The Globalization Rapporteur

Leadership: How to create independent thinkers and give them the freedom to enjoy...

2009-10-22T01:31:00.002+02:00

"Maestro, with all due respect... when do I start?"

Karajan: "You Start when you can't stand it anymore"

Itay Talgam: "You need to have process and content to create a Meaning"

Enjoy the video... it's so good!

Will social networks kill Spam? (Are we creating self regulated networks?)

2009-10-21T20:05:00.006+02:00

The amount of comunications happening inside social networks is exponentially increasing. People are not using email anymore (well, not that much at least):

Why Email No Longer Rules…

Happens with every change, some people are afraid of it and some are so rapidly changing habits that they forget that the value of technology is to enable better processes, be more efficient and get most of your time spent in front of a computer.

There is a big fuzz about getting Google wave invitations. It is just a matter of typing "google wave invite" in your search engine and you will see, or try twitter and you will see everything from people asking for Retweets to some even offering sexual services in exchange of a Wave invitation.

Google Wave may or may not be a revolution, but the really interesting thing for me is that I believe all these communications through social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, etc... will provoque a major change to our communication behavior and specially will allow for getting spam out of our lifes.

It will take time, but I believe that these new platforms for communication will become self regulated networks. Users will no longer accept unsolicited communications, it will simply be a matter of unfollowing, deleting or not being friends anymore with the person sending you spam.

And you better not be in the list of people doing that because you won't be able to communicate anymore.

Professional Translation - Dilbert way

2009-10-21T11:02:00.001+02:00

Don't you feel sometimes translations are performed this way?

Fighting with SDL Passolo and SDL Trados Studio 2009

2009-10-02T12:00:00.009+02:00

Blogging out of frustation is normally an experience that should be avoided and I normally prefer to concentrate on positive feedback, but... Please prove me wrong and I'll acknowledge my error and ignorance! (Feel free to contact me).

Foreword:

Trados is still an essential tool for any agency performing tasks that go beyond simple Word translation. I have not seen yet any set of tools work for such an ample diversity of software applications: FrameMaker, Indesign, etc....

Coincidence:

9PM: I just arrived home and my mobile phone rings. It's an ex-colleage of mine who runs a small sized translation business.

- Are you using SDL 2009 in any of your clients offices, ¿should I upgrade?

My first impression was that I had a camera on my shoulder: how else could it happen that after 10 hours trying to figure out what wasn't working properly with a recently upgraded license of SDL2009 so translators could work on a project, I receive such a call.

I told him my "yesterday 9PM" truth. - Listen, I just had a very bad experience with it and I'm not going to be objective. Can I sleep on it tonight and try to be a little less subjective with my response tomorrow?

Background (11 hours earlier):

We had to translate resource strings with Passolo. It has worked in the past, so wasn´t supposed to be a big deal...You are supposed to get your prepared bundles into Passolo, connect the TM and Multiterm to Passolo through the Addin, et voilá.. all should work like a charm.

The problems:

1st issue: The Passolo edition coming with SLD 2009 is an incomplete edition, same for the one that comes with SDL 2007. The funny thing is that even the Translators free edition has basic functions like (Edit/Find) enabled and the one installed with a close to €3000Euro SDL 2007 license doesn't (The message: "The Function "Find..." is only supported by the SDL Passolo Professional or Team Edition.", not true, since it works on their own FREE Translator's editions.)

OK, we must be doing something wrong. I've seen this work. It was not yesterday, but I was sure Passolo worked and I had a good experience with it.

2nd issue: Let's link the TM and the Multiterm to Passolo. Surprise! It seems to work, but when we try to translate the strings, try to Find Concordance, the TM connection changes its state and is "deactivated".

3rd issue: Can we check if Multiterm can be linked? I simply didn't manage to make it work. I could simply mean I was ignorant on how to do it, but Passolo seemed not to let us get the Multiterm link option work.

(Just in case: yes, I did link the Multiterm through Trados Workbench first)

Oh!! But it works with Passolo 2007!

Solution:

Why don´t we forget about all these new versions and just take the ones that seem to work fully: Passolo Freelance Edition and we take an old Trados 7.1 which is the version the translators will have anyway (it's not going to be easy to make translators upgrade!).

And it works....By taking the older Addin for older Trados versions, all works like a charm:- TM is linked- Multiterm is linked- Passolo works

My thoughts:

What is going on? Am I simply not capable of making the new versions work? Maybe these are too complicated for me and I should finally get one of these expensive SDL courses? My filling so far with the combination of Passolo Essential and SDL 2009 is that the software provider is trying to make us pay much more than we should for a product that comes with "essential versions".

BUT: I liked the new interface! I liked the fact that I would not need to use the tedious S-tagger anymore! I liked the integration of many features that were sold to us with the new upgrade! But again, when we need to do something that goes a little further than the simple doc translation...something goes wrong.

Please, prove me wrong. Please tell me I don´t know what I'm talking about. Because if I'm right, I find it very unfair that people downloading Free editions and getting working Trados versions through simple google searches with no need to touch their wallet are managing to make this work and those who pay a high fee are rewarded with a 10hour nightmare "training course".

I'm afraid I won't have a final answer for my friend yet. For the moment I can say that the purchase of SDL Trados Studio 2009 Professional (2995€) + SDL Passolo 2009 (1840€) is quite an investment.

Links:

SDL Trados Studio 2009: http://www.sdl.com/en/sites/sdl-trados-solutions/default.asp

Free SDL Passolo Freelance Edition: http://www.sdl.com/en/sites/sdl-passolo/downloads/files/passolo-2009-translation-edition.asp

Simple explanation of Web 2.0

2009-07-22T16:22:00.003+02:00

(in Spanish) Presentation on PM tools for managing cultural diversity - PMI Madrid Chapter - March 2009

2009-05-22T18:47:00.002+02:00

Herramientas Gestion Diversidad Cultural

View more Microsoft Word documents from victor.alonso.lion.

Price and value...

2009-05-14T23:05:00.003+02:00

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

Warren Buffett

Leadership Key Sentences

2009-05-08T22:37:00.005+02:00

The five most important words: "You did a great job."

The four most important words: "I really was wrong."

The three most important words: "Your opinion is?"

The two most important words: "Thank you"

The most important word: "We"

The less important: "Me"

Stop selling: learn and share

2009-03-31T04:59:00.004+02:00

Sometimes you just need to stop delivering your selling pitch.

Share information, comment, start a dialogue. If you are really interested in what you sell, if you consider yourself an expert in what you offer, then you will be able to give and share information. You will learn so much from your interlocutors, that the result from these real conversations will outperform any possible "pressure" strategy (pressure will just create rejection anyway).

Tech. Tip: MS WORD Remove frames (text boxes) from document, after OCR or save as rtf from pdf (works fine with Crystal Report exports too)

2009-02-20T17:09:00.003+01:00

If you ever needed to remove frames and still maintain formatting use this tip found at http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php?topic=21220.0

Worked perfectly for the problem I needed to solve for a client...

"Removing frames (text boxes) from a word document, after OCR or saving as rtf from pdf document

You saved or scanned a document with OCR software like Abbyy FineReader or OmniPage Pro? You saved as rtf a PDF document and the resultant word document, contains multiple frames?

Frames make the document very hard edit because all text is placed inside frames. We need to remove those frames if we want to edit the document.

How do we do that?

If you do not care about formatting you do this:

1.
—Open the file which has frames in MS Word
—Save the file as a Plain text file.
—Open the new text file you have just saved in Notepad or WordPad or some other text editor.
—Now Select all the text by pressing Ctrl+A, Copy and paste that into a New MS Word file. Then Save it with any name you want. Frames are gone.

If you do care about formatting:

2.
—Copy everything in the Word document, paste all the text into WordPad, copy all the text in the WordPad document, and paste it back into the Word document.

Or

3.
—Select the entire document by pressing Ctrl+A, and then press Ctrl+Q. This will set every paragraph back to its default condition."

"Long Tail" economy also for the service industry

2009-02-19T15:12:00.004+01:00

You probably have read already about Chris Anderson’s Long Tail concept to describe the niche strategy of business is very well known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail)

But how does this affect the service industry or the individual consultant:

You could claim that it is necessary to twist a little bit the idea to understand it as a valuable resource for the service industry.

Here is my attempt:

a. Broader audience could mean less attraction: The more specific you are the more you could position yourself as THE expert in the field.

If you focus on a small niche, the members of that tribe will easily consider you as the problem solver for their specific issue. The more specific your target niche is, the less efforts and resources will be necessary to outstand from your competition.

Let's consider an example: There could be many English to Spanish translators, but how many are experienced in the broadcast industry? How many of these are experts in signal measurement devices and protocols... If you find the way to proove your expertise in such restricted area, guess who clients in that specific industry will call next time they need a quality translation. With that perspective you could become the king of mambo. Your kingdom will be restricted, but you will lead it. (Of course you will need to find the way to market yourself correctly to the target market.)

b. Be specific: In a Long tail economy, consumers ask more and more for that specificity. They become used to specific messages and to receive offers focused on them. I believe that poor quality mass media advertisement has favored a development of a brain switch in the public: “General ads: not interesting. Please ignore”. If you are not specific enough, people will easily forget about you.

c. Compete for sincere love: The less obvious your niche is, the less competition you will have. Who are you really? Where are the people you can connect with? If you connect at an emotional level you will be remembered. Relationships are what matter the most.

Why do I enjoy game localization so much?

2009-02-01T00:52:00.006+01:00

The game industry could still be perceived by some, as a less important division in the localization league. The truth is that the game industry is a complete world in itself. There are really bad quality translations in some games...absolutely true. But doesn't this happen in all industries? However top game publishers (and not so top) aim for translation quality that could compete with the most demanding regulated industry.

I'm so lucky to be involved in different industries and be able to have my inhands personal overview of how localization is maturing in different fields including Financial, IT and Life Science. Although these last mentioned industries are considered to be more "noble", I can confirm that none, including regulated industries, should be, as a whole, be considered as more demanding than the game industry. I will try to explain why in the following discussion.

The "Fan" factor: game players are incredibly tough critics:
Game users are fans. They play on a specific title because they chose to (and pay for it). This doesn't apply to any other non-entertainment industry localization.
The first consequence of this is that a huge community of users is analyzing, criticizing, suggesting better translation, voice over or feature in regards to any possible tiny detail in a game.
The second consequence is that players could really feel spoiled if a game translation, voice over or functionality in a specific language is not working properly. For major MMORPG games, millions of users are interconnected, not only in the game itself but in mega huge communities in continuous movement and discussion. In addition, these fans are fond of their games. And the news about mistakes spreads quickly... Really, really, very fast.
I can give an example of the fast spread of information. Just imagine... For a game I was involved in there was a localized voice over part recorded directly by the publisher to launch a demo, in a kind of amateur way. This demo reached journalists who were supposed to simply have a quick overview of the game months before the official release. Even before the scripts reached the studios to record the final version, we already had specialized journalists calling us and asking if we were going to record the voice-over the way it was in the demo... comments on their website was full of angry fans, not understanding why voice over of the second version of the game was not going to be as good as the first one.

The "Expert" factor: real experts will play your game:
Imagine you decide to launch a baseball game in France. Who will buy it? People who love baseball. Even if baseball is not an extremely popular game in the country. Users will know the terminology, and therefore will require that the correct terms are used in the game. If you are working on localizing such a game, you better send your linguists to a French baseball field if you don't want the result to be strongly criticized and have a very unhappy costumer at the end of the day.

The "Emotional" factor:
Game players are emotionally bound with their games. Consider the implications in regards to the quality standards required. The concept of a virtual life gaining importance in respect to real life is extremely well expressed in the following video (a bit long but worth it), presented by David Perry at the Ted Conference.

The "multidiscipline" factor:
The Game industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines. Just check the amount of Special Interest Groups from the International game developers association (IGDA) to get an idea. Localization, like it happens in many other industries was only considered at the latest stage of game development in the past. Today simultaneous shipment ("simship") is essential for any important game in the market. The consequence is that localization is considered already in preproduction and during the production stages. Localization is planned early in the process and, if outsourced, localization vendors are involved since the beginning, becoming real partners. Many publishers are highly conscious that the success of the product in the different markets depends on localization as much as on the quality of the game. To succeed in such a competitive market, Development, Marketing and Sales need to be involved. It is also very important not to forget an essential discipline playing a relevant role in a product aiming to be global, what the real experts on the topic call “Geoliteracy". Cross-cultural awareness is more than essential, to avoid unnecessary risks.

The "multimedia" factor:
For localization project managers (or producers, as they are usually called in the game industry), this field could be a very interesting and instructive experience (or a real nightmare). I'm not going to talk about how aggressive schedules can be, because I’m sure there will be examples of impossible turnaround requirements in all imaginable industries. The original factor comes from the fact that game localization usually includes audio localization (not that usual in other localization projects), and very often a very strong involvement with integration activities (integration of localized assets in game code). For localization experts or project managers coming from more "standard" localization (like myself), the game industry has lots of new experiences to offer and new knowledge to acquire. In addition to these activities, game localization is strongly related to testing. Of course this is not a 'game industry' only characteristic, but there is a very strong linguistic testing investment in games, especially in AAA games.

Let’s also not forget that the game industry is huge. In many countries, revenue for games is higher than movie and music together. Check the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) facts if you are curious.

As a last thought, my opinion is that creativity and science coincide in the game industry making of it a crucial technology laboratory.

Be remarkable: Stay ahead of your competition

2009-01-27T16:35:00.009+01:00

I was listening to an interview to Seth Godin, the Internet Marketing Guru, available at Ducttapemarketing.com.

The following statement took my attention. "Be remarkable, by simply delivering what you promised to deliver."
It seems like simple common sense...

A simple statement in itself, but if deeply analized not so simple to accomplish. If you are working on your own, it could me a matter of simply maintaining your promise...

But what does it mean for a multiperson SME or a big corporation?:

¤ As a company, do you know what is exactly offered to clients?

¤ Is your company, (or are you) providing your teams and different departments all the necessary tools and techniques to share information?

¤ You could state that strict process, investment in standards will take care of this. Really?...
Does your sales team really know how production is handled? If you have an operations manual (you should), hand it over to your business development people.
Is your marketing campaign in synch with what is really done once you get the go ahead from your client?

Be remarkable and work on analyzing how applying this statement to your specific case will make your service outstand from your competition.

My product is selling well in English! What next?

2009-01-20T06:31:00.000+01:00

Your traffic metrics are getting higher and higher numbers. The analysis shows that a high amount of these new visits come from international visitors. Is it time to localize?

There are a few things to consider first:

Localizing your site or presence in the internet has one objective: bring new final customers or consumers for your information or product. The real challenge is to bring NEW costumers. Consider that these new customers will be different than the ones that found you with an English search. You will need to optimize your localized version as much as your English version (multilanguage SEO for your web site for instance).

Provide the same customer support service to your international clients as you do to your English clients. If you have a customer support infrastructure, think that you will need to support the non English speakers too. This could be very costly if not correctly done.

Don't change your business model! (yet): If your revenue is coming from advertisement in your web pages, or inside your software product, don't forget that your non English speaking audience will need the advertisement in the local language. If you are aiming for a widely spoken language, the effort could be interesting, but if you are launching one sole product for the international versionsand your are planning to deliver rotating languages in your advertisement, it could happen that the efficiency of this new advertisement compared to the original English one will drop. Again, this completely depends on your business model (this will not apply if your revenue comes from selling the product itself).

Different products requiere different efforts, different markets ask for different needs. Going global is not without challenges, but don't forget that the market outside your boundaries is huge, and that brings an awful lot of new opportunities.

Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech | Focus on localization

2009-01-16T14:05:00.003+01:00

Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech

My fellow Americans, today is a original day. You have shown the world that "hope" is not just another word for "localization", and that "change" is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually Globalize.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces perfectly quality challenges like never before. Our economy is consistent. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for multiple language translations. Our healthcare system is multilingual. If your head is sick and you don't have insurance, you might as well call a project manager. And America's image overseas is tarnished like a test console computer. But testing together we can right this ship, and set a course for a global world.

Finally, I must thank my comprehensive family, my trustful campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank team for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of translating the views of American people. Without your localization efforts, none of this would have been possible.

---

Speech generated with:

http://www.atom.com/spotlights/inauguration_speech_generator/

Change happens! and fast...

2009-01-11T12:37:00.000+01:00

Marketing 2.0: How to respond to a viral attack (Tiger woods & Electronic Arts alliance)

2009-01-05T12:39:00.004+01:00

We sometimes do not recognize the importance of our presence in the internet.

Electronic Arts has responded to an attack to its PGA Tiger Woods game with the same weapon...

Agile & Scrum Project Management applied in the Translation/Localization industry?

2008-12-01T14:27:00.002+01:00

Agile Project Management is a trend, not really new in software development projects, but quickly gaining popularity in other areas.

Practitioners of the Scrum Methodology claim that once trained in “agile thinking”, it becomes a part of your everyday thinking process: it specially forces you to focus on the right thing at this point in time, while continuously anticipating later actions aiming for an optimal end result.

Although Agile is criticized for not being as formal as other methodologies, these critics are not really understanding the point.

Agile forces scope commitment at multiple levels and is a open to continuous adjustment and review.

In a simplified explanation, we would be for instance talking about having a running software as quickly as possible (let's say 2 weeks, where all phases will be performed: design, implementation, testing, correction...) and from there, use similar quick turnarounds to build additional features. I'm leaving many interesting characteristics out of this short explanation, but this incremental approach is the basis of my comments below.

Based on this basic idea about scrum that the team should get to an operative product as soon as possible, how would that "translate" into the localization industry? Should we aim to get "chunks" of translated content as soon as possible?

That would in a way go against the best practices from the industry (i'm leaving many activities out of this description...just to make this thinking as light as possible) :

- 1st phase: Translation of the whole content

- 2nd phase: Editing of the whole content

- 3rd phase: Proofreading of the whole content

Well... In fact in any demanding project, review starts before translation is completed.

So were we "scrumming" in the localization industry whithout knowing it? Like Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme: « Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. » (M.Jourdain is surprised and delighted to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it). Or were we just "fast tracking" the project and not really having an agile approach?

What about other situations where this could be "already" happening?

I'm thinking for instance of Content Management Systems where translated/reviewed/approved paragraphs can be displayed to the user without waiting for the rest of the content. Technology can make this work perfectly, I've seen it implemented at Nestlé for instance. Any company big enough to run a GMS could aim for it with the help of the proper technology partner and experienced team.

Need for speed

The trend for speeding up the reaction of translated content to created content is no doubt going to increase.

Technology will probably lead the change, and project management approaches will need to follow.

No doubt the "need for speed" will be exponential, which will influence the whole industry. Process will need to adapt.

There are of course top companies working with online TMs, Collaboration portals, etc... but the bulk of the industry still works with really old tools: Are you telling me that you are still not emailing your kits to the translators?

Clients will still ask for lightspeed... and they will get it...

When did Globalization start?

2008-11-28T11:10:00.007+01:00

"It may have been possible in the past, for things to have happened in isolation, but from this time forth, the world must be seen as an organic whole, everything affects everything."

Polibius
born circa 200, died circa 118BC
Megalopolis, Greece

If you have the opportunity to assist to a presentation from Gerd Leonhard, do not miss the opportunity. This quote from 2000 years ago was commented yesterday during his presentation (The Future of Content: Free, Shared...Paid?) at FICOD 2008.

It's nice to have in Madrid a forum where you can meet in just 3 days people like Kevin Roberts (CEO Saatchi & Saatchi), Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine) and the mentioned Gerd Leonhard.

In Mr. Leonhard presentation, he talked about the present of content and his ideas of how the future will look like. He is working on his new blog-book: The End of Control.

As a personal summary, and in my own words:

Aiming for control is impossible. If today 6% of the users are connected to broadband, what would happen when in 3, 4 or 5 years atleast a third of the world population will have that access? What will happen when storage, already cheap today will become "cost zero" in a couple of years?

Content will be free (if it's not already free today). In order to get a part of the cake ($$), content will be the channel and surrounding activities, advertisement, items, etc.. will be what would be sold and bought.

In short: if today a group of young artists makes teeshirts and pins in order to spread the word of their music, the "good" idea would be to do exactly the contrary: Share your music, give it away... and get the money out of selling teeshirts, pins, concerts, whatever...

This is already happening in the music industry. It may simply be that we are not completely (or always) aware of it. It happens also in many other industries.

Back to content localization: Gerd Leonard's speech also made me rethink of the approach on Community Translation I commented a couple of days ago. Without really being against it, I was somehow criticizing the approach. I need to rethink my statement... As De Bono says in his 10 rules of simplicity: Rule number 6: You need to be prepared to start over again.

My preferred thinking tool (and brainstorming, note taking, planning ...)

2008-11-25T13:18:00.002+01:00

Mind mapping enables a mixture of structured content with visual planning. I've been using mind mapping as a tool for many years and started to use Software mind mapping tools to share these mind maps with others. I still love to draw ideas on a piece of paper and still use this technique in meetings and brainstorming sessions.

I already mentioned in a previous post that I started by using a free tool: Freemind, but quickly needed a more professional approach. I was starting to use mind mapping for many things, from project plans. to preparing presentations.

Mindjet's MindManager enables to do this and much more. Mindjet's team released a new version last week.

Actually two new products: MindManager 8 for Windows™ and MindManager Web™. The new version of MindManager has now increased capabilities for embedding data, creating hyperlinks, even a very useful search and browse option. Mindmanager web is a SaaS (Software as a Service) that enables online editing and collaboration within mindmaps.

The first improvement that I will be using is the new Mindjet Player. I can now transform my maps and share them with teams and colleagues using PDF or even embedding the map in a web page (See top of this blog for an example).

I still need to test the Automated Task Management function with the faculty to instantly perform summations of task start dates, end dates and level of completion.

Community translations or "Cloud Translation"

2008-11-20T21:33:00.000+01:00

Things like this could happen if amateurs do the work of pros :-)!

TAUS (Translation Automation User Society) presents in its newsletter an interview with the Localization Director at Linden Lab, the "Second Life" company. Linden Lab has opted for a "Crowdsourcing" approach to localize their content.

Just thinking of the possibility that enthusiastic users just for an emotional reward (or teeshirts..whatever) are ready to work on the translation of a product from a "for profit" company, does not stop amazing me.

It is true that there are many activities that we do that have a direct beneficial impact on other businesses (in my own blog entries where I talk about interesting products for instance).

Linden Lab is not the first company to take this approach: Google, Sun, Facebook, and even Microsoft have tried or used Community Translation.

The first time I heard about translation being performed by the users I immediately thought that those who opted to participate were translators looking for a job or a project within the companies asking for participation. I was wrong.

Be careful: It is not really free!

As mentioned on this Community Translation article on MultilingualBlog, this approach is not really "free" for the companies taking this path.

There is technical and human infrastructure to be created to support this "Cloud Translation":

The company opting for this choice, needs to have the hardware and software ready. I can not imagine this approach with hundreds of different individuals translating each a small part of the content without a few mandatory basics:

- Project Management: Undoubtedly there will be a team managing the resources (this is true no matter if the translation is done by the cloud or performed by professional paid translators). In my perception there will be a need for additional experience, additional knowledge and increased project management skills in the team managing such "Community projects". It is very improbable that things will go right if the team is not really doing an amazing job mitigating risks and anticipating community and project behavior. The planning stage must be very challenging and interesting.

- Terminology: First point where this starts to be really particular. In the TAUS interview mentioned above, one of the main arguments to opt for Community translation is that the users of the product, are the ones that have the real knowledge about it. I can only agree with this. Any professional in the GILT industry knows how bad a translation can show if the translators are not familiar or do not investigate (or are not provided with the necessary training and reference material) on the specific product.

This is really true for technical translation. In short, with this approach, those who use the product and understand it are the ones creating the terms in the target language. This is a solid argument.

Of course there needs to be a team managing the consolidation of the terminology, and specialized software to control and share it with the "community" when approved.

- A few additional words on this just mentioned "consolidation" need. Consistency must be a real challenge in such projects. It is already difficult to maintain intra-language consistency when working with big teams in traditional localization or translation projects. If each individual translates a small part and we are probably talking of hundreds of translators per language, imagine the problems that could be faced with this approach... On the background a hard work with CAT tools must be performed. Choice of the tools must be a key point on the success of these projects.

- Technical infrastructure: CAT tools as just mentioned. The company will need to invest in the correct tool that will enable the management of the content. But not only that. There will be a need for servers, portals for sharing information... all this will need a technical infrastructure with many costs involved.

There seems to be small literature on Community Translation, specially on large projects. Having the community work on a project is not a new idea. Just check the numerous open source projects where developers have joined efforts to create very good products.

Would you do it? Being part of a team managing such a project must be really interesting. Participating as a translator is a very different topic. I find it a good option for collaborating with non-profit organizations...

A few links to related and mentioned articles:

http://www.multilingualblog.com/index.php/weblog/community-translation-aint-free-translation/

http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com/profiles/blogs/2008157:BlogPost:26420

If you have links, experiences, reports to share on this subject, please do not doubt to contact me to add them to this post.

Marketing: Let's get into action - Fresh look to marketing plans

2008-11-14T10:20:00.003+01:00

Financial Times' Management blog invited Tim Calkins, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University to talk about new trends in Marketing.

Nowadays, getting information about costumers is easier that it ever was. The main driver (wasnt't it always) today is action.

The challenge is not anymore: "How do I know more about my costumer?", but "What are we going to do?"

This change in the set of mind should lead to a change in the tools used in your marketing plans.

A Marketing plan is nothing but a simple document explaining how your company is going to get into the market and compete with your competitors: "This is how we are going to build the business".

Marketing plans necessarily should concentrate mainly in three components:

Objectives: What goals do you want to achieve. This is where the numbers are. What market share you need to be succesful, what increase in revenue, etc....
Strategic initiatives: The big things that we are going to do: launch a new product, enter a new market, change pricing strategy....
Tactics: What precise actions are you going to take in order to get the initiatives to happen (point 2): advertising plans, etc...

In order to have a good and useful marketing plan, the plan should have these characteristics:

Be FOCUSED: Not too many things that need to be done, in order to be able to concentrate on the important points.
Be CLEAR: In order to clearly state what is going to be done, there is no question on what you are really going to do.
Be COMPELING: Why this is going to work.

and I would add one point:

Be Concise

A side point of a Marketing plan is to convince the whole organization and get support for the tactics and initiatives that need to be put in place. You are not going to succeed with a document with hundreds of pages because simply nobody is going to read it. In addition it will be much more difficult to extract the specific actions from it.

Professor Calvins insists on the fact that the discussions should focus on the strategic initiatives and not on the tactics or neverending analysis of the situation.

Tim Calvins has published a new book where further information can be found.

Into Chinese?

2008-11-10T11:46:00.001+01:00

Photograph by Gavin Hellier/Getty Images
Published at: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/photos/photo_china_china.html

It is true that starting a translation into Asian languages could have big implications, but working with the correct resources you should be able to get a Chinese site.

There are several things to consider:

Want to reach China. But what Chinese should you localize into?

- Mandarin is really the main “Chinese” language, other languages like Cantonese, although widely used colloquially in areas like Hong-Kong, are hardly used in written language. There are also many characters from Cantonese that are not even considered in Html encoding.

- For Chinese, the main difference resides, normally, not so much in the choice between Mandarin and other dialects (Cantonese (and many many other dialects in China), but in the choice of the standard set of Chinese Characters: Simplified versus Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese is the encoding for Republic of China characters and Traditional Chinese is commonly used in areas like Hong-Kong and communities outside China, also in Taiwan (with further complications because written Taiwanese differs from the one in Hong-Kong).
In my experience the most common request is to translate into Simplified Chinese, but the best thing is to let the client define which target markets they want to reach and decide based on that.

Implications of double-byte localization. Let’s assume a 3 component website: html content, SQL database content, and finally Flash content.

- HTML Content: This is the easier one, there should not be major problems with it. Some issues in html encodings should be considered however, like for instance differences between browsers in reading the encoding and things like problems with UTF8 BOM which are not uncommon.

- Flash content: Carefully check the implications of Flash and the use of Asian languages. Although the latest Flash versions can work in double-byte languages, it is important to consider things like: * Fonts: Be careful with the conversion process. The correct font should be available during the whole process, including .fla to .swf convertion. If the localization job is outsourced to a China based vendor it would probably make sense to look for a partner that can handle the complete process, including fla conversions.

- SQL with Chinese characters: Same question as for Flash here. Would your client actual setup work? Of course SQL supports double-byte, but it could happen that the server or systems in place are not able to generate and display correctly the Asian language characters. Always check with native speakers if everything displays properly. It will not be the first time that characters look Chinese, but order or display is completely messed up but not appealing to a non speaker of the language.

PMBOK 4th Edition: ¿Is there a good strategy to get the translated versions?

2008-10-24T18:03:00.002+02:00

The new edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge, commonly named PMBOK 4th Edition is coming in December 2008.
This video shows some of the changes between this new version and former ones.

Translations will only be lauched around 6 months later. PMI is still not at the phase of implementing an efficient Globalization Strategy for the translations and not yet ready for simultaneous multilingual releases.

It looks like content is translated on one side and on the other a commitee of PMI members (I applied for being part of the Spanish PMI translation team and hopefully will be able to figure out the details) discusses and agrees on the terminology.

Localization for China

2008-10-23T11:44:00.000+02:00

If you have access to the October/November Magazine of MULTILINGUAL, do not miss the Article from Xiaochun Zhang "'Harmonious' games localization for China".

The article explains in a very clear way the process of modification of several games (i.e. Blizzard's World of Warcraft) to be allowed in Chinese cyberspace.

The author concludes that not only sex and violence are considered, but mainly cultural, political and legal issues, including moral behaviours of the characters.

Ms. Zhang also mentions a bbc article where this topic is analyzed.

Also from bbc TV there is a very interesting news on how people are paying to get several type of equipment for their characters in virtual worlds.