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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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Tool Buyer Beware
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Buyers can choose from a wide range of language service providers, each falling into one of 3 categories when it comes to the technology they use to translate, localize, and manage customer projects: 1) LSPs that buy most technology (e.g., Bowne Global as a recent convert); 2) LSPs that build some technology, usually pretty impressive, but keep it to themselves (e.g., Lionbridge and Connect Global); and 3) LSPs that build and sell software, including to rival agencies (e.g., SDL, Star, and now Transware). How these different provisioning models affect consumers of globalization software depends on where they sit.
First, if you buy language "services" for your company's marketing, website, and other needs, you're in the catbird's seat. You could ask your favorite translation agency to manage your translation memory and processes using monks, papyrus, and quill -- and you will find a taker. While most LSPs favor a particular TM tool or workflow system, they will use your favorite TM if you ask and will learn to work with whatever process management solution you ask for. Nonetheless, add a middleware clause to your contracts that specifies that the LSP takes responsibility for keeping your content assets, translation memory, and processes in a portable format. Ask for Unicode, TMX, and XLIFF compliance in all tool choices.
But if you actually buy "tools" like translation memory to manage your own global content needs, you will face fewer choices. You already know that there is no large globalization software vendor on the scale of an Oracle or SAP. Anyone could be bought -- that's clear now with the Trados purchase. Make sure that your commitment to a particular tool doesn't leave you exposed to higher costs, diminished support, or the need to develop a quick exit strategy. Ask your supplier to escrow code and guarantee 3 to 5 years of support if acquired.
Regardless of where they sit, buyers face a new landscape. Small companies will partner more aggressively to fill gaps in their offerings. M&A will gather speed as smaller suppliers jockey to become the superstars that define the globalization software business. Bigger software suppliers from beyond the industry might begin to find globalization more interesting. But none of these eventualities means that you should let down your guard when buying business-critical technology.
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