Some Background

STAR Servicios Lingüísticos S.L., the Spanish branch of the STAR Group, was founded more than five years ago. We now employ 18 permanent staff, not to mention the many freelances for whom we are the main source of income. Apart from our mission—assisting our customers in creating a Globalization Infrastructure that helps them to communicate internationally with their customers, suppliers and partners—one of the most important goals is to create stable employment and distribute wealth.

But we have other goals as well, and I cannot imagine our work without them:

• to foster mutual understanding and the exchange of ideas across linguistic and cultural barriers
• to reconcile language with technology
• to create a pleasant working environment and encourage real teamwork
• to train and educate professionals to ensure their success

Catalonia – A Minority Language Locale

We chose Barcelona to host the Spanish branch. The city is the capital of Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain with its own strong cultural identity based on a linguistic, literary, political and national history that stretches back over several centuries. Although Catalan is the native language and the joint official language of the autonomy, it still is not used equally in all areas of daily life. For example, although it is a legal requirement, not all software sold in Catalonia is localized into Catalan, and many companies do not translate their product documentation into Catalan. Spanish is still predominant in some areas, especially IT.

The reason, of course, is market size. Similar to other minority language locales, the Catalan-speaking market is simply not big enough to justify localizing certain products. Therefore, Catalan users are often forced to use Spanish or foreign language versions of operating systems and applications. Due to the importance of the public sector, Microsoft localizes some of its operating systems and applications, and with the help of non-profit organizations like Softcatala, the list of software localized into Catalan is steadily increasing. As the main distributors for Spain of the STAR Group’s portfolio of Language Technology products, we wished to offer our flagship product, Transit XV, not only in Spanish, but also in other languages of the Spanish State, despite the economic constraints.

A Public-Private Partnership

To localize Transit XV into Catalan, we opted for a public-private partnership and approached the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). As one of the most renowned faculties of translation in Spain, it was the first University center of its kind in the country when it was founded in 1978. Secondly, it has long played a very active role in integrating language technology into translator curricula. A good example of its pioneering work is the recent creation of a Master’s degree in “Tradumàtica,” a post-graduate course that aims to train language professionals in the IT sector.

The entire localization project was conceived, financed, planned and carried out by STAR Servicios Lingüísticos and the UAB, with the sole support of the STAR Language Technology division in Böblingen, Germany. There was no further subsidy or any financial backing. From the beginning, it was inspired by our joint desire to collaborate to meet our educational and social obligations and to explore new ways of applying resources and know-how to achieve a common goal.

The Project

We agreed with the UAB to plan and carry out the project as if it were a “real-life assignment,” that is to carry out a fully-fledged localization project within a limited timescale. We first established the workflow and planned the resources to be used, and then set up a team with assigned responsibilities.

Since Transit had already been localized into Spanish, we decided to use Spanish as our source language. Although Catalan and Spanish are two different languages, there are many similarities, both in vocabulary and syntax. The translation work was thus easier, and it helped to speed things up. Other localization tasks, for example resizing, also proved to be more efficient because of similar string length.

The localization team was made up of eight fourth-year and postgraduate students, with one of them as team leader. The latter was responsible for work distribution, quality control and meeting deadlines. He also served as our primary contact for feedback. On our side, the head of IT supervised the work, and we were backed up and supported by the Technical Documentation and Development Departments of STAR Language Technology in Böblingen.

A kick-off meeting was held, followed by a training course in Transit for all team members. Transit was used for the translation of resources, printed documentation and online help. This not only enabled the students to gain in-depth knowledge of a widely used computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool, but also allowed them to work in the very same application they were localizing.

Creating New Terminology in Catalan

The resources were extracted from the application and imported into Transit with the appropriate RC (resource files) filter. Before translating the resources, we created a trilingual software terminology glossary by merging several existing bilingual Windows application glossaries. We merged the English-Spanish and the English-Catalan glossaries into one big English-Spanish-Catalan glossary and imported that into TermStar, Transit’s terminology management component. Thus, we had a sound base of quasi-standard software terminology for the generic resources like File, Save, Edit, etc. Since some Windows applications have been localized for the Catalan market, we wanted to guarantee that Catalan users would encounter the same terminology in our application as in their normal working environment. Our other terminology resources (especially for the relatively new field of computer-assisted translation and terminology) included TermCAT, the coordination center for terminological activities in the Catalan language and Softcatala.

After translating the resources, we created a resource glossary from the Transit files. To do this, we first exported Transit’s bilingual file resources into a TMX file. We then used a simple Ruby script to convert the TMX into structured text that could then be imported easily into TermStar. Due to time constraints, we started the translation of the documentation before compiling, resizing and testing the Catalan language version. However, we avoided the risk of creating terminology conflicts or having problems related to missing context since we were supported by the software glossary that we had created, along with the Spanish Transit version as our working environment.

We did the resizing and resource fine-tuning in ExeScope, a shareware resource-editing tool that featured the same basic functionalities that commercial resource editors have. Thus, the students were given the opportunity to learn resource editing, resizing and other, more technical aspects of the localization process.

The Documentation Piece

The translation of the documentation started with the conversion of the original Frame Maker files into MIF. The MIFs were then imported into Transit. We used the translated resources as our translation memory and thus were already able to leverage some of the translation. After a leverage analysis (pre-translating one part of the documentation with the other), we started with the translation of the Start Up Guide, followed by the Transit User’s Guide. Once translated and reviewed, we used these manuals to pre-translate the TermStar User’s Guide. The only parts of the localization workflow that were not done by the students were the conversion of the FrameMaker files into the online-help, the screenshots and DTP work, and the compilation of the Catalan language version.

Figure 1. Catalan Interface for Transit XV

The project was finished on time, and the quality of the translation was high. After two months of hard work, we were able to launch the Catalan version in August 2003.

Conclusions

UAB students described their learning experience as extremely beneficial. Not only did they have the opportunity to work on a real project and gain insights into the different phases of a typical localization workflow, but they also learned how to cope with time pressure and quality requirements. Every team member was given a free copy of Transit Professional as a token of our appreciation, so the students now have a professional CAT tool to begin their careers as freelance translators. In addition, this project helped the students gain real-life work experience to include on their resumes. Some of the team members also immediately became part of our freelance team.

The collaboration was a huge success. All participants enjoyed and benefited from it: students, teachers and our staff. The result is something we can be proud of: Transit is the first and only CAT tool to be fully localized for the local market and is now listed by the Catalonian Government as the only CAT tool localized into Catalan. When we officially presented the Catalan version, high-ranking officials from the government attended, and we were the only private company invited by the prestigious Institut Ramon Llull of Catalonia to participate in Expolingua, the Spanish Language Industry Fair, in Madrid earlier this year.

Michael Scholand, CEO and founding member of STAR Servicios Lingüísticos, has twelve years of experience in the localization and technical translation sector. Starting as a freelance translator, he worked his way up through management positions at Polylang Ltd., England, (now SDL Sheffield) and Wordstation GmbH, Germany, before he teamed up with the STAR Group.