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WELCOME TO THE RUBRIC NEWSLETTERHello, and welcome once again to the Rubric newsletter, where we bring our Better Localization Experience to your in-box. As always, this edition provides both business and technical insights into your localization processes. 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.In This Issue:
RUBRIC NEWS: Rubric newsletter archive online.
BUSINESS — Evaluating your vendor: Choosing a localization vendor is like choosing a mate: a serious, and potentially life-long, decision. Our guest columnist outlines how to spot a localization vendor that sells, and those that service your needs. TECHNICAL — Pseudo-translation testing: In a perfect world you could test a localized software product before any words were translated. Pseudo-translation is the best way to do this, and reduce localization cost and time in the process. RUBRIC NEWSRubric newsletter archive online: Are you a new subscriber to the Rubric newsletter? Feel like you may have missed good tips on localization business issues, technology, or cost cutting tops? No worries. The entire set of Rubric newsletters is now online and formatted for easy printing and sharing. Visit http://www.rubric.com/en/knowledge/back_issues.php |
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SOFT TIPS FOR EVALUATING YOUR LOCALIZATION VENDORBy Michael Gavin, Guest Columnist for Rubric |
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Much has been written about technical processes for selecting localization vendors. You have been told to ask for test translations, issue RFIs and RFPs, get the vendor to provide project specifications, and on, and on, and on.
But the softer areas of your relationship with a localization service provider are just as important. Your concerns in this area should focus around issues like the integrity of the vendor, their understanding of your business, determining if the vendor has your genuine best interests at heart, and what it will be like to have an ongoing business relationship with them. In this article I will outline areas that will help your vendor evaluation from a business perspective, and gauge a vendor's suitability for you as a business partner. |
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Trust and IntegrityAll relationships are built on trust. Without trust in your localization vendor, you can never be sure that your products or content will be well represented overseas. There are some obvious "red flags" that are worth watching for.One of the first areas to focus on is whether the localization vendor's salesperson is in the "selling mode" or is genuinely interested in your business issues. A good way of judging this is the extent to which they ask questions about your business objectives, your specific situation, and your potential needs. It is also instructive to see if they respond to your issues in an open and genuine fashion. Frequently salespeople (account managers, business development managers, etc.) are so eager to sell to you that they forget to listen to your localization needs. While you may have needs that are common to other customers, there are always ways in which your needs will differ from those of the masses, or even from your closest competitors. If the localization vendor's salesperson does not invest the time necessary to fully diagnose your requirements before entering "selling mode" it is likely that your expectations for your localization project will not be met. There are other warning signs worth heeding. For example, if in the earliest stages of the engagement, the sales person forces you to suffer through long presentations focused on the vendor's business, and if the salesperson uses words like "this is exactly the same as my other customer's situation," then you are being sold and not serviced. Beware too of empty familiarity by a localization vendor. Some sellers try to get people to like them at a personal level. Salespeople mistakenly believe that being overly friendly is a way of reducing your ability to say "no." While it is good to have a perspective on the people you want to do business with, this type of forced rapport early in your decision cycle is not genuine. If your localization salesperson inquires about your golf handicap, your son's education, your sleepless nights with the crying newborn, or that camping trip you are planning in the fall, ask yourself if they are really interested in the deep analysis of your multinational business objectives. Many localization services' consumers are unaware of tactics to minimize localization costs. A trusted business partner makes the effort to help you save your localization budget. If your provider offers questions and suggestions about your project that could potentially reduce cost and save you money, then they are looking out for your interest. If not, you need to ask yourself why they have not done so. Perhaps they are not able to offer that aid, or perhaps it is less profitable to do so. Either way, your interests are not being represented. In some cases a vendor may come back to you with cost-cutting options that you had not considered. In most cases this reflects a genuine approach on the part of the provider who wants to avoid nasty surprises during or after the project. You should question a situation where a potential supplier has come back to you with potential additional costs in advance of your decision. A final vendor integrity check is documenting their knowledge of your situation and if their capabilities align with your needs. Many salespeople can't resist telling you about their capabilities, regardless of whether you need them (in the sales trade, this is known unaffectionately as "spray and pray"). Providing details on capabilities that do not address your actual needs is a clear sign of being sold and not served. Either the salesperson does not understand your requirements, or they are only interested in getting you to buy anything at all. Technology and Tools to Die For!Technology is a tool, but not a solution. In the localization business, some vendors seem abnormally preoccupied with technology and mindlessly deploy more of it to service customers.Let's remove the veil. One secret about the localization business is that all vendors use technology to streamline work, and we use many of the same technologies. It is the management of the relationship, the customer, the project, and the work that makes one localization vendor better than the next. If a salesperson espouses technological answers early and often in the engagement, then they have not taken the time to understand your business issues and want you to believe bit, bytes, and networks resolve all localization issues. Technology can and does play a significant role in making a localization project successful, but it can be absolutely irrelevant—or even counterproductive—if not deployed based on a full understanding of your situation. Evaluate YourselfBuyers should also examine themselves and their goals in terms of how they wish to evaluate potential vendors. For example, I believe buyers can be unreasonable if they look for exact matches for their own situation in the references provided by potential vendors. Buyers should examine vendor capabilities rather than exact situational matches.I have come across many situations where a customer was looking for references in the most obscure areas. Not surprisingly, few localization providers can produce a case study for Fish Farming Accounting Software localized into Norwegian running on Linux—yet some customers ask for the reference regardless. A vendor who has experience of localizing financial software, has references relating to Linux, and has a Norwegian capacity is likely all you need. References FodderCustomers should validate references of any vendor, and localization vendors are no exception. Unfortunately, some customers merely scratch the surface, performing only superficial checks. This is what a sales-oriented localization vendor relies upon.Take a little extra time to validate the names of other customers provided by potential localization vendors, and determine the size and currency of those relationships. Many localization vendors' web sites and literature reference marquee clients like Microsoft, IBM and HP. Since all large companies evaluate many different localization vendors by assigning them small projects, these references may be of little import. Also, watch for outlandish claims made by localization vendors and their salespeople. Some common examples I have encountered over the years include:
Time to ChooseWhen the sincerity and integrity of your potential suppliers has been gauged, be very open with these vendors—allow peer-to-peer communications, and access to other players in your company who have an input into the project plan or who might be impacted by the execution of the project. Getting broad consensus on the value of making a specific localization vendor a strategic partner is essential. This is the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship, and one that must improve over time. An open dialogue will provide potential vendors a deeper understanding of your requirements and the nuances that might exist in localizing your materials.The way in which your potential vendors behave during this phase of your evaluation will expose how they will perform when the project begins. You should look at the vendor's responsiveness, accuracy, willingness to share ideas and concerns over project issues, willingness to introduce their executive level management, and frankness about how issues should be resolved. Also, examine their approach to business and determine if the vendor is prepared to create a long-term win/win relationship, or just one that serves their own end-of-quarter interest. Most localization providers are owned and managed by genuine business people. They are staffed with professionals committed to providing quality service. That intent is sometimes tainted by poor selling practices that may erase the vendor's ability to deliver on your expectations. Genuine integrity from your potential partners and appropriate capabilities to meet your needs are the golden keys. With these elements, you are unlikely to be disappointed and you can look forward to a long-lasting relationship that will serve you and your organization well. About the Author: Michael Gavin has worked in the localization industry since 1985, having been one of the founders of Softrans, subsequently European VP of Sales at Berlitz Translation Services and more recently at Bowne Global Solutions. Michael currently works in a consultative capacity, helping companies improve the performance of their sales organizations. He can be contacted by email at: michaeljgavin@eircom.net |
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PSEUDO-TRANSLATIONS: PART 1by Ian Henderson, CEO, Rubric |
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Creating a successful software product for domestic markets does not guarantee success in adapting the same product for international markets. Programmers who cut code but have not been exposed to internationalization (I18n) issues, risk creating problems that will arise during localization (L10n) efforts.
Waiting for the problems to be addressed after translation is the wrong approach to internationalization, for two primary reasons: First, the cost of retrofitting a product for internationalization is huge, particularly if the product is being localized into multiple languages. |
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Generally speaking, your engineering team is busy fixing bugs in a core product right up till the release date. The additional effort of fixing localization bugs for multiple languages puts an unnecessary burden on your engineering team when they are already stressed.
Internationalization testing was developed for just this reason. In broad terms, there are two general approaches for such testing:
The purpose of pseudo-translation is to alter the source code semi-automatically in order to identify internationalization problems (this is especially useful in User Interface, or "UI" components, but has uses in other parts of a software product as well). The automation aspect of pseudo-translation can usually be done quickly and inexpensively. The cost of pseudo-translation testing is significantly less than the cost of discovering and correcting mistakes during localization, or worse yet, during field acceptance testing. There are really two steps in pseudo-translating source code: 1. Identify what is to be translated (i.e., parsing)Of course, merely pseudo-translating source files is insufficient to uncover internationalization issues. To complete the process you need to add two additional steps: 3. Build the pseudo-translated productParsing is the most difficult step in the procedure, though the actual pseudo-translation itself is fairly easy. Pseudo-translated source file usability is thus restricted by the number of file parsers that are supported by pseudo-translation tools. For example, standard UI file formats such as RC or DLG are supported by many commercial tools. However, if your software is composed using non-standard software file formats, you will have few—if any—commercially available tools to aid in pseudo-translation parsing. Rubric believes that pseudo-translation is an indispensable part of localization, and a very profitable process for our clients. Because of this, we have made non-standard file format parsing and pseudo-localizing part of our practice. Rubric deals with many different non-standard file formats and we write our own file parsers when no commercial tools are available for a particular project. Once your source files are properly parsed, there are different approaches to the pseudo-translation itself. Some of these are more useful than others, as we will illustrate. Pig Latin: This approach to pseudo-translations involves moving one or more letters from the beginning of a word to the end and then adding a few letters. Even though the source text is modified, it is quite hard to read. Take a look at http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/ for a very visual example of this type of pseudo-translation before you decide to adopt this approach. Pig-Latin pseudo-translations also suffer from not fully exercising local character sets which, in the long run, are essential. Consider this approach as a first-pass test to isolate fundamental coding mistakes such as buffer sizing. Machine translation: Conceptually, this ought to be the best approach to pseudo-translation because you get a "close" translation using native character sets, but without the extra expense of native/human translation services. However, there are several problems with this approach: 1. Cost and accuracyLet us examine the cost/accuracy point first. Free machine translations usually ignore context. (For example, the English word "File" in a UI menu is automatically translated as "Akte" in German. This may be an accurate translation when dealing with legal materials, but in a Windows UI the word "File" should be translated as "Datei" in German.) But, since the purpose of pseudo-translation is to identify coding mistakes, these types of exceptions are often insignificant. Completeness is also a problem for machine translation. Let us take the common UI word "OK." This translates into "OK" in German. The translation is correct, but any associated coding errors around internationalization will go undetected. This may be acceptable if you only localize to German. But, if you add Spanish to your list of target markets, the translation of "OK" is "Aceptar," and this significantly changes your test results. The third problem with machine translation for testing purposes is that UI navigation can be difficult, particularly when dealing with options that are sorted. You may wonder why your French photo editing software makes grass red instead of green, until you realise that sorted colors blue/green/red are in a different order in French—bleu (blue) / rouge (red) / vert (green). Machine translation has its uses, but pseudo-translation is not the best one. In the next edition of the Rubric Newsletter, we will examine simple text modifications, character mapping, and the pseudo-testing environment. |
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