There is a natural tension in global organizations between centralization and decentralization. As regional subsidiaries grow stronger, they begin to exert more control, leading to increased decentralization. As global businesses mature, they introduce innovations to increase efficiency, leading to greater centralization. A good example of this second tendency is the scenario where companies build global technology infrastructures that enable e-business processes to span multiple regions.

Today, many global enterprises find themselves with strong subsidiaries. The way local offices create, store and publish content is often at odds with corporate objectives, including global brand and market positioning. The implementation of content management systems and the resulting centralization of information assets that can be seen in many of today’s global organizations is a counter-movement, reintroducing control and cost-efficiency.

Implementing a centralized content repository, such as a content management system, an e-learning platform, a knowledge base, or even a simple intranet, inherently brings about major shifts in content ownership, budgeting, publishing workflow, and resource allocation. Where many individual regional or local offices have been operating independently, they now find themselves involved in global initiatives and standardization efforts.

This article explores how the implementation of content management systems is creating a trend toward centralization in the procurement of language services. Also, it discusses the importance of building appropriate regional participation into the system.

Outsourcing Models

How do centralization efforts affect the creation and publishing of local language content for international markets? One of the key features of Web-based publishing and content management systems is that anyone with the necessary access rights—regardless of physical location—can create and contribute information. This automatically solves the issue of publishing local language content to a centrally hosted server. But what about information created in one language that then needs to be translated?

Creating content centrally and then translating it is cheaper than creating information separately for each different language… as we all know, translation costs less than copywriting. Obviously, the content will have to be written with a global audience in mind, so minimal adaptation for each individual market is required.

There are a number of ways that global enterprises can address growing translation requirements. Here are three models that represent the most attractive options:

1. Central management, central production: In this approach, companies build internal translation groups for all required target languages.
2. Decentralized management, decentralized outsourcing: Here, each regional or local office is responsible for managing translation of relevant material for their own target language(s).
3. Central management & central outsourcing: In this approach, a central office manages the outsourcing of all translation work to a single multi-language vendor (MLV).

In the early years of localization many IT companies adopted model one and built their own internal translation groups. However, due to the growing number of products and target languages, organizations quickly saw costly translation overhead that was complicated to manage. Also, as companies focus on strengthening core competencies, they have less time to focus on managing complex translation and localization resources and processes.

Historically, most global companies outside the IT sector have used the second model, where each local market office is responsible for creating, modifying, translating, and publishing content in their local language. As the number of locally hosted and managed Web sites, intranets, and knowledge bases has grown, corporate managers often discover that the only commonality between regional Web initiatives is the design template, or, in some cases, just the logo. Local offices take information from the corporate (typically English) Web site and either produce a translation internally or outsource the work to local translation providers.

Initially, local outsourcing seems like a cost-effective approach, for two reasons.

1. Translation management costs are hidden in general marketing budgets, and therefore not calculated.
2. Local vendors usually have what appears to be lower “per word” translation rates than the global multi-language vendors.

However, as this article illustrates, there are many disadvantages to this approach, including higher total cost, increased time-to-market risks, accountability issues, and other factors described below.

Model three has traditionally been problematic due to coordination and business process constraints, which are now alleviated by the e-business technologies supporting centralized content repositories and publishing systems. Effective solutions now exist that allow a central office to produce multilingual content while preserving regional input and approval cycles. Ensuring appropriate regional input is by no means certain however, and companies implementing these systems must proceed carefully.

Many Lionbridge clients are currently going through the transition from model two to model three, in most cases as a direct consequence of the introduction of centralized content management or publishing systems.

Issues for Central Outsourcing

A centralized model for translation, where one office produces and manages all multilingual products and outsources all translation work, is efficient from a budget and process control perspective. However, it does not necessarily meet the needs of local offices that are using the translated material. Local representatives or partners often perceive giving up full control of how a company’s message is presented in the local marketplace as a major barrier.

Therefore, organizations must carefully balance economies of scale through centralization with local content validation. A well-defined model that incorporates local validation will ultimately shorten time-to-market and produce higher quality deliverables.

Here are some additional points that organizations should keep in mind when considering model three:

• The initial costs may be higher than in model two, although total costs are lower.
• A centralized outsourcing model makes visible certain costs that were previously hidden, such as translation management. Companies may realize that they’ve been spending more on translation than they thought.
• Model three minimizes fixed costs and overhead in each individual market, transforms many costs to variable costs, and avoids resource investments. All of these changes are good, but organizational resistance is likely.
• Once a centralized system is in place, incremental languages can be easily added onto existing processes and validation models as the enterprise extends further into global markets. Initial costs for these additional languages are now much lower, and thus help to amortize the original investment.

Benefits of Central Outsourcing

It is our experience at Lionbridge that organizations with large-volume translation projects can achieve the best long-term results using a centralized solution. Specific advantages include:

1. Avoiding duplication of efforts in each country - Examples of these efforts are project preparation, project management, communication planning, terminology research, production tasks such as desktop publishing and quality control. This will minimize resource investments.
2. Achieving consistent quality – For each country and target language a similar quality control process is implemented, including for example a validation phase by the people who will be using the translated material in their local market.
3. Guaranteeing consistent and predictable turnaround times– Process steps and schedules are created and managed spanning all languages. Project portals give managers real-time oversight into all processes for all languages.
4. Ensuring consistency between languages – Queries on translation issues can be leveraged across languages, generating a consistent translation approach between the various target languages.
5. Maintaining accountability through a single point of contact – One project manager can provide schedules and status reports for all target languages and project components, and respond to urgent requests.
6. Generating a full picture of translation costs – In the case of a separate solution for each country, companies will be faced with various accounting and billing methods for translation and maintenance work, making it difficult to budget for future translation costs. Budgets are easier to control when translation activities are centralized.
7. Implementing a single technology solution – One technology solution for the multiple languages means that there is no need to duplicate technology investments in each individual country. A solid basis of translation memory use and management can easily be enhanced by automation of additional process steps.
8. Centralizing terminology management – Terminology management is key to ensuring that approved terminology is used in all translated material. A centralized multilingual terminology system would ensure the quality and integrity of terminology used in the various target languages.
9. Guaranteeing ownership – When local partners manage and outsource translation work, there is an inherent risk of loss of intellectual property of the translated material.

Although initial efforts and costs may appear to be higher, the centralized translation outsourcing model makes currently hidden costs visible, and ultimately delivers a more cost effective translation solution by minimizing the fixed costs and overhead in each individual market, transforming fixed costs to variable costs, and reducing resource investments. When implemented correctly, this model also increases accountability and reduces risk in global business operations.

Requirements for Success

Obviously there are several requirements for making a central outsourcing solution a success. These include:

• Buy-in from all stakeholders – All local and corporate stakeholders in the translation efforts must accept and support the centralized outsourcing approach.
• Central information repository – An information repository or collaboration portal should provide all stakeholders with the latest guidelines, project updates, contact information, etc.
• Language validation process – Although management and outsourcing of translation is centralized, ownership of the language quality should always reside with the local representative. Some regional resources must participate during the translation approval process, or at a minimum with style guides and terminology decisions.

Corporate initiatives that are launched without buy-in from local stakeholders are destined for struggle. Setting up a validation process — including spot checks, validation cycles, and sign-offs — should achieve the necessary buy-in from local offices and increase the quality of the deliverables over time.

What It All Means...

Where content management systems and centralized knowledge bases characterize the growing maturity of the use of the Web by global corporations, centralized translation outsourcing and management is a logical next step.

Considering the growing volumes of content within organizations it will be increasingly difficult to hide translation costs or to incorporate them in general marketing budgets. A central outsourcing approach makes it much easier to budget for translation expenses, ensure a consistent process and quality, and cost-effectively add new languages and markets.

Lionbridge recognizes the growing need for centralization of translation activities and helps organizations manage this change through its professional services organization.

For more information:

info@lionbridge.com
www.lionbridge.com

Bert Esselink is a Global Engagement Consultant for Lionbridge's Professional Services group, and has been active in multilingual publishing projects for over a decade. Bert has been involved in all aspects of the localization industry and his knowledge is drawn from the many customer interactions and implementations he has experienced. Lionbridge offers a comprehensive suite of Professional Services designed to achieve clear, consistent returns in the design, development, and management of multilingual content and products.

Bert's consulting expertise is in the field of globalization strategy, best practices and process optimization, linguistic/technical quality assurance, and translation technology. The second edition of his book, A Practical Guide to Localization, was published in September 2000 by John Benjamins Publishing Company, and is used widely throughout the localization industry. Bert is also one of the editors-in-chief of Language International, the magazine for language industry professionals.

Bert can be reached at bert_esselink@lionbridge.com.