Common Sense Advisory

The data for the first quarter of 2009 is in. Both buyers and suppliers of language services told us they are significantly more confident about expected business over the next six months.

An urgent message comes in from the sales team, "Do we support Green Hmong? The prospect specified that he does not want White Hmong." Questions like these come across the desks of many suppliers – lately, with greater frequency than ever before. In this Quick Take, we discuss the challenges for language service providers and best practices for finding translator and interpreter resources in less commonly requested languages. 

SDL's software products now make up 33 percent of the company's direct revenue, but the company has claimed that as much as half of its turnover derives from its sale of, and investment in, software engineering. We recently met with CEO Mark Lancaster and CTO Keith Mills in Maidenhead to discuss SDL’s software futures.

Translation management systems (TMS) process content, but also orchestrate the business functions, project tasks, process workflows, and language technologies that underpin large-scale translation activity. The mushrooming demand for digital information in local languages, coupled with the results demonstrated by early adopters combines to form what we call the "TMS Imperative," requiring companies to formulate a translation management strategy and adopt this enabling technology.

One of the most common refrains that we hear from software vendors and from too many enterprise planners is that "their buyers and developers can handle English." They tell us that as long as the products can ingest, manage, and publish information in other languages, that’s fine. However, "our CMS (or database or ERP) administrators and application developers can get along just fine with English, thank you." How valid is this point of view? This Quick Take summarizes our November 2008 report in a shorter format that should be more digestible by time-starved budget executives.

Since the beginning of 2005, Common Sense Advisory has conducted quarterly surveys of buyers and suppliers to measure the business confidence of the translation and localization sector. This Quick Take presents the results of our surveys for the fourth quarter of 2008, compares that data with results from the third quarter and Q4-2007, and outlines the changes in confidence through the course of 2008.

This Quick Take links to two new scorecards and updates the comparison scoring table for all enterprise-type TMS solutions, including common pairings of two jointly marketed business and language-type systems.

We recently wrote about the possibilities for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act under the Obama administration. Earlier this month, we also convened public and private California health insurance plans at a colloquium in Los Angeles to discuss translation issues related to Senate Bill 853, which went into effect on 1 January 2009. In addition to the landmark law in the Golden State, other important policy pushes are currently taking place throughout the United States.

Why is terminology management important? This is a question that both language service providers (LSPs) and buyers of translation services often ask. Organizations that stand to benefit the most from terminology management sometimes remain unconvinced. They ask the most fundamental questions: "How does this affect my bottom line?" "Why go to the trouble?" "What's in it for me?" In this report, Common Sense Advisory answers these basic but important questions by examining both the rationale and the results of terminology management.

International companies that wish to sell goods and services on the web face a range of challenges, such as determining which regions take priority for localization efforts, computing the company's share of the world online wallet, and ensuring that customers' payments will actually go through when they check out. In this Quick Take, we outline the best practices for communicating what something costs in local currency.

This analysis of the U.S. market breaks down domestic translation and localization spending by major exporting sector and specific industries according to North American Industry Classification (NAICS) codes. This report provides defensible numbers that can be used in strategic planning by buyers and sellers of language services in the United States.

In the United States, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits recipients of federal dollars from engaging in discriminatory acts based on national origin, which includes discrimination on the basis of language. Federal agencies are already acting on new marching orders from the incoming administration. This landmark law could find new life under Obama, with major impact on states, counties, municipalities, and language service providers.

In our research, we regularly encounter companies where terminology has jumped the tracks in product development, documentation, marketing, and support. In February 2009, we will publish a report on the value of terminology management, including typical measures of success and return on investment. For now, we consider the state of the technology for managing terminology and basic requirements for any software solution.  

The majority of telephone interpreting (TI) services are provided using consecutive mode, in which a person speaks and then waits for the interpreter to render the utterance to the other party. This Quick Take addresses the growing phenomenon of synchronous phone‐based offerings in the marketplace and the implications.

A lot has happened since we first began our coverage of collaborative concepts in the translation space. Terms such as "crowdsourced," "collaborative," and "community" translation now often appear in industry journal articles and conference presentations, and have established a place in the vernacular of language and business globalization professionals. This report addresses the question, "What does it mean to the practices of translation and localization?"

You've overseen the translation of your marketing materials and localized your wares. Now, as localization brings your company business from abroad, you're close to landing one of the largest buyers in the Russian market. Given the amount your prospective customer will be spending, he's decided to visit your corporate offices. The problem? You know little more than da in your client's native tongue. This Quick Take discusses the on-site interpretation needs of global businesses.

At the end of our translation management webinar in November, we received more questions than there was time to answer them. Here are the questions, with our answers and commentary. We cover which solutions work best for website globalization, what is the market for TM vs. TMS, how we distinguish house systems from enterprise-type systems, where to find expert third-party systems integrators, and what's next for TMS.

When shopping for translation services, buyers often confuse one supplier with another. It's easy to see why: Few players have done much of a job differentiating themselves, so creative language service providers (LSPs) can be difficult to find. This Quick Take discusses the characteristics of successful innovators.

What kind of financial return should your company expect when you localize its products? If you translate your marketing website, will more people buy what you're selling? Or is English enough for both products and the websites that market them? This report tackles those oft-asked questions with an eight-country survey of 351 business buyers.

Since the beginning of 2005, we have conducted quarterly business confidence surveys of buyers and suppliers using an OECD-style questionnaire. In this Quick Take, we look at the raw data for language service demand in the third quarter of 2008, what respondents expect to see for the final three months of the year, and how this all stacks up against our data from the second quarter.