LISA: What motivated you to stand for the OSCAR Chair position?

Daniel Grasmick: OSCAR is addressing some of the most important issues related to enterprise globalization. As we all know, all GILT-related topics/companies/issues are currently suffering. Only if we manage to agree on standards, will we have a chance to develop … and buy better solutions.

I have been following most of OSCAR activities since the foundation of the SIG in 1997 and I am perfectly aware that it will be a huge challenge, especially since my job is already very demanding and I don't have all the time I sometimes wish I had. At the same time it is very clear that I would not have been able to accept this position without the active support of my team, mainly Susan McCormick and Christian Lieske.

LISA: It has often been said that OSCAR is the "S" in LISA. What is OSCAR's main goal?

Daniel Grasmick: It must be clear to everybody that OSCAR is and must be THE Language Industries SIG in LISA. Standards are the backbone of localization projects and companies. If defined and applied correctly, they will foster reuse and allow for less dependency on particular tools and service providers.

The first part of this "if" is clearly the development program of OSCAR…

LISA: The OSCAR Steering Committee comprises an impressive list of companies and experts, many of whom have made significant contributions since the group was formed in 1997. What are the current initiatives and who are the people taking the lead roles?

Daniel Grasmick: There are urgent issues that need to be solved. First, one of the most important ones is certification. Several OSCAR members and the administration is working on these issues. If TMX/OSCAR wants to be credible, we want to make sure products correctly implement the standard.

Second, several active users found out that even if all tools produce valid TMX-format files, too much content is lost due to differences in segmentation. In some of our internal SAP tests we noticed that we lost approx. 30%. Similar figures were confirmed by other companies using other products… this is not acceptable.

A working group addressing this topic as well as word count (used as a basis for billing… and very often subject to heated discussions) has already been started within OSCAR by Thilo Schüler from Welocalize.

The results of these issues are the key to acceptance and further development of TMX. This is why we have to manage to get the same momentum as in 1997 when OSCAR was founded. We need key people from all tool providers in LISA as well as key representatives of their customers so that we can make quick and pragmatic progress.

LISA: Oscar's first Chair was Franz Rau, former Microsoft Language Development Tools Manager, who helped drive the implementation of TMX. He was succeeded by Dr. Alan K. Melby, Professor of Linguistics at Brigham Young University, who helped define and position the TBX standard. Do you have any specific technical aspirations for OSCAR? If so, what are they?

Daniel Grasmick: Needless to say that it a great honor to come after personalities like Franz and Alan. They did a tremendous job in supporting the development of these standards. There is also one name that I would like to mention in the same "breath": Yves Savourel, currently with RWS. He has been the key mastermind behind much of the work and did not hesitate to take over strenuous and fastidious tasks.

From what I can see at the moment there are a few things that I would like to encourage: pragmatic work, continuous support of tool providers and active involvement of customers of these tools. Small well thought-through steps are still needed to help these standards to fly: segmentation, word count, TMX/OLIF exchange, to name just a few…

Harmonization between different standards, and embracement of new technology (e.g. schema languages like XSD or Relax NG as complementary representations for TMX or TBX) will also be a target.

Defining standards is nevertheless only the first part of the game. We will also need tools for comparing files in these standardized formats, performing quality checks and mining work etc.

LISA: In terms of both TMX and TBX, which industries do you believe will be the early adopters and first to gain their efficiencies?

Daniel Grasmick: There has been obviously more competition in the translation memory area than in the terminology tool scene (and there are already many adopters of TMX). In fact, the logical approach would have been to concentrate on the exchange of the smallest element, the term.

For TBX/OLIF, we can see an even larger user base since, in addition to the classical TMX players (localization tool providers and localizers), data packaged in TBX is a valuable asset for anyone working with Natural Language Processing: text classification, monolingual and cross-lingual information retrieval, speech applications, etc.

We will all see improvements with access to lexically enriched, terminological data, for which TBX/OLIF is meant as a container.

LISA: With respect to developing standards and educating users on the benefits of implementing them, what direction do you see OSCAR taking in the short and medium term?

Daniel Grasmick: I don't attend all the conferences about GILT, language technology, etc. but have you seen a strong case study from a company who has used TMX or TBX? How much money has been saved? How much quicker have new solutions been implemented? This touches the "marketing" part of OSCAR (and LISA?).

OSCAR is not just developing standards for the sake of allowing people to have a label "certified" or "foolproof" on their packages. It is not just for reassuring the upper management. We need hard figures and need to communicate them - and this is the task of all people involved in GILT activities within LISA.

LISA: What do you foresee OSCAR's relationship with organizations like OLIF, UNICODE, OASIS, Li18nux/The Free Standards Group, and W3C, among other standards bodies whose works influence how language and business intersect?

Daniel Grasmick: In fact, relationships between OSCAR and other standards bodies already exist since some of the people working in OSCAR participate in the work done by these bodies. Since OSCAR draws on the largest pool of experts in the GILT industry, my hope is a division of labor between the different standard bodies where OSCAR focuses on GILT-related issues.

LISA: How can the OASIS-LISA cooperation (they have recently exchanged full membership privileges at the administration levels) benefit the localization industry?

Daniel Grasmick: Great first steps. OSCAR does not have enough really active members to save the localization world on it's own. OASIS is certainly is a strong partner. The whole localization industry could benefit from a close cooperation. We will use XLIFF as a test bed to see how the cooperation between XLIFF/OASIS and OSCAR/LISA can produce concrete results.

LISA: Do you see a functional role that OSCAR can fill in terms of assisting OASIS' standardization efforts? E.g., ebXml, XLIFF or other language dependent initiatives?

Daniel Grasmick: Since there are several members (Oracle, RWS, SAP, Sun..) that are part of LISA/OSCAR and OASIS this will help the exchange and integration targets. See my answers to the last two questions. Let's use a step-by-step approach rather then trying to save the world in one go.

LISA: Among OSCAR's achievements over the past five years, in your opinion, what have they done well? What can be improved?

Daniel Grasmick: The misunderstanding regarding the role of OpenTag (originally perceived as a threat by several TM vendors) really got the ball rolling and the involvement of numerous experts allowed for incredible achievements.

Lack of support and encouragement during the last 2 years, however, has slowed things down and needs improvement. We need more people like Kara Warburton from IBM and Ben Martin from JDEdwards who are both doing an excellent job in improving the communication and focus within OSCAR, and we also need more concrete agreements (logistics and marketing support, member motivation, etc.) with the LISA administration…

LISA: In an industry sector where standards are rarely defined, and even when they are, its difficult to have them implemented at the customer level - How can OSCAR contribute to developing and implementing standards?

Daniel Grasmick: OSCAR can contribute to a broader acceptance of standards by working on issues that improve credibility, ease implementation and help with concrete and pragmatic business cases: certified solutions, case studies, and hard figures related to cost savings and other benefits.

A very good idea would certainly be to develop open-source libraries, to help the implementation of the TMX/TBX standards.

Another very important area of expansion could be the closer cooperation with authoring tools and technology providers. An example? All terminology exchange formats have come from the translation world but terminology is an issue with its main roots in the authoring area. If something is wrong in the source, it is very often too late.

I sometimes have the impression that in the GILT area we have specialized in saving babies from the river. We are actually quite good at it and have won prizes and medals of all kinds… but what we should really do is to prevent people from throwing additional babies into the river upstream!