Localization tools are only as good as their users

In all industries, including the localization and translation industry, new tools are continuously designed and sold to streamline the key processes used in the business. The overall goals of these tools center on improving efficiency, saving time and reducing cost.

Organizations that depend on the management of projects involving the expertise of multi-specialized professionals require a strong leader at the helm, no matter how sophisticated the tools. This is true for a general contractor for a large construction site, for a program manager for a manufacturing or software company, or for the project manager of an elaborate NASA shuttle mission. This individual is responsible for making sure that the end product of these cross-functional teams is delivered successfully.

The same holds true for the localization industry where the project manager must select appropriate resources with the proper expertise to complete the project per the required specifications, properly using the localization tools available to facilitate this effort.

Translation memories are one of the tools heavily used by localization teams with great success. A more recent tool added to the internationalization arsenal is the translation management system or TMS. This enterprise-level localization tool is used to facilitate packaging and distribution of translation kits, centralize the data repository for translation assets, and facilitate communication and collaboration among all the project stakeholders.

Used properly, a TMS can greatly increase the efficiency of file and terminology exchange, as well as the communication and clarity of project requirements. But in order for the project to be a success, the proper resources must be selected for all phases of the project. Translators must be chosen with native language expertise in the subject matter and style of the material being translated. Desktop publishing teams must be versed in the proper file types, language nuances during layout, and attention to detail for the final quality assurance. Translation memories, terminology glossaries and other reference materials must also be selected properly. And last but not least, the project manager must structure the workflow and communicate the proper details to ensure that end results meet the client’s requirements.

Localization tools can be a tremendous help in organizing and packaging data as well as providing a central point of communication. But they are no substitute for a skilled and knowledgeable localization team. Successful use of a TMS only complements the proper localization resources in the execution of localization projects; it does not replace them!

Translation Collaboration Portal

With the advent of the internet and Web2.0 technologies, collaboration portals are put to use in all industries, including translation and localization.

Exactly a year ago, GlobalVision released the industry’s first online collaboration portal to handle translation and localization queries between all translation and localization projects’ stakeholders.

Immediately after the release, translators began initiating queries regarding the text they are translating from within the translation management system allowing our clients’ in-country, documentation and engineering experts to respond to these queries in a secure easy to use environment with a web browser.

gvCollab, the online translation collaboration portal, quickly became an integral part of GlobalVision’s larger translation management system (TMS), gvAccess*, seamlessly handling hundreds of queries, and facilitating the translation and review tasks which constitute roughly 65% of a localization project’s efforts.

What used to take days to compile, document, forward, allocate, answer and disseminate is now done automatically and expediently in the translation management system, enhancing response time along with the receipt of timely knowledge for translators and reviewers to accurately complete their translation and localization tasks.

This, not only improved the efficiency of our translators, it also improved the end-quality of the localized product and minimized the quality assurance steps needed to achieve a proper release.

Since Web 2.0 technology was used to develop gvCollab, translators now submit queries online in a wiki environment tied to the project’s query and terminology databases. Project managers then moderate them online allowing servers to automatically route notifications to the expert personnel on the client side. The experts in turn answer the queries online, swiftly and securely. Since the data is SQL based, it resides in a knowledge base that constitutes a critical component for accurate future projects’ completions.

While in the past we had Translation Memories (TM) and Terminology Databases (TD) to rely on, now we have Query Databases (QD) as well. QDs are as important assets to translation and localization projects as TMs and TDs.

The following are the benefits gained from the translation collaboration portal, gvCollab:

• Preserve translation knowledge assets by organizing queries and automatically storing them in a SQL knowledge base for future use accessible to all stakeholders
• Reduce redundancy by eliminating duplicate queries through automatic search of queries already in the knowledge base and avoiding unnecessary queries by automatically searching the terminology database
• Create efficiency by streamlining the routing and notification of queries to the desired language experts or authors for timely responses

Today, GlobalVision's worldwide translators, project managers and clients are benefiting from this enterprise-wide collaborative database that is streamlining their translation and localization project efforts. The days of ad-hoc querying by email and forever waiting for redundant answers are eternally gone!

* gvAccess and gvCollab are offered free of charge to GlobalVision’s translation and localization clients. To learn more about them, or to attend a free webinar or to get a free white paper about the benefits of translation management systems, visit http://www.globalvis.com/.

The Language of Business is the Language of the Customer!

Last week, we got the following email from a prospective client: “I am aware of the services for translation and localization that exist in the market place such as yours. My challenge is on how to then take the translated / localized versions of our field service solution and go to market with it in the foreign marketplace. To accomplish this in house would not only require investment into the translation services but complete hiring of an internal bi-lingual marketing / sales / support staffing.

Before I can make the investment to engage in your services I would require assistance in identifying solid partner(s) with the ability to market / sell / support the translated & localized product in the corresponding foreign markets. Is this a challenge that you and your firm could assist in?”

What is heartening is that we seldom hear anymore doubt that globalization is here to stay. With a weaker US dollar overseas and the unrelenting pressure on Wall Street companies to constantly lower costs and increase profits, globalization trends have grown stronger by the day, despite the current worldwide economic turmoil.

Executives possessing a global vision are convinced now more than ever that to succeed internationally they must localize their products, websites and literature. The benefits are many:

• Better communications with international customers and prospects

• Unparalleled market penetration
• Tangible competitive edge

• International and local image that is hard to ignore

• Visible commitment to customers worldwide

With many years of global exposure, our clients continue to confirm that the language of business is indeed the language of the customer. Since localization and translation are not core competencies they possess, our clients believe that outsourcing those tasks to us is the obvious solution.

But for many emerging companies, going global is a catch-22 proposition. They understand the long term benefits, but cannot justify their upfront costs.

At GlobalVision, we believe that your international expansions do not have to be an expensive proposition. Read going global on a shoestring and discover our tested approach to achieve international market penetration incrementally and judiciously. It is a compass that will guide you as you embark on your international journey.

When you become our client, we take your global market commitment to a higher level. Your languages, schedules, budgets, processes, and goals become our business. We put them and your end-users first and foremost.

In short, your language becomes our language! Don’t accept any less from a language service partner!

Statistical Machine Translation for All

In the 80s, I worked for a large European chip manufacturer who at that time was marketing a new technology in video chips. They architected a solid state CCD (Charge Coupled Device) relying on the Frame Transfer (FT) technology to compete with the common Interline Transfer technology adopted by most Japanese video camera manufacturers.

Although the FT technology was superior, it never took off. Why? The company focused on the scientific and professional markets instead of the consumer market that was dominated by Japanese companies. Lacking consumer volumes, they could not justify financing their technology for too long, hence its demise.

Lesson learned? Volume often trumps technology!

But what if someone has the volume, the technology, and offers it for free? How can anyone compete under such conditions? This is the case with statistical machine translation (SMT).

At core, all SMT solutions are based on the same algorithms. And by their nature, they all require intensive mathematical operations on very large sets of bilingual text corpus and even larger monolingual corpora to stand a chance to resemble human translation quality. The winner will not be the user of the better SMT technology, but the user of the one that relies on the largest volume of translation databases and computing muscle (read the unreasonable effectiveness of data).

Effectively, the power to harness SMT lies with the company that accesses, spiders, aligns and indexes the massive volumes of monolingual and multilingual corpora available to the public, while at the same time holds an enormous infrastructure in computing resources. The larger the volume of language corpora processed, the more valuable SMT will be.

But just like translation memory (TM) and rule-based machine translation (RbMT), SMT will not replace human translators or language service providers. With adequate integration in the translation environment, and in time, SMT will offer benefits similar or possibly better than fuzzy-match results from TM tools.

Certainly, human translators will keep on applying the final edits and linguistic quality control; localization and QA engineers will carry on ensuring that the localized product operates correctly; and, project managers will continue overseeing timely and on budget projects’ completions.

If you want to experiment with SMT technology today, don’t look far. Think volume, think cloud computing, think free! Think of the most popular search-engine company in the world. Get the picture?