Heading the new service at ELS is Thorkild Fougner who has the title Translation Operation Support Manager. Thorkild explained that for some ten years ELS has been operating as a national language support interface organisation between IBM's own information development laboratories, and the IBM translation centres established in individual countries. There are today 19 such national translation centres in Europe, handling 25 languages, and soon the figure will increase to 25 national translation centres with the addition of new centres in Central and East European countries such as Russia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

ELS also provided the infrastructure for file transmission and communication, developing highly efficient electronic links between the developers, ELS, national language centres, and the suppliers of translation services. In 1992 IBM ELS processed the translation of 110 million words relating to products, with an unquantifiable further large amount of work relating to marketing. The translation turnover was of the order of $65 million, which, they believe, make them the biggest commercial play in this particular market, far larger than any commercial translation bureau.

Why should we keep all that organisation and experience solely for in-house use? was an obvious question they had to ask themselves. What they feel they can offer a customer--and they are principally targeting American software houses seeking a pan European market--is a fixed price, turnkey or one- stop solution, which includes all activities ranging from translation to distribution of national language software and publications.

Formally the system is known as the IBM Turnkey National Language Support Solution, and it will be offered through the new IBM company SMC (Software Manufacturing Company). It involves various elements. One is the selection and evaluation (Qualification in IBM-speak) of translation companies (vendors). IBM believe that they have built up unmatched experience in selecting and qualifying vendors for their own work. Incidentally, it is a firm IBM belief that translation should almost always be done in the country of the target language; languages are changing so quickly these days that, in their opinion, unsatisfactory results are likely to be obtained when expatriate translators are used.

ELS is in the process of building up a translation inventory file. The contents of the file record the experience gathered by using a vendor for translation up to now of IBM products, plus information defined in an ISO-certified IBM document called Selection and Qualification of vendors. In addition to general vendor information such as ownership, location, contacts, the Inventory File enables IBM to select the best vendor candidates for a specific customer project. Technical skills involving translation technology, domain specific knowledge, knowledge about hardware and software platforms under which an application is running, and capacity, are of course important selection criteria. So too is quality, and IBM carefully evaluates the vendor's own quality procedures.

Cost is a major factor in this sector. It is the intention of ELS to define a standard cost structure, with competitive pricing based on the fact that the vendor is responsible only for the translation; marketing, customer relations. project management and file handling are all looked after by IBM. All material belonging to a particular project, such as files for translation, the translation dictionary, and the translation memory (created on the IBM Translation Tool or IBM Translation Manager), will be stored in what IBM call an NLS Folder. This concept makes the customer as well as ELS "translation vendor independent" when a new release of a product has to be prepared. The IBM Translation Tool or the IBM licensed product Translation Manager/2 becomes the vehicle for the NLS Folder concept. The contents of the Folder are owned by the customer and managed by IBM.