Editorial

Editor's Note: Thanks to LISA Member John Freivalds of JFA Marketing for this wonderful example of branding!

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What are the best ways to support clients as they face the challenge of sourcing globalization-related capabilities and selling it to their upper management? One way is to learn to express our value-added services in terms of a brand. That way, people on the outside would at least know where to begin when discussing how we can solve their global challenges – especially when they’re talking with other people who don’t know what we do either.

Together, we must learn to clearly articulate that the value of this industry lies in helping others get to market faster with higher quality products that solve customer needs. No one else understands how to go global or has the expertise to make that process easier for them. LISA Members know how to do it, and they have done it successfully.

Our value lies not in our ability to translate, but in our incredible market knowledge expertise.

The challenge, then, is to raise the awareness of the value that we bring to the table for both the private and public sectors – not because we are able to translate, but because we have incredible market knowledge that others can leverage to save time and money. On the flip side, it is important to communicate the consequences of not getting it right when going global, since these are staggering in terms of finances and lost time-to-market.

If Malandrino is right, why are we (of all people) so challenged when it comes to communicating the value of what we can deliver to our colleagues who are struggling to go global? Is it because we have concentrated too much on what we do and how we do it, that we have ignored the why, that is, the value of enabling organizations to reach and service new regions of the world?

What would it really take to brand the language services industry? Is there really something that special about what we do (and what is it that we really “do?”) that continues to prevent us from uniting together for our common good and survival?

Hold it right there!

Why should the language industry spend any of its precious time or resources on branding right now? There are much bigger issues to deal with, e.g., even if business has greatly improved, we (customers) can’t convince our VPs to increase localization budgets, and we (service providers) are still struggling to make a profit. There is also the very challenging issue of commoditization.

Hold it right there! These are the two most critical challenges that branding is equipped to address. Read Branding Is a Lot Like … Translation (public), to find out why. Then answer Malandrino’s call to action.

Editor’s Note: The panel discussion following Malandrino’s presentation at the recent LISA Forum Europe in Paris was extremely lively and valuable, involving many people in the audience. LISA Members are invited to review his presentation and to read the summary of the entire session (begins on page 63).

The quest? To ensure a seat in the boardroom for a Globalization Director at McDonald’s.

LISA Member Jia-Shin Chiu Osiel, Manager of Language Services for Worldwide Training, Learning & Development at McDonald’s (aka Globalization Evangelist), is one person who continues to push us to brand ourselves. If we ever do, her quest within McDonald’s to ensure a seat in the boardroom for a Globalization Director will begin to require less education on her part. In the second of a two-part series (click here to read part one), we tag along with Osiel to finish A Day in the Life of a Globalization Manager (premium).

More and more corporations like McDonald’s are seriously considering sustainable development.

As they map out their long-term strategies, more and more corporations like McDonald’s are seriously considering their roles in sustainable development. Sustainable development is based on inclusive capitalism, a form of capitalism that will allow the four billion individuals who currently survive on US $1,500 or (usually much) less a year, to raise the quality of their lives – and to do so in a way that will not destroy the planet. It recognizes and includes other living forms and is designed to be mutually beneficial, i.e., it is sustainable in the long-term. This model is in contrast to the current form of capitalism practiced in most of the world, which generally only provides for the material needs of the 800 million people who live in relative comfort.

Many companies and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) want to move forward in this area, but lack the business model and rules of engagement on how to do it. We spoke with Professor Stuart Hart, the Samuel C. Johnson Professor of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University, about how to meet this challenge. Hart is widely viewed as a pioneering thought-leader of sustainable global enterprise in both the academic and business communities. He is the Founder of the Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory, a coalition of corporate, academic and non-profit partners focused on identifying practical, market-based solutions for the four billion individuals living in poverty at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP).

Language plays a critical role in everything that Hart does, since communicating the messages (branding, if you will) of sustainable development is critical to affecting change on a global basis. Read Capitalism at the Crossroads (premium) to find out why.

Editor’s Note: To learn about how some companies are selling across the Digital Divide, read Localization Squared: Selling the 21st Century Across the Digital Divide.

Leverage the LISA brand.

Communicating your message is critical to your success, no matter what the product or service, and no matter what the market. Don’t forget that LISA is equipped to help you do this through leveraging the LISA brand, which is now recognized globally as a standard for industry professionalism and quality. Read These Numbers Don't Lie (public) to find out how you can support your sales and marketing activities through educating potential and existing clients (both internal and external).

It’s time to register for the LISA Global Strategies Summit to be held in Boston from May 23 – 27 at the Radisson Hotel (sorry "Big Apple" lovers – NOT New York – as we announced in our last issue – our apologies). This year's Summit will concentrate on how clients are implementing Global Content Management. A dedicated focus will be placed on the implementation challenges confronting today's users. What has been successful and why? What are the costs? What are the required resources? How do we judge quality? What are the leading technologies and why? What have we learned about open standards, and how do they apply to GCMS? What role does enterprise terminology play? Is it really worth the effort?

An active program committee led by LISA Members Alison Toon (HP), Allan Adams (Adams Globalization), Andrew Draheim (World Bank), Claes Holm (Merrill Corp.) and Dan Kuperstein (EMC) will ensure that the panels, presentations and workgroup discussions take a 'hands-on' approach. The gloves are off as technology developers, clients and their outsourcing partners confront the issues associated with costs, resource planning, implementation and quality.

Don’t miss this year's Global Strategies Summit. It’s one of the reasons LISA continues to be the industry leader. If you are interested in speaking, sponsoring, exhibiting or attending a professional skills workshop, please click here.

Many of our readers use localized software throughout their workday. Many of our readers also devote most of their waking hours during the workweek to making localized software products a reality. Others ensure that the budgets and technical infrastructure are in place to make this effort possible. Yet, do we really understand the impact of global software quality on the ability of organizations to carry out their business functions to meet the needs of their customers?

Click here to participate in the LISA Global Software Survey.

LISA decided to find out through the LISA Global Software Survey, which addresses the use of localized software by organizations engaged in international business. By focusing on both the business perspective and on technical aspects of global software, it will provide concrete data to link companies’ technical and business needs. Currently available in fourteen languages, the survey will provide hard data about the development, deployment and use of localized software around the world.

If you use localized software in any way whatsoever, we encourage you to participate by clicking here.

Editor’s Note: The LISA Global Software Survey was generously translated by LISA Members as a service to LISA and the localization community to allow the survey to reach a truly global audience, including those missed in most surveys. We wish to recognize CLS - Corporate Language Services * Comsys * Enlaso Corporation * Hermes Traducciones y Servicios Lingüísticos * HP * Human Science * IBM * Interverbum * JLS Language Corporation * Lionbridge * Logrus * Merrill Corporation * Syzygy Information Services Company * WH&P for their contribution.

Click here to download the new “Manual de Introdução à Localização.”

Brazil has developed a national software market that is relatively strong for its size and level of economic development, enabling the country to rank among the world’s ten largest software markets. With software development and exports a high priority of the Brazilian government, this means increased opportunities in Brazilian Portuguese as a source language for localization. LISA is proud to announce the availability of Manual de Introdução à Localização, the Brazilian Portuguese version of its extremely popular publication, The Localization Industry Primer. We are very grateful to LISA Member Djali Valois and her team at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and GeNESS (Centro de Geração de Novos Empreendimentos de Software e Serviço - a software incubator) for donating their time and expertise to make this possible.

If you have issues with multilingual glossaries, then check out Incorporating Multilingual Glossaries into Localization Systems, a 45-minute webcast to be given on March 10 by LISA Member ENLASO, as part of its educational Webinar series.

Editor’s Note: LISA is committed to “spreading the word” about educational opportunities available through our Members, so please keep us up-to-date on your current webcast schedules by forwarding them to editor@lisa.org.

The European quality standard for translation services, EN-15038, will go live in 2006.

A hearty congratulations to LISA Member Juan José Arevalillo, Managing Director of Hermes Traducciones y Servicios Lingüísticos S.L., who has been unanimously elected to chair ACT (Agrupación de Centros Especializados en Traducción - Spanish Translation Companies Association) for a two-year term. ACT’s current goals include (1) publishing the first broad-based market study on the Spanish translation industry; and (2) continuing to chair the meetings of the European Committee working on EN-15038, the European quality standard for translation services that is to go into effect in 2006.

And last, the U.S. Senate has designated 2005 as The Year of Foreign Language Study in the U.S.

That’s it for this month! As always, please contact us anytime at editor@lisa.org.