Main Content
Workshops
Are you facing at least one international-related challenge that you and your team are finding difficult to resolve? Don’t waste time and money reinventing the wheel! Attend a LISA Professional Skills Workshop and leave with the latest best practice to share with your team back at the office.
Executive Roundtable
Taiwan’s Position in Business Globalization and
Outsourcing Global Product Development
Monday, April 6
Presentation language: English
Asian economies have long relied on exports and manufacturing as a road to increased prosperity. The recent global economic downturn has shown that they cannot continue to rely on ever-expanding Western appetite for goods made in Asia but that they must instead cultivate a more diverse economic basis based on unique offerings and value-added services. GDP growth in Mainland China dropped to substantially in 2008 compared to a robust 13% in 2007, and industrial production in Taiwan dropped by 32% in December, 2008 (source, The Economist, January 29, 2009).
One of the dangers in the face of disappointing economic conditions both in Asia and the West is that companies or even national economies may become much more skeptical of international partnerships or that it will be harder for outsourced development providers to justify their services to potential partners nervous about the economic future.
In this Executive Roundtable, business leaders and upper-level management from Taiwanese and international companies will examine the issues affecting global business today and the opportunities available to Asia, Greater China and Europe.
Product Globalization Testing
Functional Testing (including Translatability Testing
Using Pseudo-Translation) and Translation Testing
Instructors: Dale Schultz, Wayne Chiang, David Liao
Monday, April 6
Presentation language: English, with additional expertise in Chinese
Globalization of software requires much more than translation. The software has to be properly designed, enabled, tested and translated. This workshop will provide an overview of an efficient approach to the globalization testing of software. The Why, What, When and Who of globalization testing will be explained and best practices will be suggested.
There are two main areas of globalization testing, the functional and translation testing. One of the aspects of functional globalization testing is translatability testing - determining if software can be translated. Attempting to translate software into multiple languages before it is translatable can be an expensive and frustrating experience for everyone involved so it is important to test translatability beforehand. Translatability testing allows the development team to fix translatability issues in the software before it is sent off for translation, resulting in significant translation cost savings. A translatability testing methodology called pseudo-translation will be presented and the technique explained.
Once the software is known to be translatable, and has been translated, the actual translation itself needs to be tested. The planning, best practices and useful tools of translation testing will be presented.
Using Open Standards and Tools
to Automate your Company’s Globalization Processes
Instructor: Frank Rojas
Thursday, April 9
Presentation language: English
Managing translation services is a critical part of the overall software development cycle and it impacts not only the end user customers but also the time and ease with which translated information can be delivered to customers. The task of managing content end to end, from requirements to the web/production, is getting more and more complex as development cycles decrease in length, the number of languages and volume of content increase, standards and open-source projects mature at higher rates, and customers’ appetite for global information rises.
Ultimately, businesses need to adapt to more frequent requests for smaller translation volumes. Given these demands it is becoming financially impossible to manage all aspects of a globalization value chain throughout the authoring, production, and consumption phases using today’s complex systems. As a result, businesses are looking to move and adapt quickly with their service providers.
This workshop will describe and provide examples of globalization value chain to help guide a business set up end-to-end globalization workflows/business rules across an enterprise. It will then focus on standards and identifying a “standards-based translation technology profile” that can be used to profile types of translation services - On-Demand vs. Project Based. The final phase of the workshop will include an interactive session where teams will use the translation service and technology profiles to address common industry environments and business global problems.
