By Anthea Oosthuizen, Production Director, Rubric South Africa 

The advent of EPUB 3.0 heralds a new age for multilingual publishing and presents localization companies with a real opportunity to influence the industry as it becomes truly global. With EPUB 3.0, the new specifications released last year by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the standard for creating reflowable content adds much needed technical tools. As the IDPF touted upon release, the new version adds “video, audio, interactivity, vertical writing and other global language capabilities.”   

But all these extras are meaningless without the technical skills to use them to their fullest. And that is where publishing houses suffer. I agree with Arthur Attwelll, an online digital publishing entrepreneur, who recently wrote in his blog, “EPUB 3.0 has great bells and important whistles, but you’re going to need actual software-development skills in-house to use them properly. In other words, ebooks just took a big step towards becoming software, rather than elaborate text files.” ( http://arthurattwell.com/2012/02/13/new-epub-spec-gives-tech-companies-the-edge/)  

And that is where localization companies enter the picture. Language service providers that operate in the digital publishing space very often have much more sophisticated technology tools than the publishing houses. Their in-house technology and software expertise make them well-placed to provide solutions to traditional publishers who are slow to take up advances in technology and who have as their core competency the creation of content, not its delivery via digital means ( especially not to multi-lingual audiences). 

The outsourced model offered by language service providers is the most cost-effective solution for traditionally offline publishing companies whose margins don’t cater for investment into in-house software expertise. As a publishing manager at Oxford University Press Southern Africa, I saw the impact technology could have on a major multi-lingual publishing project. Using advanced technologies through our outsourced localization company, we were able to deliver the project to deadline and under budget. Now with the added tools afforded under EPUB 3.0, the impact of technology savvy language service providers can be even greater.