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WELCOME TO THE RUBRIC NEWSLETTERIn This Issue: RUBRIC NEWS: Starting with this edition, we bring you tips of the trade from Rubric localization project managers. Welcome once again to the Rubric newsletter, where we bring Rubric's Better Localization Experience to your in-box. Past editions of the Rubric Newsletter can be found on our web site. We encourage you to forward this newsletter to anyone interested in localization topics. If you are receiving this newsletter from a friend, feel free to subscribe to our newsletter; you will receive your copy as soon as it is published. |
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RUBRIC NEWSPM TIPSRubric localization project managers know the ropes, and are happy to share their top localization tips with you in every newsletter, and on the web at www.Rubric.com/pmtips. Start before you localize: "Even if a product is not ready for translation it can be a good idea to send through some sample files. This gives the localizer time to pick up on any technical irregularities and solve problems before they become critical. These could be things like unexpected file formats or template issues." — Kelly Illingsworth, Project Manager
 Batch small, non-urgent jobs: "Do you have regular requests from your team for one or two strings to be translated into multiple languages? Are they always urgent? If not, it might be worth thinking about batching them up into groups of strings that can be translated on a fortnightly or even monthly basis, in one go. That will be much more time- and cost-effective, for you, your team, and the localizer." — Andrew Jones, Senior Project Manager
Don't embed graphics: "When you have a document which includes graphics to be localized, the project moves more quickly if you do not use embedded graphics in the documentation. You should supply the original 'layered' graphic file which will make the localization better and quicker, and with higher quality." — John Gorski, Project Manager
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THE CHANGING EU MARKETby Colin Imrie, Managing Director, EU Solutions |
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Europe is changing, and with change come new and evolving markets.
Software engineers the world over noted European Commission anti-trust regulators' decision to set a compliance deadline of February 2006 on Microsoft. The EU wants Microsoft to share essential information about its Windows operating system with rivals. These rivals desire to create software that works with Windows PCs and servers. This robust move is only one of a number of areas where Europe is putting itself on the map as a dynamic place for high tech businesses. The European landscape is changing fast, and it is essential to pay close attention as you consider your business's European strategy. |
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The European Commission has strong powers to promote competition in what constitutes 25% of the global economy. Increasingly, the Commission uses these powers to promote growth in high tech sectors — and it is working. In an attempt to end months of wrangling over the extent of disclosure the decision mandates, Microsoft announced it would license the relevant parts of the Windows source code. It remains to be seen whether this will satisfy rivals and European regulators alike, but it confirms the drive to place the European Union (EU) firmly at the head of efforts to promote competition in our global economy.
As well as developing its regulatory teeth, the EU itself is changing fast. In 2004 the existing member EU states (in Western, Northern and Southern Europe) were joined by 10 new member states from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus and Malta. Two more former socialist countries, Bulgaria and Romania, are scheduled to join the EU in 2007. Other countries including Croatia and Turkey are negotiating to join the EU at some point in the future. Why is this important? By 2007 over 100 million new citizens and consumers will have joined what is the world's largest trading block with 450 million people and 25% of world GNP. Europe may be divided by many languages and cultures, but regulatory systems and political institutions at the European level are making it easier than ever for international companies to market products across European frontiers. Companies like yours are developing coordinated strategies for the European market, reflecting not only difference in national customs, but also taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by this single market. This allows them to develop economies of scale while taking advantage of relative economic strengths in different parts of the EU. The new EU member states vary greatly in size. Poland has over 38 million citizens, while Estonia has a mere 1.5 million, and Malta has even fewer. But all the new EU members are experiencing significant economic and social change as they adapt to their new EU environment. The most obvious impact is high economic growth. For example, Lithuania grew by 9% in 2004 and the other countries have shown consistent growth since their membership was confirmed at the turn of the millennium. A striking feature of Europe is the contrast between the persistence of moderate growth in the euro area and the economic dynamism in most of the rest of Europe, with the new member states leading the way. However, western European levels of income — the dream of tens of millions of east Europeans — are still years away for most people. In Slovenia, the wealthiest former communist state, incomes are 80% of the EU average purchasing power parity. Yet in Poland they are only about 45%, and in some countries incomes are lower still. Significant divergences exist in standards of living within the countries — areas of high growth exist around capitals and other large cities, while little or no change has occurred in remote rural areas. The primary motors of growth in the new countries are exports, with significant direct foreign investment flowing in since the mid 1990s. The foreign investments mainly seek to take advantage of lower production costs and wages, and to increase consumer demand. Exports will continue to be important although some industries, such as textiles, are feeling the pressure of competition from dynamic East Asian economies, particularly China. Consumer growth will, over time, be more substantial and sustained as Central European consumers become wealthier and increasingly take on the consumer habits of their Western, Northern and Southern neighbors. The retail environment in these countries is changing rapidly with multinational supermarket, hypermarket and cash and carry operators expanding across the region. This consumer growth has particular relevance for the communications and technology industries, as consumer penetration of products such as laptops, iPods, and the new generation of mobile phones shows substantial growth. The EU has significant experience with integrating poor countries that have joined in the past. The standard of living in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland in the early 1980s was considerably lower than that in the existing EU. Years of sustained investment through regional policy (structural funds) has contributed to sustained economic growth well above the EU average, and narrowed the gap with the existing EU members. Indeed, in terms of GDP per capita, Ireland was close to the EU average 10 years ago, but now stands at 138% (2004) — the second highest GDP in Europe after Luxembourg. At least 100 billion euros will be invested in the new member states over the next seven years, with promotion of ITC industries and skills as a key element. And there are significant opportunities for IT developers in working with the authorities to ensure that systems are in place to manage the new programs and their rigorous audit requirements effectively. Many US and Western European software firms are already established in these new and growing markets. These firms are combining skills and products — that are tried and tested in their home markets — with the dynamism of fast growing economies and very competitive costs. Software development infrastructure is being established, and universities are refocusing their training programs to promote IT skills. Areas where progress is already measurable include e-business applications development, multimedia product development (content application, encyclopedias, multilingual applications, WebPages, CD-ROMs, DVDs and others), localization of software applications for office and business, applications for cardiological and other medical applications, and applications-based mobile handsets and technologies. Countries like Lithuania and Estonia are keen to develop themselves as outsourcing centers, offering the key advantage of compatible time zones and close proximity for Western European clients. Indeed the new member states are already overtaking some of the existing member states — the Czech Republic, with a strong scientific and industrial heritage, is showing real strengths in innovation and has now overtaken Portugal in terms of GDP per capita (73% of the EU 25 average last year compared to 71% in Portugal). In practice however, structural funds are a minor though important part of the drivers for change in the New Europe. Sustained private sector investment via education and skills training, as well as stable monetary and fiscal policy, are vastly more important. All new member states are committed to adopt the Euro currency. Current expectations are that Slovenia and possibly Estonia will do so in 2007, with other countries following later. And what about the other member states? In the Euro zone, especially the economic heartland of France, Germany and Italy, growth has been weak and unemployment remains stubbornly high. But positive signs are emerging as Europe struggles to refocus its policy instruments through the so-called "growth and jobs" or "Lisbon" strategy that seeks to turn Europe into a dynamic, innovative, and high growth economy. Countries such as Sweden, Finland and the UK have combined recent high productivity growth with high levels of employment. The difficulties in adapting the former Eastern German economy into the German economy should not mask the significant progress the German export industries have made in transforming their competitive base. Older member states are benefiting considerably from enlargement, with new markets for their products and new partners and production facilities for their companies. Workers from countries such as Poland and Lithuania are flooding in to the UK and Nordic countries and boosting economic performance. They come to learn skills, and carry money and consumer tastes back to their own countries when they return. As the economy picks up in Germany and France in 2007, we can expect Europe to be one of the most exciting areas for developing new business. As you develop your European business strategy, be sure to plan forward and make both the new and the resurgent counties of the EU part of your planning. |
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HOW DO I DECIDE HOW LONG TO ALLOW FOR A LOCALIZATION CYCLE?By Andrew Jones, Senior Project Manager, Rubric Limited |
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Vendors offer faster, smarter turnarounds and translation memory tools are designed to help speed up the localization process. But how long does it really take to localize a product?
Your product is selling well in the marketplace. Your marketing team is receiving requests for versions in other languages. They ask you how long it will take before you can give your customer a version in Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese and Arabic. Can they have it by the end of the week? The end of the month? Having never produced a different language version before, you are stumped by this question and reply that you had better contact a few localization vendors to gauge their opinion and report back on your findings. But marketing, as always, is impatient — they need to give their customer an release date estimate, and they don't have time to wait for a survey. Can't you give them an estimate now? How does the localization vendor decide how long something is going to take anyway? |
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Nailing down a localization schedule is as painful as managing your boss, your production engineers, and your marketing department. So I'm here to help you by illustrating some of the factors you must consider, and set you thinking through the problem. Drawing up a localization schedule is not straightforward given the many aspects you must take into account — and not just the customer's desired release-to-market date. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to working out how many days a localization schedule will take — if there were, this would be a much shorter article! What you might be thinking now is, "Why doesn't he just give me a table of metrics, such has how many pages can be DTPd in a day, or how many words can be translated"? What I want to do is to show that each stage in the localization cycle needs to be broken down and fully understood before a realistic schedule can be established. Metrics alone are misleading. Let me explain the limitations of metrics, and then look at how to break down the cycle. First of all, let's make sure that we haven't forgotten the basic premise of this article, which is to help you estimate how long the cycle is going to take. You can leave the really precise calculations to the vendor: what you want to avoid is telling your manager that something can be done in six hours when it is going to take six weeks.There are three main problems with metrics. Averages aren't: There is a lot more to each individual task in the localization process than is apparent at first sight. For example you may hear that an individual translator can translate about 2500 words a day. This is a fairly standard metric — of course, you will always find someone who will tell you it is less or more than this, but this seems a reasonable basic figure. So if you have a documentation file with 5000 words to translate, it can be done in two days, right? Well...
Resources are always limited: A second problem with metrics is that they are effectively meaningless unless you have a control over the number of resources that are going to be used. For example, with your 5000 words of documentation, ten translators are going to complete it in much less time than one translator. However, the likelihood is that your localization vendor is going to be controlling the number of people that are going to do the translation, not you: encouraging them to throw resources at the job to speed up the process is not really a wise move anyway — ten translators working on 5000 words is going to lead to much worse quality than one translator working on it, as there are much greater risks of inconsistency. Moreover, let's look back at the "sub-tasks" to translation themselves.
Incomplete inventory: Thirdly, when you are at this stage of estimating your schedule, you might not even know how many words, or pages, or screens your product has, and that might need a complex analysis process to ascertain. That being the case, knowing how many words a translator, or several translators, can translate in a day is going to be of no use to you at all. Yet you still want to have a basic idea. There must be a better way! A better way to sketch your basic schedule is to break it down into tasks and sub-tasks. Herein, I'm going to consider an entire software product. Broadly speaking, a localization cycle for software needs to include the following:
Let's consider just some of these tasks and sub-tasks here: once you can see how I am breaking down three stages into some questions, I hope you will be able to do the same with the other sections in order to come up with an idea of how long you need. Stage 1) Planning Stage This could potentially be the most time consuming stage of the whole process, and if you are not careful you could lose weeks before a single word is even translated. Here are some things you need to consider in this stage:
Before you fall off your chair in horror because your software only contains 100 words, don't panic just yet, because some tasks can be done in parallel, and you will find that this will reduce your basic schedule length significantly. Moreover, if your software really is only 100 words you are likely to have a lot fewer questions to ask about it, and consequently fewer tasks. Conversely, if your software is huge, you will doubtless find more questions and tasks. Once you have your basic schedule, then you can start to add a few or a lot of days to some of the tasks depending on how large you think your product is. This might sound like pure guesswork, but in terms of an estimated cycle, the number of days you allow for each task is less critical than making sure you have the right number of tasks in place. The list of tasks, which I have demonstrated above, can be assembled by stepping back and asking yourself some simple questions. But these questions are the critical element in drawing up a basic localization schedule. |
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