It all started with my modest desire to purchase a backup power adapter for my notebook to avoid carrying it between work and home. Reasoning that notebooks come and go, and their tips are notoriously incompatible, I decided to get myself a universal one with multiple tips and searched through amazon.com. Imagine my amazement at seeing prices for these small, mundane, almost indistinguishable...read more...

As more companies move to structured authoring, content management and simultaneous releases on all markets, content development teams face increased pressure to start localizing earlier in the development cycle. How well a team handles issues in the following 10 areas can determine the success or failure of the integration.read more...

As with many other small businesses, Language Service Providers (LSPs) often wade into the technology swamp without fully recognizing the difficulties and dangers lurking there. The demos we see at the many language industry conferences make it all look so easy. Many LSPs are faced with a choice of either continuing to develop and maintain a proprietary TMS or moving to one of the many available...read more...

In the long term, the work of translation is not limited to organizing translation tasks. Modern systems offer the possibility of automated work steps, optimizing the quality of language used in texts with continuous re-use in almost any granularity and to accelerate the actual translation process. Be that as it may, the human mind and its knowledge of processes and the correct use of available...read more...

Imagine you just received the Chinese and Japanese translation of your manual, and are unable to decipher anything; even the numbers or measurements don’t look familiar anymore. 10,000 kW now appears as “1 something”, and your company is introduced as being founded in “35 something” rather than 1960. How could that be possible, let alone correct? Do you have any way to cross-check this? This...read more...

Recent survey results suggest that more and more practitioners in the field of technical communication understand the benefits of maintaining client- or project-specific termbases. However, based on anecdotal evidence, it seems as if very few organizations currently have processes for validating translated terminology, i.e., employing subject-matter experts to check the suitability of those...read more...

There has been plenty of debate and speculation following the liquidation of the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA). Dr. Arle Lommel is the former director of open standards at LISA. He is currently Standards Coordinator for the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA)'s standards initiative, where he is focusing on establishing a broad program to promote the use of...read more...