Globalization Blog

"It's not information overload. It's filter failure."

2009-02-02T18:55:18Z

Thanks to Clay Shirky for the title; watch his Web 2.0 Expo NY presentation here.

This is also the mantra for Alltop.com, self-described as a "digital magazine rack" of the Internet. As an analyst I get a lot of stuff and peruse twice the amount I get. Now that I'm twittering (@lciarlone) and face-bookin' in addition to being a long-time LinkedIn user... well, you know the story. Not enough time in the day.

I'm looking for -- and finding -- ways to streamline keeping up to date. Alltop's darn efficient in helping me do that, organizing "stories" by category per hour. And certainly like that our own Content Globalization blog surfaces within All the Top Linguistics News.

Curious on the method and the genesis? Check it out.

Webinar: Ingersoll Rand, Club Car's Strategy for Multilingual Product Documentation

2009-01-08T22:34:53Z

How effectively are you linking product engineering and multilingual product documentation processes? What kind of returns are you getting?

To learn about a real-world manufacturing success story, join us for our latest webinar : Broadening Product Lifecycle Management: A Strategy for Multilingual Product Documentation.

Tuesday, Febuary 3rd, 2009
11am EST / 10am CST / 8am PST

You'll hear first hand experiences from Club Car, the world leader in golf cars and a division of manufacturing giant Ingersoll Rand, and learn how this company:

Speeds time to publishing in international markets.
Increases global content volumes without raising costs.
Attains greater accuracy and consistency for multilingual product documentation.

Club Car estimates they will save $450,000 over three years! Could these savings and advances in multilingual product communications be yours? Come and find out.

What's Your Elevator Pitch?

2009-01-05T13:03:19Z

First, Happy New Year from the Content Globalization team & hope your holiday season included rest and relaxation. Now back to it!

I'm not big on once a year resolutions; I like ongoing "continuations" better - i.e. keep doing what works and throw out what doesn't. In terms of our education mission, what worked best in 2008 is exactly what we set out to do via our inaugural mandate -- talk to practitioners, CIOs, strategists and fellow analysts about our view of the "globalization mandate" and understand how it fits into the "field view." So in terms of "continuations," we're increasing this commitment -- because it works.

Our 2008 experiences throughout corporate consulting gigs and Gilbane conferences underscore a simple truth -- when folks share, communities gather, and corporate operational champions for multilingual communications band together, "things" happen. And our "thing" is solidifying industry awareness that content is a vital part of web experience, customer satisfaction, and multinational expansion programs. The monolingual "one size fits all" approach? Doesn't work.

So what's with my elevator pitch title? It's an ongoing conversation we're having with our community about making the business case for content globalization strategies that are funded, valued, measured and successful. Basically, the elevator pitch for multilingual communications in five minutes or less. Here's one of our favorites, courtesy David Lee from 3M:

Ready for Open Source Translation?

2008-12-19T14:05:27Z

In July of this year, WeLocalize launched the GlobalSight Open Source Initiative, offering the industry's first open source version of enterprise translation management software. WeLocalize plans to release open source GlobalSight in January, 2009, and is committed to supporting LISA standards Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) and Segmentation Rules eXchange 2.0 (SRX). GlobalSight also recently announced a partnership with ClayTablet Technologies to enable connectivity with content management systems.

Is this just another marketing initiative searching for a way to differentiate common technology? Early indications are that there's a real movement afoot. Over 200 people from 147 companies have joined this open source community, and the steering committee contains many high-tech leaders, including Cisco, EMC, IBM, Autodesk, NetApp, and Sun Microsystems. Sun, for example, has a long history of embracing open standards and open source. Sun has staked its future repeatedly on open standards and open sources, ranging from the early days of UNIX and Java to today's OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, Java, and, now, Open Translation centering on XLIFF standards.

To be sure, this is an impressive list of companies. But the basis of these companies' interest is not entirely clear, and the adoption history for open source solutions across the value chain of content technologies has been fragmented at best. Open source content management software is still in the early stages of acceptance and open source authoring software has yet to take significant market share.

In the end, global corporations and organizations determine value and standards. So we put the question to you: WOULD YOU CONSIDER ADOPTING OPEN SOURCE TRANSLATION, AND WHY? Please comment on this blog or send me email with your ideas. Let's continue this conversation...

Strategies: PLM and the GCVC

2008-12-16T13:55:21Z

We are pleased to announce the Content Globalization Practice's newest case study: Broadening Product Lifecycle Management: Club Car's Strategy for Multilingual Product Communications, sponsored by Sajan.

The case study describes how Ingersoll Rand Club Car introduced and continues to strengthen a Global Content Value Chain (GCVC) focused on product content:

The largest manufacturer of golf cars and utility vehicles in the world, Club Car is a shining example of Ingersoll Rand's commitment to deliver product innovation from all perspectives.

Operational champions from technical publications groups take note! This is truly an impressive story. Download here.

Sharing is Twice the Fun!

2008-12-14T14:14:36Z

Spot on!

The title of my colleague Natasja Paulssen's presentation during the Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Product Content session @Gilbane Boston 08.

Based on impressive results achieved between Philips and Ordina, Paulssen is specifically referring to Support and Marketing collaboration, but as the results showed... a whole lot more.

Who would have thought? Shared consumer care content including user manuals, service manuals, service scenarios, FAQ's, tips & tricks, and instructional videos within a spectacular web site available in 52+ languages. It can be done. It will be done.

Global Content Value Chains: Collaborative? Or Not...

2008-11-30T14:06:07Z

Got 30 seconds?

Take our poll on content sharing trends between customer support, technical documentation, and marketing.

Then, consider coming in to Gilbane Boston this week to discuss the results!

Gilbane Boston: Content Globalization Track

2008-11-26T15:08:26Z

We're looking forward to a great conference, and especially excited for the globalization track. Although our state-side audience is gearing up for turkey dinners, there's still time get a great education at Gilbane Boston next week!

Register here for the full conference or for free - yes, I said free - access to the Technology Showcase, keynotes, and sponsor reception.

Gilbane Boston Content Globalization Track

Special Keynote 2: Foundations for Global Content Value Chain Strategies

Moderator: Mary Laplante, Vice President, Consulting, Gilbane Group

Speakers:
David Lee, Manager eBusiness, 3M Company
Nicholas McMahon, VP & General Manager, Jonckers
Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, Gilbane Group

GCM-1: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Product Content

Moderator: Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, Gilbane Group

Speakers:
Fred Hollowood, Director Language R&D, Shared Engineering Services, Symantec Corporation
Natasja H.M. Paulsen, Partner, Ordina Consulting
Sophie Hurst, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SDL

GCM-2: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Brand Content

Moderator: Karl Kadie, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group

Speakers:
Gary Muddyman, Managing Director and CEO, Conversis
Anne Casson, Principal Consultant, Content Management Practice, Molecular

GCM-3: Designing Culturally Customized Web Sites: The Next Localization Frontier

Moderator: Ulrich Henes, President, Localization Institute

Speaker:
Nitish Singh, Assistant Professor of International Business at Boeing Institute of Int. Business, St. Louis University

Web Globalization Management: Got Certification?

2008-11-09T13:46:07Z

We were recently introduced to the Executive Certification in Web Globalization Management by our friends Nitish Singh and Ulrich Henes during October's Localization World conference. We're thrilled to have both Singh and Henes as participants in the Globalization track at Gilbane Boston 2008, December 2-4.

A new venture within the executive education arm of John Cook School of Business at St. Louis University, it is quite an impressive program! And beyond compliments such as well-designed and timely, the program's message of "why invest now?" -- or more pointedly as the program describes, "why supercharge?" -- is a mini-lesson in and of itself.

Consider the megatrends that answer these questions: (full text available here)

Megatrend-1: Web will be critical to achieving global expansion.
Megatrend-2: Innovation in the new economy will be driven by blurring of disciplinary boundaries.
Megatrend-3: Hyperconnectivity will redefine how people and organizations communicate.
Megatrend-4: Value systems will compete globally.
Megatrend-5: Smart organizations will harness the power of "Collective Intelligence."
Megatrend-6: Economies of China, India and Brazil will be future engines of growth.

Powerful food for thought and incentive to check it out -- and register for Spring 2009. No travel required!

Gilbane Speaks on Multilingualism

2008-10-20T22:18:19Z

Readers of this content globalization blog will be interested in hearing about Frank's adventures in Finland this week at the Kites Symposium. Check out the entry on our main blog. About Kites:

Kites Association develops and promotes multilingual communication, multi-cultural interaction and their technical content management to improve the competitive edge of the Finnish economic life and the public administration.

The World is Curved

2008-10-08T22:24:15Z

The announcement of this new book caught my attention for a number of reasons, many obviously due to the state of the financial markets. More attuned to the Globalization practice is that we noted in our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report that:

A common observation made during industry discussion of Internet-driven opportunities is that the proliferation of the worldwide web has made the business world "flat." In other words, companies of all sizes can compete on a level playing field wherein everyone has the same access to technology and information. While our study respondents acknowledge the "flattening world" as Thomas Friedman has described it, they also recognize that different geographies and cultures have varying and distinct expectations. Thus, generalized information access does not equate to generalized information delivery. From this perspective, a flattening world requires far deeper levels of content relevancy, localization, and personalization than ever before. From this perspective, "one size fits all" is hardly the recipe for success in the global economy.

Risking the wrath of Friedman'ites, we contend that as far as multilingual communications are concerned, the world is most definitely not flat. Giving Friedman his due, David Smick contends that as far as global financial markets are concerned, the world is most definitely curved, where one "can't see over the horizon and sight lines are limited." Describing globalization as the great paradox of our time, this review quickly convinced me to put it on the "must read" list.

Off to Localization World in Madison, WI

2008-10-06T12:42:10Z

Here's where Mary and I are headed next week, participating as both educators and students. The full grid is here.

Wearing our student hats, we're looking forward to gauging a trend we introduced in our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report:

Emerging enterprise expectations for high-value services that support Global Content Value Chain (GCVC) strategies.

Our premise is based on lots of talks with operational champions that are succeeding in garnering executive support for multilingual communications initiatives as part of corporate globalization programs. As part of that executive commitment, it is inevitable that infrastructure focus becomes broader, scope extends, and organizations look to augment internal expertise with external guidance and tactical assistance.

In our "Looking Beyond the Research" section we noted that Language Service Providers (LSPs) are uniquely positioned to meet a number of these expectations, but we also wondered whether LSPs consistently communicate their value as strategic enterprise resources as opposed to cost control advocates. We'll be checking on our premises at Localization World, but we've already received a strong response from one LSP that debunks our speculation on readiness.

Language Solutions commented on our "sneak peak" research blog in August, noting their development of the Client Mentor program, with a focus on HR communications and a solid global readiness assessment offering. They've followed up with a blog launch focusing on Metrics for Multilingual Communications, an interesting read.

Machine Translation (Finally) Comes of Age

2008-09-30T16:35:37Z

In our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report, we noted the fact that machine translation (MT) has long been the target of "don't let this happen to you" jokes throughout the globalization industry. Unpredictable results and poor quality allowed humor to become the focus of MT discussions, making widespread adoption risky at best.

On the other hand, we also noted that scientists, researchers, and technologists have been determined to unlock MT potential since the 1950's to solve the same core challenges the industry struggles with today: cost savings, speed, and linguist augmentation. Although the infamous report on Languages and Machines from the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) published in 1966 discussed these challenges in some depth (albeit from a U.S. perspective), it sent a resounding message that "there is no emergency in the field of translation." Research funding suffered; researcher Margaret King described the impact as effectively "killing machine translation research in the States."

Borrowing from S.E. Hinton, that was then, this is now. Technology advancements and pure computing power have made machine translation not only viable, but also potentially game-changing. A global economy, the volume and velocity of content required to run a global business, and customer expectations is steadily shifting enterprise postures from "not an option" to "help me understand where MT fits." Case in point -- participants in our study identified MT as one of the top three valuable technologies for the future.

There's lots of game-changing news for our readers to digest.

An excellent place to start is with our colleagues at Multilingual Magazine, who dedicated the April-May issue to this very subject. Don Osborn over at the Multidisciplinary Perspectives blog provides an excellent summary, posing the question: "Is there a paradigm shift on machine translation?"

Language Weaver predicts a potential $67.5 billion market for digital translation, fueled by MT. CEO Mark Tapling explains why.

SYSTRAN, one of the earliest MT software developers provides research and education here.

And finally (for today), there's no way to deny the Google impact -- here's their FAQ about the beta version of Google Translate. TAUS weighs in on the subject here.

Mary and I will be at Localization World Madison to provide practical advice and best practices for making the enterprise business case for multilingual communications investments as part of a Global Content Value Chain. But we're also looking forward to the session focused on MT potential, issues, and vendor approaches. The full grid is here. Join us!

Multilingual Communications Report Resonates

2008-09-17T12:42:31Z

We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report, for which we're grateful - and thrilled! I can summarize the response as "peer sharing works!" And not only works, but spurs conversation, new ideas, and without a doubt, more sharing. For the Globalization Practice team, it's true validation of the people perspective of Web 2.0.

It would be a long list to point out all the countries represented through report downloads and additional conversations we've had since July, but here's just a sample. We've heard from content and translation management professionals from all across the USA in addition to:

Austria

Belguim

Canada

Chile

China

Finland

France

Germany

India

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Japan

Korea

Netherlands

New Zealand

Russia

Singapore

Slovenia

South Africa

South Korea

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

United Kingdom

What resonates most? Unwaveringly first is the need to look at multilingual communications creation, management, and delivery in a new way; as less a cost center and more an integral part of business value. Next - the inherent connection readers have with our definition of operational champions and the stories told by those that shared challenges and strategies in the report's Best Practices Profiles section. Of course those links have pros and cons; the former obviously cementing the growing need for community sharing and the latter validating the struggles of educating senior management and making the business case for focused investment.

Those "on the ground floor" clearly want more - and we aim to provide it. As Frank documented in our Events blog on Fall Speaking Gigs, we're focused on sharing our experiences and more importantly, learning from yours. Particularly exciting for our team is the Content Globalization track we've put together for Gilbane Boston, December 2-4. The full conference schedule is here. Join us!

On Multilingual Communications and Open Source: An Interview with Jahia's Emmanuel Garcin

2008-08-29T16:30:31Z

Recently, we had an opportunity to catch up with Emmanuel Garcin, Vice President at Jahia, a Swiss-based vendor of open source solutions for web content and portal management. Jahia is a sponsor of Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative," a report released by Gilbane's Globalization practice in July.

KK: What have been the biggest roadblocks to companies in demonstrating value for multilingual communications initiatives?
EG: We've found that web content management systems often need to be customized - in a big way - before they can be integrated with authoring tools, translation management systems, and other enterprise applications. This can result in big-ticket licensing and implementation costs as well as IT departments that become concerned with "overloading computing platforms. Open source technologies can help with these obstacles, but companies are often challenged to adopt and rollout new business models that go hand in hand with the open source context.

KK: What is the "tipping point" that compels companies to move forward with your solution as part of the infrastructure for multilingual communications
EG: The key business driver is a burning need to broadcast both local and global messages for brand management. We also have customers that must address language-based government regulations. Since there are three official languages in Switzerland, Jahia's Swiss origins naturally focused us on the implementation of adequate business logic to provide flexible language management tools to accommodate this need. Other customers have a need to mix languages when they publish a particular country or regional site. One example is a large international institution that publishes in over a hundred languages who found that Jahia provided the vitamins (enterprise & portal capabilities) and the painkiller (globalization capabilities) needed to implement its content globalization strategy.

KK: What do you do to educate, prepare, and enable customers to be successful? EG: There's a lot of back and forth. Companies often want to shape new solutions around existing business rules, but they also need to plan intelligently about how they're going to communicate globally, and determine which processes should continue to evolve. We educate and train organizations on how to get the best results and can help with planning, installation, and configuration. At the end of the day, it's all about technical details. Companies want to manage content in any language, decide for themselves which languages are mandatory and which are optional, and even publish web sites that mix languages on the same screen. In addition, they want to give their customers the ability to select a new language through a simple, easy-to-use interface.

We spend a lot of time communicating a vision of successful web communication. We talk about how content repositories are the new databases, that all content should be dynamic, and how successful enterprise applications need to be function and feature-rich. We make sure companies are fully aware of industry trends that affect global communication practices and common standards, such as JSR-170/283.

KK: What have been your customers' best practices in building a global content value chain?
EG: You can't overlook the significance of having a globalization strategy in the first place! Examples of success that I'm familiar with include a large international agency, a GPS vendor, and a global glass manufacturer. The most successful companies are equally concerned about which solutions for multilingual communications they choose, and how they roll them out; about a single source of content, along with information that is customized or added to meet regional needs. They have a globalization strategy that strikes the right balance between centralized and regional content management.

What is most important, however, is to define how that strategy relates to business needs. A good example of this is a pan-European government agency that we work with. A particular document may be mandatory for certain countries and languages but irrelevant for others. To address this challenge, they prepare source content in a single language, deliver translations up to 25 languages, and publish local language sites with different, additional or custom content for a variety of regions and countries.