Main Content
Paris 2004
Automating Global Business Processes
Leading-Edge Strategies,Technologies and Standards
Holiday Inn Disney, Marne-la-Vallée, France
11-14 October 2004
The Localization Industry Standards Association’s 50th International Conference will go beyond the usual discourse about multilingual content management challenges and solutions to address the practicality of international products delivery, applications, and costs as well as how a larger Europe and companies wanting access to its markets can best manage business practices like emerging collaborative systems, outsourcing management, and open standards deployment.
Managing multilingual content is this century’s most crucial challenge to social, political and economic sustainability. For example, since the May 1st enlargement to include 10 new countries, the European Union is faced with an expanding content management problem that global businesses have wrestled with for over a decade. Europe has grown to a 25-member bloc with 20 official languages, and 280 possible language combinations. As a result, their budget for translating documents and on-demand requirements has grown to 1 billion Euro annually, the current staff of 1300 translators will double, and the number of pages translated will increase to nearly 2.5 million pages in less than 2 years. Translation has become Europe’s biggest “boom” industry, as a majority of the 380 million Europeans speak only their own language and the EU mandates that each member be entitled to information in their own tongue.
Companies seeking to penetrate growing European markets in sectors like gaming, automotive and the Internet industries must understand the importance of regional diversity and the emphasis placed on issues such as language and technology. While the motive for such a focus on translation may come from, as the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation stated, “a question of rights, democracy, equality, as well as being part of a peace strategy and a multicultural society,” the fact is that reasons given for joining the EU have shifted from general historic and geopolitical reasons to more concrete economic requirements. The economic benefits sought by all players extend to global business and trade as a whole, while companies and countries search for effective tools to manage multilingual content, open-source standards will become increasingly critical to achieve scalable solutions.
KEYNOTE: Localization for the Explosive Startup Companies: Building-up Organically
Loic Le Meur - General Manager, SixApart Ltd
Six Apart Europe’s goal is to reach 1 million subscribers in Europe in the fastest possible time. How can the localization industry and its service community solve the globalization issues of today’s rapidly evolving, hi-tech communications-based software development companies. The main challenges are turn-around time and cost: align target markets with language support, and, flexible costing to leverage opportunities for the thousands of aggressive startup-companies that are exploring new techniques to grow quickly and adapt to global market requirements.
Loic Le Meur, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa-- is a well-known French entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Ublog, one of Europe’s leading blogging tools providers and hosting services. Prior to his appointment at Six Apart EMEA, Loic founded and served as CEO for several companies in France, including Tekora, an ASP-driven Web site publisher for small businesses; RapidSite France, the first shared Web hosting company launched in France, which was sold to France Telecom and integrated into their Wanadoo offering; and B2L, one of the first Web agencies launched in France, with clients including Chanel, 20th Century Fox, Mars and other major brands, which was sold to BBDO, a leading advertising group.
Beyond Language Handling: Functional Localization
Michael Depner - Director Product Management, International Development, SAP AG
When talking about localization, most experts cover language related issues, i.e. translation, code pages or character representation, etc. However, an important area in localization refers to what we call functional localization - managing the product’s compliance with local laws and best business practices - especially for business applications. SAP’s budget to ensure that compliance issues are properly satisfied is comparable to the amount disbursed to handle the range of language management issues. SAP has established specific internal processes to do functional localization with optimum speed and optimum efficiency. Selected examples for functional localization are: VAT calculation and reporting, accounting rules, payroll, electronic payment processes, and inflation handling.
A particularly interesting example is the functional requirements generated through the recent accession of the new EU countries. When one would have expected harmonization and simplification along with the EU accession, the new laws in those countries have created special challenges for business application software vendors.
Michael Depner will focus on the needs of the new EU countries and the consequences for SAP’s Translation Group.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Localization Metrics and Quality Assurance - What is Quality, and How Can it be Measured?
Kim Harris - Managing Director, text & form Software-Localisierung
Edith Kroupa - Manager, DaimlerChrysler
Sylvie Hergault - Product Localization Manager, Borland Software Corp.
Andrzej Zydron - CTO, XML Intl Ltd.
Bettina Reichart - Regional Manager, Vendor & Language Solutions, Oracle
Andrew Bredenkamp - Director, acrolinx GmbH
Nowhere do opinions and expectations diverge as much as they do in the assessment of service quality, and our industry is no exception. This session will address a range of quality-related issues and the ability to objectively measure and maintain quality during the product cycle. This Q&A panel will discuss corporate understanding of localization quality and its importance within the production chain, the impact of quality on long-term investment, how localization quality can be measured throughout the product life, and whether or not global standards can be developed to measure it.
A Business Case for Investing in Translation Workflow
Peter Wilms van Kersbergen - Business Improvement Manager, Medtronic
Peter Wilms van Kersbergen addresses Medtronic’s rationale for investing in translation workflow rather than a wider global localization workflow solution. He provides in more detail the internal factors that determined the vendor and tool selection process to justify Medtronic’s new translation investment.
Given Medtronic’s complex profile as a virtual in-house translation vendor in the context of multiple internal business clients, this presentation will analyze how internal client production processes and tools requirements determined the workflow automation requirements. Peter will address the resulting investment criteria, as well as the validation criteria that were identified for the production pilot.
The example of the pilot study will be used to show what process and other gains were identified. For this presentation additional data will be shared to reflect 3 months of actual production.
MT in Practice Today: Customers, Applications and Costs
Daniel Grasmick - Development Manager, SAP AG
Edith Kroupa - Manager, DaimlerChrysler
Nestor Rychtyckyj - Technical Specialist, Ford Motor Company
Reba Rosenbluth - Director Corporate Sales, SYSTRAN
Andras Bocsak - Director, Comprendium Deutschland GmbH
Stephan Bodenkamp - Director Corporate Sales, Amt fur Auslandsfragen
Anthony Clarke - VP, CLS Communication Inc.
With contributions from ProMT, SDL International, and linguatec language technologies GmbH
So much has been said about machine translation in the past and much more will be said in the future. But do we actually know the truth about MT and can we get past the myths and prove its case?
One thing is for certain: An ever-increasing number of words is being translated with machine translation these days, and MT has become a critical component in the effort to keep up with globalization in the fast lane.
Nowadays, a large number of organizations with sizable multilingual requirements are considering and implementing MT as a solution to their translation needs. During this panel, to be moderated by SAP AG, real corporate users such as DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company and CLS will team up with their respective MT providers, Comprendium and Systran, to discuss their investments and achievements, as well as the challenges they faced during the development and introduction of the technology.
The panel presentations will be complemented by additional case studies from linguatec language technologies, ProMT and SDL International.
Enterprise Globalization: The Evolution and ROI. How Does an Organization Accomplish More to Justify Investment?
Christian Redmann - Manager, Product Localization, UGS Inc.
Christian Redmann defines content and resource (I.e., organization, tools, electronic assets/data) requirements for successful globalization of large portfolio with a small in-house organization. He relates his accomplishments in terms of outsourcing decisions and localization models, along with the trends to embrace and trends to avoid.
Christian will focus on how his department have accomplished more and justified a serious globalization investment. He covers the evolution and the associated cost metrics by addressing the efficiency requirements that UGS have come to impose on content and organizational resources. Christian explains how his organization have achieved their goals and how they position themselves in the global market. He shares his expectations by revealing lessons learned and adopting best practices. Christian also notes his view of how service vendors can add value and, how he believes content and resource management will work for UGS going forward.
UGS delivers integrated technology and services supporting the entire lifecycle of a product -- from concept and development to distribution and delivery. PLM is product lifecycle management, an increasingly important and visible enterprise business strategy through which organizations digitally manage a product’s complete lifecycle, all the way from its concept to its retirement -- and gain higher business value from that product as a result.
UGS is a 4,700-strong, global team. With more than 3 million licensed seats of our technology in use and 42,000 clients worldwide, UGS manages or creates more than 40 percent of the world’s 3-D data.
Quality Partnership - The Human Factor in Business Relations
Philippe De Sainte Maresville - WorldWide Localization Center Director, Hewlett Packard
Janaina Wittner - Senior Project Manager, WH&P
Widely used in the industry to hide business dependency, the term “partnership” has been emptied of its real meaning. Growing competition induced new practices such as job auctions. The growing discourse about disloyalty of clients and exchangeability of vendors leads to product quality depreciation.
While most manufactures oppose quality to cost and time-to-market, HP manages all three through its unique quality partnership model. With several hundred thousand individual localization requests per year, HP is one of the world’s largest localization consumers. The presentation will show how advanced technology and rigorous procedures smooth out a very complex, fast moving and tightly framed production process, where several hundred actors spread all over the world intervene. The presentation will show through case studies that only human values such as trust and mutual investment combined with competence, professionalism and advanced technology allow for exceptional achievements.
Managing Web Localization to Deliver Content Intelligence
Bruno Herrmann - Web Content Manager, ACNielsen
Managing multiple customer-facing Web sites on a global basis requires an effective and collaborative content strategy involving all business units and processes, while meeting user needs. The main challenges lie in merging technology and content, building Web governance and covering complex content lifecycles. Therefore, implementing a content management solution means dealing with technical and organizational issues. Participants in this session will learn why ACNielsen has invested in their content management strategy and what they expect to gain.
Bruno Hermann will be detailing their implementation challenges by defining content strategy components, processes and objectives. He will be discussing his ideas initiating and developing a content framework and selecting a content management solution which is capable of meeting Bruno will also address how their system helps ACNielsen achieve their global requirements while underlining the importance of content classification and identifying and deploying content on a regional and global basis.
Localizing Complex Consumer Electronic Products
Darja Le-Blond - Strategic Account Manager, WordBank
As the market for complex consumer electronic products such as smart phones, PDAs, digital cameras and DVD writers takes off, so does the demand for mechanisms to help communicate the benefits and features of these products to potential and existing customers. Whilst handbooks or user manuals are still popular, the main growth area for consumer communication is the multi-media, interactive CD or DVD which can provide ‘info- or ‘edutainment’ for the new purchaser through a combination of animation, interactivity, and audio-visual content. Darja Le-Blond’s presentation will provide an insight into the linguistic and technical challenges of localizing multi-lingual, multi-media projects which include voice-overs, text, artwork and animation. It will draw on a recent project to localize a CD that consisted of 420,000 words plus voice-over recordings in 13 languages for consumers of digital camera products.
The concepts discussed in the presentation will include:
- The necessity to design the creative concept for the project in such a way that it is capable of being internationalized without major re-engineering for each language. The starting point should be an internationalized design - not an English one which cannot be easily transferred into other languages
- The importance of involving the localization specialist early on in the planning process to ensure that the client and creative agency understand the significance of using localization-friendly technologies and file formats such as Director, Flash MX and XML
- The importance of extensive testing of the design to ensure that languages with different character sets display correctly guidelines on managing the relationship between the client, the creative agency and the localization specialist the challenges of ensuring consistency of terminology across multiple languages for a wide range of product names guidelines on how to project manage the production of voice-over recordings in multiple languages
From the presentation, the attendees will gain: an appreciation of good design practice for international communication practical solutions for achieving commercial objectives of speed, cost-effectiveness and linguistic quality understanding of the pitfalls of using any manual processes in engineering localized versions an understanding of why Director, Flash MX and XML are currently the best technologies for achieving multi-lingual animation an understanding of the file engineering and language typesetting skills required to achieve good technical functionality for multi-lingual, multi-media projects in a way that will ensure accuracy and quality but not at the cost of efficiency and turn-around time.
CASE STUDY: Internationalization and Localization of Communication Manager: Managing Design and Code so that Customers Can Localize Their Own Products
Charles Wrobel - Internationalization Engineer, Avaya Inc.
Chuck Wrobel did the design and requirements to internationalize and localize Communication Manager CM (previously known as MultiVantage and Definity). CM had its start 20 years ago as System 75. CM basically supported ASCII only until Avaya’s CM 2.0 release (Dec 2003). Chuck will illustrate how he and his group internationalized software that has been around for 20 years. He reveals how they devised some very unique methods that allowed end-users to directly localize. Although there is always a risk when letting end customers do this, Chuck explains how his solution minimizes the risk.
Web-based Multilingual Documentation Management System
Regis Chauvaux - Director, Crestec Inc.
In order to reduce production costs, Crestec have for many years promoted the SGML (and now XML) format together with FrameMaker SGML as their preferred layout engine. This solution allows considerable cost reductions when a document needs to be published in many languages because an SGML document can be neatly parsed with a translation program like Trados. The document translated with Trados is still an SGML document and can be automatically formatted with FrameMaker, then converted to ready-to-print PDF, online PDF or HTML.
Regis Chauvaux outlines the main problems with popular desktop based CAT software today:
- each translator must own a copy of the software; and clients must agree on the version of the software and some basic settings.
- clients must send the translation memories, the documents to be translated and other reference material to the translators. After a job is finished, the translator must send back the files. These problems arise when interfacing with a large network of translators working from all continents.
Regis describes the main components of his proprietary web-based translation system and explains how file exchange between translators and clients are no longer required because the translation software, documents, translation memories and the basic settings of the translation reside on a central Web/database server. He also addresses how Crestec solved the problem of maintaining several translation memories and making them available to a growing network of in-house and freelance translators.
Crestec (part of the Crestec Group, Japan) produces technical documentation in the automotive, electronics and home appliance industry for many of the largest Japanese manufacturers. Their services include authoring, translation, artwork and printing.
The LISA Automotive SIG - Solving the multilingual business, technology and customer support challenges facing the automotive sector
Hanspeter Siegrist - LISA Executive Committee
Guido Stanovsky - Services Director, Woco
Nestor Rychtyckyj - Technical Specialist, Ford Motor Company
Anders Andersson - Product Support, Volvo Parts Corporation
Joerg Schutz - Director, IAI Saarbrucken
Rick Woyde - President, Detroit Translation Bureau
The LISA Automotive SIG - Solving the multilingual business, technology and customer support challenges facing the automotive sector.
A panel of industry experts address the automobile sector’s capability to streamline the high quality production of multilingual support documentation. By providing a cogent review of the auto-industry’s global supply chain’s key requirements, panelists explain how standardized terminology development, automated language processing technologies and multimedia workflow management yield lower production costs and faster delivery times.
This session will cover issues ranging from the deployment of leading edge technologies to the application of standards that support language data processing to achive quality information and effective exchange, communication, and search and retrieval. Proprietary workflows and the efforts of the SAE’s J1930 terminology initiative for automotive manufacturers are outlined so that a clear picture emerges showing the advancements and opportunities for managing complex content accross the enterprise and around the world.
Localization Issues in the Publishing Industry
Dan Dube - Director, Business Development, Innodata Isogen
The global economy has presented a dramatic paradigm shift for companies and governmental organizations that publish content. However, the traditional LISA membership has only focused on a subset of the industries facing the challenges of supporting a worldwide customer base. This session will explore in detail many of the localization issues facing one industry segment that has not traditionally fallen into the core LISA membership (the publishing industry) and will cover the following topics:
- challenges facing the publishing industry to address these issues, including process, cost, and technology
- the role of standards, technology, and outsourcing in addressing these challenges
- market size, awareness of need, and willingness to explore options to optimise their content supply chain
Dan Dube will include detailed case studies from representative companies within the publishing industry.
LISA’s Open Standards: OSCAR Initiatives
David Pooley - Development Manager/Software Architect, SDL International
Daniel Benito - Director Of Development, ATRIL Software
Andrzej Zydron - CTO, XML Intl Ltd.
OSCAR standards have set the benchmark for open standards in today’s language processing industry. TMX is the industry’s first certifiable standard. Through OSCAR’s leadership and dedication to excellence the results of their open standards initiatives represent great promise for clients and translation/localization service providers.
Attendees of this session will learn about the business and technical issues related to the development of the LISA’s open standards. Key OSCAR members will introduce and explain their working group efforts and the rationale behind TBX (MARTIF), SRX, GMX and TMX. Why have they been developed? What are the end-user benefits? What is the current support in the marketplace? How are they being used today, and by whom?
Translation Technology for the Open Source Communities
Tim Foster - Localization Engineering Manager, Sun Microsystems
Tim Foster explains how Sun Microsystems makes available translation technology tools for the translation activities in the open source development communities (e.g GNOME, Mozilla). Allowing organizations and communities to utilize the translation tools made available by Sun will reduce the capital and license investment costs for these groups. This availability/access to open translation tools reduces market entry costs for developing nations, especially their governments.
Tim’s presentation will describe Sun’s experiences using open standards, such as XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) and Translation Memory eXchange format (TMX) and his experiences providing tools to process these formats. Sun finds that these tools can:
- increase the access of developing nations to technologies,
- allow them also to contribute to an open corpus of translations in multiple languages and
- aid in sharing translations across multiple projects.
One technology area that the GILT Industry see as vital to increasing productivity for translators and increasing translation quality is that of standards. Using tools to process documents that conform to these standards has benefitted Sun as well providing common access to developing nations.
Expanding TM Usage Across the Enterprise
Mika Pehkonen - Localization Manager, F-Secure
Francois Richard - Translation and Localization Manager, Hewlett Packard
Using the TMX standard as a basis for a dynamic localization process. As a company that produces a high volume of localization output for its size, F-Secure have opted to streamline their localization process by building a dynamic process around the TMX standard. Mika Pehkonen explains how their resulting dynamic localization process has created substantial cost and resource savings in F-Secure’s localization outsourcing process due to increased translation reuse, as well as savings in personnel costs. He discusses how this approach has also decreased the amount of localization-related development bugs that require product development effort, and given F-Secure a healthy and open ROI-focused environment in which to build partnerships with vendors.
Deployment of a centralized Translation Memory at Hewlett Packard. Francois Richard had several key objectives to achieve for his operation: Ownership and accessibility of TM, flexibility to address development team translation & localization requirements, cost and turn-around-time reduction, consistency, and quality. He explains how his group designed and implemented a centralized TM solution with translation and localization support features such as XML validation, inline tag verification, preview. Francois shows how their Web-based review design helped in this deployment and what are the features down the road to complete this set of management tools for localization production and performance data.
Enterprise Content Management
Claude Lamoureux - Multilingual Information Services Manager, PerkinElmer
Peter Wilms van Kersbergen - Business Improvement Manager, Medtronic
This session will discuss 2 examples of how multinational companies are addressing content management, the business drivers behind improvement, and the standardization goals ahead.
In the first contribution, PerkinElmer will focus on re-use through standardization efforts. Internal processes such as terminology and translation memory and outsourcing management play a key role in delivering multilingual solutions in a highly regulated environment.
In the second, Medtronic will focus on one internal business solution where integrated processes between authoring and translations have driven down volumes, cost and time, and lessons learnt in the process.
The workgroup session will conclude with a look ahead at standardization and the role of technology in the interest of containing cost and improving overall quality.
GCMS - A Collaborative Effort
Trenton Cycholl - Director, Web and Business Intelligence, Citrix Systems, Inc.
Trenton Cycholl explains how his team has automated the localization process of Mycitrix.com using the right mix of technology and services. He helps us visualize a great example of collaboration between a major localization client, a globalization tools provider, and a localization service provider. The result is a fully automated localization process that runs like a clock.
Trenton covers the business drivers and the opportunity case while factoring in the decision making criteria and anticipated results. He provides attendees with a high level overview of vendor & product selection process. How the solution was designed both in software and service terms. How it was implemented, the benefits achieved, what Citrix learned, and what is planned for the future.
Arabic Localization: Language, Culture and Standards Issues
Manal Amin - CEO, Arabize
Matta Saikali - VP Testing Services, i18N Inc.
Bettina Reichart - Regional Manager, Vendor & Language Solutions, Oracle
Understanding Arabic localization considerations is crucial to supporting this region. This session is dedicated to Arabic market specialists and companies supporting the Arabic markets.
Arabic language and culture experts discuss technical and business issues for product localization in the Arabic region. What is the importance of using BIDI? Is there only one Arabic? What are the prevalent product conformance and name convention issues? How is bidirectionality best handled in documentation? What are some of the social restrictions, E.g., Images, Gambling, Nudity, Alcoholism, etc., that developers should be aware of, and why?
How fast or slow is the Arabic language spreading over the internet. Should Arabic countries care? And why? How do you search for Arabic data over the internet? Is there really an Arabic website? An equivalent web site in English? What are the Arabic search engines and the different types of search methods?
What standards exist today? ASMO (Arabic Standards and Metrological Organization)? There are national organizations but who is responsible for approving the addition of new Arabic words into the Arabic language? Can the Arab world use voice synthesis and recognition technology? What are the most used Arabic code sets? How about Unicode? Any conversion tools? Spell checkers?
Use of Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management for Localization Project Management
Willem Stoeller - VP Globalization, Welocalize
Are you responsible for planning and tracking multiple localization projects? Fast pace, budget pressure, tight deadlines, resource management and priority setting of multiple projects make the management of localization projects a real challenge. This presentation focuses on how the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management System Solution assists the localization project manager effectively in his daily responsibilities. This presentation is based on Welocalize’s initial experience with Microsoft’s EPM.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Branding the Language Industry
Q. Malandrino - Chairman & CEO, BrandLink Corporation
Charles Pau - Director, Globalization Architecture and Technology, IBM
Philippe de Sainte Maresville - Hewlett Packard France
Bengt Sjogren - President, Interverbum AB
Q. Malandrino opens this session with a short presentation of what Industry Branding is and explains how some simple principles might be applied to branding the localization industry. He then raises some thought provoking questions concerning: What it means to brand something? What is LISA’s current ‘brand positioning’, and what? whom? why? and how? are LISA members defining their industry? What can LISA contribute to its members (brand-wise), and what can the members contribute to LISA (brand-wise)?
As the basis for panel and audience participation and interaction, this session is designed to outline a framework for resolution and a means of actionable next steps.
