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Table of Contents
About This Primer How This primer Is Organized Section 1: Globalization and the Web Section 2: Project Pre-planning Section 3: Project Planning Section 4: Project Management Notes and Icons Abbreviation Key and Definitions Globalization and the Web THE WORLD WIDE WEB IS GLOBAL Is It Worth It? Translations Return on Investment (ROI) Global Goals for Your Organization International Web Strategy Dealing With Foreign Offices Your Source Website Options Mirrored Site Blog Site Custom International Site Your Global Gateway: How Will You Welcome the World? Localized Site Navigation Through Links Localized Site Navigation Through a Gateway The Translation Process (TEP) Translation Memory Definition and Uses TM Tools To Use or Not to Use Free TM Tools Purchasing TM Cross Department Assets: See What You Already Have Dictionaries and Glossaries Machine Translation Next Steps
really is, youll inevitably come to one word: opportunity. Consider This: GLOBAL Internet Traffic is expected to QUADRUPLE between 2010 and 2015, according to data provided to Mashable by Cisco. (http://mashable.com/2011/06/09/ global-internet-traffic-infographic/) As of August 2010, of the top 20 sites for global web traffic, 12 are in English, five are in Chinese, one is Japanese, one is German, and one is Indian. (http://www.alexa.com) A 2002 survey of 2,024 web pages determined that, by far, most content was in English (56.4%) followed by pages in German at 7.7%, pages in French at 5.6%, and pages in Japanese at 4.9%. (http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html) As of 2010, English-speaking internet users totaled 536 million, Chinese totaled 444 million, Spanish totaled 153 million, Japanese totaled 99 million, Portuguese totaled 82 million, German totaled 75 million, Arabic totaled 65 million, French totaled 59 million, Russian totaled 59 million, Korean totaled 39 million, and all other languages combined totaled 359 million. In a 1998 report, David Brooks of Microsoft said, More than 60% of Microsofts revenues came from markets outside the United States. The majority of the revenues come from non-English speaking markets, and a key component of Microsofts international strategy has been to lead the industry in the delivery of localized products to these markets. In [Fiscal Year] 1998, Microsoft revenue from localized product exceeded $5 billion. Only five years ago, these figures were a fraction of what they are today, and as revenues have grown, so has Microsofts investment in localization. According to the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), their members reported $10 of additional revenue for every dollar spent on localization in 2001. Since that time, LISA members have almost universally reported 15%-25% annual productivity increases on their localization spending. This means that, today, companies are receiving approximately $25 of additional revenue for every dollar spent on localization. Annual spending of the International Fortune 500 on globalization-related services is now at close to $24 billion.
When you decide to translate your website, you are making a commitment to the entire localization process. If youre not ready to allocate resources to translate your site, you probably shouldnt make globalization a goal to begin with. It could even be argued that if youre not invested in the completion and maintenance of your website, why even have one? You could do more harm to your business by translating your site and not supporting it than by just leaving it in English in the first place. Your brand, your goodwill, and your reputation are at stake. And this is even more important once youve expanded into foreign markets. So what investments do you need to localize your website, and does the payoff make it worthwhile? That seems to be the million dollar question. The first thing you need is a baseline which sets the standard by which your options can be measured against. Without a baseline, ROI is meaningless. Dont get complicated, a simple measurement within a given time period will suffice. For example, you could choose: revenue what will be the projected revenue for the coming year if we do not translate our site? new membership what will be the expected number of new members without translation? new support tickets what will be the expected number of new support tickets if we do not translate? tweets what will be the number of tweets we expect without translation? you get the idea, anything that you want to use as one of the deciding factors based on your site/products/services.
Once you have your baseline you can apply your translation expectations to it. The question you are trying to answer, without the fancy corp speak, is am I going to make money, and how long and how much will it take? The following formula is a simplistic method for trying to answer this question. You will notice that a few of the required numbers are pretty subjective. Thats okay. The point of this is to just help with decision making. Now, the formula: ROI = (E * M) + (L * M) T/ T Your variables: E = Projected net revenue for the coming year per language. M = Number of markets you are translating into. This assumes each market is equal. To be more precise simply add each individual E. L = Leverage and reuse savings you realize from content reuse. Very hard to calculate but a good starting point is the TM savings from your word count analysis. Take the total cost without repetition and fuzzy, subtract the reps and fuzzy matches, and you get the reuse savings. We can sample calculate this at about 10% of the total cost of translation. T = Total costs of translation and localization including: The project management necessary to plan, prep, launch, and monitor the site translation throughout the given year. The cost of translation (TEP) if you already know it. The cost of engineering for your site, graphics, data, reprogramming, traffic SEO. The cost of quality testing. The cost of launching the site in the target languages, including initial marketing, etc. The cost of supporting the site for the initial year. And dont forget opportunity cost of projects that have to be put on side while this is completed. This one is a little harder to calculate and understandable if you leave it out, but should be considered.
A Simple Example Translation ROI Lets start with the baseline. For this example, lets say revenue is $100,000 for our untranslated site. We estimate the following values for Next, lets determine the sample variables.
E = A modest $25,000. M = 4; French, Italian, German, and Spanish L = A conservative $5,000 T = Total cost for the year is say an overestimated $75,000. (really, think about the true costs, maybe $10,000?) ROI = (25k *4) + ($5k * 4) $75K/$75K Did I do my math right? 60%! are you kidding me? Show me another fairly simple process where you can get more than 20%, let alone 60%. That is for year one, after that your development costs fall off and your ROI should skyrocket. Does that answer your bosses question? Does that justify your investment in translation; in this site? For more links on calculating the financial impact and results of website translation and our exclusive ROI calculation spreadsheets. Visit http://globalsitesecrets.com/theprimer/globalization-and-the-web/roi/
Mirrored Site
The simplest strategy is to create a mirror copy of your current website. Since most companies use this approach, that is our suggestion and is the basis for this primer. If you dont have to reinvent the wheel, then why reinvent the wheel? Brochure Site Some prefer to create a brochure site, which is a basic showcase of your business created with the same mind frame youd use to design an actual brochure. It is a quick representation that is
often used to answer questions posed by foreign customers. There isnt a complex plan to create a brochure site, but the translation process will be exactly the same. The best strategy is to translate only what is truly necessary. Boil it down to what you really need to meet your objectives, and leave everything else out. Not sure what is absolutely necessary? By using the Master File List, you can go through your site and determine what you need and what you dont. For your bare minimum brochure site, we recommend: Single home page Describe everything you want on one page. Contact us/About us Set up specialized contact methods for your international customers so you can keep track of them. FAQ Solve most of your international customer support issues with a comprehensive FAQ created specifically for that target market.
Blog Site
Translated blogs also work well with the brochure site approach. It would be very simple to install some blogging software such as WordPress and then translate the single blog page/post.
incapable at best. Its easy to see how translation is hard to rate, but the best way to achieve quality is to clearly define the key elements of your content and make sure they are met. Identify your target market, the theme and tone you are looking for, and the age and demographics of your audience. Then assemble a translation team that has experience with the elements you feel are most important. So how do you make sure youre getting not the best translation but the best translation for your particular project? We use a process called TEP. Translation. Editing. Proofreading. This three-step approach will increase the number of eyes that sees a piece of translation, thus rendering a better chance of getting goal-achieving text. Simply put, the translator does the initial translation and passes it to an editor. The editor makes changes and returns them to the translator for approval and updating to translation memory, or TM. Once the edits are incorporated, the translator sends them to a third individual for proofreading. Final changes are then made, if necessary. The order of diminishing editorial power is: translator, editor, and proofreader. The editor should change only large and more grievous errors. The proofreader shouldnt make any linguistic suggestions at all, unless there is a glaring mistake. Consider This: We once worked for one of the biggest sunglasses companies in the world. Their market was young, active, and cool. We hired the most qualified person we could find to translate the technical aspects we thought were needed. Our problem was that this individual wrote in a style more suited to an older demographic. The young and hip motif that the company was looking to project was, well, lost in translation.
Translation Memory
Definition and Uses
Essentially, Translation Memory, or TM, is all your translations compiled and stored in a reusable database. It becomes more beneficial over time. Its cost is rarely treated with the value it deserves. Few translators provide proper or adequate TM management. And in all our years of experience, we maybe had a handful or two of clients who even asked about TM. From Wikipedia.com: A translation memory, or TM, is a database that stores so-called segments,
which can be sentences or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list), that have previously been translated. A translation-memory system stores the words, phrases and paragraphs that have already been translated and aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called translation units. Some software programs that use translation memories are known as translation memory managers (TMM). Translation memories are typically used in conjunction with a dedicated computer assisted translation (CAT) tool, word processing program, terminology management systems, multilingual dictionary, or even raw machine translation output. A translation memory consists of text segments in a source language and their translations into one or more target languages. These segments can be blocks, paragraphs, sentences, or phrases. Individual words are handled by terminology bases and glossaries and are not within the domain of TM. Basically, TM is a database containing English source segments and corresponding target translations. Websites, in particular, have a good deal of repetitive content. Theoretically, as translations are completed, they are pushed forward into each new document or file. This process creates several benefits: Saves Money With each source segment that is reused, you are saving on your translation costs, thus increasing your ROI. Saves Time The more content is pushed forward, the more the translators can complete. Not only can they reuse translations, but also the previous versions will give them a good sense of the vocabulary and writing styles. This speeds up the process even further. Increased Quality The more good translations you have in your TM, the more is pushed forward. This increases the quality of the translation and promotes consistency in terms of writing style, tone, vocabulary, and substance.
Money, time, and quality are all pretty important when running a business, and TM is valuable because it can give you these quantifiable results. If you understand how it can work for you and make it a priority in your translation and localization process, youll already be well ahead of the competition. Remember, only a handful of our clients even thought to mention TM! Spend the time and money necessary to create it, use it, and protect it. Be wary of translators and LSPs who want to keep it as proprietary and leverage it to pad their profit margins. And whatever you do, please dont compare it to machine translation!
TM Tools
To Use or Not to Use
These tools are generally referred to as Computer Aided Translation tools (CAT Tools). Use translation memory tools. The questions are, do you need to invest in the tools and the expertise to run them yourself, or can you just have your vendors serve as the tools and provide you with TM benefits? At what point is it wise to bring the management in-house? Heres our answer: For our first five years in business, we didnt own any translation tools and left the TM management up to our vendors. We would simply ask them for copies of the TM databases when the project was complete. Our reasons: There is no translation memory standardization. There are many expensive and difficult-to-use tools. And, lastly, because we were managing the project, not actually translating it, we didnt have access to the database and needed the translators to make changes regardless. Our suggestions to you: The majority of companies dont need to purchase any translation tools like SDL/Trados. They are expensive and have a significant learning curve. This means they are time-consuming if you want to learn how to use them properly and get the most out of your investment. One more thing youll also need to know the target language in order to properly edit the translations with the tool. Unless you have an enormous amount of critical content, not to mention the internal language resources youll need to manipulate that content, its best to just have your vendors create and manage the translation memory. Make sure they are qualified with the tool, and you shouldnt have any problems. For a list and links to the best translation tools available visit http://globalsitesecrets.com/theprimer/globalization-and-the-web/tm-tools/
Free TM Tools
If you ultimately decide to bring your translation memory in-house and manage the file
processing and management, be sure to compare the basic features of each option. Some are open source and free, some are more expensive. Remember, you get what you pay for. Depending on the size of your project, most software vendors give you a 30 day trial. You can certainly complete most any website translation in 30 days. For a list and links to the free translation tools available visit http://globalsitesecrets.com/theprimer/globalization-and-the-web/free-tm-tools/
Purchasing TM
Though its possible to buy translation memory, we have never actually purchased it for a client. The main reason is that most content, particularly on the web, has a copyright and is very particular to each client. If your company uses lingo or vernacular or any form of creative writing, then purchasing TM might be marginal at best. In terms of maximizing your ROI, theres really no reason to buy TM anyway. Youll spend the same amount of money acquiring the memory and editing it as you would just properly translating what you already have. If you really feel the need to buy TM, though, check out http://www.tmmarketplace.com.
project is complete.
Commission. EU Main acronyms and abbreviations EU definitions of abbreviations and acronyms as well as their usage appear in Section 10.7. Terminology Collection Links to general language dictionaries and glossaries from different fields. Latin character picker Brings together the Latin characters in the Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional blocks. Also included are the characters in the Combining Diacritical Marks block. Arabic character picker Includes all characters in the Unicode Arabic and Arabic Supplement blocks, plus a small handful from outside the block, such as quote marks and control characters.
Machine Translation
Theres nothing good to say about machine translation, but you should know what it is. Examples of machine translation are Google translate, Babelfish, Sybase, and the other so-called on-line translators. DO NOT USE THEM unless you dont care about accurately communicating with your customers. Language is far too complex for a computer to perform anything more than rudimentary translations. A simple good morning is often too difficult and can sometimes be a challenge! You might eventually find an argument for why machine translation is valid. But weve been doing this for a long time, and we havent. If you come across something interesting that you think we should know, please share You might think that using a machine translation is a money-saver, but youll wind up spending just as much (and probably more) when you have clean up your crappy machine translation. Dont waste your time. The substance of your website is so unique from other types of content that youll wind up creating more problems than solutions. And theres a very good chance your machine translation wont even make sense. Consider This: Take any foreign page, in this example we will use Yahoo Japan (http://www.yahoo.co.jp/):
Take a gander at those translations. You tell me if that is how you want your website to be translated. Enough said.
Next Steps
If you are a company that is interested in growing your business into foreign markets and generating new leads, contact Russell for a free consultation and learn how to translate and localize your website and reap the rewards of international business. rlundstrom@globalsitesecrets.com
RUSSELL LUNDSTROM
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