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WELCOME TO THE RUBRIC NEWSLETTERWelcome 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. In This Issue: RUBRIC NEWS: Rubric expands in Boston and Silicon Valley, and drives Macromedia's Studio 8 into Europe. |
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RUBRIC NEWSRubric expands the North American service teams: Rubric intensifies their focus on the Boston and Silicon Valley high tech communities by growing their localization consultant staffs. Rubric pushed Macromedia Studio 8 into Europe: Despite a last minute trebling of English documentation, Rubric delivers Macromedia's Studio 8 to European markets on time and within budgets. ALIGNING LOCALIZATIONS WITH STRATEGIC PARTNERSby Ian Henderson, CEO, Rubric |
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Going to market with a technology product often means going to market with a partner. But if your technologies and those of your partner do not share the localization effort, your customers can be confused, your support costs will rise, and your market traction will be weakened.
The "whole product" problem Marketing people talk about "whole product" strategies. A "whole product" is the sum of all the features, functions, benefits and services that customers want. The problem for technology firms is that no one firm can invent or provide all the technology, features and functions customers demand. That is why high tech firms partner with someone — to deliver a complete solution to a customer. |
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In North America, this rarely causes problems because with few exceptions, all technology users speak English and share a very uniform set of terminology for their industries and the technology they use. When a customer reads your documents and those of your strategic partners, odds are the terms, language construction, and visual cues (icons, illustrations, etc.) are similar and reinforce one another. When you and your partner decided to serve foreign markets, problems can and do arise. What the customer sees When a foreign customer uses your and your partner's products, do they get the same usability that customers in North America do? Unless you mutually plan your localizations, and share language and visual elements, your customers may see two very different descriptions of the technology and how they interoperate. Take for example this subtlety of language. The English word "contribute" has several connotations depending on the context used. The same applies in Italian. If the localization teams used by you and your strategic technology partner selected different translations of the word "contribute," then your customer might well be confused between the Italian equivalent of "collaborate," "donate" or "participate." This simple example shows the larger dangers in your joint go-to-market planning. With hundreds of industry, regulatory, industry, and technical terms used in a typical business application (or even a relatively simple set of IT utilities), the probability of creating customer confusion is huge, and the result is customer dissatisfaction. We all know that customer dissatisfaction leads to few sales, eroded market share, support cost escalation, and bottom-line profitability hits. Joint localization Joint localizations involve two or more companies coordinating their localization efforts. This is neither difficult nor expensive, but is not always necessary. The criteria for requiring joint collaboration include:
The most expedient approach is for the two partners to select and share a localization services provider, like Rubric. Having a single firm handle both localization efforts, and reusing digital assets from one or both partners, assures that the two localized products are symbiotic. In most technology partnerships, there is a "gorilla" and a "monkey" (these phrases come from the seminal works of the Chasm Group, the legendary technology marketing consultancy). The larger and more significant partner typically leads the joint localization effort given that their product is the primary focus of the buyer. Their digital assets typically define the scope of the solution, and the industry/technology/regulatory specific terms. In partnerships or equals, joint localization requires one of two approaches: agreement or mediation. In the "agreement" scenario, both partners need to itemize and cleanse their respective lists of terms and images, selecting those that communicate to customers most effectively. However, in many cases the localization vendor is best suited for making these decisions, and thus can be an arbitrator. When presented with a joint localization project, your vendor can review all materials together and determine the best solutions for the target markets. Since Rubric employs in-country technology, industry and language experts, their participation in the review process will speed the localization of both products. Areas on which to focus There are several components of localized products that may be readily shared between partners: Glossaries: Provide your partner and your joint localization firm with any list of terms and definitions. This assures that everyone is relating the same concepts. This is especially important when dealing with the customer's industry or regulatory terminology. Conclusion Joint localization does save money and time to market. But that is not the biggest benefit. Market acceptance, market share growth, and profitability are the most valuable part of joint localizations. By focusing on the "whole product," and delivering one to your customers, you beat lackadaisical competitors who do not strive to make the end user's product experience as good as it can be. When customers get the most value from your "whole product," they stay your customers and recommend you to others. When they have trouble using your "whole product" they abandon you and generate negative buzz. |
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YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HEREWhat should be in an L10n Kit?By Susannah Eccles, Senior Project Manager, Rubric |
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Few people would drive from San Jose to New York without a roadmap, yet many of these same people will attempt to have their globalization partner localize a software product without an L10n (localization) kit.
In my eight years as a project manager at Rubric I have worked on many projects for a variety of customers. A huge contributor to the success of these projects is the customer-provided localization kit. A good L10n kit:
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A picture is worth 1,024 words, so let me paint a picture for you with two cases that show how a good L10n kit can improve your bottom-line and save you headaches — and how lack of one will have the reverse effect. Customer 1: A company with a great deal of localization experience provided Rubric a comprehensive L10n kit. Rubric instantly provided an accurate quote and schedule at the project outset. We flagged potential issues and investigated these straight away. Rubric identified a significant error in the source files provided in the first week of the project. Our customers provided new files and the speedy resolution prevented any impacts on the schedule and project costs. Since the information in the L10n kit was comprehensive, our customer was confident about the schedule. Our customer could then provide precise scheduling information internally, and time slots for printing and testing were booked early, reducing time spent agonizing about when things could be slotted in. This allowed Rubric and the customer to concentrate on a high quality translation rather than on scheduling problems and crisis management. Customer 2: This client did not provide an L10n kit. From the quotation stage onward, project information was incomplete. Rubric could only provide estimated quotes and schedules. Our customer spent the whole project trying to track down files and information internally rather than focusing on translation issues. Although our customer was very happy with the final outcome and appreciated the help Rubric provided in delivering the project, time and the Manager's sanity could have been saved if some effort had been put into providing an L10n kit. So what should be in a comprehensive localization kit? There are a few individual components in an L10n kit, so I'll list each and explain what pieces you should gather. Project Overview You should provide the localization team with an overview of your product and the items to be localized. Having this information upfront in an L10n kit saves time requesting these details at a later stage, and helps the localization project manager understand the project scope and details, and communicate them to his engineers and translators. Your project overview should include:
UI/Database/Installer/Messages/Properties:
Testing A lot of time can be wasted clarifying testing issues. Testing is something which can greatly impact project costs and timelines in unpredictable ways. It is in your best interests to think through and document the testing process at the project outset. Some testing aspects to include in your L10n kit are:
It sounds odd — documenting your documentation — but you can save significant project dollars and personal heartache by documenting your documentation in the L10n kit. Documentation and Help systems can be very complex, with single source documents, multiple and various Help outputs, and common chapters. It's extremely important to provide clear information on how your documentation and Help assets were created. It's also useful to check through each document/Help system to ensure all the files are present (you would be surprised at how often we receive projects that are missing some or all documentation files) and record any specific information that would be important for someone outside your company to know. Knowing these details streamlines the work for everyone involved in the localization project — the project managers, Desk Top Publishing (DTP) team, graphics and image editors, and of course, translators. I have been party to a few projects where huge delays were incurred because processes (such as Help subsystem conversions) could not be validated early in the cycle. When documenting your documentation (still sounds odd), be sure to supply:
If the product has been localized previously, supplying existing translations leverages that previous work and helps to keep localization costs down for the new version down. This is especially important if someone other than Rubric performed the previous localization (which, of course would have been a huge mistake). If there are any concerns/question marks over existing translation quality it is very useful to make this clear at the outset as well, and supply Rubric with:
A comprehensive L10n kit ensures that most localization project issues will be uncovered before the project begins or in the early stages. Problems found early on will reduce the impact on the project's critical path and time to market. The project will be smoother, faster, and less stressful for you. At first glance this list looks like a fair bit of work, and you may ask yourself, "Why bother to do it? Surely it is Rubric's job to work out what needs to be done, they are the experts?" True, Rubric is the expert when it comes to localization. And that is exactly why we provide these L10n kit instructions. Our expertise comes from experience, and experience shows these small steps up-front eliminate huge problems later on. If instructions are unclear at the outset, and if files are missing in the project folders, Rubric will have to dig, review, research, cross-reference, and otherwise flag all the potential problems. This adds to your costs, and stretches your time to market. The clock is ticking and all open issues extend the critical path and project costs. Rubric customers who have worked on multiple localization projects find that an L10n kit is the single most important contribution to smoothly running localizations, and gets products to their destination — your customers — on time and without detours. |
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