Editorial

Some of our readers are surrounded by issues related to globalization everyday at work. I live surrounded by them in my everyday life in a country (Turkey) that’s globalizing its processes in real-time. The outward signs are all there – the conversion to the YTL (Yeni Türk Lirası, or “New Turkish Lira”) as of the 1st of January and the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of laws and regulations that have been passed in order to be considered for membership in the European Union (EU).

However, at the deepest level, this rather startling transformation of an entire country (almost in “internet time”) is not about EU membership, but rather about a group of people very focused on globalizing their processes and practices (business, economic, political, legal, military, social, etc.) in order to be taken seriously as a member of the global community. Everyone at all socioeconomic levels here in Turkey – the ones who will lose out under the new rules, as well as the new players who will win – knows that whether or not the country eventually joins the EU is not the point. Rather, the exercise of transforming their entire infrastructure is taking the Turkish people to a whole new level in terms of participation within their own country, as well as within the rest of the world. That’s the end goal.

The same political and economic integration on a global level brought on by globalization (in the broader sense) that is affecting Turkey is the same integration that has opened a wide window of opportunity for anyone involved in evangelizing a rational approach to globalization within their own organizations. In the “old days,” it was about creating and executing a business plan to expand gradually into international markets – those of us responsible for international business basically viewed the world as a set of national markets. Now, it’s about a company looking at the world in a “holistic way,” i.e., interpreting it as a source for the scarce knowledge and expertise that it needs to integrate into all of its business functions, not just in its sales/marketing/support activities.

Size doesn’t matter. The rules apply to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as to large companies. Why the change? Intellectual property and the fact that the most valuable asset of many companies worldwide today is their bits of electronic data, i.e., their intellectual capital, whether they sell hamburgers, earth moving equipment, services or software. According to Professor Christopher Bartlett at the Harvard Business School, today's scarce resources are the information, knowledge and expertise that are embedded in people's heads and within human relationships. However, companies are currently organized to allocate and control financial capital. The challenge now is to completely change them so that they can manage human capital in order to develop and diffuse intellectual capital.

And globalizing a company’s business processes requires just that – managing human capital in order to “get it right.” In many markets and industry sectors, it’s no longer good enough to tailor your original processes as international expansion takes place. Your competition can do that. What is required is for you to really analyze the process in question and determine how to implement it as you compete globally. For example, can your customer service organization efficiently process all non-English emails received on any given day? If not, why not? What is required to move them to that point? Is it justified now? İn 6 months? In a year?

On the flip side, championing globalization often seems daunting, especially at the beginning, if you do not have upper management support, a mandate or a mentor/guardian angel. Under these circumstances, the trick is to break down the process into manageable pieces and go for the small strategic wins that can be used to gain attention and financial support through your evangelization efforts up, down and across the organization. At every opportunity, the key is to express globalization as an investment, not as a cost.

LISA Member Jia-Shin Chiu Osiel, Globalization Evangelist at McDonald’s Corporation, provides a great example of this strategy. Her official title is Manager of Language Services for Worldwide Training, Learning & Development, but that hasn’t stopped her from leveraging the pain spots at McDonald’s to build executive support for doing globalization right. With training programs delivered in up to 40 languages, our readers may wonder what McDonald’s has left to learn in terms of staying on top in its international markets. To find out, please join us as we tag along with Osiel on a “typical day in the life of a Globalization Manager” [premium content]. Readers will find Osiel very candid about her challenges, what’s working/what’s not, and the type of support that she needs from language services and content management providers. Hint: it’s definitely not about the lowest prices.

And why do we need to move up the food chain? Osiel, again, is quite clear about why. Because a company’s attitude toward globalization determines what it spends on preparing its products to be localized, on localization itself, on its marketing, on its after-sales support, etc. – and ultimately, on how successful it will be in general. Interestingly enough, Osiel has found that one of her most difficult evangelization tasks is not with upper-level executives or even with other department managers within McDonald’s, but with potential vendors of language and content management services. Read the article to find out why.

Osiel knows that she’s not alone in her efforts, and that’s one reason that she is now a LISA Member. LISA continues to serve as a nexus for companies as they go global. Check out the Letter From the Director (public podcast) to find out the latest from Michael Anobile.

Many (if not most) of our readers interact on a daily basis with people who speak more than one language. The ability to communicate in more than one language is often taken for granted in our field. But how do we acquire our first language? Is there really any such thing as a language gene or a language organ, as proposed by Professor Noam Chomsky? Dr. Adele Goldberg, Professor of Linguistics and Associated Faculty in Psychology at Princeton University in the U.S., explains how linguists are branching out beyond the original Chomskyian theories and how they are applying what they are learning to language acquisition in young children in Language After Chomsky [premium].

In Focus on Standards this month, Andrzej Zydron, CTO at xml:Intl, provides part 2 of his article, Coping With Babel: How to Localize XML [public]. He continues his discussion of how to design XML to facilitate localization, along with specific methods for integrating XML into localization processes. Click here if you would like to read part 1.

Since it’s January, it’s time for John Freivalds to update us on what’s going on in his column, Money Talks [premium].

One of LISA’s newest members, Ektron Inc., recently surveyed more than 100 businesses with single-language web sites. More than half responded that creating multilingual sites was among their top-tier web priorities for 2005. In the advertorial, Eliminating Barriers to Web Globalization [public], Bill Rogers, Ektron’s CEO and Founder, highlights what Ektron is doing differently from other content management solution (CMS) providers with regards to globalization. He also explains how Ektron’s CMS bridges the gap between organizations that want a multilingual web site, and the providers that can deliver the language services to make it a reality.

Make it part of your strategy in 2005 not to reinvent the wheel in your own global business planning. Is your organization just beginning to get its feet wet in the global market? Then come to LISA for the information and education you need to be successful. If your company is already a player in the global market, then consult LISA for the standards and best practice guidelines needed to hone your global marketing strategy to generate a better ROI. Our Members are more than willing to candidly share what they did right and what they did wrong as they went global (and as they continue to do so). For an introductory reading list that covers best practice guides, primers, member presentations, surveys, white papers, please take a look at the LISA Reading List – How the Language Industry Can Help You Go Global [public].

Here are just some of the many ways for you to network and participate over the next few months:

The theme this year for all LISA events will be Managing Content and Building Markets. The LISA Global Strategies Summit will be held in New York City in the late second quarter, with LISA Europe scheduled for early November in Zurich, Switzerland. LISA professional skills development workshops and Executive Roundtables will also run during these events, as well as at separate regional venues throughout the year. Please contact us if you are interested in sponsoring an event, serving on a Program Committee, submitting a Speaker Proposal, participating in one of the Technology and Services Exhibitions and/or in taking part in one or more of the LISA workshops and/or Executive Roundtables.

If you would like to participate in the latest in the series of LISA Industry Surveys – on the Middle Eastern Localization Market – please click here.

Terminology is one of the building blocks for humans in learning languages. The LISA Terminology SIG has launched a new project that aims to identify and define key terms that are used in the language services industry. Anyone can submit a term or a definition, and the LISA SIG will review and approve it. The terms and definitions will eventually be published in a new LISA Glossary.

As part of its educational webinar series, LISA Member ENLASO Corp. will be offering
Effective Localization Project Handoff Project Management on February 3.

For the latest information on events sponsored by LISA Member Termnet.Org, check out the two-day seminar in German on software localization (Softwarelokalisierung) which will take place at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany on March 11 and 12.

And for those of you who have joined the blogging set or who are thinking of doing so, we invite you to check out our new blog, Everything LISA, in which Arle Lommel, LISA’s Publications Manager, takes on any and all questions. Recent subjects include language rankings for localization, the aspects of a web site that should be localized, the “reverse Babel effect” and localizing PHP. If you have a question that you would like LISA to answer, we invite you to send it to arle@lisa.org. If he doesn’t already know the answer, he will do the research and find out.

A belated Happy New Year! Please contact us anytime at editor@lisa.org with your ideas and comments on content.