test and vote. Remember, one lucky winner will get the Apple iPAD electronic reader and eleven lucky winners will get Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using Localization to Penetrate International Markets, the latest eBook in the industry on globalization and localization done the right way!

Vote on: www.gabble-on.com/SurveySelector.aspx. Also, let us know what you think about the test and the results.