Many global organizations are now taking initiatives — such as working in partnerships, outsourcing services and forming associations — to generate revenues through localization services, one of the most under-funded business segments (See Key Providers Chart). In fact, 65 percent of multinational enterprises rate localization as important or very important for achieving higher revenues, according to a study The Strategic Role of Localization in Multinational Enterprises, 2007, conducted by Conversis and California State University.
“Localization/translation is one of the true outsourcing and offshoring processes in the businesses today,” says Stephen Ryan, Marketing Director, Moravia Worldwide, and one of the key members of GALA (Globalization and Localization Association). “So if companies want to provide their services to the global market, of course, they have to make their services available in the local languages as well. This would help them market the content services effectively as per the local government’s requirements.”
However, only 38 percent of international Websites are localized; 47 percent are somewhat localized; and 15 percent are not localized at all, according to the Conversis/California State University’s study.
People generally interpret localization as translation services while the truth is that translation is a subset of localization. Localization involves customization of all language-related features of products and services. Web localization — the major segment of localization — involves services from translating content to localizing dates, currencies, colors, logos, symbols, icons and graphics.
If handled carelessly, the mistakes in translation can prove to be costly because of wrong interpretations. Moreover, a 2007 survey of European businesses by SDL International found that eight of ten international businesses suffer because of translation errors, causing lost revenue, delayed product launches or even fines for non-compliance.
“Historically, machine translation has been so called rules-based machine translation. A set of rules, or structure and algorithms has been written for machines. But today machine translation is statistics-based where a very large body of work is examined. Though machine translation is limited today, it is also more useful and structured. In fact, human translation is assisted by machine translation, but in the future it will be human assisting machine translation.”
Stephen Ryan, Marketing Director, Moravia Worldwide, and one of the key members of GALA (Globalization and Localization Association)
At present, the translation services industry is $10 to $12 billion in size. And the general perception is that machine translation is the future of the industry. But “it’s a little bit of a joke,” says Moravia Worldwide’s Ryan. Because technology has been a part of this industry from a very long time. “The U.S. government and IBM in 1940s and 50s studied machine translation. Historically, machine translation has been so called rules-based machine translation. A set of rules, or structure and algorithms has been written for machines. But today machine translation is statistics-based where a very large body of work is examined. Though machine translation is limited today, it is also more useful and structured. In fact, human translation is assisted by machine translation, but in the future it will be human assisting machine translation,” he adds.
Major providers of these services include Enlaso, Iverson Language Associates, Jonckers, Lingotek, Lionbridge, Moravia, SDL, Transware, thebigword and WeLocalize.
“The translation industry is in the midst of a transition from traditional, point-in-time service to an on-demand support model,” says Kevin Bolen, Chief Marketing Officer, Lionbridge, the U.S.-based localization and offshore IT-service provider with 4,200 employees. “This is being driven by changes in the content and application markets where Web-based delivery and support models are collapsing the traditional product development cycle from months to days or even hours. Lionbridge is responding by deploying our own Web-based infrastructure to connect our clients to our global production centers and our teams to a community of more than 10,000 translators enabling 24/7 production,” he adds.
Even large companies like Microsoft make use of localization services by various localization service providers — Webdunia is one of them. Webdunia has localized MS Office in Sinhalese and Pashto. Adobe, MSN and Yahoo are some other companies that are working with Webdunia to localize their software in local languages such as Hindi.
| Some Hilarious Translations |
- Nova can be construed as “doesn’t go” in Spanish
- Coca Cola can be translated as “bite the wax tadpole” in Chinese
- “Come Alive, You’re in the Pepsi Generation” becomes “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave” in Chinese
Source: GALA
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