LISA Forum Asia

LISA Industry Introduction Session

This session is designed to familiarize attendees with LISA: its goals, management structure, operating objectives and membership entitlements. The association's activities, member involvement and expectations will be outlined, followed by a question and answer period aimed at identifying how LISA can be more responsive to its members, the industry and the China and Asia-Pacific markets.

Welcome and Introductions

Program Overview & Day 1 Objectives

KEYNOTE: Building a Global Center for Product Localization

In November last year, Cisco announced plans to double its investment in China to USD $16 billion over the next five years. Under Dr. Jan Gronski, the company’s R&D Center was opened in Shanghai in 2005. It has grown to more than 550 people in less than two years, 10% of whom comprise Cisco's globalization and localization services group. In his keynote, Gronski will describe how he and his team are transferring Cisco’s innovation culture to China through building trust and building managers. He will also share his views on intellectual property in China; how Cisco is empowering its new Chinese managers to feel comfortable speaking out and speaking up; why the lack of English in China is only a transient problem; the hiring process that Cisco employs in China; and why he believes that China will eventually become a global center for product development and localization.

Best Practices for Managing Growth in China Outsourcing

TIBCO China Development Center, which is operated by VanceInfo, is involved in the full product development lifecycle, i.e. architecture, development, testing, technical writing and technical support. In 2007, the team underwent a huge growth spurt, almost tripling in size. Tan will cover some of the challenges faced by a rapidly growing team and describe some key best practices for overcoming these challenges. She will also share how TIBCO is investing in China's students and educational institutions to help better prepare students to develop practical skills in emerging technologies.

PANEL SESSION: China’s Evolution from Language Services to Global Software Solutions Providers

With reference to China's evolutionary role from localization services to globalization and IT services, Eltschinger will open this session by describing the economics of today's global outsourcing market and its potential for China. He will cover key China outsourcing business statistics, competition, development trends, skill sets, challenges and opportunities.

In an interactive discussion format open to the audience, the panelists and moderator will address the following issues: What are the challenges confronting China's recognition as a world-class outsourcing services partner? How can it differentiate between BPO and ITO in terms of what Chinese companies are offering today? Are China's culture, business education and skillsets prepared to lead the global outsourcing services market? What role, if any, will localization services play? What are the challenges confronting China's outsourcing business growth? What evidence is there that China will overcome these obstacles? How are globalization services companies positioning themselves for success?

14:00-14:30
Automating the Localization Process to Optimize Web Site Globalization • Li Hao - Software Localization Engineer, Intel Localization automation is clearly a huge part of controlling costs. Reusing what has been previously translated is critical. Hao will focus on the tools and processes required to increase the rate of reuse and how to measure their effectiveness.
14:30-15:00
Chinese Web Site Localization: Current Trends and Best Practices • Gary Muddyman - CEO, Conversis Global In 2007, Conversis commissioned a research study managed by California State University (Chico). The goal was to explore multinational enterprise web sites to find out how well businesses were adapting to Chinese culture and languages. Muddyman will share the results of the study and provide attendees with a comparative analysis of Chinese and U.S. sites to enable them to learn how to culturally customize web sites for both countries.
15:00-16:00
WORKGROUP DISCUSSION: Improving the Localization of Marketing Materials – A Call for Action! • Tze Kai Ng - Translation and Localization Web Content Management Services, Asia Pacific, Hewlett-Packard Ng’s goal is to encourage both service providers and project managers in the localization industry to address together the challenges they face in globalizing marketing content. He will examine the nature of marketing content, and the complexity of pre- and post-processing from its native format to various publishing forms (campaigns, newsletters, RSS feeds, etc.). Ng will also review the current guidelines in place in the industry to prevent major slip-ups that may offend targeted customers either locally or abroad. Attendees will be encouraged to share their experiences and to suggest processes and tools that can be adopted by the industry to overcome the current challenges in this area.

14:00-14:30
Designing Software for Global Markets: Globalization Considerations • Dr. Wei Chen - Senior Engineering Manager, TIBCO Software When constructing software products, we often underestimate the difficulties of resolving the design issues created when globalization is not taken into account from the beginning. Chen will share TIBCO’s methodology for software design for global markets. He will cover design considerations, coding recommendations and testing strategies in three related areas: (1) Data Transparency and Transformation, (2) Localization Readiness and (3) Localization Friendliness.
14:30-15:00
Making DITA Fit China’s Global Companies: The Challenges and Solutions • Stephen Zhang - Software Engineer, IBM Nowadays, more and more Chinese companies are trying to expand into the global market. This includes providing global content, which enables a company to deliver not only good content, but also the right content, to their customers. More and more, they are starting to pay attention to information standards to learn how to deliver this information more efficiently. DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is one such standard. Zhang will discuss the common issues and solutions that underlie migration, translation and globalization when Chinese companies move to DITA.
15:00-16:00
The Practical Benefits of Open Standards: Saving Time and Money • Andrzej Zydroń - CTO, XML-INTL • Arle Lommel - OSCAR Chair, Open Standards Committee, LISA Recent far-reaching developments in the field of localization industry-related open standards from LISA OSCAR, OASIS and W3C have created the basis for an advanced and highly efficient approach to the problems of document creation and localization. Not only do these standards potentially save money by eliminating hurdles to the interchange of data by differing systems, but they also provide the basis for effective automation of publishing and translation workflow. Learn how to build advanced, cost-effective and efficient authoring and localization systems using Open Architecture for XML Authoring and Localization (OAXAL), based on TMX, XLIFF, SRX, GMX-V, xml:tm, Unicode TR29, W3C ITS and DITA.

14:00-14:30
How HyperSTE Helps You to Write in Simplified Technical English • Dr. Frans Wijma - Managing Director, Tedopres Asia Simplified Technical English can help you to improve your documentation and save costs. Frans Wijma will show you how HyperSTE helps writers to work in Simplified Technical English and allows editors to check the quality of documentation.
14:30-15:00
Working with Globally Decentralized Teams • Sung Cho - VP APAC, Jonckers Translations & Engineering A majority of companies today maintain some level of off-shoring and global operations. The move to this model has happened extremely quickly, leaving little time to create the organizational structure necessary to support it. Join Cho to learn some best practices in working with globally decentralized teams in today’s ever-changing environment.
15:00-15:30
Software Localization Processes • Lior Cohen - VP Marketing and Sales, Net-Translators Software localization processes are complex by nature, encompassing a large number of stages, as well as stringent quality control. Translation is only a part of the process. In order to be fully implemented, localization requires highly professional personnel, including translators, proofreaders, QA specialists, DTP specialists, internationalization specialists and software engineers. Cohen will cover the various stages of localization; what should be localized; and the best way to do it.

Using Automated Translation in the Enterprise

A panel of experts describe the role of machine translation in providing enterprise globalization solutions, with a focus on what works, what doesn’t, and for what languages.

Day I Summary and Adjourn

Day 1 Summary • Program Overview

Virtual Collaboration Across the Globe: Human/Machine Interaction

Distributed cognition illustrates the process of interaction between people and technologies in order to determine how to best represent, store and provide access to digital resources. When applied to collaborative learning in VLEs (virtual learning environments), distributed cognition allows us to capture the thought processes in and the multicultural dimension of collaborative work. Understanding how people work together virtually to construct knowledge across cultural and linguistic boundaries allows us to leverage resources and improve efficiency.

Moser-Mercer will provide scientific evidence for how new types of knowledge are constructed when different cultures collaborate virtually. Using the example of East-West collaboration, she will share how evidence suggests that the knowledge constructed in such culturally blended groups of learners is superior in quality to that constructed by monocultural groups. She will also describe how the insights gained from the design of multicultural VLEs can be applied to virtual multicultural work environments in order to improve team efficiency and to access global markets.

Using Automated Translation Software to Translate Dynamic Content

Content is starting to undergo a significant shift, from that of static (updated periodically after several rounds of review) to dynamic content (created by users around the world). This shift is empowering users globally, but it is also increasing the demand for usable, real-time translations. Marcu will share why dynamic content is becoming more important; how automated translation is being used to translate it; the types of applications and deployments that are best suited for automated translation; and why statistical syntax represents the next generation of automated translation.

Is Machine Translation Ready for Real-world Use?

Wiggins presents a high-level business and technology overview of how Machine Translation's application delivery focus is shifting to accommodate internet users and the developing economies in Asia-Pacific markets. By analyzing baseline technologies, language escalation and knowledge-based application requirements, Wiggins gives a compelling argument why automated translation will have an enormous impact on the economic development in emerging economies.

Why Terminology Means Big Business to Enterprise Globalization Services

Due to current applications in content and knowledge management, business globalization is helping companies better understand the financial importance of terminology work both in terms of methodology as well as data. Industry terminology, often called ontology, helps define the form and content upon which globalization, internationalization and localization processes are built. When managing content globally, terminology management is crucial for effective communications in trade, marketing, legal, governance, etc., by helping to control the quality and cost aspects of product data management, along with web support, technical documentation, translation, and localization production issues. Galinski will describe how and why terminology is becoming more recognized as a global business driver and how the professional skills of terminologists are changing to meet the associated challenges.

13:30-14:00
To Improve Your Multilingual Content, Start at the Source • Dr. Frans Wijma - Managing Director, Tedopres Asia When you export your products, you will need information in foreign languages. Frans Wijma will show how to use Simplified Technical English to improve the quality and readability of your documentation, which will facilitate its translation into other languages.
14:00-15:30
Open Source Localization • Melanie Gao - Senior Manager, Asia Globalization Center, Sun Microsystems • Michael Huai - Deputy Director of Education and Training, The Beijing Redflag CH2000 Software Co. • Andrzej Zydroń - CTO, XML-INTL • Arle Lommel - OSCAR Chair, Open Standards Committee, LISA Leading this session Gao will focus on Sun's localization experiences with open source products including OpenSolaris, Netbeans, Glassfish, OpenOffice among others. She will talk about the challenges she has faced and the attempts to overcome them in order to make progress. With colleagues from the open-source community in China and abroad, Gao will lead a discussion centering on localizing open source applications today. The group will address how localization tools and standards, process management, and localization product testing relate to the open source methodologies and how greater progress can be made.

13:30-14:00
Hewlett-Packard Product Testing - Internationalization and Localization • Hua Duan - Application & Content Globalization Consultant, Hewlett-Packard HP Services has access to over 6,000 engineering resources worldwide with testing expertise and knowledge across varying technologies, applications and industry domains. They perform end-to-end testing from unit test, through integration test and system test, to user acceptance test. Duan will share how this group applies continuous application testing to enable customers to lower testing costs, to increase testing quality and to shorten the testing life cycle.
14:00-14:30
Best Practice: GB18030 Compliance Testing • Forrest Xia - Software Engineer, China Globalization Competency Center, IBM The GB 18030 standard was released in 2000 and represents the new generation of Chinese character standards. Different from previously approved Chinese character standards, GB 18030 is a mandatory standard that requires compliance testing for every IT product sold in China's market today. However, one of the key challenges confronting the GB 18030 certification process is how to run the test! Xia will share IBM's best practice for GB 18030 compliance testing, including how to implement the standard and how to ensure successful testing procedures. He will address the common issues faced when handling Chinese characters and the differences between various Chinese character standards. Xia will also summarize the status of major IT vendor products vis-à-vis their support for GB 18030.
14:30-15:30
WORKGROUP DISCUSSION: Chinese Standardization Activities in Language Processing • Prof. Dr. Christian Galinski - Director, Infoterm • Changqing Zhou - Senior Researcher, China National Institute of Standardization • Changqi Huang - Assistant to President, Translators Association of China Due to China's steady market growth and the progress being made by Chinese multinationals entering the global market, the Chinese government is focusing on the strategic aspects of open standards, particularly in the translation and terminology areas. Galinski and Zhou will discuss the work being sponsored by the government and how these activities will impact China's globalization efforts and the localization industry.

13:30-14:00
Lessons Learned from Customers and the Transition to Global IT Services Provider • Lily Haryanti - Sr. Business Development Manager, hiSoft Services (Beijing) The question of "Why China" has rapidly transformed to "When China". Current situation reveals how significant projects allocation from other part of the world flowing into China. Due to the increasing demand of capable & reliable IT Services provider, hiSoft will share the challenges as well as success stories during the process of creating Global IT services provider company. The area to be covered during the discussion will include the importance of project management, chasing new technologies in the industry, and the gradual shift into Machine Translation.
14:00-14:30
A Leading Indic Language Service Provider • Biraj Rath - Director - Sales & Marketing, Braahmam Net Solutions If you are looking for a top Indian language service provider with several years of experience, then join Rath to find out how to cut production and project management costs in localization engineering, GUI/linguistic testing or e-learning localization, regardless of the language involved.

What Is the Business Value of Globalization?

Translation and localization are often managed operationally, but not strategically. How can we bring visibility to top management? What value do we provide, and how do we demonstrate it? And, most important, what makes your CEO excited about what you are accomplishing for the organization through globalizing its business processes?

Wrap-up and Adjourn