Archive for category: Webinars

To kickoff the new year, we interviewed Yuka Kurihara, Director of Globalization at Syncsort, to get some quick insights into the current state and the future of the i18n and L10n industry.

 

How has L10n technology evolved since you began in the industry?

Yuka Kurihara: I started my career 20+ years ago as a Software Localization Engineer in a start-up software company. I graduated with a double Major in Computer Science and Linguistics. Back then, there was no localization industry per se. Companies were just starting to develop software for different languages/encodings. There was no commercial tool to manage the localization process so I built it myself. I did a lot of batch scripting to gather files for localization kits. Our build engineer used to consume my scripts so that pre-processing could take place when the nightly main build kicked off. I was fixing i18n bugs in the C++ code whenever I found corrupted characters. I also wrote a lot of test scripts for automating localization testing because I was tired of the manual testing – having to repeat the same operation in 20 languages.

We have come a long way since then. Now we have numerous options for TMS with many different content connectors. “Continuous Localization” is the norm in the software industry. We’ve seen tremendous improvement in the Machine Translation quality in recent years. There are many new faces in technology companies supporting localization. It’s really exciting!

 

What would you describe as the leading challenge localization experts face?

Yuka Kurihara: I think it depends on the industry, the type of solution/content you are managing, and what role you are playing. Even though there are many different interesting views out there, there are two things that have been very consistent in my mind. First, change is inevitable. You will need to be able to anticipate change and make the best of it. If you are not initiating change yourself, change will happen to you. In terms of localization production, there is an emphasis on automation so how does a localization project manager transform themselves to be more valuable than just an email inbox? On the other hand, even though business is accelerating due to technology advancement, personalization and human empathy are more important than ever in winning customer loyalty. How do you balance this? Secondly, the speed of change. If you are not keeping up with it, you will quickly fall behind. This is especially true if you are in the technology field.

 

How do you feel i18n and L10n will evolve over the next 5 years? How will technology affect future processes?

Yuka Kurihara: Hyper automation for localization production process including automated content hand off/check in and continuous delivery for all and every type of content. I don’t think you can stop this trend. Machine translation will get continue to improve and start to get embedded in the human communication channel whether it’s text or speech based. I also think that language technology can play a significant role in new innovations, not just supporting the localization production process in enterprises. I think there is an opportunity in the areas of data management and NLP also.

 

How has agile development impacted localization teams?

Yuka Kurihara: It certainly has impacted in many ways. The biggest positive is that agile development brought the localization team closer to the development team. The challenge we all experienced was adopting and creating a model to be able to perform “continuous localization”. You need to get your team and stakeholders behind it. There may be a lot of prep work you need to do before you can embark on the journey. You may even have to either build the tool yourself or buy something commercially available to support this. This will help deliver localized products at the same time as English so it’s great for our global customers but it’s an investment to make it happen and to operate in this model.

 

What is the biggest opportunity to improve L10n processes?

Yuka Kurihara: Currently commercially available TMS’s lack comprehensive capability to support “Continuous Localization” for all different content. Many companies are developing their own solutions to fill the gap. If someone develops this, please let me know. I’m interested!

There is also an opportunity for Content writers and UX designers to be learning from Globalization/Localization specialists. UX designers own UI design during the development process but often don’t take into consideration the global audience. Content writers can produce better English content if they write content with a non-English speaking audience in mind.

 

What advice would you give to individuals just getting started in the L10n industry?

Yuka Kurihara: The Localization industry is becoming more mature now. However, it’s still ~10 years behind compared to software development in terms of recognition as a profession and an industry. Last year, I was admitted to the Technical Ladder program as a “Distinguished Engineer”. This program is very prestige and only a few top talents in the company are accepted. It was very much “trail blazing” because this was the first time ever for “Globalization” to be recognized as an expertise. Even today, there are no industry wide standardized job descriptions and competitive salary studies that corporate HR departments can readily use. We need a comprehensive career development track for our industry. Having said that, our industry is growing and there are lots of opportunities. If you are just starting out, know what like and enjoy and find a position/career where you can use your strengths. Globalization is poised to take center stage rather than merely being a supporting function. It’s an exciting time for all of us.

 

Want to hear more from Yuka? 

At LocWorld38 (Seattle, 2018), Yuka Kurihara presented together with Lingoport’s Olivier Libouban, Lingoport’s VP of Product Development. This session had a packed room, with standing room only. Yuka did an outstanding job of presenting real-life situations and solutions.

https://lingoport.com/collaborative-and-agile-software/

 

 

 

As part of Lingoport’s December webinar, 5 Steps to Create a Software Globalization Culture, we interviewed our featured guest speaker, Elizabeth Riley, Solutions Architect at Vistatec, to get some quick insights into the current state and future of localization. Elizabeth explores internal team processes and how cross-team collaboration is affected by technology and G10n knowledge/support within your organization.

 

 

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

Elizabeth Riley: The industry has changed a ton since I began working in it. There has been so much technological innovation it’s affected pretty much every aspect of the work and made previously unimaginable gains in productivity become new benchmarks for throughput.

Personally, I feel like the localization biz is experiencing something like an industrial revolution whereby translations have heretofore been done “by hand” and are moving to a method of “machine” production that’s powered by automation and of course machine translation. Of course, at present, use of MT is far from being standard practice and is still seen by many as a novelty if not an outright joke. At the rate that automation, MT and NMT, and other yet-to-be seen technologies are emerging and developing, however, I’d be surprised if in ten years we’ll still see it as standard practice to employ a “hand-crafted”, 100% human-powered translation process.

This doesn’t mean that I think human translators will be phased out in ten years and replaced by bots. When we talk about innovations in translation, there’s always a risk it’s perceived as this scenario where automation leads to mechanization and the complete eradication of human translators. But I have a more optimistic view of things. While we may be undergoing a sort of “industrial revolution” in our industry fueled by technological innovation, our “output” is still, ultimately, foreign language. As a human construct, I believe that language, and by extension, translation and localization, will never be completely mechanized even with vast technological innovation. In the future, innovations will allow those of in the industry to best apply our knowledge and intelligence; say, in curating foreign language content, post-editing NMT output, evaluating translation quality, rather than repetitively spend our time engaged in the execution of repetitive manual tasks like sending files, downloading updates, or gathering data.

 

How have advances in L10n technology impacted G10n processes and internal team collaboration?

Elizabeth Riley: The advent of tools like translation management systems have allowed for huge improvements in internal collaboration, not to mention process improvements. Modern enterprise TMSs have tons of features that permit substantial and extensive automation of processes that were previously done one at a time: think automated assignment of linguists to a project, workflows that automate project kickoff and task routing, even vendor quality ranking and allocation. Centralization driven by TMSs also allows teams to best leverage shared content, such as memories, glossaries, and the like, and made it much easier to do this as well. On the process side, I hardly know where to begin; we now have tools that are sophisticated enough to visually render web pages and certain applications that allow for certain software QA tasks to occur far earlier in the project cycle, which is a huge benefit for globalization because of course it allows internationalization and localization issues to be caught sooner – or eliminated altogether.

 

What is the biggest opportunity to improve L10n processes?

Elizabeth Riley: I honestly think that the biggest opportunity to improve localization processes rests in educating customers/localization project and program managers on the depth and breadth of tools that are already available on the market to automate, centralize, and streamline our work. It’s true that innovation continues to happen, and at a very exciting and rapid pace. But I feel the thing that would bring the most benefit to the greatest number of folks working in localization would be something very simple – just greater awareness of the tools already out there and some education on how to quickly start using them. There is so much already available that can be used to solve common—but still complex—problems. People should be better made aware of them and it should be easier to use and master such tools.

 

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

Elizabeth Riley: I really like this question. I’ve worked with customers in a variety of industries, from medical device to gaming, religious organizations to startups creating dating apps, and what I’ve noticed is that everyone thinks their worst globalization challenges are unique to their organization, when in fact their challenges are just variations on a theme that everyone else has probably experienced at some time. So I’d answer this by saying that the biggest challenge organizations face is lacking awareness of how common their localization problems are – and by extension, how much information, insight, knowledge and tools are out there already to help them solve them. I suppose what I’m saying is that the biggest challenge is everyone’s lack of awareness how certain things are intrinsic to localization, regardless of industry or vertical, and as such, there are myriad suitable ways to solve those problems that are already in use by those who have come across it already. There could be more knowledge-sharing across verticals. The commonalities are greater than the differences, I think.

 

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

Elizabeth Riley: When leadership and management don’t understand localization, or even language, for that matter, it has an enormous effect on quality and efficiency. A great number of quality issues can be obviated or at least minimized at a process stage far sooner than by the time software gets sent out to be localized. This is an inefficiency in terms of cost but also time, of course. But if an organization’s management sees localization as an afterthought, it is—as we’ve all frequently seen—relegated to the last stop in a project process and subject to numerous time and cost pressures. If global organization leaders understood language and localization better, you might see localization departments brought to the forefront of any process development as a way to introduce quality at source, both in-language and in English, and save substantial amounts of money not having to test and fix issues later.

Date/Time

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

 

 

As part of Lingoport’s October 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.

 

 

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 customization 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

 

 

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.

 

 

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!