An Interview About L10n Customization with Paul Hegarty, Iota

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As part of Lingoport’s upcoming webinar, Bringing a Human Touch to Continuous L10n, we interviewed our featured guest speaker, Paul Hegarty, Head of Engineering at Iota, to get some quick insights into the current state and future of localization. Specifically, Paul explores how advances in automation technology is impacting the customization, speed, and quality of localization output.

 

View i18n Webinar Recording

 

How has Localization evolved since you began in the industry? Where do you see the industry 10 years from now?

Paul Hegarty: Massively. I started in the l10n industry in 1994, and large QA teams were a part of all l10n providers. Manuals were printed, software was mass produced on disk sets and CDs, online was really only in its infancy. Cloud computing has completely changed how we work, QA is now a mixture of shorter, targeted test passes with the ability to fix issues almost “live”. Updates are now much more frequent and less static, they can occur at any time, and for numerous reasons. The cloud has completely changed how we work, how we communicate, how projects are run and delivered. Online technologies have replaced a lot of the desktop technologies we used – documentation is now usually built via web based build systems rather than compiled on a desktop. In another 10 years I see the industry being further distanced from the concept of “desktop” computing – everything we do will be in the cloud, and we’ll become more and more device agnostic.

 

Why has customizability become so important for L10n?

Paul Hegarty: The variety of file types, the content within those file types and how dev teams address l10n (which is often a low priority) mean that what we actually get to translate is far from a standard format. While some long established dev teams have their product well prepared for l10n, many of the products we see are new (that’s becoming more common), with the result that a proper l10n strategy has not been defined. In a lot of cases, a proper strategy might never be defined as these products are under constant change. Hence, we often find ourselves having to customize solutions for individual projects to make sure our translators can access everything they need to access, in a manner that is productive for them, whilst hiding them from the material that they don’t want or need to see. The other element to this is the very granular requirements around some of the projects we see, where certain components of a project might be translatable in one language but not in others. So not only are we customizing for a massive variety of file formats, but the complexity of translation requirements of the overall project is increasing also.

 

How have advances in L10n technology and processes impacted the quality, speed, and needs of L10n??

Paul Hegarty: I think the demands of l10n customers are driving the l10n technologies, not the other way around. Our industry and the technologies we employ are driven by the increasing demands of our customers. Speed is crucial as release schedules get tighter and tighter, and volumes continue to grow. Efficient reuse of previous translation is critical to the success of projects that are constantly being updated.

 

What would you describe as the leading challenge of blending technologies and customizability?

Paul Hegarty: For me, that is deciding when you employ and pay for an off-the-shelf technology compared with a customized solution. For established projects with large volumes and lots of updates, where the workflow is defined, it makes sense that a technology solution will work (and importantly will be worth paying for). For new projects, not so defined (dev teams unfamiliar with l10n), with smaller volumes and constantly changing formats and requirements, customized solutions are the answer as the overhead in terms of time and expense for technology solutions often will not be an option.

 

What is the biggest opportunity to improve L10n processes?

Paul Hegarty: Hard question to answer – in the ideal world, l10n being part of the dev approach to product design – all to often, l10n is an afterthought. From our perspective, being able to adapt to our customers’ needs, advise and educate on best practices around l10n and always reviewing our processes and approach to our customers’ projects is the answer. Improvement is a continuous goal.

Date/Time

  • Date: October 24th, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

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Webinar: Bringing a Human Touch to Continuous L10n

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Continuous Localization is far from a “one size fits all” endeavor. In fact, the best technologies are nothing more than shelfware if you’re not fulfilling unique technical and business requirements. It takes bespoke attention to service, customizing to the unique needs of enterprise customers, security and software requirements, product teams, and target markets.

In this webinar, Lingoport and IOTA will be analyzing the most common personalized engagement needs we’ve experienced within client organizations to ensure the highest level of customer success.

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A Powerhouse of Localization Experience

In this webinar, we’ll hear from Lingoport’s own Adam Asnes, CEO and Olivier Libouban, VP of Product Development along with featured guest speakers from Iota, Paul Hegarty and Graham Rigby.

Paul is Head of Engineering at Iota and has worked in localization since 1994. He has held various positions with translation service providers from roles in QA and localization engineering, through analysis/pre-sales support roles to his current Head of Engineering position at Iota.

Graham is Business Development Director at Iota and has been involved in the software industry for nearly 20 years, working in a broad range of client-side and LSP based roles in sales, marketing and solutions architecture.

What You Will Learn

  • New practical ideas to help your localization go smoother and faster!
  • How to eliminate friction points, delays and hiccups between development and localization
  • How to avoid unforeseen costs
  • How quality L10n engineering and systems enhance your efforts
  • Future proofing your program as your organization expands its global focus

Date/Time

  • Date: October 24, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

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An Interview About Globalization Technology with Allison McDougall

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As part of Lingoport’s webinar, Learn Continuous i18n & L10n, and Buy a Droid Too!, we interviewed our featured guest speaker, Allison McDougall, SVP of Global Sales at Amplexor, to get some quick insights into the current state and future of globalization including processes, technology, communication, and opportunities for improvement.

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How has i18n technology evolved since you began in the industry?

Allison McDougall: Evolution from traditional ‘train-the-trainer’-style teaching developers how to develop code with localization in mind; evolution from identifying potential I18N issues once development is finished to agile-based, ‘real-time’, continuous I18N. It’s been incredible to witness the combined evolution of both Technology as well as overall global awareness!

 

What would you describe as the leading challenge of blending technologies and service?

Allison McDougall: Ah, great question! I would say “Understanding the BUSINESS need and ensuring that all team members continue to stay on the same page in terms of requirements, interdependencies, and communication.”

 

How do you feel globalization will evolve over the next 20 years? How will the technology continue to evolve?

Allison McDougall: Most of us are feeling the effects of increased automation and AI in the industry now … Content and software DEVELOPMENT will become much more automated, as will globalization efforts. Content data stores will be used to create more content, and we’ll be able to globalize much faster using existing technologies that embed AI and are able to make complex decisions ‘on the fly’. People working in this industry will become even more strategic, more valuable, more consultative as we educate clients and executives about the pros/cons around developing software and content that most effectively aligns with business goals.

 

What is the biggest opportunity to improve globalization processes?

Allison McDougall: Identify your internal Champion. Move up the value chain, insist upon your ‘seat at the table’, create globalized software and content at source — something we have been evangelizing for well over a decade. Globalization can no longer be an after-thought.

Date/Time

  • Date: September 26th, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

 

Ready to learn more? View the webinar today!

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Webinar: Learn Continuous i18n & L10n, and Buy a Droid Too!

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Are you a Star Wars fan? Are you struggling to gain globalization support from your organization?

Register for our upcoming webinar, “Learn Continuous i18n & L10n, and Buy a Droid Too!,” for the exclusive debut and demonstration of our new Star Wars themed sandbox e-commerce site.

You’ll be able to explore i18n issues in real-time, share with your team, & provide a better understanding of i18n & continuous L10n issues, processes, and technologies. Battling the “dark side” of globalization…just became fun!

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“Use The Force”…of i18n and L10n Technology

Lingoport has created an e-commerce site, Rebel Outfitters, that demonstrates the concept and technologies that put internationalization, localization, context and Linguistic QA in sync with the speed and changes of agile development.

Want to localize for Yoda? How about Sith? After the webinar you’ll have first access to play with the sandbox, explore our various Star Wars themed i18n and L10n issues, share with your team, and have some fun.

i18n and L10n Jedi Master Insights

In this webinar we’ll hear from Adam Asnes, CEO of Lingoport, Olivier Libouban, VP of Product Development at Lingoport, and Allison McDougall, SVP of Global Sales at Amplexor, each industry veterans with extensive globalization experience.

Featured Guest

The webinar will features special guest, Allison McDougall, SVP of Global Sales at Amplexor. Allison is a board member of Women in Localization and a globalization-guru with over twenty years of multi-faceted experience. She’ll be sharing her extensive knowledge and insights, discussing the challenges and opportunities of blending technologies and service for fast and efficient globalization.

 

View i18n Webinar Recording

 

Date/Time

  • Date: September 26, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

View i18n Webinar Recording

An Interview About Globalization with Kevin Benson

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As part of Lingoport’s webinar, How to Engage Your Organization and Gain Critical Globalization Support, we interviewed guest speaker, Kevin Benson, Global VP of Corporate Sales at United Language Group to get some quick insights into the state of globalization including processes, communication, and opportunities for improvement.

View i18n Webinar Recording

 

How has globalization evolved since you started in the industry?

Kevin Benson: Process optimization and enhancement, to support human translation, are the most noticeable differences in the industry over the last decade. The ability to seamlessly share content from internal systems of record, without human intervention, has allowed companies to expand their efforts at globalization. Incorporating MT to augment human-based process, in addition to TM, is quickly changing the face of globalization as companies are able to leverage globalization across a broader spectrum of content and processes.

 

What would you describe as the number one globalization challenge organizations face?

Kevin Benson: Budgetary constraints continue to hamper globalization efforts across companies at a global level. Globalization is often considered as an afterthought around processes which are already optimized for throughput.

 

How does a lack of support and understanding from leadership teams impact globalization quality and efficiencies?

Kevin Benson: Not considering the budgetary implications of globalization often times causes companies to accept short-cuts in the globalization process which directly impact process efficiency and quality of final content. A firm understanding of globalization processes, investment requirements and overhead of not addressing early in the process is critical to success. Many leadership teams are frustrated by the investment required to ensure global acceptance of their products, but fail to consider or understand the potential cost savings offered by pre-planning and process optimization in the area of globalization.

 

What is the biggest opportunity to improve globalization processes?

Kevin Benson: Technology and trusted vendor partnerships go hand-in-hand in improving globalization process. Building a globalization process on a foundation of technology, supported by a collaborative team of resources offers tremendous gains on long-term investment and time to market.

Ready to learn more? View the webinar today!

Date/Time

  • Date: August 22, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

 

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Webinar: How to Engage Your Organization and Gain Critical Globalization Support

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It’s surprising, but here in 2019, our industry professionals are still fighting US-Centric perspectives that see software globalization as a low priority.  There are still attitudes that US English is fine for expanding to global customers.

The battle has certainly gotten easier, but it still remains. There’s also tactical friction, in that localization can seem expensive and to get in the way.

There are many globalization objections and conditions I have heard in the last couple of years.

View i18n Webinar Recording

Globalization Objections and Conditions

  • Our customers are technical and need to learn English anyway.
  • Our distributor says that if we give them our source code, they can just replace the strings with Chinese (what is this, 1995?).
  • We are already selling in these countries without doing anything new.
  • Localization is expensive.
  • We’ve already internationalized, but we’ve never tested that out and never translated.
  • We just don’t have time for that, we’re under a lot of release time pressure.
  • That’s a just translation.

These issues and judgements are a symptom of misunderstandings and limited mindsets.

There are organizational objections and impediments to globalization success that start with broad cultural mindset shortcomings, and then there are those that ultimately deal with day to day points of friction. As localization leaders, we need to consider both.

Localization is much more than a project management exercise, even if that is a person’s literal job title.

Webinar

In our webinar, we address cultural and tactical directives toward building more globally aware and responsive teams. We cite examples from experience, plus we’ve polled a few known industry experts.

And if you want to share your own success story, let us know and we can include it in the webinar.

View i18n Webinar Recording

Date/Time

Date: August 22, 2019
Time: 9am PT | 12pm ET | 18:00 CET
Duration: 45 minutes, plus audience Q&A

View i18n Webinar Recording

Lingoport Releases Globalyzer 6.3, Focusing i18n Detection

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August 14, 2019, Boulder, CO

Lingoport is pleased to announce the release of Globalyzer 6.3. Primary features include adding an easy slider interface to prioritize internationalization (i18n) issues, helping developers focus on fixing i18n problems quickly.

Additionally, more string concatenation was added, as concatenations come in many forms and tend to be one of the most repeated problems even for internationalized applications. The list of release enhancements includes:

  1. Focusing users on Top Scan Results
  2. Concatenation detection for HTML Strings
  3. Security enhancements for password encryption

We focused this release on getting development teams to high priority i18n results even faster. Many detected i18n issues may in fact be false positive detections as they can be conditional depending upon specific coding context. Globalyzer has the capability to detect issues with in a hierarchy of conditions, and we used that to help teams see the most likely i18n issues first and work their way towards less certain detections as they progress. That’s an important distinction for managers wanting deliver global readiness success at scale across their development teams, while also meeting demanding sprint schedules.

Release notes can be found at: https://wiki.lingoport.com/Globalyzer_Release_Notes#Globalyzer_6.3.0_Release_Notes_.28August_2019.29

To learn more about the Lingoport Suite and Globalyzer, please visit https://lingoport.com/products

Want to discuss your internationalization and continuous localization process? Contact Todd Flaska, tflaska(at)lingoport.com.

Visit our blog at https://lingoport.com/blog for industry posts, technical info and more.

What is Pseudo-Localization?

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What is Pseudo-Localization?

Pseudo-localization is an effective way to test the localization-readiness of an application. By pseudo-localizing the resource files, an application can be tested for internationalization without waiting for localization.

Creating pseudo-localized resource files help test for:

  1. embedded strings,
  2. text that was externalized but should not be,
  3. text expansion issues,
  4. character-encoding problems,
  5. text concatenation issues, and
  6. UI boundary issues can be identified.

Pseudo-localization is covered by many terms: pseudo-translation, test translation, round-trip test translation, translation simulation, or dummy translation. It basically means simulating translation by automatically replacing text with test characters while preserving non-translatable code and simulating expansion or contraction.

Check out the video (or read through the transcription) below to discover how pseudo-localization can help prevent costly L10n issues and improve the speed and quality of localization.

 

What is Pseudo-Localization? | Video Transcription

Hi, this is Adam Asnes from Lingoport with just a brief technical talk on pseudo-localization. This is a concept that can really help you if you want to enable your QA department to not treat localization as an afterthought, but instead continuously test during the sprint for the localizability of your UI.

Although pseudo-localization is certainly not full coverage, and I don’t recommend it as the only way to approach internationalization, it is a really straightforward, effective way to catch errors at least reasonably early in the development cycle. Globalyzer will find issues as developers are actually coding and show you exactly where those issues are. But pseudo-localization, if that’s all you got, is certainly better than nothing. It is supported by default by our products so that they’re automatic every time somebody updates a file. You don’t even have to think about it. It just happens.

But let me give you the principle here, and then you can decide. First of all, this is an actual screenshot from one of our customers. What you’re seeing is the locale on the browser changed to Esperanto. So for this site, they consistently inject these pseudo-localizations so that their QA department can make sure that languages will be supported without having to wait for the localization to happen.

Image V.0

 

So anybody who is testing their application in U.S. English should be able to read that this says, “Connect Generations.” If they look at the screen and it just says, “Connect Generations” without these pad characters on it, they know they have a problem (See image V.0). In fact, it tells them that they have an embedded string. That string is embedded in the source code, and it’s unavailable to the translators.

Take the open paren and this closed paren for example(see image V.1). If there’s two of them, they know they have a concatenation. That is the string is being built. The problem with strings being built, is that they may not be localizable for the target languages because of several factors including the word order being wrong, plurals being handled differently or incorrectly, adjectives in a different place, etc.

Image V.1

If, say, this came out all as like a bunch of square boxes, then we’d know that they had an encoding or a font issue. And so on down the line. If, for instance, there’s no square bracket at the end, we know that the interface is cutting off that expansion. Then finally, we can see here if it shows up like this (see image V.1), it’s a pass. We see the beginning and the end.

Now with these characters, you’ll notice we’ve added diacritics by default, and we have expanded the string open and close characters and some Unicode characters. This is what helps us to see right away, will the string expand to fit, say, German or another language that typically takes up a little bit more space? Will the fonts support, Chinese or Japanese? So we make this a continuous process. We can do it in Globalyzer, but it happens automatically in our Lingoport Resource Manager. You can see that if you go to lingoport.com/products. You’ll see the whole scope.

With Resource Manager, nobody has to think about this. The minute somebody adds a string to any resource file in the repo, it’s automatically going to get recognized, and the pseudo-localization is created so testers can be continuously testing. Now you can also test for things like date format. You’ll need to build those test cases, and it’s a little more complicated, but it’s all available to you.

The reason why, again, I say this is not the be all-end all, is that it still puts you pretty far away from the coding experience, in terms of finding internationalization. But like any coding quality, you need to test, and this is one of the many ways that you can test. If you’re using Lingoport Resource Manager, you can actually click on a string and track back to exactly where that string is within your code base so there’s no time spent looking for that string by the developers.

Need support with your i18n project? Contact Us.

Using Advanced Branching for Continuous Localization

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Software Development Branching

Before writing code, developers will first create a branch, typically from the main repository branch, such as master or develop. A branch works like a copy of the entire repository. This allows a team of developers to work in isolation and write code in an environment under their control. Once the code is written, the branch is merged and becomes part of the main branch.

Translation for Repositories?

Resource files are files to be translated: .properties files, .resx files, .json files are de facto standards. For example, a file ‘messages_en.json’ may contain key/value pairs, where the value is displayed in the UI of an application. When the locale is switched to French, the values from ‘messages_fr.json’ are used to display the French strings for the same keys.

Keeping track of what has been translated, what has been sent to translation, what is being returned from translation, in what order, for what locale, while passing validating checks on the resource files is time consuming and a pain point for most development organization. Lingoport Resource Manager, or LRM, the Lingoport product seamlessly automates the checking,  sending, and receiving of resource files.

LRM needs a branch from which to find the resource files to be translated and to which to push the translated files. A straightforward way to on-board LRM project is to dedicate one branch to translation. LRM can rebase so that the translation branch also gets the commits from master or a deploy branch, keeping it up to date with the overall source code development. This makes for easy LRM project, where files are picked up from the translation branch and pushed back to the translation branch exclusively.

The benefit with this approach is the simplicity of the on-boarding and knowing only that branch will be affected by LRM. The drawback is that localization happens after all the development is done in a branch separate from everything else.

Advanced Branching

Git has made branching a lot easier and flexible. Developers routinely create a branch for a feature or a bug fix. Resource files are part of the artifacts created during development.

For one application, you may have one repository or you may have hundreds of repositories. You may have a couple of resource files to be translated into three locales, or hundreds of files to be translated into tens of locales. Many development organization would like to include the translation of resource files as part of the regular activities of development, inside the feature branches directly as opposed to a specific translation only branch. To do so, we recommend using LingoBot.

Lingoport Advanced Branching

LingoBot is a Chatbot which works within collaborative environments such as Slack or MS Teams. The user issues commands that the Chatbot passes along to LRM. Here is an example of a session of LingoBot in Slack:

Here the user “Andrew Wong” wanted to check the translation status of a branch, F1404-desktop-group-delivery, for a repository called ‘SSTO.webapp’. There may be lots of different branches on this repository. The one that Andrew Wong is interested in is only the “F1404-desktop-group-delivery” branch. That’s were the feature is being developed.

The system gives an overview of the status and a link to go to the Dashboard to see more information.

At some point, when the development team is ready, the files need to be sent for translation. Instead of hand picking the files from the right repository, the right directories, the right branch, verifying the correctness of the files to be sent, how many to send, tracking the files in some XL sheet, sending an email with attached files, having the attached files downloaded on the translation side, checking the files, on-board a new TMS project, it’s simply a command to tell LingoBot to send whatever is needed to be translated:

When the translation is done and send back to the repository automatically by LRM, a Slack notification will let that room know:

Note: It also provide a link to GitHub in this instance to the repository where the files were pushed and another link to the LRM Dashboard.

LingoBot and I18n

Another usage of LingoBot is to ask for the i18n issues for the files which were modified in that branch. A team of developers may modify a few files during a sprint. The overall code base may have a huge amount of files. To make sure the new code does not have more i18n issues, the command is ‘i18n scan’. It will use the Globalyzer configuration for that project to scan only those files which were modified in that branch.

Conclusion

Lingoport provides an elegant solution to complex branching and all the resource files which works from collaborative environments that developers and other team members are already familiar with. They only need to know a few simple commands, and the automation takes over. This fits in with the way software development is done in most modern companies.

An Interview About i18n Gremlins with Adam Asnes

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Adam Asnes, LingoportAs part of Lingoport’s webinar, The Most Common i18n Gremlins and How to Squash Them, we interviewed Lingoport’s own CEO, Adam Asnes to get some quick insights into i18n gremlins and how they are impacting the quality of localization.

View i18n Webinar Recording

 

What are i18n gremlins?

Adam Asnes: I18n gremlins are bugs that create localization problems that wouldn’t be tolerated in a product’s native target language (i.e. US-English). They could be as simple as a string that isn’t externalized and will appear in English no matter the target locale, a date/time in the wrong format, a concatenation where the word order, gender or pluralization won’t make sense for translation. These gremlins aren’t cute mistakes and often have a long lifetime until they get fixed.

 

As software development as evolved to become continuous, how has this impacted the frequency of i18n gremlins going undetected and the impact to the localization quality?

Adam Asnes: It is always far easier, faster and less expensive to fix an i18n gremlin during code creation rather than after localization. With continuous development, we have a clear opportunity to measure i18n and give developers feedback during their sprint, just as you might do for other coding quality measurements.

The impact of i18n gremlins is on the frequency and speed of agile development as developers simply may not have time to go back and fix issues if they are discovered after localization. They will be working in a different area of the source code and just seeing the issue after testing usually doesn’t make it obvious where it occurs. This is why i18n Gremlins can hang around for years.

 

What is the biggest consequence developers face when they do not proactively prevent and rectify i18n gremlins?

Adam Asnes: The consequence is that the localization and global sales stakeholders have products where they can’t guarantee the presentation and data quality. You localize in the first place for competitive advantage or at least parity in markets. There is so much invested in global opportunities. The US is 24.4% of the global economy measured in 2017 down from 60% twenty years ago. Why not have a product that reflects that?

 

What i18n issue would you describe as the king of all gremlins?

Adam Asnes: Indifference is the king of all gremlins. When executives remain ignorant, you don’t have global directives. When managers remain indifferent, you have a sloppy attention to i18n. When developers remain indifferent, you have shoddy application of locale.

For a list of i18n Gremlins, see: https://wiki.lingoport.com/Gremlins

 

Ready to learn more? View the recording today!

Date/Time

  • Date: July 30, 2019
  • Time: 9AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 18:00 CEST
  • Duration: 40 minutes, plus audience Q&A

 

View i18n Webinar Recording