Globalization and technological innovation have joined forces to radically alter work processes and relationships. Andrzej Zydroń, CTO of XML-INTL and OSCAR Chairperson, underlined this trend in his (very personal and honest) vision for global information management for the next ten years in Future Directions for Translation Technology: Preparing for Automated Language Processing last month at the LISA Forum Europe in Zurich.

Zydroń confirmed that the translation/localization industry has done an incredible job of adapting to new conditions and has fulfilled its role well. However, he believes that the next ten years will resemble a scary roller coaster ride. Until now, it has been a bit like being on a tricycle, with all of us pedaling away. However, very soon, the industry will switch to 42-ton trucks, and the result (unless we prepare ourselves) may well be a lot of “roadkill” (i.e., dead animals killed on busy highways).

In Globalization With a Capital G, (premium) Nancy Locke focuses on this same fundamental shift, in an effort to stimulate discussion of the stakes involved for language services providers and precious human resources.

The Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark is now offering a quite unique Executive Master’s Program to allow these human resources to update themselves. Executive Master’s programs directed at business professionals are becoming a dime a dozen. Since 2000, however, CBS has offered something quite unique: an executive program directed at language and communication staff. The Master of Language Administration (MLA) is a two-year, part-time master’s program designed for professionals and managers with an academic background in languages and communication, and at least three years of relevant working experience. It is organized as web-based distance learning, combining the use of discussion forums with webcast lectures and workshops. Read Stig Jørgensen’s Golden Words (Now in English!) (public) for more details.

Looking forward in terms of technology and how it can help support all of us worldwide, we turn to wikis – what some have called “email for the blogging generation.” However, if you don’t consider yourself a member of this generation, why should you care? Because wikis can provide you with a very efficient alternative to drowning in your email (a miracle in itself!), along with a great way to collaborate on projects and documents with your colleagues worldwide.

Too much high-tech hyperbole? Not this time. As many of you know, LISA is extremely virtual – our Managing Director is the only person (along with our Swiss postal box) who actually resides and works in Switzerland. The rest of us report in from Russia, Turkey and the U.S., with the help of wikis.

But what is a wiki, anyway? Read what Ross Mayfield, LISA Member and CEO of Socialtext, has to say about them in Kill Your Email, Wiki, Wiki! (premium).

While the rest of us are busy proliferating our content as fast as possible, and in as many languages as possible, Kara Warburton, Chair of the LISA Terminology SIG and Terminologist at IBM, asks, Can We Develop Content and Manage Terminology at the Same Time? (public) She has been lobbying OASIS on our behalf on this issue and outlines how we can (if we really try), with some help from our DITA friends.

And now, to the LISA Forum Europe and Zurich, Switzerland ...

Participants from more than thirty countries during the LISA Forum Europe 2005 confirmed that it is becoming increasingly clear that we have made great strides over the last decade to enable our customers (both internally and externally) to bring their products and services to market much faster than any of us dreamed possible. It is now time to share with one another creative ways to align our PEOPLE, our processes and all of our technology to support our customers and our own companies to expand the geographic reach of our brands and to deliver what customers want to buy – not what we think they may need.

As we do this, all of us need to bear in mind that there are major, major changes on the horizon in terms of structured authoring and search engine marketing that will completely change our business models. The sooner all of us understand how to prepare for these shifts, the sooner we can start building the new business models and preparing ourselves, our employees and our partners to deal with the adaptive change that is already bombarding us from all sides.

(Read PEOPLE, Process and Technology).

Doris Marty-Albisser, CEO of CLS Communication, opened LISA Forum Europe 2005 by stressing that we must leverage standards and the required automated processing in such a way that our clients can truly be successful. We are the leaders, along with our clients. We must bring both sides together to optimize the tools and processes.

This Forum focused on customer testimonials and experience, with LISA serving as the nexus for all of us to speak the same language – with the goal being to share our data and our expertise in order to learn how to do things better. It now becomes our responsibility to communicate this to the larger community to ensure that the appropriate business processes and technology are being implemented.

Implementing technology and business process integration helps to de-commoditize our business. Creating the power of words is brainware and skill-based. If we can scale the skill and power multilingual content by recycling and repackaging it effectively, then we can leverage global information management to our customer’s benefit.

Andrew Draheim, Consultant to the World Bank Group, reminded us that GDP for the most economically developed countries in the world is growing around 8%. Yet GDP in the so-called developing world is predicted to grow at 40%. This will eventually turn our business models on their heads. (Read Capitalism at the Crossroads.) This also means that, as managers, we will be called upon to teach our colleagues and employees how to deal with a lot of adaptive change in the near future. The technical change will be easy, but adapting to the new business and workflow models will take much more sustained energy and creative thinking.

One crucial aspect for productivity gains and cost improvements depends on terminology – how it is created, implemented and managed across the organization. Several customer best practice sessions focused on this issue, along with controlled authoring and GCMS (global content management system) implementations. (Read LISA Best Practice Guide: Managing Global Content.

According to Kara Warburton, IBM Terminologist, we are all in a race with mounds of data. Whoever can analyze, discover, synthesize and find relevant information faster will win. Knowledge does not exist without words, but technology often fails us, leaving us with no control over the lexical data in our companies. In her presentation, Leveraging Lexical Resources: Taming the Knowledge Lion in Your Enterprise, Warburton explained that we can leverage all of this lexical data to help us deal with the crushing load of unstructured data that surrounds us … IF we can encode it for machines to read. (Read Terminology: Getting Down to Business.)

In her presentation, The Role of User-oriented Terminology Management in Software Localization, Silvia Cerrella Bauer’s (Head of Translation Services for SIS SegaInterSettle AG) message was clear: process-oriented translation technology, linked to enterprise terminology management and based on user consensus, pays off. Consistent (and consistently used) corporate language plays a pivotal role in cost justification and in delivering timely and successful communications internally and externally to customers.

With more and more GCMS implementations under our belts, the entire localization process is now being integrated more properly into the global information management supply chain and workflow. In Implementing a Localization-centric CMS: Key Findings, Mirko Plitt (CMS Program Manager for Autodesk) shared fourteen key lessons for implementing GCMS systems and challenged all of his localization colleagues to seize the opportunity to automate and rationalize their processes. Plitt believes that CMS solutions are maturing quickly, and that it will only be half as painful for organizations in the future to implement their systems well. He also believes that, long-term, the partnering model with language service providers will definitely change. He expects it to eventually be based on a constant flow of translation to smaller, in-country partners with dedicated teams that will be booked for specific time windows. Plitt’s mantra? Adopt XML and automated workflow.

What if you had to align all of the processes that have been mentioned above AND operate within a very strict regulatory environment? Claude Lamoureux, Multilingual Information Services Manager for PerkinElmer Life Sciences, does it every day. He described how his team has built a rationalized global information management system based on Business Optimized Compliance in his presentation, GILT Processes Supporting Regulatory and Marketing Decisions.

Well-integrated global information management processes can make the difference between costly and uncontrolled compliance vs. sustainable, business-optimized compliance. PerkinElmer’s model makes it possible to meet regulatory requirements – without losing too much time or money – because it is based on well-integrated global information management processes. The bottom line? Be just as picky as the developers!

In Web Site Google-ization: Localization for Search Engines, Curt Porritt (President and CEO of 10x Marketing) described how international search engine optimization (iSEO) will have a tremendous and unavoidable impact on the localization industry. As it becomes more popular, localization professionals (both buyers and sellers) will be forced to translate with SEO-specific terminology and to include additional keyword content on each localized web site.

This can be a complicated process, so those companies that begin to focus on iSEO early will have a significant advantage over those that wait until they are forced into it. The bottom line? The more you develop these skills right now, the happier you will be in a year. Ad impact fades quickly, but once you own and maintain the top links, it will be extremely difficult for anyone to dislodge you. (Read Google-ization: How It Will Impact the GILT Community?)

As always at LISA Forums and Summit Strategies, there was much discussion about standards and how to take advantage of them. Andrzej Zydroń, in How to Make the Maximum Use of Localization Industry Standards, presented all of the localization industry and related standards (TMX, TBX, SRX, XLIFF, TWS, GMX, DITA, xml:tm, Unicode), showing how they can be leveraged together to improve the localization process. (Read How to Leverage the Maximum Potential of XML for Localization.)

Dr. JoAnn Hackos, President of Comtech Services Inc. and Director of The Center for Information Development (CIDM), continued from where Dave Schell of IBM left off at the LISA Global Strategies Summit 2005 in Boston earlier this year with her presentation, Understanding DITA: Its Impact on Globalization and Translation. Hackos has been one of the key developers and evangelists for DITA since the very beginning. Approved earlier this year and adopted by OASIS, the new DITA standard promises to radically change the way content is delivered to users and to the localization process.

Hackos addressed several questions during her presentation. How will the localization process be affected when organizations move their authoring to an XML- and topic-based environment? How will localization respond to the need to begin translating topics early in the information development life cycle? What if information development management decides to send only new and changed topics for translation? (Read Are You Prepared to Meet the Global Information Challenge?)

Don’t miss the summary of the open discussion session on the TRADOS-SDL merger – A Boon or Bane to the Localization Industry? to find out if SDL is considering whether or not to allow any of its acquired technology to become open source …

As always, there were many other excellent presentations, case studies and workshops on topics such as Buying and Implementing CMS and GTMS Systems, All About Arabic, Global Content Management in a Web Portal Environment, Legal Issues Confronting the Globalization Industry, ROI Localization, Best Practices in the Manufacturing & Industry Automation Sectors and the results of the Accreditation Procedures Panel discussion (send an email to admin@lisa.org if you are interested in participating in a Special Interest Group on this issue).

Many, many thanks to our program committee for LISA Forum Europe 2005: Doris Marty-Albisser (CLS Communications), Terry Lawlor (SDL International) and Michael Anobile (LISA).

If you are a LISA Member, the presentations and detailed Zurich Forum Summary are available at the following URL:
http://www.lisa.org/archive/forums/2005zurich/presentations.html

And remember … what all of us face everyday is simply the challenge of language meeting technology (as Pierre Cadieux of i18N Inc. would put it!). Language is simply one more example of the pervasive diversity of human culture.