Globalization: A strategy focus?

We like to tell ourselves that the C-level is getting our message and that we are moving forward. The recent GeoMarkets survey (available for purchase on the LISA site), which was done in cooperation with LISA, sought to take the pulse of the IT arena's C-level with regard to GILT issues. IT is the one market area where we had thought our message was really resonating, and to a degree this is true - IT companies are indeed more aware of globalization issues than they used to be and are devoting more resources to globalization - but the picture is not entirely rosy.

At LISA we recently went through some of the raw data from the responses to the open-ended question "What are the first three things that comes to your mind when you hear the word GLOBALIZATION?". We categorized them into types of responses and pegged each category as a Cost, Benefit or Neutral (i.e., the category itself doesn't tell us if it is a cost or a benefit). The results are sobering - in our analysis the top 8 of 17 response categories were either Costs or Neutral, not Benefits. The highest ranked benefits were cited by only about a quarter of those surveyed:

The one item we would most like to see at the top (and which we aspire to and constantly talk about), "Strategy Focus," is dead last in the listing, with only about 3% of those surveyed including it as one of the first things that come to mind. Almost half of those surveyed saw globalization as primarily a compliance issue (and hence a cost). In addition, many of the Neutrals in the list are probably in fact Costs since they would be seen as obstacles in entering international markets. Even giving the neutrals the benefit of a doubt, we can see that the gut reaction at the C-level to globalization is not what we hope for (and occasionally convince ourselves of). In short, the C-level sees globalization as a costly thing, not a focus.

Clearly we aren't widely seen as strategic yet, and it is not apparent that our efforts as an industry in this direction have really paid a lot of dividends. If globalization is preceived as a cost rather than an opportunity there will always be a strong tendency to put it off and "throw it over the wall", handing globalization off to service vendors treated as second-class citizens who are doing a dirty job because it needs to be done (see Yann Meersseman's 1997 article [premimum content] on how the client's attitude and policies have a direct effect on quality). This ain't the path to the board room folks... it's how you end up fighting over scraps.

One item that I noticed recently is the announcement of a rough port of OpenOffice for Mac OS X (working towards a full version in the near future). For those of you who aren't familiar with it, OpenOffice is the free and open-source cousin of Sun Microsystems' office productivity suite StarOffice. Both OpenOffice and StarOffice clearly are aimed at Microsoft Office's juicy market niche, and include components very similar to Microsoft Office that can read and save Microsoft Office files, and also include advanced XML functionality. StarOffice sells for around $80 U.S. (versus $500 U.S. or so for Microsoft Office) and both it and OpenOffice are presently available for various Unix flavors and Windows.

StarOffice has nine localized versions, and OpenOffice has twenty-four, including some languages (such as Thai) that are normally considered to be "difficult". Since OpenOffice has 15 more localized versions than StarOffice we can't assume that Sun gave the OpenOffice project all of the localized text that it is using. This means that the OpenOffice project got somebody to donate these localizations (remember OpenOffice is open source and so has no sales revenue from which to pay for localization). The question then is, who does these localizations? If Microsoft wanted to localize its Office it would cost in the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars (at least), per language. Yet OpenOffice can somehow get this for not a dime. What does this mean for the GILT industry? I don't know the answer.

It is also worth noting that the OpenOffice folks don't throw globalization over the wall, unlike far too many of our supposed friends. The open source and shareware community actually tend to be very responsive to international issues, just as they tend to be very responsive in many areas where large commercial developers are not.

As an example of the responsiveness and awareness of the OpenSource community, I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised to see that the OpenOffice website lists as a bug the fact that the Mac OS X version of their suite can't yet display Unicode fonts. Microsoft has been on the Mac for many years and still can't do this in Office for Macintosh (despite the fact that they, along with Adobe, developed OpenType, the major Unicode font format now in use on the Mac), something I reported on for the LISA Newsletter last year. At least the OpenOffice people realize they need to get on this issue (probably because fully porting the localized versions of OpenOffice to Mac may depend on it). I rather suspect that OpenOffice will support OpenType Unicode fonts on Mac before Microsoft Office will.

(As an aside, the coming of OpenOffice for Mac will probably start a massive abandonment of Microsoft Office on that platform, where rabid haters of Redmond and all things Microsoft are legion. If I were Microsoft I would be afraid. Mac users could be the first domino in a long chain.)

If the above examples are any indication, we are in a bind as an industry. Those who most understand the vaule of globalization may be those who can least afford to pay for it, while those who should understand it still see it as a cost which can and should be trimmed.

While we may have come a long way, it is not clear that the golden city on the horizon is anything more than a heat-induced mirage.

In this issue we have a range of articles for you, not all of which are quite as gloomy as the introduction:

1. We interviewed Daniel Grasmick who is taking over as chair of OSCAR in the stead of Alan Melby, whose term expires this year. Daniel explains what he sees the future of OSCAR as and talks about its successes to this point.
2. John Freivalds takes a look at market hype and reality in the latest helping of his regular "Money Talks" (Premium Content) column.
3. Shailendra Musale, author of Localizing for Mobile Devices: A Primer, takes a look at difficulties of localizing custom file formats in Designing Tools-Friendly Files Formats.
4. Jorden Woods delivers a review of the recent book Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery in No Role for Content Management Systems without the GILT Edge .
5. The latest in industry buzz: J2450 and the translation industry.
6. and finally, from the Archives, we present Yann Meersseman's classic 1997 article Translation Quality: The Customer Makes the Difference (premium content)

We hope you enjoy these articles

Arle Lommel is LISA Publications Manager. A native of Alaska, he currently resides in Indiana. In addition to working for LISA, he is an emeritus member of the Brigham Young University Translation Research Group (TRG), a Provo, Utah-based translation, theory and technology think-tank directed by Dr. Alan Melby.