The Guide to Translation and Localization: Case Study

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The Guide to Translation and Localization: Case Study

By Lingo Systems,
Portland, OR, U.S.A.

info [at] lingosys . com
www.lingosys.com

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[ Table of Contents ]

Chapter 14: Case Study

Product: Training Materials for an SAP implementation

Situation

A leading global manufacturer of consumer products made a three year, several hundred million dollar commitment to implement SAP - a well known business process improvement software. Through the coordination of both in-house and professional services consultants, the software was rolled out to facilities first in the U.S., then to Europe and Asia.

To maximize the utilization of the software, the manufacturer initiated a global end-user training program to accompany the implementation. After conducting a series of internal needs assessments in each global locale, the company determined that the training for certain courses would be more effective if taught in the native language of the employees, rather than English. The decision to translate the courses is typically based on the level of English comprehension expected from the locale's employee base. For example, in the accounts payable department, English comprehension might be quite high, which means that translating the training material is not necessary. Conversely, since the English comprehension level of the facility's warehousing personnel is low, they may need to be taught in the local language.

The training materials included a traditional instructor-led (ILT) curriculum and a web-based application that functioned as an intelligent help system sitting on top of the SAP software. The company's challenge was to find a localization partner who provided experience with SAP, the ability to deliver quality results under aggressive timelines, and the technical know-how to work within the parameters of the project. Finally, and perhaps most commonly, the project budget was very limited, so a cost-effective localization solution was needed - without compromising the imperative for quality and speed.

Project Scope

Database localization: Four localizable tables in a SQL Server database, totaling 310,000 words.

Instructor Led Training: 30 PowerPoint presentations, totaling 1,350 slides and 65,000 words.

Supplemental Materials: 18 MS Word documents, totaling 85 pages and 11,000 words.

Timeline: 12 Weeks.

Leah Carter

Accounting Manager

I'm an accountant, not a bio writer. Ledgers and pivot tables I know; letters and punctuation, less so. Now, may I please have your expense reports?

Process

Given that the majority of the localizable content resided in a SQL Server database, extracting the text into a useable format for the linguistic tasks became a chief concern. Tables may be exported as Excel worksheets; however, there are notable disadvantages to using Excel: field formatting is lost, and managing suing lengths becomes difficult if not impossible. Moreover, without the use of a sophisticated software tool, repetitious strings cannot automatically be excluded from the training materials.

As part of our solution we selected a tool designed expressly for database localization. This provided an intuitive user interface (UI) for the linguists, tools to manage suing lengths, and the ability to exclude duplicate strings (repetitions) from translation. Because identical strings only had to be translated once, significant cost savings and shortened timelines were achieved. It also ensured that repetitions were consistently translated throughout the material. Finally, in light of the aggressive timeline, we worked together with the client to prioritize translating the materials based on the training schedule. In this manner, we customized a "just-in-time" localization process, delivering localized courses to the customer as they were needed.

Summary

By using the right technology, the most qualified resources, and the optimal process, we met all of our client's requirements, helping them to maximize the return on their substantial investment in a new SAP platform.

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