In this part, he’ll examine the various technologies used by different partners. Can technology be used to eliminate partners from the network, or might it change the roles partners play in the future? 

Buyers

Many localisation buyers in the IT industry used to rely on software localisation tools like . Today, they have the choice of enterprise (TMS) or developer-focused tools. Enterprise TMS tools manage the buyer’s content and vendors and take care of their content sources.

Some of these TMS tools, like or , are on the open market, while others are offered by the largest multi-language vendors, e.g. SDL Worldserver or Translations.com GlobalLink. Some technology providers, like or , started out as technology providers for enterprises but turned into MLVs later.

Developer-orientated tools are aimed directly at developers, and this is where tools like , or become an easy sell. They speak the language of developers and are intuitive for them.

If the buyer company has an internal translator team, they prefer to use similar tools to LSPs. When I was at memoQ, we were extremely successful at selling to such companies.

Buyers have a lot of work to do on the internationalisation of their software products, and for this, little support exists. Their software needs to be properly internationalised before it can be localised – currently I am only aware of supporting such tasks – and then they need to integrate the strings into their agile sprints using their continuous integration/continuous delivery tools like or .

Buyer-side technology is often not translator-friendly or created with the translator in mind.

Some buyer companies build their own TMS – Oracle, SAP, Netflix, IBM and Mozilla are good examples – because developing is something they do anyway. Others – like Evernote or Box – create continuous localisation platforms like Mojito or Serge. This technology doesn’t have many touch points with the translation service providers.

The problem with buyer-side technology is that it is often not translator-friendly or created with the translator in mind. It’s surprising how often the concept of the translation supply chain is completely missing from the buyer-side technology. The solution is usually to export and import the translation material with an , but there are systems that don’t allow the translation to be imported back. Workaround solutions can easily lead to quality compromises.

In a recent survey, we at Belazy discovered that the majority of localisation buyers today have a TMS that they control. This used to be the job of the MLVs, but with the changes in technology requirements, there are more client companies that are not afraid to deploy a TMS – either cloud-based or on-premises – which is owned and managed by them.

MLVs

All language service providers (LSPs) need to have business reporting that is independent of their client’s systems. Large MLVs use business management systems like or , or develop such systems themselves. This is the technology they use internally and with their translation vendors. The systems often have APIs and customer portals that their clients can use to post their projects.

MLVs tend to prefer easily customisable web-based tools with reasonably strong translation support.

MLVs tend to prefer easily customisable web-based tools with reasonably strong translation support. If they don’t own the translation management technology, they like to buy or rent from MLV-independent software vendors like , or memoQ. They prefer technology that allows the synchronisation of projects between servers, so that their vendors can work on their servers.

MLVs also develop technology to connect their clients’ bespoke content management systems to their own translation management systems. This offers then a chance to control how projects from a certain client or program are received for translation, which makes their integration work easier.

SLVs

SLVs also work with business management systems. When it comes to translation environments, they have to engage with multiple systems, either hosted by their MLV clients or by the buyer companies, or hosted by the SLV themselves, or installed locally.

SLVs tend to prefer desktop tools like SDL Trados or memoQ because they are more popular among translators.

SLVs tend to prefer desktop tools like SDL Trados or memoQ because they are more popular among translators and offer the SLV a chance to further optimise the translation projects from how the MLV had set them up. They like to standardise tools because it helps them achieve optimal production efficiency.

SLVs are in a unique, complex position where they have to create and set up translation projects in their business management system after having downloaded the translation material, assignment details and contractual documents from their MLV client’s multiple vendor portals. When they select a translator for the project, they have to reassign the work to the translator in their own translation management system.

Freelance translators

To put it bluntly, freelance translators use the technology their clients tell them to use. There are specialised, well-positioned translators who can pick and choose jobs based on what technology they are offered in, but many simply accept the clients’ choice of translation environment.

To put it bluntly, freelance translators use the technology their clients tell them to use.

How translators keep track of their projects depends on their degree of tech know-how, financial status and tidiness: while some use specialised business management systems aimed at freelance translators, others keep records in Excel spreadsheets. There are freelance translators who don’t keep track of their projects at all but trust the order data from the systems of their clients when it comes to invoicing.

Even though the up-to-date information about freelancers’ capacity to take on new work would be very sought-after data for those in the market who are constantly trying to place new tasks, there is no streamlined way for freelance translators to keep their current and potential clients informed of it in real time.

In-house translators

In-house translators work most efficiently if they don’t have to switch between translation environments too often. This is probably best facilitated at buyer companies where the tools and the content to be translated are most consistent in nature. In-house translators at translation companies work best under similar conditions, and the most productive ones are those assigned to dedicated, client-specific teams.

Summary

The localisation supply chain with its four partner roles is complicated, but even with time, I don’t see it changing significantly. Technology and process will remain in the hand of the buyers and MLVs. Clever SLVs will develop their vendor management role further and, instead of just delivering quality translations, contribute a quality workforce. While the ripples may temporarily shift tasks from one player to another, there are still plenty of valid reasons for keeping all four players in the supply chain.

In the table below I attempt to summarise what is the single most important task for each player in the localisation supply chain:

The post The retelling of an industry, part 2: Technology in localisation appeared first on sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½.

In part 2, he’ll examine the role of technology at each stage of service provision and discuss how it ties in with the tasks performed at that stage.

Same old story: buyers, MLVs, SLVs, freelancers

When I was younger and more revolutionary, I loved to question everything in localisation. I wanted to replace translation memories with bilingual documents, because it seemed so logical. I wanted to push LSPs towards reusing translations for multiple clients, because it also seemed logical.

Some practices remain unchanged because the benefits seem smaller than the effort required to bring about the change.

Neither is a reality today, and I learned to live with the path of least resistance: some practices remain unchanged because the benefits seem smaller than the effort required to bring about the change. Very few concepts in the translation industry have changed over the last two decades, whereas the technology that translation buyers use has moved on significantly.

When I joined this industry over 15 years ago, the parties in the localisation chain were translation buyers, multi-language vendors (MLVs), single-language vendors (SLVs) and freelance translators – and that remains the same today. It’s interesting to see what function each of these parties has had in the process, and how technology has changed – and continues to change – their roles.

Buyers

At the advent of localisation, large IT companies started pushing out multilingual content, which gave rise to large MLVs like , and . The majority of the content came from desktop software that was delivered on CDs, with full documentation and often a manual. Desktop software followed the waterfall model – with specification, development, testing and bug fixing, localisation and distribution being very distinct steps. The timing of a release was crucial, as large press conferences or user conferences attracted many target users.

Remember visual localisation tools like and ? There were plenty of them: Multilizer, Sisulizer, RC Wintrans… strings had to be positioned and resized, scrolling was often not an option, Asian characters and bidirectional writing for Hebrew and Arabic was a challenge. Consistency between the interface and the help was hard to achieve.

Today, internationalisation has a very distinct set of challenges. The prevalence of Unicode made the support for writing systems easy. Today’s challenge lies in mobile-ready, responsive interfaces of web pages. Cloud-based systems support remote working, and instead of large systems, many companies work with a variety of systems to store their content.

Agile development is practised by most enterprises, not only IT, but also those where IT supports the core activity. Continuous integration/continuous delivery drives the need for quick-turnaround localisation. With the explosion in the volume of content, machine translation has become part of the workflow.

Buyers continue to face the problem of isolation and silos, not so much from the technology perspective but from the ignorance perspective. By necessity, their managers continue to collaborate with people, both within and outside their company, with various levels of understanding of the bigger picture in multilingual content management.

The local power plant or food manufacturer also needs translation services, though perhaps on a smaller scale.

When people in the translation industry speak of buyers in general terms, they tend to think of IT companies. In reality, the local power plant or food manufacturer also needs translation services, though perhaps on a smaller scale.

The research on the fragmentation of the translation market indicates that not every buyer needs the sophisticated expertise of the largest translation service providers. You only need the services of auditing firms like KPMG if you start optimising tax cross-border, and the same applies to buying localisation services.

Multi-language vendors (MLVs)

MLVs emerged because they had the technical knowledge to understand and support a variety of clients. They employed engineers who were able to help the buyers in the IT sector. Most of today’s successful MLVs have grown on the back of their clients’ growth. They were the ones who started providing staffing for their clients and they built their service on two cornerstones: dedicated customer teams and a customisable technology stack.

Buyers’ content repositories have changed significantly and the rise of APIs and the concept of platforms has enabled software to play better together. MLVs always pursued the know-how and control of the technology stack, and over the years, technology became the most important driver for LSP growth. Large MLVs partnered with content technology providers to create efficient localisation solutions for their clients. Technology is a great lock-in because changing it requires investment in time and money.

[MLVs] understand the bigger business picture better than most smaller translator-led shops do.

In the footsteps of continuous integration came continuous localisation: buyers sending increasingly small chunks of text for translation. A handful of large MLVs handles the bulk of the software and website translations for large enterprise clients, and they do it under time and price pressure. The role of the MLVs has not changed much: they understand the bigger business picture better than most smaller translator-led shops do.

And then there is the ripple. Large tech companies like Facebook believe they can build better technology for their localisation needs than the MLVs can provide and they start contracting directly to SLVs. At the same time, Spotify moves from an SLV outsourcing model to an MLV outsourcing model. Other giants, like Netflix, but do not change their outsourcing model.

More often than not, procurement at large enterprise buyers doesn’t allow for single-sourcing translation, thus the buyer’s partner MLVs have to collaborate with each other in the service provision. Many buyers have their own shared service centre for their translation needs which then engages a mix of MLVs, SLVs and freelancer translators.

In a nutshell: MLVs have always been the guardians of process and technology. They have the knowledge of internationalisation, workflows for dozens of languages and the ability to test and quantify localisation outcomes. MLVs are also able to specialise in niche workflows for regulated industries or computer gaming and can work with large procurement teams at multinationals.

Single-language vendors (SLVs)

Single-language vendors are defined by the fact that they translate into one target language or a group of regional languages. If the MLV is the tech shop, the SLV is the language quality shop. Interestingly, the same company often wears both hats: for example, in Spain, most of the local translation orders are from English, French, Italian, German or Spanish into the same EFIGS and into Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese. Any other language combination is in low demand. Any LSP in the region can function as an MLV by managing the work between the aforementioned languages and outsourcing the occasional extra languages to other SLVs. At the same time, they act as an SLV by offering translation services into Spanish and Portuguese to large global MLVs.

Freelance translators turn into small SLVs, defeating the original purpose of the disintermediation.

What makes SLVs attractive partners is affordable quality: they have the staff to review and assess translations efficiently, which in turn helps them keep vendor costs relatively low. Their operational excellence – focused resources, standardised processes and streamlined configuration of translation technology – helps them build cost-effective solutions. And then there is the ripple: MLVs like the idea of and seek ways to work with freelance translators directly. There are three major challenges in this:

1. The MLV’s inability to assess the quality of all language pairs in-house.
2. The fact that freelancers quote higher rates to foreign clients and for ad-hoc work, which means that only the largest MLVs with offices in multiple countries achieve favourable rates.
3. The admin and management overhead increases with more suppliers.

I’ve seen many MLVs making a push towards working with freelancers, and then going back to working with SLV partners. Typically, an MLV builds an outsourcing platform and creates an open marketplace for registered suppliers to grab the jobs on offer. In response, some freelancers start taking more jobs than they can possibly translate themselves and pass them on to peers or mentees. The vendor managers may notice but won’t interfere as long as the delivered quality is acceptable. Thus the freelance translators turns into small SLVs, defeating the original purpose of the disintermediation. And the MLV is back with SLV outsourcing.

In a nutshell: SLVs are the best solution for finding, maintaining and training talent in a specific target language. Their unique added value lies in their efficient vendor management for a limited set of languages.

Freelance translators

Until recently, one of the greatest concerns for freelance translators was language technology: how to install, maintain and pay for all different pieces of software. They tended to master one translation tool better than the others and wanted to perform most of their jobs in that environment for improved productivity.

Today, translators work in a smaller variety of desktop-based tools and with more online tools. Online tools are simple and very similar to each other. The freelance translators’ main concern now is the size of jobs: they receive many 5–100-word tasks every day. The best translators are the ones who can communicate efficiently with their project managers and clients.

Translators are burdened with numerous email notifications about tiny jobs and can become frustrated if clients think they are easily replaceable. Job auctions, which from the clients’ point of view facilitate the speedy placing of a job, to their uniqueness and expertise.

Turnaround times have decreased with project sizes, and no LSP really knows their freelance translators’ availability because they all work for multiple clients. Translators are asked to update their availability in a portal, but many say that if they were to do that for all their clients, they would hardly have time to work on any translations.

[Freelancers] prefer clients who see them as a valuable individual, take them seriously and listen to their feedback.

And then there is the ripple: due to the stress of having to place jobs quickly with a vendor who is contracted to never turn them down, clients choose SLV or MLV partners over a vast pool of translators – let them take care of the scheduling and translator selection problem.

In a nutshell: freelance translators have always done the bulk of the actual translation work. Today, they work with translation, revision, review, post-editing and transcreation. They prefer clients who see them as a valuable individual, take them seriously and listen to their feedback.

In-house translators

There are fewer in-house translator positions available now than in the past, but there are still reasons why all types of companies employ them: data security, restrictive translation environments, quality control, their guaranteed quantifiable availability and deep subject-matter expertise, the return on investment in terms of their training and continued professional development. In-house translators can be employed at the buyer organisation, MLV or SLV.

In part 2 of this article, István will examine the role of technology at each stage of service provision and discuss how it ties in with the tasks performed at that stage.

The post The retelling of an industry, part 1: The (r)evolution of roles in localisation appeared first on sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½.