In this issue…

Globalization Technology Will Prevail • Pierre Cadieux, i18N Inc.
Director’s letter • Michael Anobile
Time For a Change • Jaap van der Meer, ALPNET & LISA Supervisory Committee
Back into the LEIT • Sue Ellen Wright (Kent State University), Erika Walker (University of Washington), Arle Lommel (LISA) & Alison Rowles (SMP Marketing Sarl)
Money Talks • John Freivalds, JFA Inc.
LISA Profiles: Jochen Hummel
INDUSTRY RESPONSE: Walk about in the Graveyard • Michel Balcaen, WizArt
INDUSTRY RESPONSE: The Globalization Services Industry—Running in Place? • Donald J. Plumley, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Bowne Global Solutions
Designing Cross-Cultural Speech Applications • José Elizondo, Peter Crimmin and Paul Greiner, Speechworks International, Inc.
Content Management and Localization • Otto de Graff, Tridion
Globalizing Painlessly with Automated Content Enrichment • Marc Bookman, CEO, Sentius Corporation
How Unicode is Conquering the World • François Yergeau, Director, Technology, Alis Technologies Inc.
Is there a Universal Creole for Localization Efforts? • Marilyn Mason and Jeffrey Allen, Mason Integrated Technologies Ltd. (MIT2)

Time For a Change

Notes from the Supervisory Committee

Jaap van der Meer, ALPNET & LISA Supervisory Committee

Ten years ago LISA was founded as a “Roundtable” of some fifteen companies, carefully chosen from the demand and the supply side of what was then barely beginning to be known as the localization industry. Officially the goal of this industry group was to establish “standards” such as a standard format for exchange of terminology, but for the individuals around the table this was really an excuse. The excitement was in being able to communicate with our peers in other companies—being together we finally felt that what we were doing was important and different. From the start we felt we needed to keep this exclusivity. Our main concern seemed to separate the wheat from the chaff—after all we were not ordinary translators, who would just translate documentation. Another concern was to try to keep an even balance between suppliers of services and publishers.

It is amazing to see that ten years later, despite all this protectionism and the sense of exclusivity, LISA has been able to grow into an organization the size it is today. Just imagine where we would have been if we had had a more open mind to our profession. TRADOS have an installed base of 45,000 workstations. The market is estimated to amount to billions of dollars and, according to surveys, companies spend between one and three percent of their revenues on localization. Despite the growing significance of our market, LISA only has about 200 companies registered as members.

Our attempts in recent years to open LISA to a wider audience and other industries have lead to some shocks in the organization. For those who think in the style of the founders, LISA is still an exclusive organization. Its members know what software localization is—they know how complex it is and that it is not a matter of just pressing a button to get something translated; and vice versa, if you do not belong to LISA, you know nothing about localization.

In the meantime the world has changed fundamentally. Localization is no longer exclusive to software publishers. Every industry is experiencing the challenges of software localization. We are moving away from localization decisions to globalization decisions. What this means is that localization becomes pervasive. Being local around the world is strategic for most companies in most industries. They can no longer afford to make decisions one by one to translate products for individual markets. Not only the products require localization, but also the corporate Intranets, the training materials, the web sites, the online support, etc.

Globalization will be the biggest economic trend in the years to come. It already drives many business decisions. Corporate executives will need their organizations to communicate in all languages, quickly and efficiently. What worries me most—as a founder of LISA—is that the most efficient solutions for globalization are being designed outside our industry. I have heard of quite a few custom built applications for companies in consumer electronics, in financial services, in agricultural equipment, where localization is becoming very close to just pressing a button. And what is worse, is that these applications are being built by system integrators who have never heard of LISA. Perhaps we are not as sophisticated as we think we are.

It is time for LISA to change—not just adjust—but change dramatically. The sense of exclusivity of the founders of LISA has lived too long in our culture. We have to understand that unless we wake up to the needs of the corporate executives, we will isolate ourselves further. It is no longer relevant to try to keep a balance in our membership between ‘suppliers’ and ‘customers’. In the bigger scheme of globalization we all work for the corporate executives who face this daunting task of making their companies truly multilingual and multicultural.

In the Supervisory Committee we have summarized the changes we are embarking on as follows:

Inclusive, not exclusive. Membership is open to all industries and all professionals who work in globalization and localization. We will launch an ‘Industrial Professional’ (IP) membership program, which will allow individual globalization/localization professionals working in organizations or on their own to become members. This will also allow corporate members to have their employees register as IP’s. (See the form on page 48 for more information on IP membership.)
Transparent, not protective. We will start making more information transparently available to all members.
Simple, not complex. Through the outsourcing of forum marketing and other public relations activities to SMP Marketing we are making the LISA administration a lot simpler, allowing it to focus on the quality of content for the Forums and the LISA portal.
Valuable, not costly. Our goal is to grow the membership and Forums in order to increase our revenues, allowing for improved value and possibly lower costs to our members.
Leading, not following. LISA must become the leading association for any organization seeking guidance in globalization and localization issues.

We look forward to building the world’s leading association for globalization and localization services together with our members. Your feedback and ideas will be greatly appreciated. We hope to see you in Chicago!

About the author

Jaap van der Meer is one of the founding members of LISA. He is currently president of Alpnet and a member of the LISA supervisory board. Jaap is a frequent speaker at LISA events. He can be reached via e-mail at jvandermeer@nl.alpnet.com.