CLIENTSIDE up · 2018. 4. 2. · 2009 and later became even more important which was a bit of a...

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ClientSide News Magazine

ClientSideNewsJanuary/February 2010 Volume 10 Issue 1

19 resource listings

in this issue

4 events’ listings —

The upside of a down economy

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publication &

membership

7 feature — adjusting to unexpected Global Market Opportunities

10 lsp hot topic — successfull management of CHANGE

13 localization specialization — is specialization the key to success in any economy?

17 l10n technology —what we are & where we’re going... a bit of existential hope for 2010

maymay 28 & 29International Technical Translation ConferenceLisbon, Portugal TRADULÍNGUASemail - [email protected] - http://www.tradulinguas.com/conf-tech/

globalizationinternationalization

localizationtranslation

Winter / Spring 2010 comingevents

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april

april 15 - 17ELIA Eighth Networking Days ELIA Istanbul, Turkeyhttp://www.elia-association.org/index.php?id=11

february 3 - 5 Technology Services Europe 2010Technology Services Industry Association Barcelona, Spain email - [email protected] - http://www.technologyserviceseurope.com/index.php

march 18 - 2011th Annual ATA-TCD Mid-Year ConferenceAmerican Translators AssociationScottsdale, Arizona email - [email protected]: http://ata-tcd.com

march 16 - 18 WorldwareThe Localization Institute and MultiLingual Computing, Inc.Santa Clara, California email - [email protected] - http://www.worldwareconference.com

february

march 18 & 19TMS Inspiration DaysXTRF™Cracow, Poland email - [email protected]: http://www.inspirationdays.xtrf.eu/

may 19 - 222010 ALC Annual ConferenceMiami, Florida web - http://www.alcus.org/education/conference.cfm

february 18 Effective Localization Project Handoff ManagementENLASOLive Webinar - 11:00 am - 11:45 am PSThttp://www.translate.com

march

february 16 A New Model for Partnerships in MT ServicesAsia Online and Moravia Worldwide Webinar - 11:00 EDT (8:00 PDT, 17:00 CET) https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/119211203

globalizationinternationalization

localizationtranslation

g i l t events

“Blazing a Trail to Business Success”Join some of the best-known names in translation, including Jost Zetzsche, Kirti Vashee, Hans Fenstermacher, Bob Donaldson, Denise Spacinsky, Sandy Dupleich, Rina Ne’eman, Terena Bell, and others as they share important knowledge and expertise in industry trends. Subjects will include:

How Can Social Media Help My LSP?•Smart HR Strategies for Small LSPs with Big Plans•Be Prepared When Disaster Strikes•Quality Assurance in the New Web Paradigm•A Roadmap to the Best Technology Decisions for Your LSP•Machine Translation and the Future of LSPs•The Inside Story of America’s Fastest-Growing Translation Companies•What You Need to Know About Translation Industry Standards•How to Build a Profitable Portfolio of Clients•A Primer for Established Companies Looking to Grow•Taking Project Management to the Next Level•

Also featuring a keynote address by Jost Zetzche and an industry wrap-up by Kirti Vashee.

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Bruno-

Right now my group is driving product information globalization for Nielsen. This area is quite huge in our company which includes software localization, content lo-calization, internationalization and international user ex-perience projects so we have to be very tactical to be sure that we target the right service and the right product for the right markets.

CSN-It sounds like you’re managing an incredible scope of

projects.

BruNo-We have a lot of products and a lot of information to de-

ploy in international markets so sometimes we’re probably just a bit under water. All in all I would say last year was quite challenging for us, as it was for many companies, but we managed to deploy most of the products and services that we anticipated. Even though our project scope is quite huge at the same time it’s really exciting.

CSN-So you were actually able to follow through with your

project goals in 2009 in spite of the economic calamity.

BruNo-Yes, that’s a very interesting question. In the beginning

of 2009, I would say Q1 and Q2, we had to freeze or just put a hold on a number of our product and service global-ization initiatives because of the economic climate at that time. At the same time it was interesting because even when we were at the worst point of this whole economic disaster no budget was really canceled. I would say it was

just a matter of postponing deployment to a later time although it was impossible to know when.

That was my problem of course. You know it’s easy to say “OK it’s not happening in Q1, It’s going to be later.” But what does later mean? That was the big question so during the months from January until June or May we had to stop working on a number of projects. Spe-cifically when it came to product localization we had to switch gears and shift from our original North America and Europe targets to Asian markets for the reasons that you can guess.

I would say last year’s volume actually turned out to be really heavy. It was a big challenge to work at a very slow pace having to halt some localization projects for five months then to suddenly accelerate product de-ployment and include the additional markets all within the months of June through December. We really had to be tactical last year because all the plans we had at the end of 2008 had to be reshaped and redefined because of the economic times. Between June and No-vember we worked very hard, first to resume all activi-ties that were related to products that were originally put on hold in January of 2009 and then to deploy even more products and information to additional key mar-kets like China, Brazil, Russia and Japan. That was a big challenge for us. In June of last year we had to reshape everything.

CSN-Can you give me a little more detail about the type of

projects you were working on and languages you were shooting for initially in 2009 and what you ended up dynamically adjusting?

Dynamicaly adjusting to unexpected Global Market Opportunities

Page 7

Last year was not all bad... many compa-nies almost entirely recovered their loses

within the last quarter of the year.

Interview with Bruno HerrmannDirector of Globalization and Localization

The Nielsen Companyfeature

BruNo-Sure, originally in January of 2009 we wanted to target

mostly North American and European markets in languag-es like French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and some Eastern European languages like Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian. One of the major milestones for us in our original plan was to target all these markets at the same time. At that time we also wanted to target Japan and Korea, two key Asian language markets. This changed dramatically as I explained where we basically moved away from that original list to less European or North American languages. We did stay with a few key languages from our original list like French, German, and Spanish. The remaining languages on the list were frozen for some time. As a result of that shift we had to target more Asian languages including Chinese, traditional Chi-nese, Thai, Vietnamese and also Russian.

Russian was an important language originally in early 2009 and later became even more important which was a bit of a surprise because many people were expecting Russia to be hit just like the rest of Eastern Europe, but it wasn’t. It’s probably something that is misunderstood by many people that Russia has been hurt in a very dif-ferent way than many other Eastern European countries. As a result we had to include Russian for every product. Brazilian, Portuguese and Spanish were also added to our plate for the same reason because those markets were less impacted by the economic disaster. It was simply a matter of redefining our list of target languages and mar-kets to adjust to the dramatic economic impact.

CSN-What kind of data trends or specific information about

those alternate markets gave you the confidence to pro-ceed forward in June?

BruNo-Sure, that’s a very good question. At that time there

was no real sign of recovery in some markets and if we had to rely on the news and newspaper reports only we would probably not have started again in June. As it turned out, some of our major clients like Coca Cola, Craft and Phil-lips had really seen very clearly that the beginning of the summer was in fact the right time to get back on track and decided to restart their initiatives. They started to feel confident again. So basically this was really coming from our clients and not that much from the economic climate in those markets, or the news, or even our own data. It wasn’t too risky for us to proceed because we were being directed by our clients.

Between June and November we worked very hard with our clients to deploy their products and services interna-tionally and it proved to be the right timing. We didn’t suffer any serious issues in any markets and all of our cli-ents’ early predictions and forecasts proved to be right.

CSN-Would you say the general volume of business that you

anticipated for 2009 was still achieved overall even after your clients shifted their market and language focus?

BruNo-All in all, I would say yes. However, if we compare the

markets we can see some differences. In Western Eu-rope and North America we ended up not doing as much volume as we initially planned. We did finish the year with very good results although it was still just a little below what we expected to achieve. That deficit was offset by the fact that we achieved much stronger results in some emerging and developing markets than what we expected. Overall, the year ended just a little below expectations.

CSN-Did you notice a correlation in the data you were re-

ceiving from your clients in relation to target market shifts? Was the information consistent with regards to market potential?

BruNo-It was pretty much consistent based on different indus-

tries. Whether it was the media industry, food industry or even the travel industry I would say most of their plans were pretty much consistent in terms of international markets targeted. That was a bit of a surprise for many people in our company because in the beginning of the summer there was no clear sign of recovery in a number of those target markets. It was still too early to tell if a recovery would occur within the year or if it was going to be the next year.

As it turned out, between June and the end of October the situation began to improve gradually. Then, between November and the end of December, the economic im-provement accelerated significantly. At the end of Oc-tober and November it was very clear that a number of markets were picking up again and it was like a rush. Ev-erybody wanted everything first, immediately, yesterday if possible.

I was talking to an SDL executive in October and he was telling me exactly the same thing that we were experi-encing. Now there is a rush, we had to wait and we had to beg for projects during six months or eight months and now suddenly we have to achieve the same results in two months instead of six.

Now we’re still on the right track in a number of mar-kets. We are a bit delayed of course on some products because sometimes you cannot simply achieve in incre-ments what you need six months to achieve. But at the end of the day things are on track even if they are com-pleted in Q1 of 2010 instead of Q4 of 2009 because there are things that simply cannot be done in a few weeks time.

ClientSide News Magazine Page 8

CSN-That’s very interesting actually because some of the

language companies I interviewed emphasized how they had to readjust their business models and streamline their organization in order to survive and wait out the uncertainties. Many companies had to tighten their belts and find opportunity’s where they hadn’t looked before. Now here’s a new aspect adapting that you just brought up. How do you meet this huge influx of business re-quired at the last minute? I imagine you must have found some interesting efficiencies in order to meet that heavy last minute demand and still keep quality at its expected levels.

BruNo-You know the fact that we were able to achieve suc-

cessful results in a few weeks on some projects, a few months for others, helped me and my team demonstrate the value of proper globalization management. What I mean here is that if we had no translation memory, if we had made no internationalization efforts at the beginning of product deployment, we would never have been able to deploy some of the products in such a short period of time. It would have been impossible.

Fortunately, many people understood that proper glo-balization management helps a company like ours accel-erate deployment of products in a significant way. I think the end of the year was tough but at the same time it was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that under very tough circumstances when you manage globalization properly you can achieve a lot.

CSN-Is your work load beginning to return to a more bal-

anced, consistent level?

BruNo-Again it depends on the markets. I would say for North

American and Western European markets it is picking up but very slowly. The volume of business is not going to grow significantly as far as I can see but we’re developing in emerging markets and that’s where most investment will be made. Every company is looking for growth and in those emerging and developing markets is where growth is still available.

At the same time there is no willingness to stop invest-ing in mature markets but to make the balance right I would say that many companies, including Nielsen, con-sider that now it is still safer to invest most resources into these developing markets while maintaining ma-ture markets. I think Europe will be the region where investments will be most challenging this year. Germany, France, Spain and Italy are getting better but the pain is still there throughout Europe and so that’s why everyone is going to try to balance investments in growth in devel-oping countries with investments in mature markets in the next year.

CSN-Do you have any expectations as to when these individ-

ual markets will warrant heavier investment or are you just waiting for some economic indicators to tell you they are stabilizing?

BruNo-Well for mature markets I think we want to be very,

very cautious. I think after this year and even the end of 2008 our company wants to be cautious and make the right decisions at the right time. So in order to make the right decision at the right time there are two things we’re looking at.

First we are looking at all the economic indicators. That of course is something that we watch on a daily ba-sis. The second, equally important, factor for us is the feedback from our clients and the way they want to posi-tion themselves ahead of the curve. They may acknowl-edge that a market has not fully recovered yet but want to be ready and on track when it does recover.

CSN-If you had a crystal ball or if you could make a predic-

tion what is your outlook on the economic recovery for 2010?

BruNo-You used the right word, crystal ball. That’s really what

we need at this time to make any predictions. I would say it’s difficult to tell. Every month we try to reconsider the situation.

CSN-Are you optimistic?

BruNo-Yes, we are fairly optimistic. Optimism is definitely

much more present our company then it was a year ago.

Bio

Bruno Herrmann is a Director of Globalization and Localization, responsible for global content operations across 5 regions at The Nielsen Company, focusing on global product and information design and management as well as on international usability areas. He joined The Nielsen Company in 2003 to manage multiple content and digital marketing programs in EMEA. Previously, he man-aged Internet globalization programs at HP and various content management initiatives in addition to Web local-ization projects at Compaq, both at EMEA and global lev-els. Prior to joining Compaq, he worked in the marketing communications area and in the localization industry as a consultant, linguist and project manager, taking part in major international projects for high-profile technology clients.


key to survival in 2009successfull management of

CHANGE

ary’s. At that point we recognized that if we didn’t make some rapid adjustments and if this continues through April, May and June we were going to be in really, really bad shape. So we started plugging up holes in the boat before it sank. It literally felt like that’s what was go-ing to happen. Because in a small business even when you’re doing a couple of $1,000,000 in revenue, you have salaries, overhead, costs and expenses. That seems like a good size business but even at that level, somebody personally has to support it. This isn’t some deep-pock-et corporation that can just dip into lines of credit or cash accounts or reserves. It’s a person at the other end, somebody that has to remortgaging their house just to cover losses and keep operations flowing. When you’re expecting to do $150 to $200k per month in revenue and that gets cut in half then you are dipping into your own bank account, your own personal banking account to the tune of $50k to $75k per month. Now put that into per-spective. What would that mean for you and I?

On top of that we had the credit crunch. It wasn’t easy to go to your line of credit or to your banker and say

“business is going really south right now and we need a floater for a few months until this gets sorted out.” That option just wasn’t available so you really had to boot-strap and figure out the solution.

We were asking ourselves how we going to turn this around. The one big question was revenue and how are we going to win more business when opportunities were drying up which was a real problem. When we would nor-mally do two or three large projects to the tune of $100k

2009 was tough. In our company we all had to take pay cuts back in April. Everyone took pay cuts and we

were happy to do that and keep our jobs rather than end up in the unemployment line.

So let’s talk about last year and some of the challenges that we saw and how we changed our business model to adapt and survive it. Not just survive but change the way that we are doing business permanently because of it.

The economic impact really started to hit us right around January of 2009. That’s when we began to see the writing on the wall. December wasn’t the best month but it wasn’t terrible. We still had a lot in the pipe and things still felt like they were going go as expected. Then January came, it wasn’t a stellar month but not terrible. When February hit it was like somebody turned off a light switch. Something just went wham! It was literally was like somebody shut down the revenue tap.

You know in our industry we are in a three month cycle. If you have a bad month, a really slow business month, you don’t feel it revenue wise for two or three months. You could still be collecting and booking from business a few months ago. So obviously it was happening back in December and January but in February we really felt it, and by March we were just in a full on panic. Revenue was down a full 50%!

By March we saw the February numbers and knew that April was not going to be good either. We could just tell March revenue wasn’t going to be any better than Febru-


CSN staff interview with Medium sized LSP executive

lsp hot topic


to $200k in a each project per year we were not bidding anything. We didn’t have any of those in the pipe. The clients that would normally give those to us were going backwards and renegotiating rates. Some said we need-ed to reduce our rates by as much as 30%. The clients were telling us they were hurting and needed some relief. Their management was telling them to cut costs and if they don’t find a way to cut translation costs by 30% they were not going to have any translation budget to work with us. Our clients were coming to us and saying if we wanted to keep their business we would have to be more competitive on price.

So we had to scramble, we had to look at our cost in-frastructure and trim the fat, trim all the fat completely. There was no room left for anything. We cut salaries across the board, we cut operational expenses across the board, and then we started to at our cost of goods sold. We had to start figuring out how to squeeze more profit out of the jobs that we still had. So we went to our trans-lation pool and asked them for a 20% to 30% reduction in their rates. These were our core translators who we worked with on a daily basis and they came through. We reduced those costs considerably.

Then we were trying to figure out why we were not winning some of the projects we were bidding? We were bidding at 20¢ per word for Spanish and 30¢ per word for more obscure languages like for example Mongolian. We

were even bidding 25-28¢ per word for Croatian, Serbian and some of those languages. And we were still not win-ning the business. So we started tracking wherever we could find out what the winning bid was. We found out that to be competitive we had to bid at 10¢ per word, dropping some of those Eastern European languages down to 10¢ per word. That’s how competitive the market be-came.

Once we realized how competitive things had become we decided to completely rethink our entire business model. We started to go out to the translation market-place and say to our resources “we have to bid this at 10¢ per word which means you have to come in at 5¢ per word. Can you do that? Can you help us win this busi-ness?” Then the translators started competing with each other. One would say “I will do that for 5¢ per word, then another would say I will do it for 4¢ per word and others were willing to do it for 3 ½¢ per word.” The transla-tors started to become extremely competitive with each other.

When we realized that the translators were willing to go that low and were willing to compete with each other we put them in a bidding war to get the lowest possible price. It’s an open market, and just like the clients are pushing us to bid at 10¢ per word as a polished final rate, we ourselves had to do the same to the translators. We did not want to do that. By no means did we want to

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push the translators to rates that low because of its po-tential, negative impact on quality. But we were able to go to the open market and openly bid some of these projects and get translators to come in with quality work at 3 ½¢ to 4¢ or five cents per word for Eastern European languages, 8¢ per word for Asian languages, rates that we never expected we would see from translators.

So we brought our cost of goods sold down considerably to where we could make a reasonable margin on the work that we did get. Hard adjustments were made across the board and things haven’t completely eased up on that yet. We decided we could not afford to be picky and choosy anymore about what we bid either and hoped to win as much as we could. Then as things eased up and as more work started to come in we decided not to bid these 10¢ for word jobs. We don’t want that low, low margin work. We don’t want to keep putting our transla-tors in that position to have to bid that low.

Now we’re a little bit more selective about what we’re bidding. We finally reached that point towards the end of the year. We felt like we fell off a cliff in February, 2009, had to readjust and rethink everything and then by the time the year ended we found ourselves in a position feeling much better. Revenues are much better, profit-ability is much better but our business model is still in that fat trimming mode. We haven’t gone back to invest-ing in other things such as growth. We’re still in a ratch-eted down budget mode from an operational perspective and our salaries are still in a cut mode.

While we feel that we fell off the cliff and finally climbed most of the way back up, we don’t feel like we’re back on top of the mountain yet. We cannot see over it and just don’t know what is ahead so we’re re-maining cautious with our budget. Even though quarter four of 2009 was very good and the revenue generated in that quarter offset the losses from quarters two and three ’09 and even balanced out the year, we are just not certain about the economy yet and there’s still a little bit of uncertainty in the marketplace.

That said, we feel really good going into 2010 and do actually have a very positive feeling about it, but that fear from last year is what’s holding us back. It’s not a bad thing to go into this year cautious. Now we are en-tering the New Year with a new, low operational overhead business model that allows us to be very responsive. If we do have a poor first quarter it won’t kill us. It won’t put us into panic mode like it did last year. At this point we’re running as lean and mean as we can.


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ANdreS-I think it depends on the area you’re specializing in. If

you happen to specialize in Financial Services or automo-tive that may be tough right now, but in our space I’ve always felt quite the contrary and that there should be more specialization in the translation space. It makes do-ing our jobs and running our business so much easier. You do one thing and you do it really well. We develop the kind of expertise that our clients look for. If you’re a gen-eralist you can try to approach that niche and if you’re big enough that your individual vertical practices are capable of developing similar levels of expertise then sure you can offer that as well, but there are less than a handful of companies that I would consider big enough to do that. So for everybody, based on our experience, I would say specialization is the way to go.

CSN-That definitely makes sense and clearly it’s not merely

an opinion considering your company achieved 40% growth in 2008, 36% growth in 2007, and still managed to achieve impressive growth last year.

Being in business for 11 years has foreign exchange al-ways achieved high annual growth levels or did you change something dramatically in your business model or focus that significantly accelerated that growth rate?

ANdreS-I think a couple of things helped to smooth and even out

our growth while accelerating it at the same time. The first thing, as we discussed before, was focusing on diver-sification verses specialization. We used to do different kinds of work in the past. Then, around 2005 or so, we limited or eliminated all non-specialized work. Back in those dot-com days we used to do quite a bit of web lo-calization work for automotive manufacturers, financial institutions and companies like that. We gradually elimi-

CSN-

Andrus, Foreign Exchange enjoyed successful growth last year and you seem to have good expectations for 2010. Considering the challenges we all faced, I’m sure our read-ers would be very interested in hearing more about your success, and how you overcame the seemingly insurmount-able challenges.

ANdreS-You know, we’re coming off of a few good years. We’ve

been growing at an average of around 40% annually. This year was a little slower, pushing single digits by the time it’s all said and done so we’re still doing pretty well. In fact, it seems like the translation business in general is do-ing relatively well in this current economic environment, however I’m sure you know there are plenty of translation and localization companies that are struggling for a vari-ety of reasons.

I think we are escaping those struggles because of our medical focus. Our work is exclusively with Medical De-vices and pharmaceutical companies. I’m always looking at the quarterly earnings reports that they’re putting out and you know they’re not always great but they’re defi-nitely not bad in comparison to what the business envi-ronment at large would indicate. So they’re doing well, we’re doing well, and based on the backlog that we have in business identified for next year we expect to have a great year as well. We’re lucky and it’s very exciting.

CSN-That’s fantastic. It seems the medical devices industry

in particular is a strong market as well as government and that makes sense. One of the things I’m hearing quite often is that diversification was the solution to growth this year and specialization was potentially hazardous. You’ve proven however the opposite by focusing on the right busi-ness sector to specialize in at the right time.


Interview with Andres Heuberger,President and founder ForeignExchange Translations

is specialization the key to success

localization specialization

in any economy?


nated those industries to become now 100%, or at least 99.9 something percent, medical focused.

The second is we tried and were successful at winning some of the top 10 pharmaceutical and medical device companies as clients. We set our sights on that level and stature of company specifically and we were able to win some of them. We have a good story, we tell it well and we were able to win and, more importantly, we were able to keep those clients. That has opened up huge op-portunities for us.

So I think really those are the two drivers that made our growth possible over the past few years and so we count ourselves lucky as I said. We look to the future and ask if there is an end in sight. So far, we can’t see one. Our plan internally for the next 10 years is to grow at an aver-age of 30% per year, including next year, and we believe that’s eminently doable. Of course that’s not super high speed software type of growth but for being all organic, self funded growth we feel comfortable that we can do that and we can build a good business around that.

CSN-So you have a very positive outlook for 2010 and be-

yond.

ANdreS-Oh yes, this year will be a great year for us.

CSN-What is your outlook for 2010 based on?

ANdreS-A lot of it is business that we’ve already won that’s now

beginning to bear fruit. The bulk or the majority of our growth is long-term, repeat business. It’s sort of a steady stream of small projects. When we win a new client it takes awhile to ramp up and get started, so we’ve won a good half dozen or so substantial clients’ in ‘09 that we will see the benefit from in 2010.

Both on the pharmaceutical and medical devices side their development cycles are so long that initiatives of whatever type have already been long underway and new decisions similarly aren’t being made based on the econ-omy in one quarter or one year.

Now, on margins, the economy will have a clear impact. If the economy is suffering, pharmaceutical companies for example are going to be suffering as well, so to deal with that they have to trim costs just like everybody else. That might impact R&D and it also might impact transla-

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tion at some point but even in that scenario that ship, or better tanker, doesn’t turn on a dime. It takes two or three years until we feel where we get impacted. How-ever, some more immediate short term effects can come from projects that are marketing related where our cli-ents, just like anybody else, can quickly save some money. That may mean a campaign gets canned or attending an overseas events which will eliminate translation require-ments.

CSN-Are there any factors that could potentially put a hold

on your projects for 2010? Are those contracts in expec-tation of certain economic factors or are you confident that they will go ahead as planned?

ANdreS-Our clients include a lot of top 10 pharmaceutical and

medical device companies. Those companies are global already. They’re not likely to pull out of a given market based on a bad year. They will clearly make adjustments to be as efficient and effective as possible in those mar-kets as they can but they’re committed to those markets for the long-term.

I believe those contracts are really independent of the economy and that’s why this niche that were in is so great. Our business really is driven not by the economy at large but by government regulations around the world. So if you want to import any medical device into Europe for example you have to translate reams of paper to be allowed to do that. You have to translate into potentially multiple languages depending on where you’re selling your medical device and that’s for even small things like a syringe. We’re not even speaking about big, room sized CT scanners or things of that bulk. Regulatory require-ments mandate that and it’s same in the U.S.

If I’m a Japanese manufacturer and I want to sell my device in the U.S., I have to translate everything into English. With every release, with every new design and with every new product tons of materials have to get translated into every market language I’m selling into.

CSN-What would you say sets you apart in terms of what you

do and how you do it?

ANdreS-We talk a lot about this, we’re all about specialization

so while anybody else out there says that they will do anything, in any language, at anytime in any format we say good, if that’s what you need then that’s who you should work with. If however you are a medical device company that needs instructions for use translated in the European market here’s what we can do for you and we have a whole set of services that support that specific service. We have expertise in house that help clients save money, we have processes that demonstrate to cli-ents how they can improve quality, which is very impor-

tant in this space, and we have success stories and case studies showcasing our experience working with these top 10 pharma & medical device companies. We’ve also been able to save companies time which is of paramount importance to those clients in particular.

All of the experiences and expertise we’ve developed have come from specialization. If other translation com-panies are active in a ½ dozen fields or more it’s unlikely that they’ve had a chance to develop their expertise.

For our clients, translation is not a high level, glamor-ous area but it needs to get done. It’s on the critical tasks side so if it’s done wrong there are huge repercus-sions. We’re able to go in and say “OK, I understand what you’re talking about and what your challenges are, let me tell you about some of the things we’ve done in the past. At this company we did this, another company needed to accomplish this and we were able to configure it this way to achieve these results.” That’s the kind of thing many medical companies are looking for. So that’s the distinguishing factor for us really.

CSN-Can you give me an example of a case study in 2009

that might be a good success story for you?

ANdreS-Yes. One of our top 10 pharmaceutical clients was do-

ing regulatory submissions work for Latin America. They were doing this through their subsidiaries in each coun-try and were looking to bring the work in-house to man-age centrally, primarily for time savings. It was going to cost more to pay an external supplier for this work than to have it done internally through their subsidiaries, but time is also money and regulatory submissions took for-ever in some of these countries.

This was a large pharmaceutical company spending $2m to $3,000,000 dollars annually. They were inter-viewing translation companies in the U.S. for the project and somehow we got onto their radar screen. We went through several rounds of meetings where they threw all kinds of curve balls at us from their perspective and asked a variety of questions. For each scenario we were able to say; “Actually, we’ve had that situation with this other client and here are some of the solutions we’ve de-veloped around that.” Having had experience delivering for companies like theirs, we outlined a solution that per-fectly fit the handling of last minute changes to their type of regulatory submissions documents and this multibillion dollar company selected us for the project.

Unless you have experience in this case with large-scale regulatory submissions in the pharmaceutical space you can talk about translation, you can talk about translation memory, you can talk about multiple people working in parallel, but you can’t talk about the very specific chal-lenges that people in those jobs face on a daily basis.


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These are hard times for everyone, and to all those who have been affected by downsizing, revoked benefits, or

unemployment in 2009, take heart that this too shall pass.

In spite of the downward economy and in spite of the slashed budgets and lost jobs that are afflicting no small number of previously healthy companies everywhere, at CSOFT we have been fortunate enough to experience considerable organic growth in 2009.

This isn’t intended as a provocation to those who have struggled in the past couple of years. Rather, my intention is to say, there’s hope out there. We’re in this mess too, but we’re surviving—and so can you.

A small part of our recent success is attributable to the localization indus-try itself: in the past few years, many companies have been shifting their fo-cus to rapid developing economies and other overseas markets, which natural-ly increases the demand for localization services. Beyond that, however, achieving fiscal prosperity in 2009 was in large part owing to a con-scious effort on our behalf to take a close look at ourselves and ask how we can do better with what we’ve already got.

LookiNg iNwArd

When we founded CSOFT seven years ago, one of the most important decisions we had to make was where we ought to establish our headquarters and production facili-ties. We decided that Beijing, China, would be the ideal location for our operations, and we have never regretted that decision since.

Maintaining a centralized facility with project managers, localization engineers, DTP professionals, and manage-ment strategically placed in China has enabled us to keep a tight watch on quality that other LSPs, who are acquiring

this and merging that, aren’t always in the position to boast about.

Having done business for many years in the US, my col-leagues and I were able to couple an Eastern approach to fiscal solvency with Western business practices. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it basically means that we can offer competitive, cost-effective service backed by a strong framework of quality control processes, corporate

responsibility, industry expertise, and the ability to significantly scale our resources at the drop of a hat.

reAChiNg outwArd

That is what we’re working with. Now as to using these advantages to their fullest potential, I’d like to start out by saying that products and services throughout the localization industry are essentially the same among different service providers. Any LSP worth its salt has invested the time and money in developing an infrastructure that produces quality, accurate translations. This is a given, a foundation on which to build—the

cake without its icing.

Service is what makes a business shine. And not just your average 24/7/365 support, quotes-within-a-day, and quick-turnaround models. Adaptable service that tai-lors its solutions to meet each and every clients’ unique needs makes the difference between a mere service pro-vider and a successful business with satisfied, loyal cli-ents. This is the icing on the aforementioned cake.

And I’m not talking about value-added services here. I hate that phrase. It basically translates into “profitable services” or what else can we split from our core ser-vices and charge extra for? That’s not good business and, frankly, it’s not honest.

Take sharing technical innovations with our clients, for example. Whether because of differing business philoso-phies or a lack of resources, some localization companies

Page 17

WHAT WE ARE AND WHERE WE’RE GOING

A bit of existential hope for 2010

This isn’t intended as a provocation to those who have struggled in the past couple of years. Rather, my intention is to say, there’s hope out there. We’re in this mess too, but we’re surviving—and so can you.

l10n technology

by Shunee Yee, President and CEO of CSOFT, the 2009 Stevie Award Winner for Best Female Entrepreneur in Asia

tend to keep their in-house technology in house, that is, they seek to keep productivity gains to themselves. We’ve found, however, that it’s much more rewarding to openly share our technological improvements with our clients so that they too can benefit directly from their use.

In late 2009, we released L10NWorks.com to this very end: we were the first to publish a comprehensive collec-tion of proprietary localization tools, free-of-charge to our clients and peers in the industry. This sort of transparency and openness was well received.

Another time, we sat down with one of our clients in the Life Sciences industry and taught them about integrating pseudo-translations into the development stages of their software GUI before performing localization. We didn’t have to do it—they do have their own processes, after all. But they were pleased as punch that we went out of our way to offer a solution that would nip their inevitable post-hoc reformatting in the bud. They saved money, and it made our job easier in the long run.

That’s what service is all about. Strengthening your core service offering by taking a close look at both your own processes as well as your clients’—this is how we’ve kept afloat throughout the economic crisis. We’ve solidified our relationships with our clientele and, as a result, have be-come trusted, de facto partners in a healthy business re-lationship.

the YeAr 2010 ANd BeYoNd

In the coming year, I think that companies look-ing to localize their products will continue to scru-tinize their internal processes even further. From what we’ve witnessed among our own clients, a pronounced portion of this scrutiny will be direct-ed at in-house technology, specifically tools aimed at streamlining and even automating already ma-ture processes.

Whether it’s finally investing in that translation memory environment they’ve been ogling for years, or deciding to delve deeper into a more proactive approach to terminology management, buyers in the localization industry will start seriously look-ing for more cost-effective and time-efficient soft-ware solutions. In the case of the Life Sciences and Manufacturing industries, risk-mitigating and compliance-oriented technology will be the rem-edy du jour for alleviating the pains of a financially distressing 2009.

In keeping with CSOFT’s philosophy of innovation, we’ve done our best to properly position ourselves in 2010 to meet the rising technological demands of the localization industry. We started investing more heavily in R&D with the ultimate intent of developing user-friendly, practical and affordable tools that will assist our clientele in operating pros-perously within the confines of a strictly managed budget.

This year, one of our solutions, our pièce de résistance—drum roll, please!—is called TermWiki. It’s the localization industry’s first multilingual, collaborative terminology de-velopment and management system. TermWiki provides users with a structured collaborative environment in which they can create, develop, discuss and manage their corpo-rate lexicon in real time.

Because it’s a wiki-based solution, TermWiki’s learning curve is essentially non-existent, and the range of control it offers over content development and traceability is yet unseen in current off-the-shelf terminology management solutions. Furthermore, as it was developed in a highly versatile, open-structured platform, TermWiki is com-pletely customizable to meet the specific demands of our clients’ project managers, terminologists, translators and stakeholders alike.

TermWiki is a powerful technology, and I’m confident that it will hold its own in 2010.

We do know the road ahead will be bumpy, though. Ter-minology management is not yet in the forefront of peo-ple’s minds, because they don’t know how valuable an ef-fect it actually has on their international releases in terms of time, money, consistency and branding.

But we’ll keep on fighting the good fight, educating our clients and peers in the industry alike, and hopefully the year 2010 will prove to be a fruitful one. For everyone.

Tel: 1 (888) 775 5376www.e-kern.com · [email protected]

Germany: +49 (0) 69 75 60 73 0 · United Kingdom: +44 (20) 78 31 56 00, Netherlands: +31 (0) 20 520 0740 · France: +33 (0) 1 53 93 85 20

Translation Services in all Languages

• Document, software and website localization• Experienced and qualified translators and editors• Multilingual terminology management• Online portal access to translation tools• Over 40 company offices worldwide

40 years of experience in European, Asian and American markets

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ClientSide News Resource Listings

FULL SERVICE LOCALIZATION

OnePlanet200 West Chapel RidgePittsburgh, PA 15328 USA Tel. 888.677.1010Fax [email protected]

McElroy Translation Company910 West Avenue Austin, Texas 78701 Tel. 512.472.6753Fax 512.472.4591orders@mcelroytranslation.comwww.mcelroytranslation.com

PH Brink International6100 Golden Valley RoadMinneapolis, MN 55422Tel. 763.591.1977Fax [email protected]

Lionbridge1050 Winter StreetSuite 2300Waltham, MA 02454 USATel. 781.434.6000Fax [email protected]

Ushuaia SolutionsRioja 919,S20000AYK Rosario,Argentina, Tel. 54.341.4493064Fax [email protected]

Symbio Group1803 Research BoulevardSuite 508Rockville, MD. 20850Tel. 301.340.3988Fax [email protected]

Logrus International2600 Philmont Ave.Suite 305Huntington Valley, PA 19006 Tel. 215.947.4773Fax [email protected]

SunFlare Co., Ltd.Shinjuku-Hirose Bldg., 4-7 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0004Tel. +81-3-3355-3370Fax +81-3-3355-1814www.sunflare.com/english/[email protected]


Aculis, Inc.852 East 1910 South, Suite 3Provo, UT 84606Tel. 801.377.5360Fax [email protected]

Idea Factory Languages Avenida de Mayo 666, 6AC1084AAN Buenos AiresArgentinaTel. +54.11.4343.4143Fax [email protected]

Crossgap S.r.l.Via Nazario Sauro 1/240121 Bologna Italy Tel. 39.0512966711 Fax 39.0512966732 [email protected]

InterPro Translation Solutions, Inc.4200 Commerce CourtSuite 204Lisle, IL 60532Tel. +1 630 245 7150Fax +1 630 245 [email protected]

PTIGlobal9900 SW Wilshire, Suite 280 Portland OR 97225Tel +1.503.297.2165 Toll free [email protected]

Studio Gambit Sp. z o.o. ul. Matejki 6, 80-952 Gdansk, PolandTel. +48 58 345 3800Fax +48 58 345 [email protected]

BG Communications International, Inc. 1100 Crémazie Blvd. East, Suite 703 Montreal (Quebec) H2P 2X2 Tel. 514.376.7919Fax 514.376.4486 [email protected] www.bgcommunications.ca

Page 19Page 19

INFORMATION QUALITY TOOLS



acrolinx GmbHRosenstrasse 2 D-10178 Berlin, Germany Tel. +49 (0)30 288 84 83 30Fax +49 (0)30 288 84 83 [email protected]

AUTHORING TOOLS &TRANSLATION MEMORY SYSTEMS

MadCap Software, Inc.7777 Fay AvenueLa Jolla, CA 92037Tel. 858-320-0387 Fax [email protected]

C S N C L I E N TS I D EN E W S

gilt resource listings

http://www.jonckers.com/en/index.php

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http://across.net/en/index.aspx

http://www.interproinc.com/


Syntes Language Group, Inc.7465 E. Peakview Ave.Centennial, CO 80111Tel. 303.779.1288Fax 303.779.1232 [email protected] www.syntes.com

Arabize22 Anwar El Mofty St., Tiba 2000 Admin. Bldg.Nasr City, CairoEgyptTel. +202.4055192-5Fax [email protected]

Tek Translation InternationalC/ Ochandiano 10 28023 Madrid, SpainTel. 34.91.414.1111Fax [email protected]

ACP Traductera, s.r.o.Nam. Miru 169/I377 01 Jindrichuv HradecCzech RepublicTel. +420.384.361.300Fax [email protected]

Worksoft3/F, Building 8, Zhongguancun Software Park, Haidian District Beijing, 100094, P.R. ChinaTel. +86 (10) 82825266 Fax +86 (10) [email protected]



ArchiText23 Main St., 3rd FloorAndover, MA 01810Tel. 978.409.6112Fax [email protected]

RM-Soft Translation & Publishing S. L.Plaza de los Campos 4, 2-D18009 Granada - SPAINTel. +34.958.215.032Fax [email protected]

Commit 139, Plapouta Ave. & Lamias St. GR 141 21 - N. Irakleio Athens, Greece Tel. +30.210.8056.930-2 Fax +30.210.8056.935 www.commit.gr [email protected]

CrossGap S.r.l.Via Aurelio Saffi 45/340131 BolognaItalyTel. +39 051 5281511Fax +39 051 5281532 [email protected]

CSOFT SolutionsEast Gate Plaza, Office Tower A, 5th Floor9 Dongzhong Street, Beijing, China 100027Tel. +86-10-6418-5353Fax [email protected]

Globalization Group, Inc. (GGI)374 East 720 SouthOrem, UT 84058Tel. 801.225.6959Fax 801.838.1117info@globalization-group.comwww.globalization-group.com

Lingua Solutions, Inc.15303 Ventura Blvd., Suite 900Sherman Oaks, CA 91403Tel. [email protected]

Palex Languages & Software4th floor, Uchebnaya 39/1, Tomsk, Russia, 634034Tel. +7.3822.531.638Fax [email protected]

WeLocalize241 East 4th St. Suite 207Frederick, MD 21701Tel. 301.668.0330Fax [email protected] www.welocalize.com


FULL SERVICE LOCALIZATIONgilt

resource listings


Janus WWI Derbenevskaya nab. 11B - office 113Business Center Pollars114115, Moscow, RussiaTel. +7-495-913-6653 ext. 213Fax [email protected]




HiSoft Services (Beijing) Limited1/F, Dascom Building, No. 9 East Road, Shangdi,Haidian District, Beijing 100085, ChinaTel. [email protected]

E-C Translation Ltd.2nd Floor, Hua Teng Development Building, No.23, Xi Huan Bei Road, BDA, Beijing 100176, P. R. China. Tel. [email protected]

Follow-Up Translation ServicesAv. Presidente Wilson 165 / Sala 1308 Rio de Janeiro - RJ20030-020 - BrazilTel. (+55 21) 2524-2994Fax (+55 21) [email protected]

Sinometrics121 Stewart Street, Suite 205Seattle, WA 98101Tel. 206.267.4100Fax [email protected]

EQHO Communications Ltd.2001 Chartered Square152 North Sathorn RdBangkok 10500 ThailandTel. +66.2.637.8060Fax [email protected] www.eqho.com

Able Translations385 Traders Boulevard EastMississauga, OntarioL4Z 2E5Tel. 905.502.0000Fax [email protected]

TOINToin Building1-12-8 Shiba, Minato-kuTokyo 105-0014, JapanTel. +81-3-3455-8764Fax [email protected]

ConversisBignell Park BarnsChesterton BicesterOxfordshireOX26 1TDUnited KingdomTel. +44 (0) 845.450.0805Fax +44 (0) [email protected] www.oxford-conversis.com

WH&PEspace Beethoven BP102,1208 Route des Lucioles,Sophia Antipolis CEDEX.06902 [email protected]

Skrivanek Translation Services Ltd. Nad Zaloanou 499/6 180 00 Prague 8,Czech RepublicTel. 420.233.320.560Fax [email protected]

Global Databases LimitedDoc3 Support & Development Center Holeckova 25150 00 Prague Czech Republic Tel.: +420 257 313 [email protected]

Arabize22 Anwar El Mofty St., Tiba 2000 Admin. Bldg.Nasr City, CairoEgyptTel. +202.4055192-5Fax [email protected]

VistaTEC700 South Circular Road Kilmainham Dublin 8 Ireland Tel. +353-1-416-8000 Fax +353-1-416-8099 [email protected]



KERN AGGlobal Language Services Kurfürstenstr. 160486 FrankfurtTel. +49 (0) 69.75.60.73-17Fax +49 (0) [email protected]



Jonckers Translation & Engineering s.a.Belgium – HeadquartersJonckers Translation & Engineering s.a.15A Avenue Herrmann-DebrouxB-1160 Brussels, Belgium www.jonckers.com

Europe Contact Phone: + 32-2-672-80-30USA Contact Phone: +1 877-590 -1927Asia Contact Phone: +86 -10-5873-1958


Web Globalization

Byte Level Research 3841 4th Ave., #235San Diego, CA 92103Tel. 760.317.2001jyunker@bytelevel.comwww.bytelevel.comwww.globalbydesign.com

CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Ektron5 Northern Blvd. Bldg. 6Amherst, NH 03031 USA Tel. 603.594.0249 Fax 603.594.0258 [email protected]

TRANSLATION MEMORY TOOLS

SOFTWARE LOCALIZATION TOOLS


XML-INTL Ltd.TechnologyPO Box 2167Gerrards CrossBucks SL9 8XF UKTel. +44 1753 480 467Fax +44 1753 480 [email protected]

SINGLE LANGUAGE LOCALIZATION PROVIDER

Business & Languages srlTechnical Translations and SW Localization into ItalianLargo Torraca, 7180133 NAPLES - ITALYTel. 39.081.551.31.76 Fax [email protected]

Multilizerc/o Rex Partners Oy Tekniikantie 14, PL 534 02150 ESPOOFinlandTel. +358.92517.5455Fax +358.92517.2202 [email protected]

DTP SERVICES

Across Systems, Inc.431 N Brand Blvd., Suite 308Glendale, CA [email protected] (877) 922 - 7677Fax (877) 773 - 5687

STEP.IN. S.r.l.Via Laurentina, 447/A 00142 ROMA (Italy)Tel.+39 06 - 5914404 / 5914808Fax +39 06 - [email protected]

TransSoftTranslation & Localization into Polishul. Jugoslowianska 6360-149 Poznan, PolandTel. [email protected]

DocZone.com bv Bronsteeweg 49-B 2101 AB Heemstede The Netherlands Tel. +31 (0) 23 548 48 80 Fax +31 (0) 23 548 48 85 [email protected] www.doczone.com

Palex Languages & Software4th floor, Uchebnaya 39/1, Tomsk, Russia, 634034Tel. +7.3822.531.638Fax [email protected]

iDISC Information Technologies Connecting to the Spanish-speaking WorldPasseig del Progrés, 96 08640 Olesa de Montserrat BARCELONA - SPAIN Tel. +34 93 778 7300 Fax +34 93 778 3580 www.idisc.es [email protected]

Ryszard Jarza Translationsul. Barlickiego 23/22, 50-324 Wroclaw, PolandTel. +48 601 [email protected]

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