Globalization Insider: What 3 pieces of advice would you give to someone who is tasked with meeting the global content management challenge for their organization?

Dr. Rinsche: The person should either be empowered or appoint someone to be responsible for globalization within their organization. We have found that there is usually a complete lack of awareness of the need for multilingual support in many or even most departments in large organizations. Whilst a globalization strategy may be pursued in Product Development, the Marketing and Legal departments, for example, may be busy outsourcing their multilingual requirements on an ad hoc basis to multiple language providers in a completely uncoordinated manner.

Assess globalization requirements, but do it enterprise-wide

The first and foremost task of the person trying to meet this challenge is therefore to assess globalization requirements across departments. The result of this research can then be used to develop an appropriate globalization strategy.

The person also needs to learn a lot about globalization:

• that it is much more than a translation task,
• that specific skills are required to meet the requirements of the target markets to be addressed,
• that appropriate and highly specialized software tools are available to manage globalization workflows,
• that consistent global branding requires building and maintaining appropriate terminology,
• that the cost and speed of globalization and update processing can be reduced by using appropriate authoring and translation tools,

And this just scratches the surface!

The person should then focus on centralizing internal requirements supported by appropriate technology, and outsourcing the globalization tasks to one or more globalization vendors – unless an existing, specific internal department with the appropriate skills already exists to address some or all of them.

Insider: What pain points are your customers facing right now? How do you help them get rid of the pain?

Dr. Rinsche: There are many pains. One of the most painful is caused by a highly fragmented approach combined with no globalization strategy and no focused responsibility. However, we can help them overcome these weaknesses. A crucial first step is to enable them to understand the importance of successful globalization management, and the risks resulting from a fragmented approach.

Once this is achieved, we recommend the following:

• to build a web-based terminology database to ensure consistent global branding. Initially, it is often necessary to introduce consistent terminology use within one language to show the value of this approach across all languages and markets. It is often quite surprising to observe the massive terminology inconsistency and ambiguity in large organizations – even in their own corporate language, which is usually English.
• to implement our LTC Worx workflow solution on the organization's intranet. This will then enable everyone with a globalization requirement to submit requests to one central point where the globalization officer and his/her assistants can evaluate and manage them, either internally or through outsourcing.

Insider: What percentage of your potential customers require you to follow standards when they submit their requirements to you? What specific standards are they looking for?

Very few customers require us to follow any standards

Dr. Rinsche: We have observed a tendency towards standardizing both content formats and layouts, an increased use of content management systems, and in some instances, the use of in-house translation memory and terminology tools leading to a requirement to deliver files in TMX and TBX formats.

Our own technology enables our customers to standardize their globalization workflows and multilingual business processes according to DIN, ISO and other requirements.

Insider: Why do you or do you not fully support global content management standards?

Dr. Rinsche: LTC is a customer-centric company. If our customers require specific standards to be supported, then LTC complies with this requirement.

Insider: What do you need from your customers to enable you to fully support global content management standards?

Dr. Rinsche: In most cases, optimized processes have not yet been introduced. We help our customers fill the gaps, introducing standards and standardized processes where needed.

Insider: What are you missing from the standards bodies to enable you to fully support global content management standards?

Dr. Rinsche: LTC is happy to work with any standards devised by any standards body. It is up to the standards bodies to define meaningful standards and to ensure that users and developers apply them.

Insider: What is your message to WorldServer users who are looking to move away from the SDL solution?

Dr. Rinsche: It has always been LTC's philosophy that globalization management systems should be separated from specific linguistic tools (especially translation memories). We have always advocated a toolbox approach because we believe that users should be empowered and allowed to choose the linguistic (along with all other) tools that are most suitable for their requirements, and to link them together in automated workflow systems. This is the philosophy that underlies our own workflow system - LTC Worx.

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Dr. Adriane Rinsche, Managing Director of LTC, founded the company in 1992 and continues to lead design for the company’s products, which include LTC Worx and LTC Communicator. She designed the first and most mature business information system for the language industry, known today as LTC Organiser. Rinsche has a PhD in Computational Linguistics from Bonn University in Germany.