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Saint-Petersburg 2004
The Insiders Look at Outsourcing!
Connecting Worlds Through Offshore Business Models
Co-located with the Software Outsourcing Summit 2004 - Russia’s Largest Software Conference for International Development Clients
Pulkovskaya Hotel, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
9-11 June 2004
It’s no secret. Russia offers excellent outsourcing opportunities for software development. While today’s offshore growth trend keeps rising, it pushes companies to streamline their product internationalization and localization processes. And Russia, with its low cost structure and experience in multilingual project management, has their eyes on this target too. Its more than just about costs. It’s a whole new set of management challenges.
In the IT sector, outsourcing is becoming the norm, as noted in a recent Globalization Insider article, Meeting the Outsourcing Challenge by Tiziana Perionotti of TGP Consulting. She noted that Silicon Valley software producers are most likely to develop their products with offshore R&D facilities in India, China or the Ukraine. Due to the nature of software writing, services such as quality assurance, localization, technical writing and project management have now been added to the lists of tasks being assigned to outsourced locations.
As Rory Cowan of Lionbridge explained in his article From Mozart to Mumbai, the localization industry is just in the early stages of this outsource migration. Translation has most often taken place in the target country for quality reasons, but now more workflow processes are moving to overseas locations. This trend is giving rise to the need for more and better project management training in headquarters and outsourced locations to manage this transition.
Global Business Managers and most recently many internationalization and localization production managers are being faced with a plethora of opportunities and challenges as the outsource engine picks up steam. LISA members and conference attendees have the unique opportunity to participate in a conference where both sides of the equation are being discussed.
Your Only Questions about Localization Outsourcing Should be “When?” and “Where?”
Don DePalma - President, Common Sense Advisory, Inc.
Hundreds of companies around the world serve a half-billion dollar market of localizing software products for international markets. Thousands more help companies translate owner’s manuals for cars, legal documents, and other business needs. Looking into the near future, localizing business applications and translating a wide range of content will become a critical issue for many more companies as they extend their software-dependent product lines, web applications, online channel, and internal systems to new markets. / For the last ten years, the U.S.-dominated software industry has chosen to perform most of its product localization outside North America, in Ireland and in a few other places like the Czech Republic. Rising costs in Dublin, the introduction of the euro to lower wage countries, aggressively innovative suppliers in non-euro eastern and central Europe, and Indian software outsourcers expanding their service offerings are radically redrawing the map of localization. / In this presentation, DePalma defines software localization as it is practiced today, the new business demands that will increase the need for intelligent localization, the human and technical resources that localization requires, what drives companies to outsource, critical success factors for localization partners, the inexorable drive eastward, and Russia’s role in this expanding market.
OUTSOURCING LOCALIZATION CASE STUDY - A New Methodology
John Papaioannou - Localization Manager, Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems (www.bentley.com), which provides software for the life cycle of the world’s infrastructure, needed to localize its software for Eastern and Western European languages. This presentation will outline the methodology developed that enabled Bentley Systems to outsource the localization to SDL International and significantly reduce the project management resources required. The new localization methodology has enabled Bentley Systems to increase from 100 projects per year to 200 projects per year with reduced costs and faster turnaround.
OUTSOURCING LOCALIZATION CASE STUDY - Why the Russian Logic Model Works so Well!
Len Erlikh - Founder and CTO, BridgeQuest Inc.
Over the course of last year BridgeQuest Inc. conducted a number of large scale successful software localization projects with STAR SPB Ltd. These projects covered a variety of facets of software localizations as well as a broad range of target languages. The purpose of this case study is to share BridgeQuest positive experience in conducting software localization projects in Russia.
The Future of Translation Tools Technology - A business perspective based on financial, technical and user observations
Vitaly Borok - Executive Director, STAR SPb
Mr. Borok shares his ideas and experiences resulting from many years of using language technology in his localization and translation production process. His presentation will cover:
- Goals and limitations of translation technology evolution
- Machine translation and its place in the professional translation
- Who is interested in productivity growth? (In fact it appears that nobody is interested in global changes, at least in those that are feasible)
- TM systems - technical improvements
- TM systems - linguistic improvements (what can be done and what cannot be done)
- The only solution that promises more or less considerable productivity growth: restricted language + TM + MT. However this solution has limited area of applicability (large-scale multilingual technical translation projects).
The overall conclusion: in the nearest future we should not expect any major changes in tools that will bring us a considerable productivity growth or cost savings.
Automating Quality Control in the L10N Process
Nathalie De Sutter - Project Manager,
Heidi Van Hiel - Language Engineer, Ycomm Europe
Assuring and measuring the quality of a translation is an issue probably faced by most GILT service providers: one company cannot have in-house linguists for every language, so how to measure the quality for languages we do not master? Trust the partner-supplier and simply resell the translation to the customer is one way. We did not like it. An Integrated Quality Assurance System became imperative. Ours is built on three major principles: people, tools and process. The first step in delivering quality translations is working with the right people: we set methods and standards to recruit and evaluate vendors, and developed a matrix to automate this task. Secondly, we developed a project management system with web-based tracking facilities that combines and automates all human actions, such as ordering and invoicing, into one flexible though strict process. But above all, we wanted to check the work of our suppliers with tools, just like you check spelling and hyphenation. We wanted to check for missing words, terminology conflicts, errors in character sets, wrongly formatted numbers,...The main idea behind the set of tools, which we baptized “QA Distiller” is: “we only measure the measurable”. Luckily, we soon realized that you can measure more than you think you can measure. And for the accountant and the account manager, the nice thing about this tool is that the ROI is very measurable. We win time in checking and we win time in managing projects by doing the right things right away.
EXPLOITING GLOBALIZATION BENEFITS - Outsourcing and Vendor Selection Criteria
Serge Gladkoff - President, Logrus International
The presentation dwells into the difficulties of vendor selection in a gray area situation of remote vendor evaluation (without an inspection visit) when there may be not enough information to make an informed decision, and further elaborates into the suggested vendor taxonomy providing clear guidelines for evaluating vendor offering in terms of comparing price and quality for vendors in different “weight” categories.
Finally, the speaker tries to derive several important conclusions regarding vendor offerings in various markets.
Localization Outsourcing: What Model is the Best?
Konstantin Josseliani - CEO, ILS
Software publishers and manufacturers approach to internationalization and localization of their products underwent considerable changes for the last decade. If in the past almost entire range of such tasks was carried out by these companies own staff, then last years a clear tendency can be seen to outsource part or the most of localization functions.
Each software vendor faces the problem of outsourcing optimal model selection. What model may be considered optimal from the budget, quality and flexibility viewpoint?
The author examines three currently the most common outsourcing models and analyzes each of them benefits and shortcomings. The special part of presentation is assigned to distribution of functions between the company and its outsourcing partner.
The presentation topics and resume are based upon author’s 10-years experience as Localization Manager with SAP - one of the world leading ERP systems vendors.
Using XML for Localization Projects
Yves Savourel - Localization Solutions Architect, ENLASO
This presentation discusses how XML can be used in the localization process from different viewpoints. It looks first at the different aspects that make XML attractive for localization tasks and explores the various ways to take advantage of XML, even if the original data to localize are not in an XML format. The session also discusses how to translate XML documents and how to overcome some of the challenges XML-enabled tools still offer. Concrete examples and demonstrations are used throughout the presentation.
Knowledge Management & Outsourcing in L10n
Janaina Wittner - Senior Project Manager, WH&P
The presentation gives a brief introduction to the theories behind Knowledge Management:
- Objectives of Knowledge Management
- Difference between explicit / tacit forms of knowledge.
- Difficulties with managing knowledge.
- Difficulties with building a trust relationship.
- Presentation of IT and non-IT Knowledge Management tools which can be applied in response to those strategic questions.
- Five Strategic questions to ask in an attempt to manage knowledge when working with external structures.
- WH&P’s outsourcing experience.
Cyrillic Languages Outsourcing: Major Issues Commonly Overseen
Dmitry Molodyk - Key Account Manager, ILS
In the past decade, most major Western manufacturers and software publishers turned to Russian and ex-USSR market. However, it appeared that standard practices and technologies do not always apply quite well to Cyrillic languages. A simplest decision, such as what separator to use for lists in your strings, may cost over $10000 at development or test stage. This presentation will cover main costly issues typical for Cyrillic languages that are often overseen by software developers and publishers. It is designed to help developers and system architects pick proper solutions and avoid standard pitfalls.
Localization Standards
Yves Savourel - Localization Solutions Architect, ENLASO
Arle Lommel - Publications Manager, LISA
Terry Lawlor - VP Worldwide Marketing, SDL International
Learn about different XML-based standards developed in the localization industry, such as XCLIFF, TMX, TBX, OLIF, SRX, etc.
How to Structure Your Outsourcing Relationships
Nick Puntikov - Director, STAR SPb
John Papaioannou - Localization Manager, Bentley Systems
Philippe De Sainte Maresville - WorldWide Localization Center Director, Hewlett Packard
Konstantin Josseliani - CEO, ILS
How to Manage Your Offshore Partner. The Best Tasks to Outsource and Why!
Outsourcing - Risks and Opportunities
Heinz Pechek - Head of Undergraduate Programs, Donau-Universitat Krems
Mr. Pechek is an expert on electronic commerce and presents his experiences working with offshore and outsourcing projects.
His presentation will address:
- partial (out-tasking): E.g., part of IT; Telecommunications etc.,
- ASP - Application Service providing
- total (strategic) : all of IT, Telecommunications etc.
- offshore (India, China,..)
- near-shore (Europe, new EU-countries, Russia,..)
Offshore regions:
- India
- China
- Latin-America
Near shore regions:
- new EU-members
- EU-aspirantes
- Russia (St. Petersburg, Rontgenstrasse, Russoft)
Key-factors to benchmark before outsourcing (make or buy decisions):
- Technology
- Infrastructure
- Cultural & educational level
- Qualification of manpower
- Cost (wages)
- Efficiency & productivity of manpower
- Legal situation
- Stability
- Contracting
- Clients
- Transportation
- Travelling
Modern Localization Technology Based on Automated Translation & XML
Alexander Serebryakov - Technical Director, PROMT
Globalization process demands from the IT industry the most effective way to solve localization tasks. At the same time, the localization focus migrates from localization of products and applications to localization of web-sites and portals. One of the main tasks is translation of the text information from multiple objects of a localized product.
As a solution for this task the following technology could be implemented: - selection of object of localization;- import of information to be localized into an XML document; - translation of the XML document; - export of the localized data into the object of localization.
Suggested translation process employs a smart combination of TM and MT approaches that allows to use already translated and edited text segments very effectively. Objects of localization can be both the program resources, Help and documentation or a Website content. It is very important that the localization technology combines tools for customizing the translation process for work with specific objects of localization and supports an unification of terminology and style.
Language Groups
David Matuska - Managing Director, Skrivanek Translation Services
This presentation gives an overview of:
- Economical and cultural differences among countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
- Relationship between economic fundamentals and demand for localization/translations.
- Relationship between city size and local localization/translation market.
- Future economical prospects of different countries from the region.
