Stages in your company's localization-life

"So, where are we on this localization-thingee?"

Do you get questions like that from upper management? The question demonstrates complete cluelessness about the work involved in creating international versions of your company's products. Secretly, of course, you're gratified that it's on upper management's radar.

Here are typical steps in a company's localization-evolution:

1. No Clue - These companies find out the hard way, often by ignoring in-country requests, bulldozing the project through Engineering, shipping poorly localized product, and not figuring out in advance how to support it. The biggest shame here is the lost opportunity to get Engineering on board properly from the start; unfortunately, localization is going to interest engineers only once - the first time - so missing this chance is costly in the long run.
   
2. Some Clue - Companies with Some Clue designate a localization manager to act as champion (or at least as lightning rod) of the process. A wise investment at this level is in somebody who does in fact know something about localization (or global requirements and differences, anyway); such a person will help the company avoid most of the in-country problems faced by No-Clue companies.
   
3. More Clue - In time, the localization champion evangelizes internationalization/localization thinking to others in the company. People reflexively contact him/her whenever the word "international" is uttered because they correctly perceive that person as the hub in the international-product wheel.
   
4. Advanced Clue - This is the Great Engineering Leap. Along with all of the other fires that Engineering and QA put out, they now know it to be a priority to design their products and processes from the ground up for worldwide versions.
   
5. Total Clue - A company with Total Clue ships multiple languages simultaneously, has happy overseas offices and customers, and probably derives much of its profit from overseas sales. Things do not run on auto-pilot by any means, and the localization team must still crack the whip and pester people, but the entire organization lives with the charter of seeing beyond the home country's borders: the corporate version of the State Department.
   

It's common, by the way, for Sales and Marketing to drive this evolution, since they're closest to the pain caused by not evolving.

So, tell me: Where is your company on the localization-thingee, where does it want to be, and what do you have to do to help take it there?

Interested in this topic? You might enjoy another article I've written called "Whaddya know? They asked me first this time!"

Whaddya know? They asked me first this time!

Do you spend a lot of your time running to catch up to the train? Have you ever been surprised in the middle of a meeting by project plans that were well underway with no thought given yet to localization? Are you getting used to it?

What if they asked you first (or at least early on) about the project's implications for internationalization and localization? Would you know how to react?

This certainly caught me by surprise a few months ago. A client called me in for consultation. He didn't want me to manage the upcoming localization of his user manuals; he wanted me to review and edit the English versions so that they would be ready to localize.

This client, though small, is enlightened. The company is selling English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese versions of several products, and it has a hand-in-glove relationship with its localization company. It knows where its global bread is buttered.

I jumped at the chance to work with people thinking this far in advance, so I reviewed the manuals and submitted changes, almost all of which were acceptable.

How can you review/edit documentation with an eye to translating it?

1. Take advantage of redundancy. Ensuring that identical sentences and paragraphs remain identical is a good way to lower per-word translation costs. Turn the text into a bookmark at its first occurrence, then invoke or cross-reference that bookmark at subsequent occurrences.
2. Ensure that the product matches the documentation. Not all organizations get around to this, believe it or not, and it becomes a bit of value added by the internationalization/localization function.
3. Standardize terms. Especially in companies without a well developed team of writers, manuals end up with pairs or trios of synonyms that will vex translators and add no information, so take the liberty of eliminating one in favor of the other:
   
   • Determine/specify
     
   • based on/according to
   • click the button/click on the button/select the button
   • lets you/enables you to/allows you to
4. Mention errors and inconsistencies that have nothing to do with internationalization. Again, you increase the perceived value of the localization function. Even though the result doesn't affect the localized products, the Localization Department (you) are contributing to a better core product.
5. Axe a few "dead" words. They add little to the explanation, will probably not survive translation, and inflate wordcount:
   
   • unique
   • basically
   • popular
   • congratulations
   • very much
     

By the way, the review took longer than I'd anticipated, so if you have a similar opportunity, don't bid a flat fee the first time.

Interested in this topic? Have a look at Improved Docs through Localization.

Localizing the bad breath indicator

You know you've been in this line of work too long when you look at every innovation and wonder, "How are they going to localize that?"

China and India may have the growing numbers of cellular subscribers, but Japan and Korea are winning the race for edgy wireless applications, as the Associated Press/NewsEdge article cited below underscores. Still, I wonder how they'll localize it...

DoCoMo's prototype phone gives users fitness check
It can take your pulse, check your body fat, time your jogs and tell you if you have bad breath. It even assesses stress levels and inspires you with a pep talk. Meet your new personal trainer: your mobile phone.

The prototype Wellness mobile phone from Japan's NTT DoCoMo targets users with busy lives who want a hassle-free way of keeping track of their health, according to company spokesman Noriaki Tobita.

I applaud this novel use of mobile technology. Life sciences and telephones are snuggling up together in many other ways, and this strikes me as a good next step in the evolution.

But how do you localize the bad breath sensor?

I don't think they'll be able to do it correctly from Japan; it will require a lot of in-country research. What constitutes bad breath in Japan may be a breath of fresh air in Idaho, and vice versa, and it would be hard to get it right working only from the source country.

Can Trados handle that? What extension does a bad breath profile have: .bbp? How do you qualify translators for it?

"It's with you wherever you go, like a portable personal trainer," Tobita said.

Does every country have personal trainers? Do they do the same thing in every country? Will I be able to tell them to go away in my own language, and have them obey me?

The Wellness phone, developed by NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi Electric, also asks questions to assess stress levels, and offers advice.

Now that's nice. Are the questions the same in every country? I would bet that the definition of "stress" varies widely from culture to culture. I've wandered into markets in other countries that were so boisterous and nerve-wracking that I didn't even want to buy - let alone sell - there, but what struck me as panic was just day-in-the-life commerce for those people.

DoCoMo, Japan's biggest mobile phone carrier, has not set a release date or price for the Wellness phone and has no immediate plans to sell it overseas.

That's just as well; we localizers need a little more time to think this one through.

Full article http://www.telecomasia.net/article.php?id_article=5956

"Why are you charging me for that?" - Part 1

Have you ever asked your localization vendor this question? Or, if you're a vendor, has any client ever asked it of you?

For a few clients, we manage large documentation projects, notably HTML Help and Robohelp localization. When the vendor translated 800 HTML pages for version 1.0 of the product, a particular client swallowed hard and paid for all non-matches, because it was the first time localizing the product.

By version 2.0, the Help had grown to 1400 pages. Many of the original 800 pages had no translatable changes, but Trados dutifully scooped up all of those words, dropped them into the "100%" or "95-99%" buckets, and the vendor charged us for them, even if at a greatly discounted rate.

"Why are you charging me for that?" I asked. I'll have more on this topic in an upcoming post, but for now:

If you're on the vendor-side, do you have a good answer for that question? If you're on the client-side, have you ever received an answer to that question that satisfied you?