Articles for Translators
and Translation Companies
Localization
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When Apple Transcreates Headlines, and When it Doesn’t
As a translator and localization specialist, my candy is a well-translated headline. While most people will find that geeky or crazy, the few of you reading this likely know exactly what I mean. Headlines, by their nature, should not be literally translated. Instead, they require transcreation, the process of translating a text creatively for its expression and tone, rather than its literal meaning…
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The
Booming Localization Industry in the People’s Republic of China
In recent years, Chinese localizers have been strengthening their
exchanges with their foreign counterparts as well as the publicity
of their services. The free and chaotic state of the sector has
been replaced by the standardized and orderly development pattern.
Although the worldwide financial crisis of two years ago crippled
the flourishing tendency of localizing enterprises, it offered them
precious opportunities in the accelerated globalization. China has
gradually become one of the major centers for multilingual localization
services…
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the full article…
Funny but Costly Localization Mistakes
You want to increase your market share, profits, and presence, so
you decide to expand into a new market. Your team spends an incredible
amount of time and money determining which market to enter. Your
brand is molded to fit into your prospective market while maintaining
its integrity, and the research backs that it is relevant, appropriate,
and remarkable…
Read
the full article…
Blunders Made by Cross-Cultural Businesses
We often get many emails
from visitors to our sites saying how much they enjoy the article
on cross cultural blunders - Results of Poor Cross Cultural Awareness.
We are constantly asked for more. Bowing to pressure we have therefore
complied some more examples of how cultural ignorance can and does
lead to negative (and much of the time humorous) consequences…
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the full article…
How to Localize Your Software Products
in Order to Go Global
Localizing software is a great way to rapidly expand your business
and grow profits. A 2007 paper by the Localization Industry Standards
Association (LISA) reported that $25 dollars was returned for every
$1 invested in localization…
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the full article…
Five
Localization Myths
For many years now, advances in internet technologies, development
tools, authoring tools and platforms, have expanded the use of different
file formats and build environments. Software applications and manuals
are no longer based only on Microsoft resource files or Word documents.
Java, XML, ASP, HTML, as well as many other formats, have become
standard in many applications and products...
Read
the full article...
LSPs
during recession: by Larry Gould, thebigword
At thebigword, during 2009, we have seen a significant increase
in the volume of work from clients who, in the past, were mainly
focused on their home markets. In the present situation these markets
have let them down and are expected to take some time to recover...
Read
the full article...
The
importance of accurately globalizing your message for new markets
At some point you may have wondered or asked yourself: what does
the term localization really mean? If you have, don’t feel bad.
Few people outside the industry can describe what is actually involved
in the localization process. And it seems like even fewer realize
how complex and potentially time-consuming the process of producing
accurate, superior-quality localizations truly can be...
Read
the full article...
The
growth and evolution of audio and video localization
The increase in demand for localization of multimedia content is
nothing new to most translation providers, but these past few years,
in addition to an increase in volume, we have also seen a diversification
of the content, from mostly voice over for phone prompts, e-learning,
and corporate videos, to web based Flash marketing animations, streaming
web videos, multilingual green screen production, internal webinars,
software tutorials and much more...
Read
the full article...
LinkedIn
- the Localization Industry’s Favorite Network?
Facebook, Twitter, Flixster, LinkedIn: They make up the fastest
growing segment of the Internet. In fact, two-thirds of online users
access "member communities," which include social networks
and blogs, according to research conducted this year by The Nielsen
Company. They have even overtaken e-mail as the fourth most popular
online category, and they are growing twice as fast as any other
category...
Read
the full article...
Work
Breakdown Structure (WBS) of Localization Projects
It happened when my interlocutor spoiled a perfectly fine discussion
about localization and project management by throwing in “Work Breakdown
Structure,” which instantly froze me in my tracks. I sprinkled a
few “WBS” acronyms in my response, and then suddenly remembered
an important meeting I had to attend…
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the full article…
Localization
- the art and science
According to LISA ( Localization Industry Standards Association
), “Localization ... involves more than just making the product readily
available in the form and language of the target market. It must
speak to the target audience, based upon its cultural norms and
worldview…
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the full article…
Internationalization
and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization (also spelled
internationalisation and localisation, see spelling differences)
are means of adapting computer software to different languages and
regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing
a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages
and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process
of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding
locale-specific components and translating text…
Read
the full article…
Localization
and Translation Best Practices: Successfully Marketing Your Brand
to a Global Audience
As Marketing Manager at an innovative, mid-sized localization company,
I always look for opportunities to provide our existing and prospective
customers with useful information about the sometimes-mysterious
world of translation and localization. To de-mystify this perplexing
world, ENLASO conducts complimentary Webinars on a bi-monthly basis…
Read
the full article…
Can
You Translate PMI-Speak?
Does your next localization project involve working with a PMP (Project
Management Professional) or with someone from a PMO (Project Management
Office)? If so, you just might need some translation help for project
management-speak…
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the full article…
Internationalization
tips
There are two kinds of software internationalization you can refer
to – built in to the product from the start, and performed on existing
code. The kind of internationalization (i18n) this article invokes
isn’t the sort that’s designed into a product right from conception…
Read
the full article…
Best
Practices for Software Internationalization
Before moving a software project to the localization phase, there
are a few things that can save time and money by addressing the
issues ahead of time. Depending on your software, there may be existing
behaviors that are inappropriate for localized versions. Data entry
involving proper names, addresses, phone numbers and currency are
all areas that could cause problems during the localization phase…
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the full article…
Using
XML For Localization
XML is one of the safest, most powerful and flexible ways to store,
manipulate, localize and present data in different languages. With
the vast array of internationalization features and companion technologies,
XML provides many advantages in translation and localization projects…
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the full article…
Preparing
for Translation - Part II of Series. The Localization Kit
I would like to expand on last month's article about how to create
a translation kit and move into the technical world of creating
a localization kit. A localization kit differs in that it deals
with issues associated with localizing web sites, CBT systems and
software…
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the full article…
Maturity
Levels for Localization Suppliers
In the software publishing and testing industries, CMM (Capability
Maturity Model) levels give a clear indication of how well defined
and robust the processes are in a given company. In a recent white
paper, Common Sense Advisory (CSA) for the first time provides a
maturity assessment proposal for the localization industry…
Do's
and Don'ts in Software Development Before Localization
Given the constant competitive pressure on executives to expedite
product time-to-market, many developers are given tight deadlines
to deliver functional software. This software is often geared for
localization once the source language version is ready for release…
Read
the full article…
Translation
Kits – Roadmaps for Your Language Services Provider
Translation kits range from the very simple to the very complex.
In either case, translation kits provide your vendor with vital
information about every project you award them. The purpose of a
translation kit is to provide us with your expectations: the subject
matter and target audience, files and format to be translated, delivery
expectations, special considerations and any other relevant information
all in one place…
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the full article…
Localizing
Online Help: Robohelp vs. Flare
Successful companies know that the effort of translating content
from one language to another does not lie solely on the localization
teams. The right selection of authoring tools, as well as the content
development methodology, plays a crucial role in global technical
publication…
Read
the full article…
Resources
in Microsoft .NET
Sometime around the year 2000, Microsoft
Corporation released its .NET (read as “dot net”) integrated programming
environment to consolidate and simplify the disparate set of tools
(COM, database operations, Win32 programming, code pages verses
Unicode, etc.) that had emerged over a period of 20+ years of Windows
development. Indeed, .NET was most welcome to those of us with a
strong interest in internationalization, localization, and a transparent
approach to Unicode…
The
Basics of Software Internationalization
Software internationalization builds
support for multiple locales in an application, where a locale is
“[a] subset of a user’s environment that defines conventions for
a specified culture,” typically including language. Supporting multiple
locales lets the user choose the most appropriate one, allowing
for easier use of the given application. It is best to complete
the internationalization process as the application is being built,
since adding in such support after the fact can be expensive and
complicated…
Translation
is NOT enough - localization makes the difference
Marketing executives and web designers spend lots of time worrying
about why, when, and where visitors leave their websites. As such,
Common Sense Advisory sought to uncover the reasons visitors leave
across the buying experience as visitors transitioned from casual
visitor to browser to shopper to buyer to customer…
Read
the full article…
The
Open Global Web Architecture
Many techniques exist for creating and maintaining websites and
applications that support multiple languages. The most established
sites use Unicode for text, use proper date, currency, and numeric
formats, and they store error messages in resource files. All of
these practices are thoroughly documented and supported by modern
web implementation platforms, such as Java and .NET, which makes
it possible for web teams with limited prior knowledge of these
practices to get up to speed…
Read
the full article…
Building
a Localization Kit
This document was created to address a typical common problem afflicting
localization managers, localization vendors, and project managers.
This document is intended for readers with years of experience in
the localization industry, as well as for newcomers. However, it
is not intended to be comprehensive…
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the full article…
Mainstreaming L10n Purchasing
Why is localization sourcing and procurement not recognized more
as a strategic and critical business activity within client-side
organizations? Which aspect of the universal business construct—people,
processes, or technology—can we point to for this failure? Do localization
buyers lack the esteemed higher education pedigree that managers
of other cost centers seem to have?…
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the full article…
“Con mala escoba mal se barre”:
los problemas de la localización de productos informáticos no internacionalizados
En este artículo estudiamos los graves problemas a los que se enfrenta la traductora-localizadora a la hora de traducir-localizar un producto informático mal internacionalizado.
Tras definir los conceptos claves de internacionalización y localización,
se hace un repaso de los mencionados problemas,
haciendo uso de ejemplos reales.
Se proponen tres posibles orígenes de los problemas…
Read
the full article…
What
the future of localization holds
As I write this, two piles of paper
overflow the left corner of my desk. One stack contains notes, articles
and case studies about the best practices for buying services online.
The other mound — much bigger — is an eclectic assortment of consumer,
business, cultural, automotive, sports and other news items about
globalization and its positive, humorous and surprising consequences.
This second pile will feed my idea factory for a future report…
What
Do We Want From Localization Tools?
A few years ago, the preparation
of certain files for translation was a task that took hours. Depending
on the lot of files being prepared, it could take days! Even with
a good deal of time allotted to the pre-production process, the
hours spent did not always result in a project that would be free
of problems during the actual production phrase or the phases to
follow…
Website
Localization Tips
Continuing with our tips on the types
of website programming and the ways to deal with these types for
later localization, we will examine in this edition what can be
done and how to do it…
Localization
of Content Management System (CMS) Websites
In this edition, we will be wrapping
up our series on website localization with a discussion of Content
Management System, better known as CSM. However, before we go into
the localization process itself, allow me to provide a brief introduction
of how this type of system works…
Volumizing: Good for Hair, Bad for Content
Life in the 21st Century centers around information. In practically
every waking moment, we create it, we receive it, we process it,
we pass it on, we ignore it, but most of all, we need it. Those
who process information for a living have developed a relentless
informational imperative: If it can be written, it must be written.
So, content developers fall into "volumizing" their content instead
of preparing if for the global workflow and end users. In this article,
I'll examine why content volumization occurs, what its effects are,
and what you can do about it…
Read
the full article…
Customer Elements within Glocalization
Despite international initiatives on global branding, advertisement
campaigns, and product features, the linchpin that transforms a
"call to action" into resulting customer purchases is an understanding
of the Customer Elements: the combined discipline encompassing online
site usability, focus groups, controlled surveys, market metrics,
etc…
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the full article…
Evolving Localization and its Brand Extension
"Frog at the bottom of a well" is an old Asian proverb which states
that a frog at the bottom of a well steadfastly believes heaven
is only the size of a small circle. Only when one climbs out of
the well can heaven's true vastness and magnitude be comprehended.
Ageless as this proverb may be, it is also an appropriate description
of the current commoditization challenge within the localization
industry…
Read
the full article…
Wikipedia: Localization in a Free Content Community
Wikipedia is now the second most visited reference web site on the
internet. Run by volunteers, its goal is to create and maintain
a free encyclopedia with a neutral point of view in every language
on the internet. Gerard Meijssen, an active volunteer with the Dutch
Wiktionary and Initiator of the Ultimate Wiktionary, explains how
the Wikimedia Foundation works and describes some of its latest
projects…
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the full article…
May Flowers
OSCAR Releases a New Crop of Standards
The work of standards bodies is usually characterized by slow and
steady work on standards that take years to define. This slowness
is caused partially by the fact that companies have vested interests
in making sure that the standards reflect their ways of doing business,
and when there are conflicts between contributors, hammering out
compromises can take years. Recent work by the OSCAR group, however,
has been decidedly different from the slow progress we normally
expect from standards bodies…
Read
the full article…
Designing for a Non-English Audience
Having worked as a digital publishing specialist at a large corporation
at my previous job, I did not think being in charge of foreign language
typesetting would be too difficult. After all, the layout and the
images are already prepared and I only need to flow in the text
- how hard could that be? I was sure that a simple Copy and Paste,
or text importation, would do everything. This was my point of view
when I initially began managing DTP projects in different languages…
Read
the full article…
The “Good Ol’ Days” Are Gone
You can be sure that the current economic slowdown in Silicon Valley
is definitely different than past ones, when you hear engineers
complain about it. I have been working in the hi-tech industry in
Silicon Valley since 1988, and I’ve never heard of a lack of jobs
for technical people. As a matter of fact, this area has always
been considered “nirvana” by anyone with a scientific background
and entrepreneurial spirit…
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the full article…
Discovering the Joys of Internationalization in Australia
My perspective is that of the academic computer scientist, a member
of a department that produces remarkably good software developers
who, up until recently, wouldn’t have known “Unicode” from “Unilateral.”
Their complacency has been shared for many years by a software industry
that has drawn adequate sustenance from local development work…
Read
the full article…
Risky Business: Risk Management for Localization Project Managers
In his first article on localization (L10n) project management,
The Life, or Lack Thereof, of a Localization Project Manager, Willem
Stoeller provided five critical success factors for localization
project management and placed them in context for the overall project
lifecycle. In this second article in the series, Stoeller presents
the case of incorporating the “kittens, puppies, alligators and
tigers” of risk management into the L10n Project Manager’s “toolkit.”
A simple spreadsheet is enough to get started; and the payoff in
retaining long-term customers will far outweigh the initial effort
required…
Read
the full article…
The Digital Divide - Why Localization Matters More Than We Know
In a recent article in Scientific American entitled “Demystifying
the Digital Divide,” Mark Warschauer of the University of California,
Irvine reports on the failure of attempts to eliminate the “Digital
Divide,” the differential rates in access to high-technology products
and services between groups and locations around the world…
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the full article…
An Update on the EU’s In-Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) Directive
New European Union legislation completing the Medical Device Directive
is due to come into force at year’s end, which is bringing added
challenges to product compliance in this field. This article looks
at the implications of this complex Directive for the multilingual
information management of product labeling in different countries
and recommends relevant strategies…
Read
the full article…
With a Clear Vision and His Feet on the Ground
You’re known for having a rather astute and unique perspective on
the GILT industry. Where does this come from?
There’s really no magic to it... I’m now an old hand at this business,
if not according to my age, at least in terms of when I started
in 1984. If you look at the other CEOs in our industry now, most,
if not all, have been in the business probably half of my time.
Also, I’m free to say what I want since SimulTrans continues to
be independent and privately owned…
Read
the full article…
What Planet Are They On?
"I firmly believe that programming language (PL) developers are
very intelligent people, who, for some reason, have not yet noticed
that we now live on such a small planet. They should have already
realized that successful applications must be multilingual to be
easily translated and localized…"
Read
the full article…
Return on Investment in Multilingual Websites from a Marketing Perspective
It is critical for global companies to build long-term trust with
their customers worldwide. One of the most effective ways to do
this is to address audiences in their local languages. By nature,
the Internet is a truly international and multicultural engine that
crosses global barriers. Effective content localization enables
companies to leverage corporate assets in ways that reduce overall
costs, accelerate revenues and build better relationships with customers
and employees all around the world. The effectiveness of this localization
effort can be measured by the development and analysis of metrics…
Read
the full article…
Global to the Core
At a time when the GILT industry is fighting for visibility this
sounds like bad news. Is this a return to the "bad old days" when
localization was so chaotic that no one knew what they were spending,
or what they were getting for their money? As it turns out, IBM's
inability to say how much money it spends on GILT may herald the
start of a new era of globalization…
Read
the full article…
Making Sim Ship Work
Simultaneous shipment ("sim ship") of all language versions of a
product is an ideal that few companies actually achieve. In this
article Tony Gray of Oracle describes the results of a project to
improve Oracle's sim ship capabilities that has allowed Oracle to
consistently deliver products in thirty languages at the same time.
The key? Support from senior management and building the right team…
Read
the full article…
Minority Report on Localization 2003
It is always a risky business to try to predict the future, particularly
in view of erratic human behavior and rapid technological changes.
Then again, we are not totally clueless; the future is built on
the present and affected by the actions we take today. Looking back
at the language industry in 2002, one may conclude that there were
no dramatic developments…
Read
the full article…
Localization Solved?
Is localization "solved"? If so, what does that mean for internationally-active
businesses? Are they then "in the market"? Arle Lommel argues that
localization is only part of the picture and that post-localization
issues will become increasingly important for companies doing business
around the world…
Read
the full article…
Localization2: Selling the 21st Century Across the Digital
Divide
Most of us live in a 21st century society with easy access to information
and entertainment when we want it, where we want it. We grumble
when we go to a conference hotel and have to use a modem to get
our e-mail (how archaic is that?), and we complain when our cell
phones don’t work on the “wrong” side of the Atlantic (I won’t give
my opinion as to which side that might be). Our clients want the
impossible done yesterday, and they want to pay less for it than
they paid for the merely possible a few years back…
Read
the full article…
Quality Assurance – The Client Perspective
Quality GILT results depend on balancing quality desires and requirements
with real-world constraints. Clients often have unrealistic or unstated
expectations for quality and are then disappointed with the results.
Making expectations explicit and understanding how they will/will
not be met (and at what cost) can help clients make appropriate
decisions and investments…
Read
the full article…
Time-to-Market: It’s Standards or Die!
F-Secure was an early supporter of the TMX standard and continues
to be an extremely strong advocate on the customer side for encouraging
language tools vendors to play to their individual strengths, rather
than investing in proprietary tools and processes. The company depends
on an open environment to meet its critical time-to-market goals
in the extremely competitive security market. Mika Pehk onen describes
how the Localization and Development Teams are integrated at F-Secure
to produce a security service that ideally responds to threats even
before they materialize…
Read
the full article…s
Mission Impossible: Improve Quality, Time and Speed At the Same
Time
It is the accepted wisdom of the translation world that translation
quality, speed and cost are all locked in some sort of zero sum
game. Any improvement in one comes at the expense of one or both
of the others. If you need to improve quality, translation takes
longer and is more expensive due to extra quality assurance steps…
Read
the full article…
A Passage to Localization Down Under
New Zealand is not just all scenery. It is gearing up for a full-fledged
localization industry to emerge. What does it take for a translation
company to become a one-stop localization shop in a country where
there is no existing localization industry? Evelyn Olsen, who works
for a local translation company, insists that New Zealand is ready
for localization and draws attention to its urgent need for the
training of localization professionals…
Read
the full article…
The GILT Industry and the Cultural Gap
The theme for this Asia-Pacific edition of the Globalization Insider
is cultural gaps — not only between countries, but also within the
GILT industry itself. At a recent international screen translation
conference I attended, DVD subtitling was a hot topic, and it became
quite clear to me that the emergence of global DVD markets will
necessitate the convergence of screen translation (subtitling and
dubbing) and localization if multilingual digital content is to
be delivered efficiently …
Read
the full article…
Is Localization a Mouse or a Rat?
Many of us know Umberto Eco for books such as The Name of the
Rose and Foucalt’s Pendulum, both of which were
international best sellers, translated into dozens of languages.
Aside from his career as an author of best sellers, Eco is professor
of semiotics at the University of Bologna and one of the best-known
thinkers about language and literature…
Read
the full article…
Spotlight: Hanspeter Siegrist
Globalization Insider: What are the two most critical
issues facing the language technology industry right now?
The interoperability between technologies and enabling true
collaboration among all players.
The interoperability between technologies (including competing technologies).
For example, if a telephone is incompatible with another telephone,
it is useless…
Read
the full article…
Culture and Website Localization
With the rise in ownership of computers and internet usage growing
daily, the internet is fast becoming the primary port of call for
information, shopping and services. In addition, those computer
and internet users are increasingly from non-English speaking countries.
At the end of 2002, it was estimated that 32% of internet users
were non-native English speakers. This figure is constantly rising.
In response, businesses have quickly become aware of the benefits
of website localization…
Read
the full article…
The
Translation of Advertisements: from Adaptation to Localization
The translation of advertisements has evolved during the last decade
towards what is now called “Advertising Localization”. It is not a
mere change of designation stemming from computer science vocabulary
but a radical change of perspective concerning the real nature and
modes of linguistic and cultural transfer from one language into an
other. The present article explains, in detail, the evolution that
took place, its expressions and its stakes in the profession and training
of translators in the field of localization…
Read
the full article… Why
Foreignizing Translation Is Seldom Used in Anglo-American World
in Information Age
This thesis
mainly looks at the issue of foreignization and domestication of
translation from a perspective of information transfer. In a literary
translation process two kinds of information can be classified:
direct information and aesthetic information. The reasons behind
the dominant domestication method in the Anglo-American world are
that the translators focus on the transfer of direct information
not aesthetic information of the source text and that the reader
doesnt possess enough backup information to understand a translation
of foreignization…
Read the full article…
Stylistic
Features of the Advertising Slogan
A slogan is a form of
verbal logo. In a print ad, it usually appears just beneath or beside
the brand name or logo. A slogan sums up what one stand for, ones
specialty, the benefit, and ones marketing position, and ones commitment.
It is especially useful to reinforce ones identity. A slogan can
prove to be more powerful than a logo. People can remember and recite
your slogan while they are unlikely to doodle your logo…
Read the full article…
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