Multilingual magazine-CoreFocus 131

7/28/2019 Multilingual magazine-CoreFocus 131

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Localization: The globalpyramid capston

The growing market o

global inormation consum

Localization orthe long tail: Part 1

Adobe fash creation &

Localization (tentative Title

TRANSLATIOCORE FOCUOctober/November 2012


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www.multilingual.com October/November 2012 MultiLingual |

Cor

eFocus

Localization: The global

pyramid capstone

Richard Sikes

SSeveral years ago, I was called by a recruiter

to interview for a job with a major Canadianmanufacturer of airplane components. It seemsthat the hiring manager had spotted the keyword

globalization in my online rsum, and becausethe company was embarking on a globalization

initiative, he thought I might be an ideal candi-date for the position. I went to the interview.

In short order, we determined that in their corporate uni-verse, globalization meant imprinting the stamp of how things

were done in the mother ship organization on all associatedorganizations around the world. I quickly explained that in myinternational software development and marketing universe,globalization meant reaching out to understand what usersin cultures other than my own desired and then to evangelizeincorporating those attributes in products destined for thosemarkets. Needless to say, it was a short interview!

The attitude displayed by the hiring company may be use-ful in some situations, but to me, it embodied much of whathas given globalization a bad name. It also pointed to anotherissue that I have observed closer to home: even in our relativelyknowledgeable and harmonious world of software localization,substantial discrepancies exist in what industry participantsunderstand about how globalization differs from internation-alization, and how both of these two differ from localization(Figure 1).

GlobalizationMy definition of globalization stems from an experience I

had while serving as director of globalization for a large soft-ware company. When I took the job, one of the first things Iwas told was that Japan was a problem. Exactly why it was aproblem was not clear to the hiring manager, since the companyhad recently completed a localization of the flagship product atgreat expense, and shouldnt the office be pleased?

So, as one of my first tasks in my new job, I set about contact-ing the Japanese office to find out what was wrong with theproduct. After a relatively short delay, they responded with a listof 1,600 issues! I found this to be somewhat overwhelming, soI tried to focus in on prioritization. Due to some factors outsidethe scope of this article, the prioritization effort took some time,so the next actual event in the saga turned out to be a visit fromtwo representatives from the Japanese office to our headquarters.

After we had gotten acquainted, they asked, The documentset for this product consists of 24 manuals, correct? Yes, Ireplied. And you have localized five of the 24 books? Yes,I again replied, in order to keep costs contained, our productmanagement group decided that we would localize only those

five. And the Reference Manual is not included in the five?they asked. Correct! I confirmed. Why not? they asked. TheReference Manual is the only one that we want in Japanese!

It was immediately apparent to me that our product manage-ment team had made a decision that was based on insufficientdue diligence. While the decision to localize the five manuals mayhave been appropriate for some target locales, it most certainlywas not for Japan. In fact, the result was a double whammy. Notonly was dissatisfaction created, but a substantial sum of moneywas wasted translating unwanted manuals. As it turned out, themissing manual was the one and only issue of importance; theremaining 1,599 identified deficiencies could have been livedwith, for one release anyway, if only the desired manual hadbeen translated.

This anecdote illustrates my point that globalization must, tosome extent at least, involve a degree of investigation into whatforeign markets require and, conversely, that international prod-uct development without globalization at its foundation is a recipe

Richard Sikes has been immersed in technicaltranslation and localization for over 25 years. He

has worked on the supplier and the buyer side of theindustry, and is known as an author, speaker and

mentor. He holds three academic degrees: a BA infine arts, Diplom Betriebswirt (FH) and an MBA.
http://www.multilingual.com/


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Core Focus

| MultiLingual October/November 2012 [email protected]

for failure. For this reason, globalizationbuilds the bottommost and widest tierin the pyramid that is the mental modeldescribed in this article. But globalizationdoes not only consist of offshore marketresearch. Rather, it should be consideredmore closely synonymous with overallcorporate investment strategy. By this, I

mean investment strategy in the widestsense of the concept not only invest-ment in the financial sense, but the effortthat employees invest in everything theydo. Globalization should be considered amindset as much as a task set.

I once was asked to prepare a con-sulting proposal to evaluate localizationprocesses for a well-known and success-ful company in the telecom space. Myproposal was not accepted at the time,however, because the company decidedto purchase a content management sys-tem (CMS) for its English content prior

to exploring its localization practices. Itnever occurred to management that han-dling localized content and adapting tolocalization workflows might be a criticalfactor in its choice of CMS, and thus glo-balization was not in the forefront of thedecision-makers minds as the companyconsidered this investment.

Based on the notion that globaliza-tion is a mindset, international marketresearch is only one piece in a muchlarger mosaic and should not be carriedout in isolation or thrown over the wallto another department, as is sometimesdone with program code. Quite to thecontrary, regional market considerationsshould be treated as an integral part ofmarketing plans created by a central-ized marketing organization. Targetlocales should be grouped in tiers basedon quantitative analysis, and a businesscase mentality must prevail, especially inthe case of emerging markets. This willpromote product planning with diversemarkets in mind.

Creating a business case for productinvestment requires additional layersof support in the finance or accountingdepartments. It has always amazed me tolearn how many companies do not tracktheir revenues with sufficient interna-tional granularity to know whether thecriteria set out in business case justifica-

tions are actually met. In my experience,it is sadly typical that companies do notknow how much revenue can be attrib-uted to localized products. At best, theymay know how much revenue comesfrom products sold in certain regions, butthere is no distinction between Englishand localized products sold. This simply isnot tracked, nor is there any infrastructurefor tracking or mining such vital data.Most companies either fly blind basedon imperfect, unverified assumptions, orthey employ the localize for whomeverscreams the loudest method of decision-

making. This is partly an offshoot of thepractice of sales personnel being compen-sated by revenue rather than profitability,and it may be considered an unnecessaryburden during periods of robust businessgrowth. However, in leaner times such aswe have as of this writing, it is a short-sighted policy.

An additional attribute of the glo-balization mindset is the conceptualtreatment of English product offeringsas a subset of a generic, locale-neutralproduct. This is a tough mental leap formost North Americans to make, althoughthere is hope on the horizon. The growinginfluence of the Hispanic population, forexample, has caused numerous US-basedbusinesses to consider Spanish as a lan-guage with an importance and personal-ity of its own approaching that of English.This, by definition, requires a whole newlevel of awareness on the part of strategicplanners.

In the software world, target marketsare generally farther afield, and compa-

nies are represented by offices locatedabroad. These offices are valuable sourcesof information but, all too often, theinformation flow is in one direction only from headquarters to the field. Thisis counterproductive. In a world whereinformation is power, the globalization-oriented company cultivates a culture of

ongoing and extensive liaisoning withresources all over the world, intelligentlyleveraging information gleaned from thatinteraction by folding it into up-frontproduct planning.

The choice of representation in foreignmarkets is also very much a part of glo-balization. There are many options; chan-nel strategy is a long-term decision withmany implications. One company that Iknow of has blithely opened and closedoffices in Japan multiple times based onshort-term results, apparently unawarethat each vacillation in policy further

undermined their credibility with localpartners. While companies presumablynever enter markets with the intention offailing, they frequently do fail to proac-tively consider an exit strategy in theirup-front planning. Even this pessimistic,risk-oriented activity belongs to due dili-gence activities of globalization.

Internationalization

Internationalization, the act of mak-ing a companys products localizable, issometimes called localization engineer-ing. This latter term is unsatisfactoryfor several reasons, most prominentlybecause it implies that the task set isdifferent than core development and, byextension, done by different people and,perhaps, at a different time. But it is alsonot broad enough. Internationalizationneed not only refer exclusively to cod-ing practices as localization engineeringimplies; it might also be applied to suchtasks as allowing sufficient white space insource documentation for text expansion

GLOBALIZATIONExpansion of marketing strategies to address regional requirements of all kinds

INTERNATIONALIZATIONEngineering a product to enable efficient adaptation to local requirements

LOCALIZATIONAdapting software and accompanying materials to suit target-market locales

Figure 1 (left): The global pyramid. Figure 2 (right): The cost of localization increases if internatioinalization and globalization have not been done properly.

GLOBALIZATION(Localization enablement)

INTERNATIONALIZATION(Business decisions)

LOCALIZATION(Adaptation/translation)

Visible costgeneration

Invisible costgeneration
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or architecting a website so that localized

content can be easily added.

When performed proactively, interna-

tionalization is conceptually very similar

to a real option. A real option is the rightor the ability, but not the obligation, to

do something at some point in the future.

One purchases this future advantage

through a current investment, and hence

it has a calculable dollar value. Think of

an entrepreneur who purchases a plot

of land alongside a country road where,

someday, residential development will

occur. She builds a small service station

and car dealership. She doesnt invest

too much money in the current facil-

ity because she doesnt know exactly

when the development will occur and, of

course, there is always some risk that it

might not. But what she does do is buy an

option to purchase a parcel of land next

door at a predetermined price at some

future date. This guarantees that she can

expand the facility if she wishes, but does

not obligate her to purchase the land if

the development does not materialize.

Within the context of product develop-

ment, proactive internationalization simply

provides the option for a company to cost-

effectively localize at some future time.

Future localization of proactively interna-

tionalized products becomes much more

cost-effective because product components

do not have to go through a disruptiveand time-consuming retrofitting process to

support a decision to launch sales in a new

market. Avoidance of the disruption causes

turnaround time from decision to delivery

to be substantially shorter, and therefore

revenue gains occur sooner.

Internationalization of software con-

sists of three basic task types, each sup-

ported by numerous subtasks. The first of

these is the removal of cultural assump-

tions from software design. The second is

architectural separation of the presenta-

tion layer from the business logic layer.

The third is implementation of support

for global norms such as character sets or

accounting procedures.

Removal of cultural assumptions is

somewhat easier said than done. Such

assumptions are not made by software

developers out of malice but, rather,

through understandable ignorance, albeit

also sometimes out of time pressure.

Many North Americans are unfamiliar

with norms in other countries. For exam-

ple, developers trained at US institutions

simply may not realize that decimal sepa-

ration is actually indicated by commas

in much of the world. Unfortunately, few

university computer science departmentsteach the principles of internationaliza-

tion, so one can hardly fault the gradu-

ates of those institutions. Another highly

prevalent category of cultural assump-

tions are those surrounding generic lin-

guistic issues. Lack of understanding of

text expansion is one of these, as is how

unresolvable grammatical paradoxes can

be created by string concatenation.

There is a plethora of issues here but,

for simplicitys sake, let it be said that the

goal of internationalization is to create

a locale-neutral product. This is done

by creating virtual layers of program

code that are discrete from one another.

These layers have different functions.

The presentation layer is that which the

user sees and interacts with. The busi-

ness logic layer is the area of code that

is the functional guts of the program.

In simple words, thats where the pro-

gram does whatever it does. There may

also be a database layer, where data is

stored and from where it is retrieved. In

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Core Focus


most programs, data is transferred backand forth between these layers, so it isnot only the program code that definesoperations within these layers that isimportant, but also the transport mecha-nisms between the layers that requirescrutiny for internationalization support.

One problem occurs when these lay-ers are not cleanly separated from oneanother. Symptomatic of this kind ofproblem is when localization of the pre-sentation layer causes malfunction withinthe business logic layer. An example Ionce encountered was the usage of theterms high, medium and low from thepresentation layer which were taken intothe business logic layer for comparisonwith the volume settings that modemsreported using those same English words.One can easily imagine what happenedwhen the presentation layer was trans-

lated: the comparison test failed everytime because the presentation layer useddifferent words, resulting in the inabilityof the user to accurately determine or setthe modem volume.

An example of problems resultingfrom poorly internationalized transportmechanisms is another issue I recentlyencountered. The product consisted of a

Windows client that drew its strings froma UNIX back-end server and also useda similar UNIX server to store data. Thedevelopers failed to realize that there are

character encoding differences betweenthe two operating systems. The code thattransferred data back and forth betweenthese two platforms therefore failed toproperly convert strings pulled fromthe UNIX server to populate the userinterface (UI), resulting in a nonsensical

UI. It also failed to properly store andreturn data entered by the user. Sincesome of the data entered was the userspassword, logging on to the applicationfailed when the user name or passwordcontained characters corrupted by thetransport process.

Fortunately, many of these kindsof functional problems can be easilyexposed by pseudo-localization. Thistechnique involves using software toolsto simulate translation of presentationlayer program code that is then sent fortesting. This brings up the subject of

when, in the development process, testingfor international support should be car-ried out and how extensive it should be.Many companies push this into the func-tional area of localization, but it does notbelong there. Even companies that do notlocalize may wish to sell their products innon-English-speaking locales. Therefore,the products should fully support thefunctional requirements of those locales.

Pseudo-localization is one strategy toproactively test for international support,but it cannot cover all cases. Functional

requirements need to be derived fromthe globalization strategy, as previouslydescribed, and then tested against duringthe core code development process.

One such example from my pastinvolved 128-bit data encryption algo-rithms that were built into a product my

employer produced at the time. Amongother markets, the product was intendedfor sale in France. At that time, 128-bitencryption was illegal in France, sointernationalization in this case includedbuilding in the capability to suppress thisfeature for French as well as for Englishproduct builds shipping to that region.

While this example is somewhat exotic,internationalization of core products maycome up in many other more mundanecontexts, such as currency format sup-port, date and time formatting, businesslogic rules such as application of value-

added tax and a wide range of otherproduct attributes that have nothing to dowith localization in the linguistic sense.

It is highly disruptive, time consumingand therefore expensive to go back andretrofit program code to be internation-alized after a product is released. Thisgenerally involves branching the code.One branch will contain developments ofnew features and bug fixes to currentlyavailable versions, and may not be inter-nationalized. The other branch containschanges to enable internationalizationsupport. Then, at some point, the code

must be merged and regression tested.Many companies follow this pattern, aspressure to release quickly to home-turfmarkets supersedes longer-range vision.But this is really akin to offloadingdevelopment debt to the future. A far bet-ter and, in the long run, less expensiveand more flexible practice is to accepta small amount of ongoing overheadto internationalize from day one in thedevelopment cycle. This ensures two vitalfactors: flexibility to localize quickly atany time and a gradual lessening of theinternationalization learning curve asdevelopers incorporate best practices intotheir daily work.

So far, we have discussed interna-tionalization primarily in the contextof software coding, but a quick detourto other areas of product develop-ment is worthwhile. One that comesto mind immediately is allowing suf-ficient white space in documentation toabsorb language growth without causingpagination changes. This is rather like UI
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Core Focus


design. It is sometimes hard to convincetechnical writers that white space is theirfriend, but it is definitely the friend ofthe localizer and the CFO. Desktop pub-lishing is expensive; a lot of time andmoney can be saved if translated docu-mentation does not require repagination.

Not having to repaginate can mitigateanother unfortunate phenomenon thatsometimes occurs: the separation ofscreenshots from descriptive text. Inrecent years, we have moved away fromextensive documentation sets, but in theolden days when I cut my localizationteeth, hard-coded page references werea big problem. These always had to bedouble-checked and adjusted in thefinal localized books because languagegrowth caused the original page refer-ences to be inaccurate. Better authoringsoftware, topic-based authoring and the

migration to electronic documentation inrecent years have largely eliminated thisproblem in todays localization arena.

And, finally, internationalizationcan be carried into such areas as col-lateral material. I remember one graphicdesign product that had an extensivetutorial whose central theme was aboutcreating a poster promoting aluminumcan recycling. Our Nordic office had tocompletely replace this tutorial becausealuminum cans were not sold in itsregion; hence, customers would have noidea what the tutorial was about. Choice

of a more internationally generic centraltheme might have saved the company,or at least that regional office, a sub-stantial amount of money. Then there isthe whole area of advertising, wherebycomparative ads are forbidden in somelocales. Whether this kind of issue falls

into the category of internationalizationor that of localization is less clear, andthere are many associated questions, notthe least of which is who owns corporateidentity: headquarters or the regionaloffices.

LocalizationThis brings us to localization. It is no

accident that this area of the pyramid isthe smallest. If globalization and inter-nationalization as previously discussedare thoroughly executed, then a founda-tion is built that ensures that the effortrequired for localization is minimized.But lets look at what localization is. Iprefer the following definition: localiza-tion is the process of adapting productsand accompanying materials to suit atarget-market locale with the goal ofmaking the product transparent to that

locale, so that native users interact withit as if it were developed there and forthat locale alone.

Given that globalization defines aproducts requirements and internation-alization makes a product localizable,localization simply becomes a matter ofimposing regional context upon a locale-neutral product. By definition, this usuallyinvolves translation, but it may not. Forexample, the creation of Microsoft Money98 for the Canadian market requiredauthoring of content that was relevantto Canadian wealth management, many

attributes of which are different from itsAmerican counterpart. In this context,content creation was localization, notinternationalization, although no transla-tion was involved. Internationalizationwas the product design that allowedeffortless substitution of Canadian con-

tent in place of the original Americancontent.

Localization may involve imposingfunctional constraints on products. Earlierin this article I mentioned a case involving128-bit encryption. The generic, interna-tionalized version of the product could

have either 128-bit or 64-bit encryptionenabled. The localized version had only64-bit encryption available to the user, andmost of the product shipped to the localewas also translated into French.

The notion held by many a seniormanager is that localization is excessivelyexpensive. This is because cost generationin the globalization and internationaliza-tion layers of the pyramid is not readily

visible. But inefficiencies created by poorlyexecuted upstream activities adverselyaffect those downstream, resulting ingreater overall cost (Figure 2). If company

management complains that localizationcosts are too high, then the first place tolook is not at the localization activitiesor unit prices but, instead, at the bottomand second layers of the pyramid. Unfor-tunately, this is far too frequently not wellunderstood by C-level management.

Client-side localization project man-agers and solution architects at largertechnology and linguistic service vendorstend to be the corporate resources thathave the broadest viewpoint and greatestunderstanding of how the layers in thepyramid model affect one another. There

are numerous strategies that may beemployed to evangelize the relationshipbetween the models layers.

I envision the localization manager ina fragile canoe paddling upstream froma sea of localized deliverables, strainingagainst the prevailing corporate currentof conflicting goals and budgetary con-straints, navigating through rapids andnarrows of internationalization, all theway to the distant peaks of globalizationdecisions that reside in some farawaycorner office. Indeed, a lot of effort is nec-essary and the journey can be daunting.It can require perseverance and patience.But it can be equally fascinating if oneis not afraid to get wet once in a while!

Along the way, the pyramid model canbe used as a secure anchor as well as apowerful, easily understood metaphor forcharting direction and progress. May itserve you well! M

This is an updated version of an arti-cle that was published in MultiLingualsApril/May 2009 Getting Started Guide.
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Cor

eFocus

The growing market ofglobal information consumers

Benjamin B. Sargent

EEnterprise translation buyers scrutinizing

their annual spend should feel confident thatthe potential return on investment for trans-lation and localization has expanded rapidly,and is likely to continue doing so for the fore-

seeable future. Figure 1 demonstrates how thelong tail of languages plays out online in order

to reach worldwide customers. However, theglobal information revolution goes way beyondthat, and by extension it is clear that printedword translations also show an expandingcommercial value due to the global explosionof information consumers.

While in Western Europe and North America, the so-calledmiddle class appears to be in crisis, everywhere else in theworld it is growing quickly. Middle-class households in Africawill double by 2020. The middle class in India will rise from150 to 600 million by 2030. Goldman Sachs predicts that twobillion people will join the middle class by 2030.

Joining the ranks of the middle class means gaining accessto computers and mobile devices with internet access. In turn,access to the internet changes our engagement with content.Becoming an information consumer changes how we learnabout products and services. As consumers and employees,we begin to access services online, in private networks, or onmobile phones. We engage with products and services, withcompanies and brands via digital content, and by joining socialnetworks we enter into broader circles of influence with otherinformation consumers. Participating in online social networksalters how we share what we know with others. Our exposure

to products, services, brands and economic exchanges radicallyincreases.

In the past two years, the economic potential addressablethrough online communication has risen from $36.5 trillionto $44.6 trillion, a staggering sum. Only a third of that totalis addressable in English as a native tongue. As more of theworlds people adopt the ways of the information consumer,the value of translation will continue to grow. The number ofbig languages on the web has grown from an initial few; now

product and service companies require at least 12 languages toreach 80% of the online population. It takes 13 languages toaddress 90% of the worlds online spending power. The longtail of languages is starting to assert its power.

Social media marketing, with its significantly more effectiveand cost-efficient means of influencing both consumer andbusiness purchasing behaviors, will soon require coordinatedactivities in 30, 40 and eventually 50+ languages. While thetask of managing product and information releases across somany languages is daunting, market planners must recognizethat the greater effort is already being offset by increasedbenefits derived from the expanding e-GDP values for eachtranslation done.

Its high time for enterprise planners and marketers to getserious about language assets and managing the translationbusiness process. For language service providers and otherlocalization practitioners its a good time to be in the languagebusiness. M

Benjamin B. Sargent is a senior analyst and content

globalization strategist with Boston-area research

and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory.


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Outstanding

Localization

Translation & Localization

I translation and localizationIprooreading

Icompany-specifc glossaries

Ipost-editing servicesIproject management

Idesktop publishing

Your German Language Specialist

Cologne, Germany Tel +49(0)221 801 928-0 www.rheinschrift.de

Figure 1: The languages needed to reach the online world.
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Cor

eFocus

Localization forthe long tail: Part 1

David Filip

TThis is Part 1 of a series focusing on long tail

localization.

Traditionally, volunteerism and professionalismhave been perceived in opposition. Nevertheless,in present day collaborative environments, thisdistinction is increasingly blurred. By no meanscould we define a volunteer as someone whodelivers lower quality. Often volunteers workingfor various good causes are motivated to performat their very best standard, as they are emotionallyengaged with the causes and, because their workis often highly visible, they would not dare toperform suboptimally.

The cluster of notions related to the term prosumer plays aprominent role here. Prosumeris a portmanteau word first coinedby futurologist Alvin Toffler in the early 1980s as a contraction ofproactive consumer, and most often refers to hobbyists who per-form basically on par with professionals. In the context of coveringthe long tail of minority languages, prosumer localizers are proac-tive, as they do not rely on official institutions or corporationsto create specialized terminology. They also more often than notdisplay a high degree of professionalism.

It can be said that survival of languages under a certainthreshold number of speakers depends on formation of the prosumerlocalization communities. The market forces generated, say, by lessthan a million speakers are not strong enough to fund commerciallocalization and translation of key technology stacks and bodiesof knowledge. The activism of prosumers is driven by highly emo-tional factors, and activist prosumers are usually very well aware

that their effort is the only force that can put their mother tongue

into the context of full-fledged cultural languages in other words,to prevent its slow and unmanaged death. Localizations of Wikipe-dia, core open source or corporate technology stacks (such as Linuxoperating system, Microsoft Windows, gmail, Libre Office, Firefox)are just a few examples of formational localization projects thathave been known to lead to conceptions of modern technology-ready versions of minority languages in emerging regions.

In our industry the volunteerism and prosumer debates hadoften been grotesquely shrunk into the so-called issue of transla-tion crowdsourcing, and professional translators feel threatenedby the price pressure of the free alternatives to their professionalservices. This is, of course, an oversimplification, because buildinga working machine translation (MT) or crowdsourcing solution isknown to have steep investment requirements and despite popular

belief there is ongoing cost associated with keeping them running.This is also the reason why prosumerism in localization cannot beconfined to the area of translation. Volunteerism needs to perme-ate the whole organizational structure or network to keep minoritylocalizations running in terms of infrastructure coordination, butalso the baseline standardization of orthography, terminology,scripts (Unicode), locale specifics (Unicode Common Locale DataRepository CLDR) and so on.

The topic of prosumerism is prominent in China (both PRCand ROC), both in the context of the translation industry and ingeneral. Comparative studies by Taiwanese scholars of crowd-sourced (in PRC) and professionally translated and edited content(in ROC) offer good lessons here, similar to Miguel A. Jimenez-Crespos study of the Spanish Facebook translator community oranother study by CNGLs Magdalena Dombek about the Polish one.Jimenez-Crespo shows that Spanish Facebook has achieved thefeeling of an indigenous Spanish page, and we know from publicFacebook presentations that the price tag is not free. Therefore,it is important for minority languages survival to be representedin localization prosumer communities rather than just translationcommunities. Shared technology and infrastructure play an impor-tant role, and in turn the cost of these can be driven down bystandardization not only language, alphabet and script standard-ization but also project and resource exchange formats. There aremany players in localization crowdsourcing in emerging markets,

David Filip is a researcher in next-generationlocalization project and process managementand an interoperability standardization expert.The underlying research was supported byScience Foundation Ireland as part of a Centrefor Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) project.


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including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft,The African Network for Localization(ANLoc), Translators without Borders andThe Rosetta Foundation. Nevertheless, it is

obvious that the methods that are a mustfor economically nonviable minority lan-guages can be generalized and replicatedwith mature language communities. The

important ingredient is passion, and asSpanish speakers do not need to be anx-ious about the future of their language,they will prosumerize based on other pas-

sions, such as other sorts of good causesor simply a passion for a product.

The previously mentioned Chinesestudies show that the professional and

prosumer scenes differ in methods andvalues, but foremost in their goals. Becausea prosumer translator of high tech newscontent strives to produce a documentmirroring the original English source in itsabsolute difference, he or she tends to useliteral translation as a conscious method

for achieving this, and may resort to longand insightful translator notes to conveymeaning that is outside of Chinese con-text and thus not within the intellectualgrasp of the average interested reader. Onthe other end, the professional publisherstrives to create an indigenous experienceas if the news was originally written inChinese for Chinese people. Compensationis a chief method; culturally unintelligibleexamples are replaced with local ones,and regionally irrelevant paragraphs arecompletely deleted. It is important to notethat in many minority languages, unlike in

Mandarin and other established languages,the compensation option simply may notexist, and a literal translation with bla-tant conveying of otherness is the onlyoption. It is important to note that largetranslation projects such as Bible transla-tions, Shakespeare translations and so onplayed an extremely important formativerole in the development and enrichmentof languages. Nevertheless, before thoseformative projects, the then emerging lan-guages did not have indigenous methodsof conveying new imagery and conceptualworlds. The literal translations that resulted

enriched the language, much like now-emerging languages are being enrichedby Wikipedia translations and major userinterface translation projects.

Apart from volunteer translators,we need to look at the volunteerismin all involved job descriptions. In the

Volunteer

Translator

Translation

TranslationEnvironment

Reporting

Review Engineering

Collaboration

TranslationProject

ProjectManagement

Subject MatterExpert

VolunteerEngineer

VolunteerProject Manager

NGORepresentative

Figure 1: Actors of social localization.

Figure 2: No volunteer roleis mutually exclusive.

Translator

Engineer ProjectManager

OrganizationalRepresentative
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not-for-profit setting, any single actor canbe an unpaid volunteer who can only ded-icate a fraction of a full-time equivalent tothe cause in question. This is, however, notsolely a nonprofit phenomenon. In the cor-porate world, many vital functions such asindustry practice standardization, profes-

sional forums and associations are drivenby part-time volunteers. Big corporationsdo include such work in (rather rare) jobdescriptions or sponsor full-time chairs,editors and so on. This is, however, not atall the rule or even statistically significant.Much critical standardization work is infact produced by dedicated volunteers,who despite representing their companiesin the forums, work after hours becausethey want to. Subject matter experts andin-country reviewers in many corporatesettings do work on the review tasks ontop of their regular duties, and they need

to be presented with the tasks in the mostefficient way possible. For all this, the scal-ing up of localization processes that mightbe first considered to cover the long tail

is totally relevant for the mainstream, coreprocesses.

Let us look at the involved actors basedon The Rosetta Foundation requirementsgathering with several global and regionalnot-for-profit and corporate players suchas Kiva (a US microfinancing NGO),

Adobe, ANLoc and so on.The special roles defined as collaborat-

ing actors in the basic use case for sociallocalization in Figure 1 can be performedby overlapping sets of users. Figure 2shows that no role is mutually exclusive,which means that any combination of theroles can be played by a single individualactor. In the context of covering the longtail of languages any one of them can bea volunteer.

Standardization challengeswith emerging languagesSome emerging regions, prominently

Africa, now suffer from the hyperinflationof the notion of a language. To have itsown language is a great weapon in the

struggle for self-determination of peoples.Many small groups of several hundred toseveral hundred thousand speakers cometo assert their rights in the national poli-tics of their countries, coming for the firsttime out of their economic and politicalisolation. The local chiefs are rarely able or

willing to see similarities, and the potentialbenefits of forming equivalences of theirdialects with the ones of the neighboringchief, and thus force the standardization oftheir own language at the national level.They pick a script and alphabet and leavea PhD candidate with the task of figuringout the written form of their language aspart of a linguistic program of a regionaluniversity or academy, and they returnto their village victorious with their ownlanguage established. Thus, countries likeSenegal end up with 37 languages for lessthan 13 million total speakers. I am aware

that I may sound politically incorrect, butstill, let us hope for some sort of consoli-dation for the sake of the African peoplethemselves. The challenge of covering the
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Core Focus


long tail will not be less formidable forsuch consolidations. The small languagecommunities would stand a much betterchance of defending their indigenous cul-tural heritage if they joined standardiza-tion and localization forces among closedialects.

It is impossible to draw a clear anduncontroversial boundary between theextensions of the concepts of a languageand a dialect. The reasons to considerdialects languages, and languages dialects,are rarely rational or otherwise based onscientific methods or facts. Homogenouslanguages spoken by moderate to smallnumbers of native speakers have been splitunder political pressure, and artificiallyimposed script variants introduced tosupport various geopolitical or religiousclaims. On the opposite end of the spec-trum, China and the Islamic world insistthat Chinese and Arabic are homogenous

languages and thus politicians do not grantlanguage status to large dialects spoken bymany millions that would be consideredlanguages according to Western under-standing. It is, however, well-known thatthe spoken dialects of many Chinese prov-inces, although officially the same Chinese,are mutually unintelligible and the identityof mainland Chinese is protected solely bythe general intelligibility of the Simpli-fied Chinese characters invariably used toencode phonetically different morphemesof the same sense. The power of writtenlanguage-driven standardization must notbe underestimated.

Leaders of formative localization proj-ects should not underestimate the roleof their project in shaping the emergingtechnology-ready language; they shouldbe actively aware of it and as a resultshould strive to strike a balance with theofficial academic or government institu-

tion in charge of language matters. Thisall of course means extra cost. If this can-not be budgeted or otherwise covered oraccounted for in collaboration with otherstakeholders (such as self-appointed lan-guage stewards), there will be explosiveissues during and after quality assurance

cycles, as the omitted stakeholders willgradually come to see and wonder whathas been produced.

Deep vs. shallow methodsThis is similar to and in some sense

an extension of the contrast betweenrule-based (RBMT) and statistical (SMT)methods in the area of MT. There is nosingle canonical solution to either of thesecontroversies. Instead, we should thinkof them as functions of required qualityand available resources, their kinds andprice tags. As from the 1950s through

the 1990s the computing resources werescarce and expensive compared to evenhighly qualified human labor, the naturalMT paradigm was rule-based because therules were simply being invented andencoded by a highly qualified and special-ized computational linguist. Some of theRBMT engines that had been developed fordecades achieved remarkable quality ontheir pairs and domains. But in the mean-time, in clear correlation with the fallingprice of computing power and growing

volumes of parallel corpora produced bytranslation memory (TM), the competing

statistical paradigm gained prevalence.However, the limits of data are being hitin present day. On several commerciallyavailable general engine language pairs,there is not enough data on Earth to buythem a single additional point of BLUE orMETEOR by the sheer power of statistics.Thus, hybrid approaches are gaining prev-alence and it can be said that all commer-cially viable solutions in 2012 are in somesense hybrid; the rules find their ways intothe largely statistically built engines at

various stages of engine development, beit at the stage of data selection; automaticor semi-supervised inference of syntactictrees or treelets; supervised identificationof significant n-grams; introduction ofruntime vocabularies; and so on.

MT is just one of many instances ofmachine learning that is used in the vastresearch area of natural language process-ing (NLP). One of the most prominentareas of NLP-based text analytics is senti-ment mining and monitoring. Sentimentrecognition data analytics is about the

If undertaking a project into alanguage yet unknown to you, performresearch of the current standardizationlevel of the language. What script(s)are used to write the language? Are

all the important characters neededto write the language included in thecurrent Unicode standard? Are therelevant locales in CLDR? Is there anacademic or governmental languageauthority? Have your competitors beentranslating into the language? What isthe size of Wikipedia in the language?Have operating systems been localizedinto that language? Are there viableinput methods for the language?

If the above information is noteasily accessible by standard searchmethods, you should start your efforts

with commissioning a feasibility study. Be open and flexible toward

minority language communities. Pre-pare generalized self-serve localizationpacks for languages and locales thatwould not be reachable for you basedon traditional market feasibility. Sucha pack can buy you markets virtuallyfor free and the loyalty generated byyour open approach is priceless. Theexample here is the Basque communityactively requesting to set up a fullyself-serve Basque locale on Facebook.

Be aware of the infrastructure

and general education conditions. Tune

your tool stack to be usable in the givenconditions. Combining multiple toolstacks is easier if they implement stan-dard exchange formats, such as XLIFF.There are generally two approaches here.

First, bootstrap on what is available,synchronize work on modem connec-tions or only from time to time, such aswhen the translator gets to cycle to aninternet caf 50 kilometers away. Havea low-profile, sturdy, robust (as in bulletproof) multiplatform client or even anSMS based process. Second, you couldcreate a fully controlled, full featuredenvironment and bring your resourcesthere. The cost of setup, training andmaintenance is high; still some are will-ing to pay for maintaining control. This iswhat MultiCorpora did in a government

sponsored project to empower the Inuk-titut community.

Working with NLP or MT, try touse shallow solutions first. If it does notwork, do a proper return on investmentcalculation before jumping on custom-ization. Even though local chiefs mightinsist that their languages are different,throwing data together might do thetrick.

Pay special attention to datahygiene upon standardized messageformats, so that your multilingual infor-mation flows can be based on empirical

data mining.

Takeaways


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KilgrayTranslaTion

Technologies

firsTTranslaTionTool

conferenceinTheusasananTonio,Texas

January31sTfebruary1sT

2013

memoqfest.org | kilgray.com | [email protected]

Industry trends. Networking. Workshops.

most powerful response of the corporateplayers to the loss of control over theircontent. The first step to improving yourimage is actually to figure out if it needsimprovement and, if there are negativesentiments around, what caused themand can they be remedied with anything

that still is (more or less) under corporatecontrol, such as feature development.Because of the extremely important roleof sentiment mining in corporate deci-sion making, multinationals are oftennot willing to wait for deep methods tocover the long tail and are increasinglyinvesting into shallow methods such asthis for detecting exceptional (negative orpositive) sentiments across a vast numberof languages. As in many areas, the long-term viable solutions will be hybrid andmost probably crowdsourced by passion-ate prosumers. As discussed previously,

long tail language communities thatwont prosumerize will most probablyperish, and therefore merely coveringthem with shallow methods will be ofonly ephemeral significance.

Business intelligenceIt is vital for long-term data hygiene

that multilingual content is designedwith multidirectional (as in ordered pairs,not directionality of text) multilingualinformation flow in mind. Looking at anypiece of content inside an organizational

context, you should be able to tell if thispiece of content was developed in thelanguage in which it is now, if it is trans-latable or not, if it needs culture or localespecific treatment, if it was machine orhuman translated, eventually post-edited,if it passed any quality assurance steps andwith what results.

This might sound like a utopian vision,but actually it is not. The key to globalbusiness intelligence without a central-ized and privileged monolithic hub clearlyis the adoption of standardized messageformats, and there are a number of core

standards (such as XML and HTML),specialized vocabularies (such as XLIFF),

various web services standards, and othercore standards and repositories (such asUnicode and CLDR) that allow for the

building of such a permeating locationlessintelligence. This picture is currently beingperfected by the development of two majorrelevant next-generation specifications,OASIS XLIFF 2.0 and W3C ITS 2.0, whichare set to produce semantically matchingresults due to their strong and explicit

liaison interrelations.Business intelligence must be collected

to drive decisions on content creationstrategies and workflows. Any piece ofinformation created anywhere within amultinational distributed structure mustbecome the subject of an overall multi-lingual content intelligence platform. Wemust qualify that this platform cannotand must not be thought of in terms of amonolithic tool stack as is often found inthe translation management system cat-egory. It is a natural development of theconcept of an open web platform; it is a

platform of common interests and match-ing process-oriented semantics. This fullcontent life cycle must be considered whenmaking strategies for massively multilin-gual content in any setting. M
http://www.kilgray.com/http://kilgray.com/http://memoqfest.com/http://www.multilingual.com/mailto:[email protected]


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|MultiLingual October/ November 2012 [email protected]

CoreFocus

Adobe Flash localizationManish Kanwal & Akulaa Agarwal

LLocalizing structured content through trans-

lation management tools is generally a simpleprocess. However, localizing unstructured con-tent, such as text appearing in Adobe Flashvideos, is not easy. This means that trackingtranslation efficiencies for unstructured contentis all the more difficult.

There are, however, some best practices that could be appliedto any localization of text or other assets in Adobe Flash files.

A compilation of these best practices was prepared from an

independent study done for a complex Adobe software prod-uct, aided by Jakub krabal and Petr Knpek from Moravia.This article covers some aspects of Flash localization, includingcreating English content correctly, so that it is internationalizedand thus localization friendly. Following these best practicescan lead to effort and cost savings, which when considered incontext of the number of languages could be sizeable.

Extracting textThe ease or difficulty of localizing Flash animation depends

on the globalization readiness of the source, which is usually anEnglish Flash animation file. During the localization process, alltext requiring translation is extracted from the source anima-tion. It is then replaced by localized text and modified accord-ing to the style guide, including choice of font size and so on.In some cases, text requiring localization is not included in thetext layers but is present as a graphic embedded in an image.Therefore, the source animation must be fixed first to make itready for localization.

As a first step in the localization ofFlash animation, all text requiring local-ization should be extracted from theanimation. This step is made possible bycommercial tools, such as Flash Local-ization Tool, or by renaming the source

Manish Kanwal is a program manager at AdobeSystems with experience spanning across almost tencountries and mult iple industry vert icals.

Akulaa Agarwal completed her bachelors degree ininformation technology from Delhi University, India.

She has worked with Adobe Systems since 2004.

Figure 1: Example of pseudo-localization. All strings that were

externalized in a text layer have been replaced by the Xstring. Whatsnew was not replaced. Figure 2: Screenshot localized into Russian.Whats new is correctly localized. In this case, the source wasfixed, and the localizable text in the button was externalized.


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Flash animation file as a ZIP archive,and then extracting all XML files fromthe library subfolder of the ZIP archive.

The Flash native format is a ZIParchive with a defined structure. Abasic knowledge of this structureenables you to easily extract all textlayers from the animation. Text layers

in XML files can be found surroundedby the Your text XML tags.

Besides storing the localizable text,the XML data stores information aboutthe font size, font family and style. Inmost cases, the input parameters such asfont family and size can be easily modi-fied to obtain the desired output fonts.More details about the Flash XML filewill follow in the coming sections.

Pseudo-localization

The first best practice is to apply

pseudo-localization to identify local-izable text which is not in text layersand externalize it. This ensures thatthe animation is ready for localizationand that all text requiring translationresides in the text layers. Ideally, thisis to be done by the team creating theEnglish Flash file.

During this process, the text inthe text layer requiring translation isreplaced by predefined strings such asX. After doing so, original XML filesin the library subfolder are replacedby modified ones. When this action iscomplete, the file is regenerated andplayed back in Flash player. By play-ing this rendered file, one can easilylocate strings that were not pseudo-localized. Text originally present inthe text layers is displayed as X in thisrendering. If there is still any readabletext, it usually comes from embeddedvideos, graphics or an ActionScript.Examples of pseudo-localization aredepicted in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 3 (left above): Only the first layer is visible. Figure 4 (right above): The second partof text is visible, completing the sentence. Figure 5 (below): Complex string in one

text layer only. There is no need to put text in yellow into a separate text layer.
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Text layersThe second best practice is to avoid

breaking down a string into multiple textlayers. If any text formatting is required,do it in only one text layer.

At times it is necessary to have dif-ferent animations for different parts ofa single string. More often than not,

authors choose different ways of insert-ing such a text in Flash animation.

There can be many ways to inserttext into Flash animation. However,one must choose between them andstick to only one approach for a givenFlash project to ensure smooth local-ization. Avoid representing text using

a scalar vector graphic. In this caseit will appear correctly in the anima-tion, but will not have anything cor-responding in the XML file. Therefore,it is recommended that you use only textlayers.

Also avoid breaking a single string

into multiple strings, unless spe-cifically required. Any separation inmultiple substrings will result in thesame amount of separation in the XMLfile. This is known as text segmenta-tion, and can lead to loss of contextduring translation and thus incorrectlocalization.

Figures 3 and 4 describe the issue oftext segmentation. The intended text isLoyal customers like you save with spe-cial upgrade pricing. Adobe PhotoshopElements & Adobe Premiere Elements isnow a perfect 10! However, the under-

lined text reading special upgrade pric-ing has been separated as a substringfor formatting issues and has been keptas a separate layer. The latest versionof Flash allows authors to keep stringswith different font family, color, style,size and so on in one text layer. Figure5 illustrates an example of a complexstring (part of the text is in yellow withbigger font) in one text layer.

Keep in mind that layer separationwill result in the segmentation of stringsin the XML file. The translator will seethem as two separate strings without

them being related, as in Figure 6.With all this in mind, it is recom-

mended that you dont split a stringinto smaller substrings, no matter whattool you use for creating Flash anima-tions. Rather, keep them in one textlayer whenever possible. The advan-tages of this approach are that thestring remains well ordered in the XMLfile, and translators get a better contextduring translation, hence improving thelinguistic quality of the translations.

Embedded videosFlash animations often contain embed-

ded videos. The best way to localizeembedded videos in Flash is to extractall text from the video, localize that text,replace it with the translated text and cre-ate a localized video.

For the given Flash file, embedded vid-eos can be found in the Flash object libraryunder the Embedded Video type.

If there are any segments to be local-ized within the embedded videos and only

Figure 6: Representation of substrings in the XML file.Substrings are enclosed in the tag inside the XML file.


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www.multilingual.com October/ November 20 12 MultiLingual |

the Flash file has been provided, it is dif-ficult and time consuming to localize thestrings in it. When the video is carefullyanalyzed, in some cases the text can befaked, which is not a good localizationpractice. Faking normally involves the fol-lowing steps:

First, screenshots are taken for eachmotion in the animation. Second, Englishcharacters are removed from each screen-

shot by using tools like Adobe Photoshop.Third, English characters are replaced bylocalized text of similar appearance fontsize, color and so on. These screenshots arethen integrated to compose a video withlocalized text.

This approach works only when theportion of the video behind the text isstatic. As mentioned earlier, this is not anefficient localization method and is limitedto static videos. If the text is moving veryfast (as in an animation) or text is staticbut the background is changing equallyfast, it is almost impossible to follow thisprocess. For this type of file, it is necessaryto spend many hours to localize just a fewseconds of video.

Thus, when you have a rapidlychanging background on which the textis superimposed, localization can be aharrowing experience if the source videofile and the externalized text layers arenot available to the translators. How-ever, with an editable video project file,the translators can modify all text lay-

ers inside embedded videos and preparelocalized versions of those videos.

Again, it is recommended to not embedassets in videos if you want to localizethem. Instead, provide them separately.

Screenshot animationOne can create an animation inside

the Flash project from a series of screen-

shots. See an example of a screenshotseries in Figure 7 and Figure 8. In thiscase, as the timeline drifts from left toright, the animated text on the surfboardstarts to appear. Figure 7 represents whenthe timeline has not started, and Figure 8represents when the timeline has ended.

Text in the screenshots is localizable,and a source Photoshop file with editable

Figure 7 (left): Screenshot series. You can see both the preview of the screenshot and the sequence of screenshotsin the Flash timeline. Figure 8 (right): End of the screenshot series in the Flash animation. Text is animated

within the series, and every screenshot adds one letter of the text into the animation.
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text layer needs to be created. Once thisstep is complete, the English text is to bereplaced with the translated one.

However, if the source Photoshopfile is not provided, the only way tocreate a localized version is to remove

the English text, for example by usingtools like Photoshop, and replace, say,the first English character with a local-ized character at the same axis in theimage and take a screenshot. Then youhave to repeat this for the next Englishcharacter until all are done. Finally,superimpose all the screenshots on eachother and set the time so that it matchesEnglish animation.

It should be obvious that doing thisfor every character is a significant effort.Therefore, if you have an editable source

Photoshop fileavailable, makesure you provideit to your local-ization engineer.

For any localizable text within agraphic (graphical text), it is importantto provide the source English assets. Ifthe source editable asset is not provided,it has to be recreated by the localization

vendor to be able to replace text with a

localized version and create a renderingfor the Flash project. During recreationof the editable source asset, some effectscan be overlooked and hence missed inthe localized version.

Buttons and active layersIt is vital to keep all buttons with

localizable texts as Movie Clip type ina Flash project and not to use differ-ent Flash types to simulate the buttonfunctionality. If the button functional-ity consists of multiple Flash types, it

is likely that during post processing,the engineers may unintentionally useincorrect relative alignment of theseobjects inside frames. This may impactthe Flash file functionally, and in somecases, render it corrupt.

An example of a corrupted buttonis shown in Figure 9. Here, the buttonconsists of graphical text in the yel-low box and an active layer (shown asa blue frame), which plays the role of

clickable area. You may observe thatthe box is not aligned with the activelayer and the left side of this buttonis not clickable. Additionally, the rightside incorrectly contains an overlappedactive area.

Active layers outside of the buttonboundary in Flash can lead to misalign-ment within the localized version ofFlash. It requires one to resize buttonand active layer objects with everychange in the number of text charac-ters in the button. Creating buttons asMovie Clip will avoid such issues in

Flash animations.

FlickeringIn some Flash players, localized text

can exhibit a flickering effect. That is,text is moved by one or a few pixelsto the left, right, up or down when thecursor is hovered over it.

See Figure 10 for more details.Girie geri shifts slightly at a low levelcompared to ri dn and the rest of thetext when the mouse is hovered over it.

The only way to fix the flickeringissue is to convert text layers within thelocalized Flash project into curves andthen render them into the final format.Graphical texts (curves) do not show theflickering effect.

Flickering is most often visible inolder versions of Flash players. It is rec-ommended that you use the latest Flashplayers that do not display this effect.Otherwise, localized text layers have tobe converted into curves before renderinginto the final format. M

Figure 9 (left) : Corrupted Whats new button.Active layer (blue frame) is not aligned with yellow box.

Figure 10 (above): Flickering in detail.
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Core Focus: Localization

he ever-growing, easy international access to information,

services and goods underscores the importance of language

and cultural awareness. What issues are involved in reach-

ing an international audience? Are there technologies to help?

Who provides services in this area? Where do I start?

Savvy people in todays world use MultiLingualto answer

these questions and to help them discover what other questions

they should be asking.

MultiLinguals eight issues a year are filled with news, techni-

cal developments and language information for people who are

interested in the role of language, technology and translation in

our twentyfirst century world. A ninth issue, the annual ResourceDirectory and Index, provides valuable resources companies in

the language industry who can help you go global. There is also a

valuable index to the previous years magazine editorial content.

Two issues each year include a Core Focus such as this one,

which are primers for moving into new territories both geo-

graphically and professionally.

The magazine itself covers a multitude of topics including

those below.

TranslationTranslators are vital to the development of international and

localized software. Those who specialize in technical documents,

such as manuals for computer hardware and software, industrial

equipment and medical products, use sophisticated tools along

with professional expertise to translate complex text clearly and

precisely. Translators and people who use translation services track

new developments through articles and news items inMultiLingual.

LocalizationHow can you make your product look and feel as if it were

built in another culture for local users? Will the pictures and

colors you select for a user interface in France be suitable for

users in Brazil? How do you choose what markets to enter?

What sort of sales effort is appropriate for those markets? How

do you choose a localization service vendor? How do you man-

age a localization project? Managers, developers and localizers

offer their ideas and relate their experiences with practical advice

that will save you time and money in your localization projects.

InternationalizationMaking content ready for the international market requires

more than just a good idea. How does an international developer

prepare a product to be easily adaptable for multiple locales?

Youll find sound ideas and practical help in every issue.

Language technologyFrom systems that recognize your handwriting or your speech

in any language to automated translation on your phone lan-

guage technology is changing day by day. And this technology is

also changing the way in which people communicate on a personal

level affecting the requirements for international products and

changing how business is done all over the world.

MultiLingual is your source for the best information and

insight into these developments and how they affect you and

your business.

Global webEvery website is a global website because it can be accessed

from anywhere in the world. Experienced web professionals

explain how to create a site that works for users everywhere,how to attract those users to your site and how to keep the site

current. Whether you use the internet for purchasing services, for

promoting your business or for conducting fully international

e-commerce, youll benefit from the information and ideas in

each issue ofMultiLingual.

Managing contentHow do you track all the words and the changes that occur

in your documents? How do you know whos modifying your

online content and in what language? How do you respond to

customers and vendors in a prompt manner and in their own

languages? The growing and changing field of content man-

agement, customer relations management and other manage-

ment disciplines is increasingly important as systems become

more complex. Leaders in the development of these systems

explain how they work and how they interface to control and

streamline content management.

And theres much moreAuthors with in-depth knowledge summarize changes in the

language industry and explain its financial side, describe the

challenges of communicating in various languages and cul-

tures, detail case histories that are instructional and applicable

to your situation, and evaluate technology products and new

books. Other articles focus on particular countries or regions;

specific languages; translation and localization training pro-

grams; the uses of language technology in specific industries

a wide array of current topics from the world of multilingual

language, technology and business.

If you are interested in reaching an international audience

in the best way possible, you need to subscribe to MultiLingual.

An invitation to subscribe to

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