In this issue…

Localisation: Beyond the software sector • Rose Lockwood, Director, ITALICS
How Do We Improve Project Management Skills Throughout The Localisation Industry? • Gunnie Jacobsson, Microsoft WPG
Reviewing the Localisation Project Management Course • Alex McDonnell, General Manager, IDOC Europe
Change Management in Language Engineering - ELRA • Robin Bonthrone [1]
The fate of the localization industry and a call to action • Jaap van der Meer, ALPNET
Market Contraction Hits the Translation Business • Gary Byrd
The Quest for Improvement • Alain Linden, AT&T GIS - France
Localisation Industry Networking • Joc Sanders, Senior Consultant, Centre for Software Engineering Ltd.
Software Localisation in Ireland - SLIG ‘95 • Reinhard Schaeler, Department of Computer Science, University College Dublin
DOCWARE - The Document Localisation Workbench • DOCWARE CONSORTIUM (BULL, CNRS, LINGA, The OPEN UNIVERSITY)

Localisation Industry Networking

Joc Sanders, Senior Consultant, Centre for Software Engineering Ltd.

CSE

The Centre for Software Engineering (CSE), a new LISA Member, is a partially state funded organisation with a mission to help Irish software developers improve their standards of quality and productivity. CSE recognises the importance of integrating software development and localisation processes into the overall internationalisation process for its own associate members, which include many locally owned and multinational software product companies.

Accordingly, CSE ran one of its quarterly Colloquia for members on 19 September 1995 on the topic "Designing Software for Internationalisation". Patrick de Gale of Sage de Gale Information Systems (a speaker at the LISA Forum in Runnymeade in 1994) gave a state-of-the-art review. Tony Burke of Microsoft and John Rowley of Symantec presented experience in their own companies as case studies, and Reinhard Schaeler of SLIG outlined the work of that group. The session was attended by 31 people from 26 organisations.

The consensus was that events of this sort, making linkages between the development and localisation communities, were very valuable. CSE expects to do more in this area, working closely with the SLIG group to avoid overlap and competition.

LISA Project Manager Training

The LISA Executive Committee has recognised the importance of project management skills for the success of localisation, and formed a work group to establish the requirements for a suitable course focussed on the needs of the localisation industry, as reported in pages 4-8 of this Newsletter.

The work group selected an Irish-based training company, ETP Ltd., to develop a pilot course. ETP's Managing Director Fergus O'Connell is the author of the well known book "How to Run Successful Projects" (Prentice Hall, BCS Practitioner Series, 1994). The 5 day pilot course was run in September 1995, and was very well received. LISA is planning a further delivery in Dublin in February 1996, with support from the European Union's ESPITI project (European Software Process Improvement Training Initiative) managed in Ireland by the Centre for Software Engineering Ltd., which will enable LISA to offer it at a substantial discount on normal commercial rates.

LISA is also discussing the possibility of setting up a one year multi-disciplinary diploma course for localisation project managers with a major Irish University. If the discussions are successful, such a course could start in September 1996.

Joc Sanders
Senior Consultant
Centre for Software Engineering
Dublin City University Campus
Dublin 9 Ireland
Tel: +353 1 704 5428
Fax: +353 1 704 5605
email: joc@cse.dcu.ie