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Welcome to the Rubric Newsletter.In This Issue: PM TIPS: Tips, tricks, and strategy 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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PM 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.Glossaries speed projects: "Rubric will often provide a Glossary of Key Terms during the first week or two of a large translation project. This allows the client and Rubric to agree on the translation of Key Terms close to the start of the project. This is so that extensive rework is not required at the end when the client decides that they prefer a different translation for a Key Term. If a glossary is provided Clients should have this reviewed and provide feedback as quickly as possible. This will save time and cost in the long run. The benefit of the glossary is wasted if the client spends so long reviewing the file that feedback is not given until after translation has been completed." — Jo Clayton, Lead Project Manager |
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RUBRIC NEWSRubric events — a lot is happening: Silicon Valley Localization Pro Meeting - April 19th: Rubric will hold their next Birds of a Feather Breakfast meeting for Silicon Valley localization professionals on April 19th. Our December event was a great success (see photos here) with guest from ViewCentral, Adobe, VeriSign, ReplayTV, EFI and other technology firms. Rubric BOF meetings are a series of informal events where we brining together peers from global firms to network, discuss localization issues, and to learn from one another. In addition to good food, great conversation, and meaningful exchange of ideas, Rubric's Senior Project Manager, Andrew Jones, will give a presentation about keeping your localization project on schedule. Andrew knows all the tricks for getting products to market on time, and will share them this April 19th. If you would like to be considered for an invitation to this limited-seating event, please email us for an invitation and give us your name, company, and email address. |
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MARKET ACCEPTANCE OVERSEASHow localization affects acquiring new customers and keeping old onesby Ian Henderson, CEO, Rubric |
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Try Trying your product involves commitment from a prospect — especially in the technology business, where people evaluate how your product will change their fortunes. Product demos are a make-or-break moment in the sales cycle. Precision of localization is key to creating successful demos as well as outstanding products, with the key differences being speed and hype. Demos focused on guiding the prospect rapidly through the trial speed the sales cycle and convince the prospect that the product is easy to employ. Poor translations slow or halt a demo. Anything that creates confusion slows understanding and creates suspicions about future difficulties in using your product. What makes good localization of demos tricky is that demos span the linguistic continuum from conceptual to functional. Yet demos must communicate on both levels, often using the conceptual voice to guide the prospect to the more technical processes. |
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Demos are further complicated because much of the communications are still in the marketing realm, and sales-oriented messages are thrown at the prospect along with functional guidance. With the sales focus, native-language demo scripts are often loaded with idioms, slang, and graphics that speed the process locally but are not recognized abroad. Merely translating an English demo using product manual translation memories is insufficient. Many PC software vendors discovered this early on when the word "highlight", used to mean "select a region of text", was translated into various languages with the results rendered as "focus" (simplified Chinese) or "climax" (French). Buy You have communicated to foreign prospects the essence of your product (seek), the benefits (learn), and the details (learn and try), and they agree that your company is the one that can solve their problems. Your new customers turn to their Web browsers, click the button labeled "Buy Now" in their native language, and receive an English language e-commerce application fed by a database of English product names, descriptions, prices, etc. You may have just lost a customer. The "buy" phase needs to be at least as easy as the "try" phase, and much faster to avoid the dreaded "on second thought" moment all customers experience. Speeding the customer through the purchase process may require a great deal of localization. These steps may include:
This last item has an almost humorous marketing aside. Many immediate post-sale communications are up-sell opportunities. We have encountered cases where a company completed a localization of all their "buy" process materials for an e-commerce system, yet automatically sent an English up-sell email offer to all regions. Any regional effort should include "buy testing" whereby the entire customer-facing buy/ship/receive process is tested. Add that to your test list. Return Acquiring a customer is expensive. Many enterprises do not begin profiting from a new customer until they make repeat purchases. Yet numerous firms that localized for initial sales success fail to localize for repeat success. Product localization is the primary issue. If the customer does not find the product useful due to poor localization of packaging, instructions, or use warnings, then the likelihood of repeat business is low. We'll skip the discussion of product localization, as this material is well covered elsewhere. It suffices to say that more than a few customers have switched brands because the products themselves were not well localized. I foreshadowed one of the main culprits, namely, post-sale communications. Much of today's sales activity involves database marketing for up-sell, cross-sell and "constant contact" communiqués. Different cultures have different biases when it comes to any communication, including sales initiatives. The frequency and content of direct mail or emails must match the tolerances of the region and also convey meaningful information and opportunity. Localization of post-sale efforts becomes holistic as these biases dictate much of the content, as well as how the database marketing process works in a region. But most important is support, especially for technology companies. Rare is the high-tech product that does not generate distress calls from unhappy customers. The quality of localized content troubleshooting is critical for keeping customers in China as happy as those in Chicago. It bears repeating that the quality of the product and its localization is the best path to reducing the number of support calls. But that level of product perfection is rare, and you need to pay attention to technical support content. Today, most support content appears on your Web site, in both static content (FAQs) and in database-driven tools (knowledge bases). Often these go unlocalized, or worse still, are poorly localized, and are confusing or misleading. The same applies to other electronic tools (wikis, forums, boards) where support is provided, if even informally. These tools have the problem of persistence. Poorly localized public responses to customer questions can then jeopardize multiple customers, as well as prospects who are performing diligent pre-sales research on your product by reviewing the quality of your online support. Forum-based responses to common questions or problems should be vetted through your localization vendor to ensure that the answer is communicated correctly and so contributes to customer delight. Keep in mind that a customer is already frustrated when they have to seek support. Poor localization of support information multiplies their frustration. Further annoying a customer will reduce the likelihood that they will purchase more of your product, buy cross-sold features, or recommend your product to others. Evangelize Happy customers are often evangelizers who will promote your products without inducement. The more common reality is that you must facilitate the communications between customers and prospects. Your first mission is to create a set of customer messages about your product that can spread like an ideavirus. Marketing messages must be short, easy to remember, and easy to repeat. Any message that is very short also tends to be language-specific. Just as Nike's "Just Do It" does not carrying the same meaning as "Do It Simply" in German, your evangelical message must be localized before it is fed to customers abroad, otherwise they will not repeat it to their peers. Because these messages are very compact, you need a language services professional and in-country translators to recreate the most concise and emotionally charged messages possible. Often you will discover that messages need minor alterations between dialects of the same language. China, with a huge and growing consumer market, has eleven primary languages and over 2,000 dialects. A viral message crafted for southern coastal industrial cities may not be understood in far western provinces. If your messages target very narrow regions, or if they convey emotional values, then regional and dialectic variations of the message may be essential. In the age of the Internet, this kind of cross-cultural dialogue occurs more online than in face-to-face meetings. Enterprises are creating portals and forums specifically to help customers communicate with the company and with their peers. For global firms this adds a new dimension to localization, both in terms of deploying the technology to support such evangelical chats, and in maintaining high-quality external communications. Like any other Web sites, an evangelical portal must be localized to suit regional preferences. That is the relatively easy part, assuming that the software you use is commercial and has already been localized, or that you have the ability to edit resource files to localize it yourself. The same teams that localize your brand and messages should review and alter the appearance and top-line copy of your evangelical Web site(s) to match corporate and product branding for each region served. The hard part is content. By the nature of the community-building process, a lot of content will be generated by both your company and your customers. Customers will generate content in their own language, and thus little needs to be done there. On the other hand, new content from your staff will need to be localized.
Conclusion Localization impacts almost every aspect of customer interaction, and as such it needs to be a corporate-wide concern. Breaking down each part of the customer interaction cycle (seek, learn, try, buy, return, evangelize) will expose opportunities for failure via inadequate localization efforts.
This extra level of localization is an important means of blocking competition in foreign markets. Sales are won or lost in each phase, so localization efforts in each phase are as important as the localization of the product itself. |
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ENSURING LINGUISTIC QUALITYWhat you can do to improve the quality of your localized materialsBy Françoise Spurling, COO, Rubric |
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So what is linguistic quality?
If you don't speak the language, how will you know if your translated products are of adequate quality?
There are many ways of defining and measuring translation quality. Many of them involve parameters that are not within your direct control. We have chosen the three criteria that are easiest for you to measure and are based on the needs of your company. Our purpose is not to look at what your localization vendor can do to improve quality, but simply to look at what you and your team can do to achieve these objectives. |
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The ingredients, or if you prefer, the main components of translation quality are: 
How to chose your translators Vendor selection is only a small part of what you can do to ensure the quality of your products. Assuming you have selected the right vendor, you can influence the selection of appropriate translators. You certainly have heard the famous line by George Bernard Shaw: "England and America are two countries divided by a common language." This quotation could be applied to several other countries as well. Thus, defining translator needs by language is insufficient, as a language does not adequately describe your customers. As English differs between England, Australia, and the United States, so does Spanish differ between Spain, Argentina, and Mexico. By defining your market in clear and unambiguous terms — not just language but language and country combinations — you can improve your chances of having the best available translator appointed to translating your materials. If you do that right up front, you will have a significant impact on the quality of your translated product or website. Let's take French. It is spoken in France, naturally, but also in Switzerland and in Canada. In the case of Spanish, it's spoken in Spain in Mexico and increasingly in the United States. This list is not exhaustive. There are many other cases of regional variations of a common language; for example, Iberian Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. Good translators are busy people; as in all industries, the best people are in demand. The best translators are most likely to have at least two weeks of work booked ahead of them, and they can pick and chose what they do. Give your vendor advance notice of potential upcoming work. This will be particularly effective in the case of text updates, as translators like to work on material they are already familiar with so they can be more productive. If you give them advance notice they will do their best to clear their calendar in anticipation of the work coming from your company. Improve translators' ability to deliver quality There are many things you can do to help translators improve the quality of their work, and they fall broadly into three categories. Context Reference and Knowledge: Looking first of all at context, it is important to remember that translation is not simply a process of word substitution with the application of grammatical rules. If it was, machines would have been doing the job successfully for a long time and we would not be here today. A translator must understand the source text, digest it and then recreate it in their native language. The process of translating can be compared to the process an actor goes through when learning his or her lines. As the actor memorizes his lines, he develops a deep understanding of the content, to the point of getting into the mind of his fictional character. Similarly the translator needs to understand fully in which context the words are being used. He or she needs to put him or herself in the shoes of your customers, the users of your product in your target market. You have a very significant part to play in this process, as you are in the best position to provide that context. Examples of such assistance could be:
Reference materials: One important aspect of translation is its subjective nature. There are many perfectly good ways of saying the same thing in any language, including English. However, one of the criteria of quality we defined earlier is that the style used in the translations should meet your customers' expectations. As in most cases the translators are somewhat removed from your customers, they need your help to meet this requirement. By providing previously translated material, existing glossaries, style guides and translation memories, you can significantly improve the likelihood of obtaining a translated product that meets your clients' expectations. I cannot stress enough that this needs to happen early on in the project, as changing the style of the translation halfway through a project not only will have a negative impact on the quality of the translation, but it could also have an impact on your delivery dates. Knowledge transfers: In an ideal world the translators should have as much specialized knowledge as the people who design and create your products. In the real world this is impossible; therefore, to deepen the translators' knowledge it is often useful to plan a training session before the start of the project. By giving your translators product training, you will improve the quality of your translated materials. It is normal for translators to come up with questions. Often the questions will highlight ambiguities or even errors in the source material. By answering these questions promptly you can impact directly upon the quality of your translations. Checks and Controls You have selected the right translators; you have given them everything they need; now can you wait for the translation to fall into your lap? Sorry, no. There is more you can do. I mentioned at the start that it was important to perform the right checks and controls. A lot of that responsibility falls on your localization vendor. You can play your part there, too, however. Starting with the last point because it is the easiest one to deal with, your localized software or website's quality will be directly linked to the thoroughness of the linguistic testing it has been through. One easy way to increase your chances of obtaining a well-tested product or website is to review the test script your vendor is using to test the materials linguistically. Linguistic reviewers have a twofold role. First they can help to meet the translators' need for context and knowledge; second, they play an important part in checking that the material will indeed meet your customers' expectations. In the globalization world there are two types of reviewers:
A power user is someone with a basic knowledge of the source language who lives in the target country and uses your products day in day out. They are not necessarily linguists, but they are literate in their own language. Power users add the most value as their competencies are complementary to those of the translator. Their product knowledge and their knowledge of your market will be of valuable assistance to the translators. How do you find these power users? They are all over the place. They can be:
Managing your reviewers This is a challenge for many companies. Reviewers have another job and have little time to devote to work that falls outside their normal responsibilities. How then can you make sure that they give the job of reviewing your translations the priority it deserves? Manage their time effectively: Ask your vendor to communicate to you exactly at what stages of the project the reviewers will be needed. Pass on this scheduling information to your reviewers and they will clear their diary for the dates you have set. Give them a deadline: You will have heard of Parkinson's law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Agree to a deadline with your reviewers based on the detailed schedule supplied by your localization vendor. Agree up front on a date beyond which you will assume that there are no review comments. Several of our customers do this successfully. The deadline is particularly important when it comes to reviewing glossaries and style guides. These two components should be reviewed right at the start of the project. Early feedback on these items will ensure that the translators are working with the correct terminology and style. This has a direct impact on the quality of the finished material. The second point is particularly important if you are using several reviewers or if you have to change to a new reviewer at some stage in the project. The reviewer may be missing information and they may not realize that the changes they request contradict agreed-upon terminology or style conventions. For this reason it is important that you allow a dialog to take place between the translators and the reviewers. In addition you should make the glossary and the style guide available to the reviewer. Reviewers checking the quality of the materials Should reviewers start at page one and continue right through to the end? What kind of errors should they be looking for? How much time should they spend? In order to make the most effective use of the reviewers' time, we at Rubric use a form with a checklist. This form captures and classifies problems with translations in a systematic way, allowing all reviewers to comment in a way meaningful to the localization project managers. Using this method your reviewers will be able to give you an assessment of quality within a very short space of time. After a couple of hours they will be able to come back to you with reliable feedback on the quality of your materials. This approach will not only save your reviewers valuable time, but it will also remove some of the subjectivity of the assessment. First, the reviewer should skim over all the materials to get a general impression of the translation and to spot obvious mistakes. This will enable them to detect if the quality is consistent or if some parts are much better than others. Next they should choose a specific sample of translated text. If they have identified some variations in the level of quality, they should focus on an area where the quality seems lower than in the rest of the materials. When reviewing this sample, they should log every mistake they find. Finally they should answer the questions in the checklist in relation to the sample. The job of the reviewers is not to correct the translation. The translation should be good already. They should not have to read through the entire material. If you find that your reviewers are spending time correcting grammatical mistakes, you need to go back to the drawing board; it shows that you have not selected the correct vendor. The job of the reviewer is to:
In summary, we have seen how careful selection of the translation resources, making sure that those resources have everything they need, and putting the correct checks and controls in place, you can not only influence but directly impact the linguistic quality of your products and marketing content. And although you don't speak the language, you will be safe in the knowledge that your translated products are of excellent quality. Which brings us back to our three quality objectives:
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