The Industry's Best-Kept Secret - Admerix Localization

Instructions or info vomit?

2012-01-12T23:48:00.002+08:00

Info vomit—a copious supply of information intended to cover one’s butt and avoid answering questions—is a very real and growing problem in the hectic business world. Info vomit simply spews out information instead of providing relevant and specific instructions. Such action has no thought or regard for whether the intended recipient reads or understands what is being vomited.

It is a common defense mechanism for amateur staff doing a project manager’s job who actually feel it is beneficial to dump as much information as possible on a resource or supplier. This is done for two reasons: 1. To save time going through all the information themselves, and 2. To ensure that if anything goes wrong, they cannot be held accountable for not sending out ALL the information.

Below is an example of a reply in defense of clear and concise communications as opposed to massive dumps of mostly irrelevant information.

Client: I know that it’s very wordy, but it is much better to send more information than too little, don’t you agree?

Admerix: We would have to say in response to this question that we most certainly do not agree. I have been in localization as a project manager for more than ten years, and I can assure you that it is critical not to be overly wordy in handoffs.

Translators generally will not read through overly long instructions, and will rather just take files, translate, and send them back—fix them later if there is a query—rather than wade through a lot of poorly written and unnecessary information in the hand-off mail.

If the information is repeated in several points in the instructions, then it just becomes frustrating. It wastes time, and will always generate confusion. This is why, for our teams, we always take the handed off instructions and rewrite them as briefly and concisely as possible making sure the information is specifically tailored to the resource task. Instructions must be a brief, to the point, as and relevant as possible if they are going to be read and thus followed.

This is the difference between wanting to make sure the people you mange follow your instructions or just wanting to cover your own tail with management by being able to say "I sent all the instructions."

So, are you a professional Project Manager who issues accurate instructions to ensure a quality result, or are you simply an employee who shovels out info vomit so you can go on a coffee break and hope for the best?

The $300 Million Button

2011-11-14T14:15:00.001+08:00

The $300 Million Button

This isn't obviously related to localization. However, with so many online localization process systems making clients and vendors (not to mention a localization company's own staff) navigate an online maze to accomplish anything, but is useful in reminding us that focusing on user experience must be key, not on the bureaucratic hoops management thinks everyone wants to jump through.

Despite the floods, your Thai-language projects are safe with Admerix

2011-10-19T21:33:00.001+08:00

Considering the serious flooding in Thailand, Admerix wanted to provide an update on the situation for Thai-language projects.

With large areas of central Thailand under pressure from evacuations, power outages, and conflicting statements from authorities, you can rest assured that Admerix can run Thai projects without a hitch.

Located in Singapore and with a large base of local resources, Admerix can apply industry standard management and quality assurance to Thai language work. Even when Thai-based companies are struggling with communication and delivery difficulties, Admerix can deliver corporate-grade localization work no matter what the conditions are within Thailand.

Admerix Thai Expertise

Availability of qualified subject specialist teams

While there are many Thais willing to give general translation a try, finding professionals with relevant experience and tools can be difficult--particularly on large-scale projects. Admerix has qualified teams of tested resources for even the largest and most challenging projects. Our large Thai team of linguists is expert in many subject specialties--medical, automotive, ERP/CRM, gaming, and elearning.

Terminology specialists

The Thai language is fraught with terminology issues. Even companies selling identical products frequently adopt different (and often confusing) terminology for seemingly commonplace terms. Admerix's knowledge of the Thai market ensures your projects will employ the most appropriate terminology.

DTP and formatting issues

Thai still remains one of the trickiest languages to deal with because of line-break issues, stacked tones and font size problems. Admerix has extensive experience in handling these types of issues in ERP/CRM, online software, and mobile devices.

If you are anxious about trusting your project to a Thailand-based company at this time, Admerix can give you peace of mind in stable and transparent Singapore.

We would be happy to answer any questions about our solutions for Thai and other Asian languages, so please don't hesitate to contact us. Email: John.Wyatt@Admerix.com

3 Questions to Ask Before Adopting that Best Practice

2011-10-02T18:18:00.001+08:00

Thought-provoking stuff from Harvard Business Review:

Best practices are alluring. If other companies have already determined the best way to do something, why not just do what they did? But before you run off to collect best practices from the leader in your industry, ask these three questions:

    * What are the downsides? Implementing a practice that worked elsewhere isn't necessarily a slam dunk. Think through the potential disadvantages and figure out how to mitigate them.
    * Is success truly attributable to the benchmark practice? There are many reasons a company succeeds. It is unlikely that emulating one practice of an industry leader will give your company the same success.
    * Are the conditions similar at your organization? For best practices to be transferrable, businesses need to have key similarities: strategy, business model, and workforce.

Adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions

"Crowdsourcing" means translators will work for free

2011-09-25T11:07:00.000+08:00

The history of the localization industry in the internet era has been the story of the race to free translation. This may be good for business, but linguists have always been aware that the expensive tools offered to them are designed to reduce what they have to be paid.

This started with expensive TM tools that had the dual effect of costing a fortune up front and then discounting repetitions--the grid of which gets tighter and tighter for the linguist with each year.

Now we have crowdsourcing, the holy grail of the industry, where linguists log on to a system (creating "systems" is another holy grail) and work for a vastly discounted rate--or even for free--to complete work in record time.

There's hardly a localization firm out there that has not contemplated a future where it gets to charge big bucks to its clients, but then gets all the work done for practically nothing by Wikipedia-style editors who, for some reason, want to do it for free.

All of this was brought to mind by this interesting thread on Slashdot: Steam Translation Community Slaving Away

It is interesting to note that the open source community supports this sort of model as being compatible with the development of community driven software such as Linux.

Press releases we see too often

2011-09-16T01:25:00.005+08:00

Localization press releases and newsletters come fast and furious these days as those in the industry attempt to drum up business in the face of an uncertain future. Most of these efforts have very little to offer to clients or resources and many unintentionally demonstrate the odd thinking that pervades the industry.

Here are a few of types of press releases we have seen that make us smile (and sometimes shake our heads in disbelief):

Localization company congratulates itself for having a blog
(…shares favorite recipes of their accounting staff in an attempt to solve the problems of their clients)

Localization company appears at localization convention
(…where they spend the shareholders’ money speaking to other firms about options for future jobs once their own company goes broke)

Localization company in the U.S. boasts that they have a project manager who lasts more than six months
(…has been driven partially insane by sales though)

Focus on standards dooms LISA – as a result, GALA jumps on board the standards bandwagon
(…everyone know that bureaucracy equals quality, right?)

Localization company revamps its website
(…and it still looks no different than any other localization company site)

Localization company trumpets its new accounting system
(…now promises to pay translators after 6 months—if they complain enough)

We are here in August!

2011-08-03T01:13:00.000+08:00

Localization is a strange business. Not many industries can hang up a “gone fishing” sign for a month and expect the clients they serve to simply wait for them to return from their holidays. The Eurozone cultural convention of month-long holidays around this time of year usually causes a dearth of localization resources. No skeleton staff or reduced capicity, just turn on the holiday auto responder messages for all emails and make sure the lights are off on the way out the door!

This trend may be changing though. July-August used to be a slow period for localization, but in the past few years it has been one of Admerix’s busiest times.

Here at Admerix, we remain on call throughout August and maintain a complete selection of subject-specialist resources to cover all requests. Our veteran project managers are standing by to solve your challenging localization problems.

Localization: Our Backwards Industry

2011-07-29T17:51:00.010+08:00

After so many years of LISA plowing time and effort into standards, it is odd to see GALA jump on the failed LISA standards bandwagon.

Does anyone in the industry really care about standards?

Talk of standards and how to maintain them is mainly used by sales departments to dazzle impressionable clients. Discussion about standards also allows clueless management to conjure up the impression that some sort of bureaucracy can compensate for the inexperienced (i.e. cheap) project managers that localization firms are forced to hire to cut costs.

This has created the phenomenon of the localization vendor manager as a bureaucratic paper pusher, requiring endless forms and notifications that are inevitably ignored by their resources. (We don’t think localization companies actually believe vendor management brings value either--it is most often the first department to go when companies cut back.)

After all the promises of unsupported processes and standards are forgotten by the production department, what is it that really guarantees quality and thus maintains the client relationship?

The answer is personalized service by industry veteran project managers. Experienced, professional project management is the key to solving the inevitable challenges that arise. Deep down, salespeople know this is true. Project managers who have to face both client and salesperson ire know it too.

Project management is also a part of sales. Their interaction with the client and the impression they make creates customer confidence and loyalty.

Inexplicably, the focus of localization companies has been consistently moving in the opposite direction.

The trend is to hire younger and less experienced project managers. When projects start wandering off track and salespeople and clients are complaining, these people get burned out and leave. Staff turnover because of this is detrimental to the consultative relationship we should be trying to create with our clients. (How many novice project managers have left your company this year and who did you replace them with?)

Localization companies are moving further and further away from personalized service by implementing expensive workflow systems to handle projects. These workflow systems go hand in hand with reduced project manager experience and competence. The less experienced project managers are, the more necessary management believes it is to have a “system” to compensate for the failings in all other areas.

This slide to employ cheap novice project managers in conjunction with impersonal workflow systems is a big shift away from anything that can satisfy and keep a customer.

The real answer is experience and client interaction that demonstrates you can and will provide the solution that a client needs.Clients may think they are choosing on price, but the reality is that they stay with companies who create a consultative relationship.

They stay with those who make them confident that their projects will succeed even when unforeseen challenges arise. They stay with those who get results in the face of crazy circumstances that could cause project disaster. They stay with those with the experience and knowledge to make them look good.

More On The Fake Euro Translators

2011-06-17T14:10:00.000+08:00

About our earlier post Fake Euro Translators, Claudia writes:

It's as simple as this: You reply to any of those "translators", they have your company details and then they will do business in your name - and not pay their contractors. In the end you will find your name on some blacklist. At least, that's what happened to us...

To Unlock the Benefits of Social Media, Content Will Always Be Key

2011-05-29T12:35:00.002+08:00

A question that seem to be getting asked in the meeting rooms of language service providers now is "Who is going to handle social media within our organization?" The answer is usually a low-level admin person or junior project manager. The questions that do not seem to be getting asked is "Do we have something worthwhile to present?" and "How are we going to monitor the benefit of these exercises?"

The amount of return on the investment in social media will be directly proportional to the quality of the content that is generated and posted. There are a few (a very few) in any organization who have some informed comment to make and this is obvious as most corporate social networking has very little of interest to offer. Social media for companies mostly comes down to generating anything to fill space on a regular basis.

To make social media worthwhile someone in the organization has to put in the time and thought to actually say something that will be of value to the reader. Such content only comes from someone within the organization who has experience in the industry, expertise at many levels, a critical eye for what is important and what is trash, and a flair for presenting their message in as few words as possible. It never can come from the lowest admin person in the company to whom the task is usually delegated and who has to fit it in when not busy answering phone calls and making coffee.

Most often top-level people in charge of company strategy in tandem with marketing people have the wherewithal to contribute valuable material. However, it is most often the case that these people are too busy to contribute and instead allow junior staff to merely fill space by posting links to articles vaguely related to the company’s business and post mind-numbing profiles of staff members.

Newsletters are another area in which many small and medium sized LSPs are investing time. Unfortunately, newsletters have degenerated into something less than a total waste of time. If the newsletter from your company includes the personal interests of the employees of your company, trivia questions, sympathetic statements for the latest disaster victims, applauding yourself for whatever it is that you think you are doing right, etc., then it is of about the same value as an email promoting the sale of replica watches, and will receive the same treatment.

Newsletters can be a valuable way of getting out to customers and resources with relevant information, important changes to processes, and updates that make a difference to how things get done. As with all marketing, it has to be about your customer or the intended reader. It has to be information that they care about and will solve their problems. When producing a newsletter, if you have these objectives in mind, and can focus on the needs of the reader and not on yourself and what is happening in your own little world, the result will certainly get a good hearing.

Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A "Social Media Expert"

2011-05-27T15:59:00.000+08:00

From Business Insider: Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A "Social Media Expert"

Great observations in this article.

“It’s not about building a website anymore! It’s so much cooler! It’s about Facebook, and fans, and followers, and engagement, and influence, and…”
Will you please shut up before you make me vomit on your shoes?
IT’S ABOUT GENERATING REVENUE THROUGH SOLID MARKETING AND STELLAR CUSTOMER SERVICE, JUST LIKE IT’S BEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.

Fake Euro Translators

2011-04-27T17:11:00.003+08:00

We have been receiving fake Euro translator resumes coming in via email several times per week. There have been 14 in the month of April alone. When you pick out any distinctive phrase from the resumes, you can invariably find this phrase has originated from Translator Cafe or Traduguide. The mails are always sent to “undisclosed-recipients” but would seem likely that any company or agency listed with the above two industry websites would be receiving them.

* They are almost all porporting to be PFIGS linguists with the occasional Arabic resume turning up among the spamming emails.

* They all have Word documents attached with a name that follows the same format: “CV_Firstname_Lastname.doc” and this sometimes has the language in the name as well.

* All the emails are Gmail addresses and frequently have “2000” in the email name.

* Particularly significant is that the attached CV documents all have exactly the same info in the properties which would indicate that they are all originating from the same computer.

AND, most interesting, all of the info in the CVs is cobbled together from online profiles on Translator Cafe or Traduguide.

For instance, the “Main customers” for fake resume for “Maria Antilon” (“CV_Maria_Antilon_English_Spanish”) are copied from the online profile of Roberto Alberdi Antolin.

The email from fake lingusit “Elisabete Dropose” (“CV_English_Portuguese_Elisabete_Dropose_Huguene.doc”)

comes from Helena Lopes’ online profile.

Alisa Fernandez’s work experience (“CV_Alisa_Fernandez_English_Spanish”)

Sept. 2005 - Dec. 2005 Translator at L&H Marketing in Nuremberg (Germany). Translation of projects and mails.
May 2006 - Oct. 2006 Sea Freight forwarder at the Import Department of Transnatur Freight Forwarder, Paterna (Valencia).
Oct. 2006 - Mar. 2007 Export Area Manager for ARYA Arabiany Asociados, Castellón. Translation of mails and interpreting.
May 2007 - Feb. 2009 Export Sales Department at Bancolor S.L., Parque Tecnológico, Paterna (Valencia).
Mar. 2009 - Mar. 2010 Export Sales Department at Molder Disnova S.L., Quart de Poblet (Valencia).

is copied from Ricardo Falcó’s online profile.

Below are a selection of these auto-generated resumes:

All the emails are formatted the same and the email text is clunky for English (“I am honored to enlighten you with my great passion for being in your service 24 hours a day, carrying out all your translation projects and strengthening our business through the effective and dynamic cooperation in this field.”)

We started writing to each one—most never answered.

Finally, a couple answered, but none would sign and return an NDA or provide any additional information.

We just received this reply over and over:

dear,

I am available you can kindly send me the file.

We don’t know what this means, but we thought we would pass it along: some sort of automated program grabbing online info about linguists and creating emails and resumes for them to solicit work from MLVs.

The real mystery is what is the intent and goal of the people behind this spamming out to Language Service Providers. The emails themselves and the resumes attached seem harmless enough. This has been going on since at least December last year and does seem to be increasing in frequency but always different email addresses, and different content on the body of the emails and in the resumes, but still always following the pattern described above.

So it's come to this: Linguists pay to see jobs on offer

2011-03-24T15:54:00.002+08:00

A funny thing that really shows the plight of the biggest players in the industry--Lionbridge expects translators to pay them for the privilege of being able to see what jobs might be on offer. From their GeoWorkz site:

...The marketplace gives you access to search, sort, and view hundreds of jobs such as translation, proofreading, desktop publishing, localization engineering and more. Get started today – just click below to subscribe. Access to the GeoWorkz Jobs Marketplace is part of every paid Translation Workspace subscription. Jobs are posted and updated daily so check back often. And remember, no matter where you are located, now you have access to Lionbridge jobs around the world...

Yes, this is an amazing advance for the industry. :)

All kidding aside, the biggest players in the industry have massive overheads since they are located in expensive locations, but their business model is the same outsourcing model from 1997. Any new start-up immediately begins miles ahead of them in terms of margins while being able to dramatically undercut them in price.

Besides an attempt to monetize the linguists they work with, GeoWorkz represents another attempt to rejigger the localization work flow in the face of Google Translate and Google Translator Toolkit. While we don't know what Lionbridge is really up to, "innovative" new directions like this are usually key for positioning the company for major mergers and acquisitions and its future strategic direction.

CSA predictions for 2011

2011-01-12T20:50:00.002+08:00

Interesting predictions from Global Watchtower: Predictions for 2011: Increased Visibility for Language Services (Global Watchtower is the blog of Common Sense Advisory).

Most localization industry predictions have not had a good record of success. For instance, throughout the 2000’s predictions of CMS and TM systems somehow turning the industry into a mature corporate-dominated arena were a bit far fetched at the time, and have subsequently not come true. (This was expected by many savvy agencies who work at the coal face of the industry :) ).

While it is true that "workflow systems" are still a vision presented as a marketing ploy to corporate clients, the reality is that the back end of the localization industry largely remains a commodity driven cottage industry preformed at home by the cheapest resources available.

Still, the phenomenon of machine translation—and in particular the involvement of Google into the equation (the only player with scale enough to make a dent in this process)—is changing the possibilities in the industry as well as how work is done.

CNS is picking up on this and several other issues, such as:

Instead of just squeezing suppliers for better pricing, they’ll start to look at the big picture, turning to more sophisticated solutions, such as automation and process optimization to address the need to offer multilingual content and services without breaking the bank.

With some top vendors pressing receptionists into project manager duties, the top down push for lowering costs and raising margins must indeed be severe. The conflicting desire for ever higher quality at the same time is what is pushing the move to computerized systems for automating the process and giving higher ups in the organization the illusion they have control of the process.

The one concept missing here is the fact that so many major localization vendors have gone through big external infusions of cash and near brushes with death (and this was even before the economic downturn of the last few years) that shaving sourcing costs continues to be a mania and a necessity.

Another trend:

Internal localization and translation departments will question whether they should go the route of outsourcing wholeheartedly, and whether a large internal staff is truly critical for efficiency in managing their language activities. Smelling the opportunity, savvy LSPs will work with their customers to develop more consultative arrangements, enabling them to offload more work.

This is particularly interesting to us at Admerix as this is at the core of what we are set up to do—provide industry veteran project management that is affordable. We allow major LSPs in expensive locations to offshore their production to an affordable location while maintaining industry expertise. This thinking runs counter to what most companies are trying to do—cut project management expertise and somehow make up for it with expensive online process-management systems.

What Went Right and What Went Wrong At Your Company in 2010

2010-12-10T10:32:00.003+08:00

So many year-end company newsletters (as well as company blogs) are simply a waste of time since they focus on the minutiae of a company's internal workings (staff profiles, cheery news about how the company fared in the past year, etc.). These are all things that no one cares about. In business, we all care about our own problems and how to solve them.

Considering that the only reason effort was put into newsletters and blogs was as a marketing activity to create consultative relationships with clients and adds value, it is amazing how anyone could think that company newsletters telling about staff member hobbies and recipes could be worth anyone's time.

As you can tell, we at Admerix have little patience for the traditional year end newsletters, so we decided to try to make a year-end message that does not focus on our performance and issues, but instead on our clients and the issues the localization industry is facing.

Take a look and let us know what you think: What Went Right and What Went Wrong At Your Company in 2010

Machine Translation and the "Over Reverence Phenomenon"

2010-11-10T20:14:00.001+08:00

Like many companies, Admerix has experimented with MT engines and other methods to reconfigure existing localization processes.

The dream of many companies is that they can eliminate translator fees by initially translating with machine translation and then get another translator to edit (read: retranslate) at an editing rate. We have even seen some companies trying to pass this off as a proofreading only process!

This sort of concept is already used by some companies—especially for more difficult work. They have the cheapest unqualified linguist to do initial work and then try to contract a normally expensive subject specialist to “edit” the translation. Most professional linguists see through this kind of scheme and will turn down these “editing” jobs that are really re-translation at cut-rate editing prices.

Although Admerix has never used machine translation on any live job, we had to investigate and understand what all the fuss is about.

One thing we discovered as we were testing the new machine translate/edit paradigm is an interesting phenomenon that we call the “Over Reverence Phenomenon.”

As we review the efforts of linguists editing machine translation, we consistently find editors deferring to often wrong or stilted work coming from machine translation. This results is less refined translation work than if an editor is editing the work of a live translator.

This reverence for machine language-generated text occurs even with experienced editors. It seems evident that there is some conscious or unconscious desire to defer to the choices made by a computer-based translation engine—particularly with regard to terminology. Editors appear reticent to challenge MT output on specific linguistic issues.

As we spoke with editors who undertook our tests, several of them expressed the opinion that the MT output seemed correct and they were happy to learn the correct terms from it.

Anyone experienced with the localization industry will find this state of affairs unusual as many linguists revel in tearing up the work of other linguists—even over purely preferential and stylistic issues. There seems to be something about an MT engine though that makes editors hesitant to rewrite stilted or incorrect grammar—instead deferring to the supposedly superior knowledge of computers.

The other machine translation trend we've been aware of recently is MLVs discovering their linguists are exposing proprietary client data to machine translation engines through Google Translator Toolkit.

Many larger companies are finding their resources have been heavily using the service and thus giving away valuable and confidential translation to a public MT engine. Non-disclosure agreements, formerly held in light regard as a bureaucratic nicety, are suddenly becoming important again to ensure that linguists are not exposing client data to Google Translate. Of course, the corollary to this is that end clients may begin to see translation gains from work that has been entered into the Google Translate system.

We are also aware that some Asian vendors have sold or bartered millions of units of client translation memory to private companies that are creating their own translation engines.

Just to be clear, Admerix doesn’t use machine translation on its projects and we never expose client material to public MT engines. We hold our NDAs to be inviolate.

We also don’t feel that eliminating linguists is key to profitable projects. Our experience is that expert project management is key for the inevitable challenges that come with every corporate project. Translation often turns out to be the most trouble-free aspect of any corporate localization project.

A Machine Translation future is not "just around the corner"

2010-10-17T19:11:00.004+08:00

Above via Flickr: Translating Machine. Typist copies story from Russian newspaper Pravda on special machine which converts Russian letters to punched holes in paper tape. Insertion of the tape into another machine produces translation. By the 1970's, automatic translation of practically all foreign publications and books will be routine. (from 1975: And the Changes To Come by Arnold B. Barach)

Note this fascinating update from the localization blog "Global Watchtower" (confusingly named as if it was a Jehovah's Witnesses site): At TAUS, Practitioners Settle In for a Long Slog

…At one point, Jaap van der Meer made the provocative statement that MT would see “no new breakthroughs” in the next five years…

This is a stunning admission from these people! And interesting that the efforts at machine translation is still so fragmented. Lots of players are trying to invent the wheel independently because they all want to be first to make a big killing by eliminating the lowly translator.

Here’s what they want: interoperability among systems of all kinds, machine translation, translation memory (TM) sharing, terminology, quality assurance, project management, reporting, finance, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and so on.

People on the production side of the localization industry (the people who are DOING the jobs that salesmen sell) often find that translation is the smallest and easiest part of any project.

The key to a successful project is: being able to synthesize legacy files from a client uninterested in being part of the process, integrating last minute on-the-fly changes from a client CEO who just "wants it done," and the knock-on effects that these inevitable challenges bring to a project schedule.

The real challenge for the localization industry in the short to medium term will be cutting the massive costs of bricks and mortar client-facing operations in Europe and the U.S.--along with dealing with increasingly savvy corporate customers trying to break the middle-man syndrome of MLVs based in major markets.

Admerix Survey - The State of the Industry: Linguists Speak

2010-09-18T17:10:00.001+08:00

We've posted our latest survey, "The State of the Industry: Linguists Speak," on the Admerix.com website.

This is a survey of linguists' opinions on machine translation editing, online work flow systems, new tools and other current innovations which threaten to drastically change the role of the translator in the localization industry.

Please take a look and let us know your opinions.

Where are Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft taking us?

2010-08-04T20:42:00.000+08:00

Where are Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft taking us?

Fascinating article from TAUS: " It’s become a standing joke in technology crystal-ball gazing: fully automatic machine translation will be available “within five years”, a prediction made regularly since the 1980s. Well, this time it seems to be true."

What is your opinion about machine translation?

2010-08-03T22:22:00.001+08:00

Many companies in the industry are taking the view that linguists are an unnecessary cost in localization and should be replaced by computer automated translation.

In the overall rush to various "systems" for localization, no one is getting feedback from the linguists themselves.

This week, we started polling our resources on the following questions related to the current issues in the industry:

1. How do you feel about the machine translation (MT) trend?

2. What is your attitude about being asked to edit MT documents?

3. Do you think your language can be successfully machine translated?

4. Of the following, what would be a more attractive arrangement for you with general translation work:
- Higher per word rates with long payment terms (60-90+ days)
- Lower per word rates with short payment term (less than 7 days)

5. Do you find that fast turnaround work a problem?

6. How do you feel about working in the online automated systems that are becoming so common in the localization industry? Does it make you work easier or more difficult?

7. Do you use a Translation Memory (CAT) tool now? If so, which one is your preference?

7b. Do you have any thoughts on Word fast vs Trados?

8. Let us know any other issues important to you when working with us as a translator.

We will be summing up the attitudes and responses in coming weeks.

Turkish pranksters load Facebook Translate with swears

2010-07-30T16:49:00.000+08:00

Turkish pranksters load Facebook Translate with swears

Feedback on Admerix's Preferred Linguist Express program

2010-07-20T12:39:00.001+08:00

Our project managers are really excited about our Preferred Linguist Express program. It is project managers in the industry who bear the brunt of not being able to source the right linguists for their projects because their companies choose to stall payments to improve their cash flow.

At Admerix we seek to show our respect for linguists with immediate payment for their valuable work.

We've already had excellent feedback from some of our resources.

Below is from K, a Japanese subject specialist:

...I greatly appreciate your effort to pay so quickly. Because no other companies can do that!

In a further email he commented:

...I wouldn't mind if you quote this fastest payment in your blog. Your effort deserves to be praised. Note that usual companies take a month or two to pay money after invoices reaches them. Your company is quite different. Anyway, I look forward to working with you again.
Kindest regards,
K

So, when you trust Admerix with your key projects, you can be assured that we are working with the very best subject specialists available--linguists we have built up experience and trust with over many large-scale projects over the years.

"SDL acquires LanguageWeaver. First reactions."

2010-07-16T15:20:00.000+08:00

Great analysis of the implications of the sale of LanguageWeaver: SDL acquires LanguageWeaver. First reactions.

The article is by Renato Beninatto, one of the few sane and reasoned voices who really knows what's going on in the localization industry.

Admerix is available during the August localization doldrums

2010-07-15T11:34:00.000+08:00

Please note: Admerix industry veteran project managers and specialist linguists will be on duty during this coming August when many industry professionals take the month off for European summer holidays.

We will be continuing to handle project tasks so our clients can leave the office on time and be certain that Admerix is solving all issues while they are asleep.

Also: Our audio studios will also be open as well, providing commercial-grade audio localization in all the languages Admerix specializes in: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, Khmer, Burmese, Lao, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Dari, Hebrew, Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Nepali, Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian

We also produce audio localization in a variety of additional Euro-zone languages: German, French, French Canadian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Belgian, Spanish, Romanian, Czech, Slovenian, Slovak, Croatian, Bulgarian, Kazakh

Admerix stands ready to provide your production. Why not allow us to quote on your next project? We would be happy to demonstrate our abilities.

Respecting those at the heart of the localization industry

2010-07-05T20:37:00.004+08:00

One of the ways that some companies these days have been financing their cash flow is with unreasonable delays in payment to linguists. These linguists have done the work up front in good faith and often then have little or no recourse in the face of broken promises and lack of communication with companies when it comes to time for them to receive their payments. At the same time, linguists are facing a devaluation by companies who have Quixotic notions of machine translation replacing the expense of a professional and competent translator.

A quick look at the Proz Blue Board will show how badly the community of linguists is being treated by even mainstream localization firms.

Respect for our linguists

At Admerix we have always understood and accepted that our most valuable resource are the linguists on our team. No automated system can supplant the knowledge and artistry of these translation professionals. We have forged and maintain great relationships with our resources and are always thankful that they are a part of our team.

Applying our specialized knowledge together

Admerix has combined individuals with specialized subject skills in terminology, glossary, editing and translation to complete many complex and challenging projects over the years. Other companies with automated production systems and novice project managers couldn't hope to complete the corporate grade projects we have been able to fulfill. Putting our collective knowledge together in linguist, technical, and production areas has allowed us to build strong relationships with our clients along with continued work.

Admerix's Preferred Linguist Express program

To show our respect for linguists as well as say thank you to the many with whom we work, Admerix has introduced the Preferred Linguist Express program.

We will remit payment within one week of invoice submission to linguists who meet these simple conditions:

* Be responsive to email queries and requests from Admerix.

* Have 100% on-time record with scheduled and agreed project deadlines.

Resources who do not meet these basic requirements will still receive payment within 30 days of invoice submission as usual although they will not be offered work when a qualifying resource is available.

Such a program may sound odd to the corporate accountants. In times of economic slowdown a common strategy is to squeeze contractors and stretch payment terms to the maximum for the greater good of maintaining cash flow and profits.

However, at Admerix we have always considered that if localization companies can require on-time work with iron-clad deadlines, then linguists can at least expect on-time payment as well.

Admerix is going one better and making payment for our preferred linguists the fastest in the industry.

Admerix Case Study: Who is really working on your projects?

2010-05-31T17:01:00.002+08:00

Assigning projects to a local middleman vs. sourcing directly

“Lowering the cost of translators has the greatest potential for increasing a company's margins and is an inevitable pressure for U.S.-based companies desiring cheaper and cheaper outsourcing as every penny saved goes directly to the bottom line."

The Situation/Problem

An ERP software company was working with a major localization firm in the U.S. to handle their projects. The U.S.-based localization company touts their leading role in the industry along with a workflow process system and translation memory tools.

However, the ERP software company soon realized their chosen company, despite their marketing assurances, was merely outsourcing to the cheapest overseas supplier. The software company had experienced endless communication hassles and problems getting quick updates and feedback across different time zones. Conference calls with the team doing their project is not possible since their chosen vendor wanted to maintain the illusion that they were doing the project.

Claims of in-house linguists and ISO certification turned out to have no impact on the work as the projects were being farmed out to the lowest bidders. The software firm suspected that going through a middleman in the U.S. was not adding value to their localization projects.

It is inevitable that companies a localization buyer deals with in the U.S. or Europe are simply subcontracting overseas. It is simply not economically viable for these companies to do the bulk of their work with in-house linguists and engineers in an expensive location.

Some U.S.-based localization companies have attempted to address this by opening overseas branches, but these are merely local outsourcing wings whose major function is to negotiate the very lowest prices from local resources.

Since lowering the cost of translation has the greatest potential for increasing a company’s margins, it is inevitable for U.S.-based companies to push for cheaper and cheaper outsourcing as every penny saved goes directly to the bottom line.

How Admerix solved the problem

Clearly this situation is not advantageous for the client. Subcontracting is fine if you are getting the service and price you need, but simply handing off your critical projects to a U.S.-based localization firm which turns out to be nothing more than an outsourcer only adds layers of cost and miscommunication.

Based in stable and transparent Singapore, Admerix was contracted by the software firm that realized the need to get in closer contact with the experts actually doing their projects.

After a series of conference calls, the software company decided to work directly with Admerix and were assured by being able to directly communicate with our project managers and get feedback direct from the project floor which was crucial for their technical ERP software applications.

What this means for you

Each year, more and more companies based in the U.S. and Europe are insisting on working directly with the teams that are doing their work as opposed to local middlemen.

If you are hearing, “I’ll check on that and get back to you..." every time you ask a question of your supplier, you can bet that you are dealing with nothing more than a middleman with little localization expertise.

Working directly with Admerix can have many benefits

* Enjoy a direct line of communication with the actual people working on your projects.

* Direct savings on your project can be extraordinary—projects can cost 30% less than working with a U.S. based outsourcer.

* Deal directly with veteran localization project managers—as opposed to inexperienced project managers favored by localization firms based in expensive western nations where labor costs are the greatest expense.

Have questions? We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with you and troubleshooting your problems.

Alex Johnson
Production Manager
alex.johnson@admerix.com

Admerix Case Study: Localization best practices may not be right for every business

2010-05-11T12:43:00.000+08:00

“It may not be the case that you have to redesign your processes around a single localization company's best practices advice or software system."

The Situation/Problem

A major manufacturer of electronics struggles with localization “best practices” as recommended by their localization vendor. Their products involve both hardware and software components in a continuous state of development and evolution with multiple models appearing every year.

Their translation company had invested heavily in an online system in an attempt to force individual projects into a factory like, repeatable process. This localization-centric process was wrecking havoc with their current workflow and actually adding extra work and delays instead of streamlining it.

The automated online system was, in reality, built with a view to increase the translation company’s margins while making it much more difficult for their clients to switch to another vendor.

How Admerix solved the problem

The solution for the electronics manufacture was to first remember just what it is that they were producing and how.

Many translation companies put highly evolved flowcharts on their marketing materials showing how a client should run their localization process. There are also claims that a proprietary translation work flow system will decrease costs and increase time to market.

This falls back to the classic old school “black box” approach where materials enter a localization process chain and later emerge in a completed format to be reintroduced into the client’s production chain.

The reality is that an industry-standard best practices workflow might not be right for your business. It is often the case that localization process steps should fit into an existing client’s process creation cycle or be tailored to the vagaries of sales cycles. Another way of looking at this is that localization steps may have to be implemented at different points on a (literal or figurative) factory assembly line. It may not be the case that you have to redesign your processes around a single localization company’s best practices advice or online software system.

For the electronics manufacturer, it was observed that the development of their products was dynamic—ongoing with a new set of devices always in the pipeline—it made a black box approach to localization all the more impractical.

Each production step required additional input from the client’s engineering department and feedback between client teams working on the hardware and software components.

In deciding between a localization-centric process and a company-centric process, it had to be understood that all stakeholders needed to be aware of the costs and consequences of creating, formatting, archiving and reviewing content in relation to the end client’s production requirements.

Admerix designed and implemented a custom solution that created an interface for localization steps at several points within the client’s existing production chain. This made the client’s localization flow less cumbersome and more attune to the client’s necessity of maintaining their current production process.

It also encouraged the consultative relationship between Admerix and the end client since our solution did not attempt lock the client into a single vendor’s system or process.

It reinforced the message that Admerix was bringing real value for the client--not trying to create some sort or recurring income by locking them into a proprietary workflow system.

This is part of the client-centric solution approach that Admerix has pioneered. The key feature is flexibility of process based around the client's actual requirements and workflow needs.

Have questions?

We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with you and troubleshooting your problems.

John Wyatt
Senior Project Analyst
john.wyatt@admerix.com

Things that will NEVER be on the Admerix localization blog

2010-04-29T10:01:00.001+08:00

List of things we will never waste your time with on our blog:

* lists of funny mistranslations

* "fun facts" about language (usually lifted from Wikipedia)

* generic articles about online dictionaries and online translation

* generic articles about UN interpreters, translation in the Euro zone, etc.

* profiles about our employees ("two cats, a dog and likes reading and traveling with her husband Biff")

We can just imagine the lower level employees at localization companies who are assigned to post on their company's localization blogs. They dutifully Google the word "translation" and eventually find irrelevant information that at least can be posted and they can say they have filled the blog for that week.

These employees know nothing about their end client's needs, know nothing about marketing, and are baffled that their higher ups have assigned them to fill a blog with garbage that no one will want to read.

It is strange that so many localization company blogs end up like the ones we have described above. It seems few localization company executives and owners have any opinion on their industry.

It is probably the case that most localization companies do view their businesses as a commodity and middleman business. They are the middleman who mark up work of linguists and pass it to the end client with as little intervention from them as possible.

What could an exec with this opinion say about their industry anyway? Probably that online systems for end clients have to be implemented to reduce the need for their company to interact with customers during the shift of the translation commodity from the linguist to the end client.

In any event, as I am sure you can see, we are trying to give some opinions on the industry and saying something that someone outside of our company might want to respond to (either positively or negatively). Stay tuned...

Japanese linguists available during Golden Week

2010-04-22T22:43:00.000+08:00

Each year Japanese Golden Week wrecks havoc with Japanese-related business activity--including localization projects. This year Japanese Golden week will take place between April 29 and May 5.

Admerix will have subject specialist Japanese linguists ready and available over the Japanese Golden Week period to handle your vital projects.

We complete Japanese-language work for many demanding corporate clients and understand the stylistic and commercial considerations involved in localizing in this language. We also provide expert feedback and foresee project challenges which are key to building relationships with clients.

Please keep us in mind this Golden Week for Japanese-language work.

(BTW: If you have Thai-language projects coming or underway, you might be interested in this related post: Your Thai projects are safe with Admerix)

Admerix Case Study: Starting a localization company - How to provide a full range of services

2010-04-12T23:54:00.002+08:00

“(The Admerix solution) made their business model extremely flexible as they did not have to commit to expensive full-time, in-house staff that could not be inexpensively downsized and would remain a fixed cost if business dipped."

The Situation/Problem 1

A new localization company was founded and staffed by localization professionals who had recently left a major localization firm in the U.S.

These new entrepreneurs had left a major high-pressure localization company which was more focused on market share than customer satisfaction and had high employee dissatisfaction and turnover. These industry professionals were confident they could earn a better living and serve clients better by working on their own.

However, the new company principals were operating on thin margins and found it hard to divide their attention between sales and production. They had no resources to maintain an expensive production office in their U.S.-based location, much less hire local production staff and other assets that would allow them to appeal to their best clients.

How Admerix solved the problem

The success or failure of a small startup depends on the ability of the principals to competently wear several hats—CEO, accountant, project manager, sales executive, etc. It is critical that expenditures be minimized and cash flow preserved.

This small startup decided to use Admerix as their production backend while they continued to maintain the client-facing communication. This meant they could focus on their core competencies—sales and client interface—while feeling confident that anything they could sell, Admerix could produce.

This allowed them to expand their client base and related offerings well beyond what they could do if they were attempting to sell, project manage, and then outsource all the language work themselves.

This mean a bigger and more immediate presence in the market, which is the primary task for a new business starting up. It also made their business model extremely flexible as they did not have to commit to expensive full-time, in-house staff that could not be inexpensively downsized and would remain a fixed cost if sales were not as high as hoped.

With our 24/7 presence, Admerix provided a quoting and advice capability for the new company. They sold the projects and Admerix fulfilled them all the while providing consulting and feedback—the key to developing a consultative relationship with an end client.

The Situation/Problem 2

An established and respected Eastern European SLV (single-language vendor) wished to move from a downstream niche player to being able to offer a more complete direct solution for their clients.

The management of this SLV felt it would be more attractive to their corporate clients to be able to provide a multi-language, turnkey solution and all that it entails (single point of communication, minimum of client-side project management, etc) over piecemeal sourcing of projects to a variety of vendors.

How Admerix solved the problem

Admerix developed a range of services and products that allowed the European SLV to confidently offer a complete range of services to its clients.

The SLV could concentrate on its own core language, while Admerix provided the production capability to offer Asian, India, and Arabic languages along with the language-specific DTP (desktop publishing), quality assurance, and technical expertise.

Overall

Admerix can serve as a rock-solid resource for companies that want to minimize their direct costs while providing a full range of language services for demanding corporate clients.

Have questions?

We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with you and troubleshooting
your problems.

Alex Johnson
Production Manager
alex.johnson@admerix.com

Download this case study as a pdf

Admerix Case Study: Struggling with ISO, QA and Project Management Issues

2010-04-06T16:12:00.003+08:00

“Investing in ISO and Quality Assurance cannot be effective if you try to economize on project management at the same time."

The Situation/Problem

A mid-tier localization company in Europe struggled with systemic quality issues. These consisted of linguistic consistency, quality assurance problems, and customer dissatisfaction due to repeated process gaffes. The company implemented ISO standards, checklists, and other bureaucracy, but the problems persisted.

The European localization firm had begun to view project managers as a unnecessary overhead cost against their projects and downsized the project management department, replacing experienced project managers with recent graduates and interns with training in project management concepts, but no real experience. Many localization companies have adopted this same tact as they became overleveraged in recent years through mergers and the is great demand to improve profits.

Not only did this lessen the company’s ability to handle inevitable project challenges, but it also led to their salespeople to overpromise to clients in the absence of reliable feedback on what was possible coming from a seasoned production department. Admerix analyzed the situation with the client and advised that the problems could be addressed by investment in project management and that this tact would also build client trust and loyalty.

How Admerix solved the problem

The company felt that recruitment of top level project managers (if they could be found locally) would impact the profitability of their company at an unacceptable level given current economic conditions.

However, no amount of checklists and process definition allowed the company to substitute young and inexperienced workers for experienced project managers with first-hand knowledge of best practices at every part of the localization workflow process.

The solution was to reintroduce industry experience through Admerix project managers. They would be able to guide decision making, enable feedback to sales, and advise clients on best practices.

On top of these benefits would be the impact on direct labor costs: their novice project managers hired in Europe as a cost-saving measure were still much more expensive than using experienced Admerix production capabilities.

How competent project managers help companies keep clients

The introduction of a new model for handling their project management was not the only change. An accompanying shift was needed in the philosophy of successful project management and how it impacts sales and client confidence.

The nature of dynamic projects means that every project will necessarily have multiple issues, challenges, and changes. These include everything from technical engineering hurdles to a company CEO suddenly demanding changes that impact the entire scope of the project. So instead of focusing on “eliminating problems,” a more realistic approach was taken.

We brought together management, sales, and production to participate in setting a new goal of customer satisfaction for the company. With Admerix project management backing up their team, the goal becomes not how projects are run perfectly, but how we are able to cleanly handle the inevitable challenges that arise—scope changes, assess the technical difficulties arising through working with legacy files, on-the-fly changes dictated by upper management, etc.

How a company deals with these issues is the ultimate yardstick of success. The process of dealing with inevitable project issues provides the ultimate client confidence at all levels of an organization.

This is the heart of consultative sales—making your end client turn to you as a knowledgeable consultant to navigate the treacherous waters of a major project.

Have questions?

We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with you and troubleshooting your problems.

John Wyatt
Senior Project Analyst
john.wyatt@admerix.com

Download this case study as a pdf

The secret to satisfied clients (Part 4 of "Will technology save your company?")

2010-03-19T22:35:00.000+08:00

At the end of the day, the focus has to be on customers getting the attention and support that they expect, production staff getting full guidance and back up for every project that they work on, and sales taking a consultative approach with clients and not overpromising.

We have always wondered what state would the industry be in today if companies had invested in localization expertise instead of endless systems, vendor mangers, ISO certification, etc.

We expect that clients would be more satisfied and more loyal overall. Also that fewer companies would be over-leveraged and continually looking for partners and cash infusions in their frantic efforts to grow.

Systems can never overcome the complexities of project management that an industry-experienced project manager deals with every day and neither should they be seen as a selling tool that trumps the advantages of an industry-veteran project manager who works closely with the client though every challenge.

Back to part 1 of "Will technology save your company?"

Your Thai projects are safe with Admerix

2010-03-10T05:26:00.006+08:00

Considering the current events in Thailand, Admerix wanted to provide an update on the situation for Thai language projects.

Thailand's economy is still expanding with many businesses moving into this vibrant country. The future of the Thai consumer market is bright with a massive population of consumers and domestic consumption poised to soar. However, the outlook for the country’s security and political future--especially in Bangkok--continues to be less than optimistic.

Recently, several large localization projects have encountered communication and delivery difficulties. These instability and security issues have had many companies questioning whether their vital projects can be completed by vendors located within Thailand.

So how can you be certain your Thai projects will proceed on schedule and on budget?

Located in Singapore and with a large base of local resources, Admerix can apply industry standard management and quality assurance to Thai language work. With our access to and knowledge of the Thai market, we can also offer advice and insight on issues such as the following:

Availability of qualified subject specialist teams

While there are many Thais willing to give general translation a try, finding professionals with relevant experience and tools can be difficult--particularly on large-scale projects. Admerix has highly qualified teams of tested resources for even the largest and most challenging projects. Our large Thai team of linguists is expert in many subject specialties--medical, automotive, ERP/CRM, gaming, and elearning.

Terminology specialists

The Thai language is fraught with terminology issues. Even companies selling identical products frequently adopt different (and often confusing) terminology for seemingly commonplace terms. Admerix's knowledge of the Thai market ensures your projects will employ the most appropriate terminology.

Generationally acceptable usage

Acceptable tone and usage in Thai can vary widely depending on the degree of formality deemed acceptable by a business or organization. The tone of communications desired by younger businesses can vary widely from a business run by older, more conservative executives. Admerix helps companies navigate these difficult issues and produce a finished product that will fulfill clients needs in the Thai market.

DTP and formatting issues

Thai still remains one of the trickiest languages to deal with because of line-break issues, stacked tones and font size problems. Admerix has extensive experience in handling these types of issues in ERP/CRM, online software, and mobile devices.

Admerix's native British, American, and Australian project managers also speak and read Thai which adds a further level of quality control and oversight to projects.

If you are justifiably anxious about trusting your project to a Thailand-based company, Admerix can give you peace of mind in stable and transparent Singapore. Your Thai projects are in the best hands with Admerix.

We would be happy to answer any questions about our solutions for Thai and other Asian languages, so please don't hesitate to contact us. Email: John.Wyatt@Admerix.com

The lure of the cloud (Part 3 of "Will technology save your company?")

2010-02-23T13:51:00.006+08:00

There is also the irresistible lure of the “cloud.” Strapped vendors dream how high margins could be if they could get a cloud of super cheap (or even free) translators who would frantically collaborate on translation in real time in the same way as Wikipedia is edited.

Considering how even the best translation can be rubbished as garbage over minor style issues specific to a company or sub-market, it seems unlikely that a group of generic translators could produce material acceptable to most demanding corporate clients (and if you thought they could, would you risk your client on trying it?).

Is communicating with the client necessary?

One effect of these systems is to eliminate the need to communicate with the client. When we see this we have to wonder: Is a corporate buyer or executive really going to be comfortable putting their key project through a computer system designed to eliminate the need for the localization company to provide them personalized service, consultation, and feedback? And an inherent admission that this level of service is too expensive to provide?

How can localization sales executives sell systems for localization that cut out the technical feedback and support that localization companies used to crow about? It is a basic desire of a customer to have their own personal account executive taking care of them and communicating with them at all phases of their projects. They want someone to be there for them should they unexpectedly need to change the scope, modify a file, change the time frame, or even put the job on hold.

It must be acknowledged that the same false assumptions that call for systems to take over work can also seduce an end client. For some clients, the idea of them being able to log on to an online system and look over your shoulder while a project is being done has its appeal.

However, project managers end up artificially showing progress on jobs just to forestall the blizzard of frantic emails from the end client if the schedule is perceived to be slipping. Also, there is hardly a localization salesperson who does not recognize the value of offering a system he can offer to a client that will “automatically” solve their problems and help them reach their goals.

To be continued...

Next: The secret to satisfied clients

The three-focus syndrome and the localization customer

2010-02-20T16:54:00.007+08:00

The three-focus syndrome is one of the biggest traps that we see being laid for localization project managers in recent times. Understanding it can be the difference between a successful project and failure.

First, the customer asks about price, and is looking for the most "competitive" price that they can find.

Second, they are interested in knowing how fast can their localization project be turned around. They want (and expect) super fast deliveries while seemingly ignoring any complexities or technical challenges that their work may involve.

Third, and this is the crunch, when the work is pushed through on a crash schedule and at super low prices, they inspect in minute detail checking the quality of deliverable.

As a project manager, how do we deal with this three focus situation?

Lets be clear that the "three focus" syndrome does not apply to all customers and certainly "savvy" customers don't have this approach. They understand the correlation between cost, time frame, and quality of the result.

The explanation of this can only be attempted in broad terms because it tends to vary quite a lot. I have found that in about 50% of instances of the above mentioned situation, the customers will see reason and adjust some aspect of the project that will allow the PM to retain control of the quality. I have found that the following is true in all situations:

1. Cheap price + crash schedule = poor quality and unacceptable results.

2. Cheap price + reasonable time frame = generally acceptable results

3. Fair price + reasonable time frame = high quality

Certainly in 3 above, customers are justified in having quite high expectations on their LSP and the Project Manager to deliver the expected quality and there would be no excuses for any drop in performance that would be acceptable. In 1 and 2 above, it is something of a gamble and the principle of "you get what you pay for" most certainly does apply.

Down-skilling project managers (Part 2 of "Will technology save your company?")

2010-02-17T23:44:00.005+08:00

Project managers working in high-cost developed countries are a huge expense. The reaction to this is that experienced project managers have been “down-skilled.” Seen only as a cost to production, veteran project managers have been pushed aside as companies replace them with low-paid novices (sometimes even interns) who can be pressured into staying in the office all night trying to fulfill promises made by overzealous sales staff. The inevitable result is chronic poor performance and low quality. The resulting quality gaffes create further pressure to regiment the project process to make it more fool-proof.

The problem is that the business of selling language services is worlds apart from the business of selling commodities. Every customer, every area of business, every communication, and every document is different and requires individual and careful attention by staff who have the experience to know how to handle it correctly. You cannot buy a box of translation off the shelf and have that fit your specific requirement as you could if you were buying a telephone system.

Computer-based systems for localization have other motivations as well. Across and SDL are offering smaller LSPs access to their “do all” computerized management systems. In effect, the smaller company has to become a client for the larger company first, then post all their projects, clients, resources, translation assets, (read--the heart and soul of your company) onto their servers.

Understandably there is a lot of resistance to this given that trust is what you want your clients to give you, but not what you want to give your competitor--particularly when the competitor is an 800 pound gorilla that you would almost certainly lose the case (or be unable to sustain the cost of the fight) in any redress action attempted in the event of a breach of that trust.

To be continued...

Next: The lure of the cloud

Will technology save your company? (Part 1)

2010-02-16T21:12:00.004+08:00

How should a localization company lower costs and increase quality? Today, the answer seems to be eliminate project managers as much as possible and regiment the process with a computer-based system of some sort.

A streamlined localization process is the holy grail of the industry and would be seen to increase quality and speed of production. However, this solution naïve and showing that it is certainly not in the best of interest of customers.

The state of the industry

Localization companies have been scrambling for market share by buying other companies, wooing investors for endless cash infusions, and annually welcoming new management teams. This means that even coming into this current economic crisis, a number of companies have been in dire financial straights many times. A clear symptom of this is the continuous extension of payment terms to contractors and the increasing number of companies blacklisted by Proz for not paying at all.

Companies and end clients have been struggling with computer systems, ISO certification, and the creation of vendor management teams who often seem to have little if any knowledge of the localization business. All of these measures have been put into place to address what is the root of the problem--moving away from the use of well trained and experienced project managers.

To be continued...

Next: The “down-skilling” of project managers