In the past the average individual had virtually no access to a computer. But this didn't mean that the Eastern European was a computer illiterate. It is known that communist governments supported reverse engineering centers for Western made software. Piracy and virus development were among some of the activities very well under control of the Communists. When a US developer was working on the upgrade to its SW, there were, for example, people cracking it in Bulgaria.

In 1987 most Eastern Europeans had more or less the same buying power. One-hundred twenty dollars per month was the average salary and evidently it was very difficult to buy any Western goods, not to mention a PC. To purchase a Macintosh was out of question because of the COCOM list. Today the number of Internet users grows at a rate of 10 percent per month. After the 1992 boom, the office automation equipment market rose by 16% to over $495 million in the Czech Republic. Nowadays the market is very competitive and it reflects the growing sophistication of East European end-users.

Local PC assemblers who had planned to phase out their 286 PC s by the end of 1993 were pushed to shift to 386 models much earlier due to the market pressure. US-assembled PC s are gaining ground in Eastern Europe. Most of the smaller local assemblers have faded out (about 700 to 1000 companies emerged shortly after 1989 to take their share in the personal computer industry of the Czech Republic). All this shows that the users have become also more quality-conscious.

The commercial translation business was also forced to get adapted to the new situation. The Czech rates for translations have changed from $1.83 to over $30 per page. Higher rates for translation and interpreting attract individuals with little or no knowledge of foreign languages and without the basic skills and experience to provide translation services. Czech as well as foreign companies look for those willing to work at lower rates in an attempt to "economise". As a result, foreign customers are confused and sometimes fail to distinguish between opportunist and professional translators.

The translation business in Eastern Europe is similar to that of Western Europe ten or fifteen years ago. Most translation agencies coordinate jobs in the same fashion: translators work at home using their favourite word processor or the good old typewriter. Most of the 2000 people making their living by translation in the Czech Republic work with a very primitive word processor: an old DOS application that quickly became the standard thanks to the fact that it was properly supported by the Czech diacritic marks. Quality is estimated by many translation agencies according to the frequency of customer complaints. As a rule a large manual is randomly broken into as many parts as many translators are available. Translators take their parts home and rely on their own resources for terminology and style. There is no coordination during the translation nor proof- reading. The translation is delivered to the agency sometimes on the same day on which the customer is coming to pick it up. Czech customers (and this also applies for most of the large international firms based in the Czech Republic) are not demanding consistency in documentation, use of sophisticated software, etc., and do not find it acceptable to pay more for the build-up of terminology.

Most localisation projects have been done by local SW distributors who have often regarded the process of translation as a simple and straightforward task and they focused only on the technical aspects of localisation. Translators who have been involved in localisation jobs for distributors quickly realise the extraordinary requirements of the job and as they are not rewarded accordingly, their output is not extraordinary either. More SW distributors have failed to set up teams and are now contacting translation firms to do the job.

Quite queer things occur sometimes. For instance, a Czech distributor subcontracted a local SW developer to localise a popular word processor for a well-known US SW publisher. In turn another company was hired by the developer to take charge of the project. This company finally subcontracted a group of individuals to do the job. The chain of subcontractors became more evident as they failed to complete on schedule and questions became more specific and required immediate response. This practice is quite frequent even today. Some distributors approach translation agencies with a set of installation diskettes and manuals just as they arrive to the user and expect to receive a quote for the localisation of the entire product overnight.

At present the largest SW developers have established local offices in most Eastern European capitals. An impressive amount of software packages have been localised into the Central-Eastern European languages within short. Most of these localisation projects have been carried out in an atmosphere of general confusion and frustration of the teams translating the SW, forced to meet deadlines that even the largest service suppliers in the West would hardly think feasible, managing people and technology without previous experience in localisation. After such an exercise some skilled people refuse to get involved in similar projects again.

Bankruptcy of translation agencies and redundancies of translators are quite frequent. Confusion is very common among publishers and service suppliers. Within the last five years prices have increased by about 1600 per cent. Higher income in the translation business has attracted people with poor command of foreign languages and without experience and skills to offer services at lower rates which may appeal to the customers and to be attractive at first sight. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that HW and SW costs as well as international telephone fares are at the level of those in Western Europe. Customers, who want to have their products localised in a professional way and assure the quality of the Czech versions, will have to realise that the local teams must be also able afford access to the expensive resources, magazines and events available in the West.

These are some of the factors that have contributed to the confusion in Eastern Europe:

FROM PUBLISHERS

• Intention to make big savings by taking advantage of the lack of experience of some suppliers, who thus commit themselves to and sign unrealistic terms.
• Poor organisation from file handling to responsibilities assignment, a clear determination of milestones, deadlines, and acceptance specifications.
• Lack of professional communication between client localiser. The information is given in fragments, many changes appear during the project life time without prior agreement.
• Continuous search for the cheapest supplier instead of the building a long-term partnership
• A long chain of mediators that offer no or little value for the customer, but increase the costs for the project substantially and decrease productivity.

FROM SERVICE SUPPLIERS

• Wish to make money fast with no or little interest in long-term partnership which results in poor quality services
• Fear to invest both in people and technology
• Lack of flexibility
• Corruption

CONCLUSION

The following would help all parties if implemented in an open and constructive dialogue:

• A standard bid platform
• A quality certification program
• The monitoring and prevention of dumping practices
• Implementation of long-term contracts