Smith's Blog

GlobalSight Open Source Marks 3rd Anniversary

2012-01-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to believe three years has gone by since we launched GlobalSight as an open source product. Time flies when you are having fun, and we have had a lot of great experiences with GlobalSight. The open source nature of the product has helped us to improve efficiency across our supply chain through open collaboration and interoperability – even with competitor’s products such as SDL Passolo. The open source nature of GlobalSight has also lead to it becoming “one of the most deployed TMSes in the market”, per a recent Common Sense Advisory blog post. I have included the blog post below.

I want to congratulate our GlobalSight development team and say thank you to the GlobalSight community (over 5,300 strong!) We remain committed to advancing the GlobalSight feature set and expanding our community through open collaboration and interoperability.

Smith

CSA Blog Post

GlobalSight was one of the first translation management systems (TMSes), debuting in 1998 (see "The Attack of the TMS Patents," Dec11). It was acquired by an Irish language service provider (LSP), Transware, in 2005, following a byzantine refinancing scheme by the two companies' backers. Shortly after Welocalize purchased Transware in 2008, GlobalSight was made open source. Fast-forward to May 2011, when GlobalSight.com had nearly 5,300 subscribers to the site and a total of 18,000 downloads.

That level of user interest putatively makes GlobalSight one of the most deployed TMSes in the market. However, from day one we've been watching for active participation in the open-source effort by developers other than Welocalize (number 18 on our list of top 50 global suppliers). Welocalize dedicated resources to renovating and updating GlobalSight, initially by replacing commercial components such as Oracle with open-source equivalents like MySQL (now owned by Oracle). Development on GlobalSight by other commercial entities and academics would prove that the open-source model was succeeding.

In September, GlobalSight 8.2 was announced with support for SDL Passolo, allowing users of that visual localization engineering tool to import language project (LPU) files into GlobalSight as source files. Previously, users localizing software such as dynamic link libraries (DLLs) had to work outside the mainstream of documentation and externalized code that could be processed through a TMS. With this integration, DLL content is presented in the same context as HTML and Word files, so localizers can get the benefit of shared translation memories and terminology databases as do translators. Welocalize's Derek Coffey told us that a future release, 8.4, in the second quarter of 2012 will be able to import DLLs directly into GlobalSight, further simplifying the process.

More immediately, the planned January release of version 8.3 will introduce the smart box, a client-side service that will allow for easier connection to remote software such as content management systems (CMS). For example, it will expedite file transfers between GlobalSight and the clients CMS and add single-screen project creation.

Support for Passolo will hopefully grease the skids for more such integrations by competitors and third-party providers, thus affirming GlobalSights open-source credentials. Elsewhere, Welocalize continues to invest in interoperability, segueing from its work with LISA on standards to GALA (see "Language Industry Standards as a Driver for Growth," Sep11). As our most recent report on the TMS universe shows, there is no single tool on the market that covers every single feature and function area (see "How to Select a Translation Management System," Nov11). However, with these updates, GlobalSight stands to boost its score in the area of interoperability. Will competing TMSes follow suit? We'll stand by to find out.

GlobalSight Interoperability Progress

2011-09-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Welocalize has been actively supporting interoperability initiatives across the industry such as Interoperability Now and Open TM2. We have also been working on practical implementations of interoperability between products, and we are happy to announce interoperability between Passolo and GlobalSight. The products have been connected through their APIs. GlobalSight uses the Passolo API to import Language Project (LPU) files into GlobalSight as source files for translation and move them through a translation workflow. This allows the user to take advantage of existing TMs, Machine Translation and other GlobalSight features when working with content supplied by Passolo. GlobalSight updates the LPU through Passolo's API when the translation process completes.

The productivity of our industry's tools is greatly improved through interoperability, and we are excited to make this step forward.

Smith

Welocalize on the Inc. 500|5000 list of fastest-growing private companies

2011-08-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

Welocalize has been investing heavily in growth, and I am happy to report that our consistent growth has been recognized once again. For the 7^th year in a row, we have won the Inc 500|5000 award for America’s fastest growing private companies.

It is rare for a company to win this award for so many years in a row, and it is a great achievement for all of our staff to enable this incredible growth for so long. I know it has been hard work, and I want to sincerely thank our staff, clients and partners. Many companies grow, but only a small few grow consistently while building a strong company that stands the test of time.

Here is the list of non-government language service providers recognized by Inc magazine:

Rank Company Growth Revenue

1283	G3 Translate	225%	$2.8 million
1474	Global Language Solutions	190%	$9.9 million
1517	SignTalk	183%	$4.1 million
1886	Language Services Associates	137%	$26.8 million
2230	CyraCom International	111%	$37.4 million
2328	Welocalize	104%	$59.6 million
3117	CETRA Language Solutions	64%	$3.8 million
3202	Universal Language Service	61%	$5 million
3216	TransPerfect	61%	$251.2 million
3338	ProTranslating	55%	$11.1 million
3548	U.S. Translation	48%	$2.2 million
3771	Para-Plus Translations	39%	$2.3 million
3935	Geneva Worldwide	34%	$7.5 million
4003	Dynamic Language Center	32%	$6.8 million
4412	Fluent Language Solutions	21%	$5.9 million

Regards,
Smith

Debt Ceiling: OK, but what about the roof?

2011-07-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

The US Debt Ceiling crisis has created no shortage of drama over the last several months. Whether in government or in business, one simply has to pay out less than what is taken in order to stay financially solvent. Fortunately, Welocalize has not had this problem. Our revenue in the first half of 2011 increased 44% over 2010, and our earnings continued to grow and remain healthy. But like any other business or government, we have had to make tough choices. There is never enough time or money to accomplish everything on the wish list. The decision making challenge is in prioritization, and the goal should be an enduring structure with not only a stable ceiling but also a sound roof to keep out leaks. This is the kind of business we are building here at Welocalize.

High growth creates great opportunities, but growth also creates structural challenges. As an example, Ireland has endured through the perils of both. After reaching an historical high of 5.47 percent GDP growth in March of 2007, Ireland fell to a record low of -4.47 percent in December of 2008. The cause of the decline, as we all know, was a systemic failure in the financial system, and not only in Ireland. Debt knew no ceiling throughout the world; the growth was not built upon a scalable foundation and the roof caved in.

Learning from this example and others over the past 14 years, it has been my priority to make sure that Welocalize continues to grow upon a scalable and reliable foundation. We have made significant investments to ensure this. We have added over 100 staff in the past 12 months giving us a current total of 500 worldwide, and we will invest nearly $4 million this year in our technology products and infrastructure. At the core of our growth will remain our 4-Pillars: Customer Service, Quality, Innovation and Teamwork. We regularly ask our clients to measure us in our 4-Pillars, and we also use them to measure ourselves.

Entering the second half of the year, I feel very fortunate and optimistic. Economic challenges still persist around the world, but all signs are pointing to 2011 being a great year for Welocalize. I want to thank our clients, staff and vendors. Our industry is changing, and I plan on Welocalize being a leader in that change. As President Herbert Hoover once said, “About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”

Smith

Common Sense Advisory Correction Notice

2011-06-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

The recent ranking by Common Sense Advisory (CSA) of the Top-50 Language Service Providers listed an incomplete total for Welocalize's 2010 revenue. Although it was no fault of their own, CSA has been wonderfully supportive in helping us to correct the revenue total and agreed to issue a correction notice. Our total 2010 revenue was US$59.61 million giving us a corrected ranking of #15 in the world in their report. Here is the link to the correction notice on the CSA website, and I have also included it below.

Correction Notice: Welocalize

In May 2011, Common Sense Advisory published a ranking of the Top 50 language service providers (LSPs) in the world (see "The Language Services Market: 2011," May11). This report contained information about provider growth rates and revenue for both language services and technology.

Description of Corrections
After the report was published, Common Sense Advisory was made aware that the 2010 revenue listed for Welocalize corresponded only to language services revenue, and did not in fact include technology and associated services revenue.

Had the company’s technology and associated services revenue been included, Welocalize would have been listed as #15 in the Top 50 instead of #18, with total revenue from language services plus technology of US$59.61 million for 2010, a significant jump above the services revenue of US$44.71. Table 2, in which the Top 50 companies appear, is located on Page 20 of the report.

Given the company’s prior year’s revenue of US$50.30, the company grew at a rate of 18.50%. This growth rate was more than double the average market growth rate of 7.41% as measured from a sample of 912 language service providers worldwide. This growth rate also would have qualified Welocalize for inclusion on Table 3, which language service providers that outperformed the underlying market growth rate.

In addition, while Welocalize did not appear on our first ranking published in 2005, which was based on 2004 revenue, the company did appear in subsequent rankings starting in 2006, and has appeared every year since its first appearance. Therefore, the company qualified to be mentioned on Page 21, under the bullet titled, "Perennial Performers."

The Multi-Screen Opportunity

2011-05-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

The Multi-Screen Opportunity

What is the biggest driver of growth in our industry right now? I believe it is what I refer to as the “multi-screen” opportunity. Let me explain. In the past, accessing many forms of content was cumbersome and slow. Finding what you wanted in a printed manual took a long time. Renting or buying a video required a trip to the store. Accessing various forms of content required specialized devices, and connecting these devices was either challenging or nor possible. These factors contributed to limits in growth and subsequently growth in the translation industry to support multilingual versions of that content and its underlying applications.

But this has all changed, and the change is accelerating. The TV, the music player, the phone, the game console, these devices are all converging in exciting ways all over the world in nearly every language. Content is now doubling on the internet every 18 months, and millions of new users are becoming connected every day. Thus, the way they are accessing information is changing.

I can’t remember the last time when I referenced a hard copy version of content to answer a question. Like many people, I just Google it. And I Google it from any screen: my desktop, laptop, phone or TV – and even more so now, my iPad. The convenience is great, and it is not just content; I am using more and more applications on a variety of screens. What I am looking for in both content and applications is simple: a great user-experience supporting anything I want, on any device, on-demand, at any time of day and at any place in the world. And I am not alone. Look at video as an example. I recently read that 25% of video is already viewed on mobile devices and internet-enabled televisions, and that number is growing rapidly.

This change as it relates to our industry is centered on two main themes: in a cluttered world with myriad choices, quality content is king, and people will pay for a better user experience on their devices. Higher quality content and a stronger economic underpinning mean one thing to our industry – more words to translate! The challenge is how?

Given the momentum in convergence across the information technology spectrum, our industry risks being left behind. Our technologies must also begin to converge. Our user experience must become simpler and on-demand. The quality and speed of our services must progress through collaborative innovation.

There are a variety of innovation efforts being lead by our associations such as GALA and TAUS. I recommend getting involved. Change is afoot. Greater adoption of standards and interoperability benefit all of us in the industry. If we don’t innovate together, we risk missing an enormous opportunity for our industry as a whole.

Smith

The Tragedy in Japan

2011-03-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Many people have been asking me about our team in our Tokyo office, and I am happy to report that they are all safe. Thank you so much for the well wishes. Our people in Japan really appreciate the support.

We heard from Shinji, our Manager in Tokyo, throughout the weekend, and I have included our last update from Shinji below.

Our primary concern is the safety our colleagues, clients and their families.

Regarding our work: No data has been lost, but obviously the timing of some deliverables will be impacted. Everyone in our company will do their best to support our colleagues in Japan as they manage through the aftermath of this disaster.

The company has provided assistance through a donation to the Red Cross. If you feel you would also like to offer support please visit the Red Cross website or any other reputable support organization of your choice.

To our colleagues and clients in Japan, stay strong, be safe and our thoughts are with you.

Smith

Last update from Shinji:

There have been aftershocks almost every half hour since the big one hit us, and we expect this to go on for a while. We honestly don’t know what to expect, how safe it is to go back into the city area, or what. There is also a warning/forecast of another 7.0M aftershock (70% chance) predicted to happen, but when no one knows.

Because of all the devastation and nuclear reactor explosions, energy, gas, electricity, etc are nearly depleted. In order to help the situation of energy, surrounding regions will be having a schedule electricity outage to save and share this energy. Although the heart of Tokyo (also the heart of Japan basically) will not be affected by this power outage for obvious reasons (there would be literal chaos), there are still concerns of being able to use public transportation.

Therefore, some staff may not be able to make It to work, and some deliveries may be affected. We will do our best to work this out of course, but your patience and understanding is well appreciated. Although we are all ruthless at work, I know we all have hearts ;-)

Welocalize Joins Center for Next Generation Localization

2011-02-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is a dynamic Academia-Industry partnership with over 100 researchers developing novel technologies addressing the key localization challenges of volume, access and personalization.

I am very excited to have Welocalize become an Industry Partner with the CNGL. It is an organization whose Mission is “to revolutionize localization via breakthroughs in automation, composition and integration”, and this is exactly in line with our goals at Welocalize. We are looking at ways to revolutionize the way localization services are performed and delivered across the translation supply chain.

Specifically, we will be working together with the CNGL on the interoperability challenge in the translation supply chain. Our goal is to create a working demonstration of standard data exchange across a content management system, connected to a translation management system, connected to a data cloud, a machine translation engine and a translators workbench.

The era of the walled garden is over. New, open ways of performing and delivering translation are emerging, and we plan to work closely with the CNGL to lead beneficial change for all.

Smith

The Standards Question: Guest Blog on TAUS site

2011-01-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked to be a Guest Blogger on the TAUS website. My post is on the topic of standards:

The Dark Side of Standards: Why the lack thereof is significantly undermining both business prosperity and social progress around the world

Please click on the title above to have a look.

Smith

The Changing Localization Industry Tide

2010-12-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

We recently celebrated Thanksgiving here in America, and Welocalize surely has much to be thankful for this year.

Riverside Partners has invested $34 million to support our expansion plans
We now have an outstanding team located in the United Kingdom through our merger with Lloyd International Translations (LIT)
Q3 marked another great quarter for Welocalize with sales increasing 32% through September over the same period in 2009
GlobalSight now powers translation matching for the 2.7 billion word TAUS TM super-cloud

Not only is the Riverside investment a great vote of confidence in Welocalize, it is a great vote of confidence in our industry. While many industries around the world are still struggling from the recession, we are fortunate to be in an industry that is growing at a double-digit rate! The credit for this great news goes to our staff, clients and translation partners all around the world.

The changes happening in our industry are equally exciting. The quality process is becoming more community oriented; there is a strong groundswell for openness and technology interoperability, and collaboration across competitors is growing in order to best serve client needs. On top of all of that, content on the internet is doubling every 18 months. Someone is going to have to translate the ever increasing volumes of this content – which means amazing opportunity for all of us!

I want to thank our clients, partners and staff for all that we have achieved this year, but we have even more great things to come! My vision for the future is one where our products and services enable any content, on any device, in any language – at any time. The “always-on” world in which we live is requiring “on-demand translation” in order to keep up with the increased pace and volume of content demanded by end-users the world over. I believe our industry is still coming up short in creating an easy-to-use multilingual end-user experience, and we want to revolutionize the way translation is performed and delivered. I see the revolution primarily being fought at two points in our supply chain which I call the first mile and the last mile.

The “first mile” revolution in our supply chain is at the point of connecting with translators. We need to make it easier for translators to be an integrated, productive and profitable part of our supply chain. I don’t think we will be able to keep pace with the changes in the world until we bridge this first mile gap in our supply chain. We need to make it easier and cheaper for translators to deliver quality work on time. Translators should be able to select an inexpensive or even free tool of their choice and have it easily connect to any other tool in the supply chain. Translators should be able to openly collaborate on a shared platform – even across competing multi-language vendors. We need to enable translators to be more efficient and more profitable. Otherwise, the number of high-quality translators in our supply chain will decline.

There is also a revolution happening in the last mile of our supply chain. I describe the last mile as the connection to actual end-users of the translated content. The same lack of interoperability in the first mile of our supply chain limits our connectivity in the last mile to end-users. Community technologies are bringing buyers and sellers ever closer together in other industries and improving the user experience. However, in our industry, the traditional translation quality/review process rarely includes end-users. Instead, the process is limited to a closed loop of linguistic review by additional linguists. Yes, this step is necessary, but until we know the true value perception of end users it is hard to determine the appropriate budget for this step by language. This closed loop of translation QA is being perpetuated by what I call the SDL “walled garden.” Until we can create open and seamless connections at both ends of our supply chain through open APIs and standard data exchange protocols, we will not achieve the necessary interoperability to improve time, cost and quality.

I describe our current supply chain as a series of black boxes of service providers and tools that are disconnected from each other. I think our industry has reached a state of maturity where it is imperative to open and connect the boxes and create a better user experience for each constituency in the chain. The result will be time, cost and quality improvements, and all boats will rise on the changing industry tide.

Riverside Invests $34 Million in Welocalize

2010-11-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to report that Riverside Partners, a prominent Private Equity firm based in Boston, has invested $34 million in Welocalize to support our exciting growth plans. Not only is this a great vote of confidence in Welocalize, it is a great vote of confidence in our industry. While many industries around the world are still struggling from the recession, we are fortunate to be in an industry that is growing at a double-digit rate! The credit for this great news goes to our clients, staff and translation partners all around the world.

The changes happening in our industry are equally exciting. The quality process is becoming more community oriented; there is a strong groundswell for openness and technology interoperability, and collaboration across competitors is growing in order to best serve client needs. On top of all of that, content on the internet is doubling every 18 months. Someone is going to have to translate the ever increasing volumes of this content – which means amazing opportunity for all of us.

My vision is for Welocalize to support its clients by enabling any content, on any device, in any language – anywhere in the world. We plan to use the Riverside investment to support this vision. Specifically, we will invest in our 4-Pillars:

Quality: expanding our QA staff and investing in the acquisition of quality oriented translation providers around the world

Customer Service: expanding both our staff and our locations worldwide to increase in-time-zone responsiveness and personal touch

Innovation: investing in innovative products across the translation supply chain in order to positively transform the user experience for translators, service providers and clients

Teamwork: investing in the expansion, training and support of our worldwide staff

I want to thank our clients, staff and worldwide translation partners for helping to make this exciting development happen.

Smith

The Welocalize vs. SDL Debate

2010-10-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Keith Mills, the CTO at SDL, for participating in the debate. Keith is a sharp guy and great CTO. SDL is lucky to have him. I also want to thank Jaap Van der Meer for hosting and moderating the debate.

I hope Keith enjoyed the debate as much as I. Our contrasting viewpoints were very interesting and thought provoking, and we also had some points in common! Kirti Vashee has written an interesting summary of the debate in his blog.

Let me begin with the views we had in common. We both agreed on the changes happening in the marketplace. The volume of content is growing; the complexity of rich-media is growing; the number of languages requested by clients is growing; clients are demanding ever-faster delivery cycles, and machine translation is creating growth opportunities for all rather than cannibalizing them. I described my “vision” for addressing these challenges, and Keith described his “practical” ideas for doing the same. It was interesting to me that our answers were characterized as “practical” vs. “visionary”, because I believe both are necessary to solve any challenge. A vision describes the shape of things to come, and a mission describes things to be done within the context of the vision in a “practical” sense. Yes, we have a vision at Welocalize, but we are also on a mission to move beyond optimization of the traditional translation supply chain towards truly collaborative innovation.

My vision for the future is one where our products and services enable any content, on any device, in any language – at any time. The “always-on” world in which we live is requiring “on-demand translation” in order to keep up with the increased pace and volume of content demanded by end-users the world over. I believe our industry is still coming up short in creating an easy-to-use multilingual end-user experience, and I believe that a lack of interoperability has created critical breaks in our translation supply chain at two major points which I call the first and last mile.

This interoperability concept is where my views and Keith’s began to diverge, primarily because of our different business models. I described SDL’s business model as a “walled garden”, and the Welocalize business model as an open, interoperable supply chain.

SDL currently owns the first mile in our supply chain. I used a railroad analogy during the debate to describe SDL’s brilliant purchase of Trados. Trados is still the preferred tool of translators and with Trados on the majority of translator’s desktops, SDL effectively owns the railroad tracks into those translators and is able to levy a “tax” on the words transported on the tracks in the form of licensing fees. Absent the purchase of Trados licenses, APIs and/or SDL professional services, there is subsequently no way to interoperate with the station at the end of the tracks (the translator’s workbench). In addition, because translators are typically isolated in a “desktop workbench” world rather than a networked “community”, knowledge is not efficiently shared and quality suffers.

I don’t think we will be able to keep pace with the changes in the world until we bridge this first mile gap in our supply chain. We need to make it easier and cheaper for translators to deliver quality work on time. Translators should be able to select an inexpensive or even free tool of their choice and have it easily connect to any other tool in the supply chain. Translators should be able to openly collaborate on a shared platform – even across competing multilanguage vendors. We need to enable translators to be more efficient and more profitable. Otherwise, the number of high-quality translators in our supply chain will decline.

Interoperability is also limited by the SDL walled garden in the first mile connections between content management systems and various translation management systems. Once again, absent the purchase of SDL licenses, APIs and/or professional services, there is no way to connect the systems and enable efficient interoperability. Both client and vendor should each be able to choose their preferred translation management system and content management system, and those systems should be able to pass data back and forth. A large amount of time and money is lost because there is currently no easy way to link these systems.

However, three companies are endeavoring to change this fact. Welocalize, Andra AG and Kilgray are currently collaborating within the context of the Interoperability Manifesto to enable data exchange across tools and will open source the results. This is in addition to the connections being created between open source content management systems, GlobalSight and the Open TM2 workbench from IBM. A seamless data round trip across tools is the goal, and these reference implementations are demonstrating how it is possible.

The last mile in our supply chain is also broken. The same lack of interoperability in the first mile of our supply chain limits our connectivity in the last mile to end-users. Community technologies are bringing buyers and sellers ever closer together and improving the user experience. However, the traditional translation quality/review process rarely includes end-users. Instead, the process is limited to a closed loop of linguistic review by additional linguists.

This closed loop of translation QA is being perpetuated by the walled garden. Until we can create open and seamless connections from end-users into the translation systems that we use, we will not be able to optimize our supply chain to the needs of the end-users.

During the debate, I described our supply chain as a series of black boxes that are disconnected from each other. I think our industry has reached a state of maturity where it is imperative to open the boxes and create a better user experience for each constituency in the chain. The result will be “practical” time, cost and quality improvements, and all boats will rise on the changing industry tide.

On-Demand Translation

2010-08-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

I want to thank all of our clients, staff and partners very much, because Welocalize had its best quarter ever in Q2 2010! In addition, Welocalize reached an interesting milestone recently. The majority of our work, currently 52% and growing rapidly, is now what we call on-demand translation.

We categorize the work we do for our clients in two ways: on-demand and traditional. Traditional localization we describe as the classic, project-based work that our industry is most accustomed to seeing. This type of work is driven by release cycles of varying lengths usually measured in months. Once a project is completed, we wait for the next release, translate what has changed and close the project.

Our on-demand segment is quite different. What was once a process of opening and closing a project has now become opening an always-on pipe between ourselves and our customer; what was once issuing a purchase order has now become billing against an open PO for the quarter or year; and what was once a release cycle of months is now measured in days or even hours. This open pipe and open PO create wide ranging challenges in reporting and configuring the supply chain. Load balancing, production accounting across the supply chain and quality are a few of the most immediate.

The shift to on-demand translation is being driven by the amount and the form of new content being produced. If our customer’s products are always-on and available on any device, anywhere in the world, at any time of day, in any language - naturally our service must change to meet the same requirements. This shift has been going on gradually for quite some time. Project automation with point solutions is steadily being replaced by process automation with enterprise solutions. This type of shift is common in industries as they scale. Vertical integration, supply chain automation, just-in-time delivery – advances and best practices in these areas drive competition in both manufacturing and service industries alike, and the trend is accelerating rapidly in our industry.

In order to keep pace, a Translation Management System such as GlobalSight becomes critical. However, the system alone is not enough. Interoperability, extensibility and standard data exchange across systems in the supply chain becomes essential in order to achieve the necessary reporting requirements and on-demand velocity.

The increase in this velocity is amazing. Welocalize grew 24% through June of 2010 with our on-demand segment growing at annual pace of 133% since 2007. Our GlobalSight community has grown to over 4,000 members, and we have plans to double our GlobalSight development budget. The combination of our GlobalSight “pipe” and our InSight business intelligence engine is driving our ability to continually increase velocity and be the on-demand Translation leader. We have some exciting new announcements around our development efforts still to come in 2010, so please stay tuned!

Smith

Why Did Welocalize Join the Open TM2 Initiative

2010-07-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

For information on why we joined the Open TM2 initiative, please follow this link: http://www.lisa.org/globalizationinsider/2010/07/open_tm2.html

I have also included the interview below.

Smith

What is it about the Open TM2 initiative that motivated Welocalize to get involved?

Most translators use some type of translation workbench tool. Most clients use some type of content management tool, and most vendors use some type of translation management tool. To make it even more interesting, add machine translation tools, authoring tools and a variety of content types. Now combine all of those users and their various tools and try to pass the content type you want translated between each of them, and tell everyone they have half the budget, time and staff to do it!

Yes, I have exaggerated a bit to make a point, but the basic elements of this challenge are what I am hearing from clients, vendors and translators. Traditional methods across our translation supply chain are just not up to the task of the now always-on velocity of end user demands.

In order to increase velocity across the translation supply chain, we need to increase automation which implies more integration, interoperability, extensibility – and standards. We are by no means the first industry to confront this challenge, so why not borrow what has worked elsewhere. At the heart of every sophisticated and mature supply chain is a consistently followed set of standards. As Craig Barrett, former Chairman of Intel, stated, "The world is getting smaller on a daily basis. Hardware, software and content move independent of, and irrespective of, international boundaries. As that increasingly happens, the need to have commonality and interoperability grows. You need standards so that the movie made in China or India plays in the equipment delivered in the United States, or the Web site supporting Intel in the United States plays on the computer in China." 

What sort of progress do you think has been made in the area of standards, and what work remains?

Unicode has probably been the most successful standard related to our industry. Unicode specifies a standard for the representation of text in just about any language across software products and systems. Before Unicode, there were hundreds of different encoding systems, and they often conflicted with each other. The significant problem was potential corruption in the passing of text representation data between different encodings or platforms. Thus the Unicode Consortium was formed, and to its credit, Unicode now “enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It allows data to be transported through many different systems without corruption.”

Other standards, such as TMX, have not been as successful. We need to understand why this has been the case? As Bill Sullivan, IBM Globalization Executive, stated, “There is a recognized and growing need for standards in the localization industry. Despite our best intentions, however, standards themselves can often be vague and open to multiple interpretations. What is needed are reference implementations and reference platforms that serve as concrete and unambiguous models in support of the standard.”

This is the work that remains. We need to demonstrate more tangible benefits for adhering to a standard in typical use case scenarios and integrations. How can a client easily integrate the translation assets of an acquisition? How can a client plug-and-play what they deem as the best tool components? How can a client change tools? These are the simple questions I hear. To get closer to the answers, the Open TM2 Steering Committee is working on a Joomla (content management), Open TM2 (translator’s workbench) and GlobalSight (translation management system) integration. The goal is to develop a viable data exchange standard which works seamlessly in this 3-way environment and then extend it to other integrations in the translation supply chain.

LISA will document and publicize the resultant standards. However, neither the Open TM2 initiative nor LISA alone can make the greater vision a reality. As the Unicode initiative demonstrated, broad participation and support across the industry is necessary to achieve success. The Unicode Consortium includes corporate, institutional, individual, NGO and public sector members all collaborating with a unified purpose.

What is different about the Open TM2 initiative?

Open source and “free” are often found in the same sentence. Yes, there is no charge to download an open source product such as Open TM2 or GlobalSight, but there is a cost associated with support, training and customization to specific needs. Open source is not a “free lunch”, but it is an opportunity to engage, integrate and customize at a much deeper level and at a faster pace. The result is potentially a product that is more suited to one’s needs, more easily integrated with other products and a lower total cost of ownership. But what you get out of it is subject to what you put into it. As an ancient Chinese proverb reads, “Talk does not cook rice.” We need people willing to take action. These concepts apply to all open source projects.

What I think is different, and exciting, in this Open TM2 initiative is an increasing alignment of broader interests. Industries typically do not change significantly until the market forces them to change (look at the American auto industry). I think there are some market mega trends in play right now (cloud computing, mobile computing, social computing, open source) and those who don’t adapt to these trends will quickly be left behind. The “translation project” as we knew it traditionally is rapidly morphing into on-demand translation. SimShip is rapidly morphing into SimStream (simultaneous streaming releases). Translation tools and platforms are rapidly morphing into “mash-ups” (combinations of different tools with the sum benefits being significantly greater than the individual benefits). The translation service on the whole is rapidly morphing into a utility inside a broader and more deeply integrated global content supply chain. RFPs now have pages and pages of interoperability, integration and optimization questions. And according to Gartner, "The number of open-source projects doubles every 14 months. By 2012, 90% of companies with IT services will use open-source products of some type.”

So, I think the timing is right. Many, certainly not all, clients, LSPs, tool providers and translators alike are realizing that it is in the best interest of the supply chain as a whole to collaborate to achieve something on the scale of what was achieved with the Unicode standard. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Open TM2 Interview with John Yunker

2010-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

I was recently inteviewed about the Open TM2 initiative by John Yunker from Global By Design. The interview can be found here. I have also copied it below.

Translation memory goes open source: An interview with Smith Yewell of Welocalize

Posted on July 8th, 2010 by John Yunker

Translation memory helps companies re-use previously translated text, improving consistency and potentially saving money.

But translation memory requires using translation memory software, which has for years largely meant using SDL Trados software.

When a company hires a translation agency and requires that they use translation memory — not only must that agency have Trados software, but so too must the freelance translators — who are often located all around the world. This is a nice business model for SDL, but it has been a pain point for translators and agencies for years.

For agencies, the more acute pain point has been that SDL not only sells TM software but also sells translation services. Nearly every translation exec I have spoken to has openly asked for an open-source alternative to Trados.

Well, now we have one.

IBM has partnered with LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association), Welocalize, Cisco, and Linux Solution Group e.V. (LiSoG) to launch an open source project that provides a “full-featured, enterprise-level translation workbench environment for professional translators.”

It’s called Open TM2 — and it’s basically a scaled-down version of what IBM has developed and used internally for years. I haven’t used the product yet and there’s understandably quite a bit of work involved to get this software to a point where it’s easy for translators, agencies, etc. to consume.

I’m not prepared to say Open TM2 is going to put an end to Trados. After all, Linux didn’t exactly put Windows or OSX out of business. But I am excited to see it out there in the world. Open source keeps software vendors on their toes. I’ll be very curious to see if developers embrace the code, and what they come up with.

To learn more, I interviewed one of the partners behind Open TM2, Smith Yewell, CEO of Welocalize.

Here is what he had to say:

Q: Why did IBM decide to open source its software in this fashion? What does it hope to gain?
Bill Sullivan can answer this question better than I, but as he stated, “Freelance translators are the backbone of the localization industry. These translators have longed for free and open translation tools to increase their productivity. There is a recognized and growing need for standards in the localization industry. Despite our best intentions, however, standards themselves can often be vague and open to multiple interpretations. What is needed are reference implementations and reference platforms that serve as concrete and unambiguous models in support of the standard.”

In my opinion, productivity and standardization go hand-in-hand. By releasing Open TM2 as an open source product with a standards-based, data-exchange goal, not only is there potential for increased productivity – flexibility and freedom of choice also increase.

Q: And what do you hope to gain from this effort?
I like to use the mobile phone analogy. I can travel just about anywhere in the world, turn my phone on, and it works. This is possible, because competing carriers and hardware manufacturers collaborated to be able to offer that seamless user experience across global networks and handset protocols. Consider the user experience in our industry. There is really no ability for a client to turn on a translation supply chain and have it work out of the box across various content types, tools and translation vendors. The clients I speak with are demanding that this change.

GlobalSight, Joomla and Open TM2 are being used to demonstrate an example of a seamless data exchange based upon a set of standards. LISA will play an important role in documenting and sharing these standards so that they can be applied uniformly to other integrations. To put it simply, we need a variety of tools to be able to talk to each other in an automated way. This is where I think we can improve time, cost and quality results and greatly improve the user experience. Ultimately, I expect Welocalize to gain an increase in productivity, interoperability and freedom of choice in configuring the best set of tools for each client’s unique translation supply chain needs. If we can get under the hood, we can tune the engine; otherwise, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain time, cost and quality advantages from the old way of doing business.

Q: Who is going to use this software? And what software will it replace?
Many translators are already using TM2 in delivering work to IBM. I expect Open TM2, as its features grow, will appeal to more translators as a desktop workbench. This is only an initial release of the open source product, and there is much work to be done. But the potential is there to collaborate and improve. Ultimately, I think Open TM2 has the potential to replace the Trados desktop workbench.

Q: When you talk open source, stability and support are common pain points. Who will be actively supporting this effort?
The members of the Steering Committee are currently supporting the effort, and the goal is to build a community which can support itself. This open source initiative is not unlike others, what one puts into it will determine the benefits one can pull from it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a company create a business model to offer Open TM2 support. Support, training and customization are typical services that bloom around open source initiatives.

Q: What would stop a technology company from taking the source code and creating a competitive TM product?
It is an open source product, so there is potential for companies to build a business model around the product. However, I doubt that will be a proprietary fork of the code. The appeal is an open source product with growing standards compliance, not yet another proprietary product. What is more likely are support, training and integration services. Anyone investing in the product naturally expects a return, and the better the return, the more healthy and diverse will be the community. I think that is a good thing. Competition drives innovation. However, if we can’t get the standard data-exchange protocols right, productivity across the supply chain will continue to lag the increasing velocity of change in the marketplace. Rapidly evolving time, cost and quality demands already exceed what the traditional translation supply chain can deliver.

Q: The source code is available now but documentation is lacking. What is your timetable for launching a more translator and agency friendly product.
I think the first step for the Steering Committee is to take the feedback that is already coming in about the product, good and bad, and use that to set priorities, responsibilities and a timeline. The idea is sound, but it must be tested in practical use and refined according to what the market really needs. Translators have the answers to many challenges in our supply chain, they are just not asked very often.

Q: How will this software be integrated? Is there is a goal of integrating it with the open source GlobalSight CMS?
Content creation, translation, workflow and performance metrics reporting – there are many systems and tools for accomplishing each of these requirements. However, very few of them can pass necessary data in an automated way. A lot can be accomplished with web services and open APIs, but widespread integration possibilities can only be realized with a critical mass actively using an industry-supported data-exchange standard.

In order to demonstrate this possibility in a live use case scenario, Joomla, GlobalSight and Open TM2 will be integrated with the resultant standards published by LISA. I think additional standards organizations will also need to participate to gain wider understanding, agreement and adoption. If enough of the industry’s thought leaders and leading practitioners get behind this standard data-exchange and tools integration challenge, I think all boats will rise. Without it, the industry will never be able to approach the growing volume of content which current production and cost models can’t support.

Welocalize and IBM Partner on Open-Source Translation Tools

2010-06-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

When I buy a product at Walmart it is scanned at the check-out counter. At that moment, the entire supply chain it took to produce that product is alerted; another product is moved into the assembly line, and the new product is on the shelf the next day. This is an enormous logistical challenge, and Walmart achieves success through very sophisticated automation systems and standard supply chain integration. Walmart is able to achieve such a high level of supply chain automation and integration, because very early in their history they convinced their suppliers to standardize the hand-offs in the supply chain around the most optimal way to produce what a customer wants, in the format they want, where they want it and at the best possible price. I am beginning to see clients in our industry requiring their translation vendors to do the very same thing.

Collaboration, integration, standardization and cooperation are all the hot buzzwords today. Why? Because clients are realizing that vendor silos are limiting their ability to achieve enterprise-wide objectives around time, cost and quality.

The Walmart supply chain is one built to support the movement of products, but what does the same set of challenges look like when it is a movement of digital information?

The translation industry is reliant upon a digital supply chain. We move words around, and the consumers of these words expect the latest and greatest instantly on the device of their choice in a simple and easy way. We can thank cloud computing, the iPhone, Google, Twitter and Facebook in large part for creating this new level of expectation.

This new expectation has a massive impact on our translation supply chain. The age of the “translation project” is waning and new age of the “translation utility” is waxing. Translation as a utility is a concept describing an always-on, on-demand, streaming translation service. Machine translation (MT) might come to mind first, but I see MT as just another important productivity tool in the translation supply chain. It is the configuration and integration of the supply chain tools and vendors to achieve “translation as a utility” which is the next frontier, where the biggest challenge lies and where the real value is created. Perhaps a Walmart of words or a FedEx of words will emerge?

Supply chain automation requires standard inputs and outputs. Otherwise, the systems and hand-offs between various vendors in the chain breakdown. The translation industry is suffering from this problem. The supply chain has not kept pace with the rapidly growing need for translation as a utility. Interoperability, extensibility and flexibility across systems and tools is currently limited. But this is beginning to change.

IBM announced today the formation of a partnership to work towards solving these challenges. In partnership with LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association), Welocalize, Cisco, and Linux Solution Group (LiSoG), IBM will offer an open source version of IBM’s TranslationManager/2 (TM2) to be called OpenTM2.

“There is a recognized and growing need for standards in the localization industry. However, despite our best intentions, standards themselves can often be vague and open to multiple interpretations. What is needed are reference implementations and reference platforms that serve as concrete and unambiguous models in support of the standard.” acknowledged Bill Sullivan, IBM Globalization Executive. Mr. Sullivan suggests, “Freelance translators are the backbone of the localization industry. These translators have longed for free and open translation tools to increase their productivity. Our expectation is that by providing OpenTM2 in the open source environment we can enlist the aid of this army of dedicated users to bring OpenTM2 even closer to the realization of a flexible open platform to mature data exchange standards our industry desperately needs." Please see Kirti Vashee’s blog for interesting read on this topic of standards.
IBM, Welocalize and the other partners are working to make this open platform a reality. Our first reference implementation will be a standard integration between a content management system (Joomla), a translation management system (GlobalSight) and a translators workbench (Open TM2). The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) plans to document and publicize the standard data exchange format to be utilized in the reference implementation, and these standard data exchange protocols will be expanded to include additional implementations until a standard, extensible and interoperable eco-system is formed. It is an ambitious goal, but market forces are driving the change, and I believe we will see the change through.

Smith

What has stayed the same, and what has changed?

2010-05-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

The fundamental business drivers in our industry have not changed much – time, cost and quality still rule the day.

The following elements are changing so fast it is hard to keep up with them: connectivity, collaboration and community.

So how do we keep up with the changes and what impact do they have on our business?

Connectivity and Time

Let’s look at the relationships between old and new and start with connectivity and time. Time cycles are constantly being compressed. Why? Because time to market is a competitive advantage. Increased connectivity has only heightened the importance of time to market. Most of us are connected at virtually all times of day in all places, and we have come to expect to have instant access to what we want, when we want it, in the way we want it on any device of our choice at any time. Information, entertainment and applications are all moving to the cloud, ready on demand. This has enormous implications on our translation supply chain.

If we look at our supply chain historically, first there was a translation project methodology, then there was a simultaneous-ship methodology and now what is required is a simultaneous streaming methodology. Connectivity and time cycles are moving in inverse directions. In order to keep up, translation must become an always on, on-demand utility.

Quality and Community

What is the relationship between quality and community? This is where it gets very interesting. Quality is a sometimes objective, most often subjective assessment in 2 general stages. Stage 1: you have no familiarity with the product or service, so you must rely upon references. Stage 2: the quality assessment is based upon your actual experience.

Amazon.com was an early leader in tying quality to the community. Like many people, I check what the community thinks about a product on the Amazon site before I buy it. The larger the community of ratings, the more confident I become in a Stage 1 assessment. In a Stage 2 assessment, if I am a happy buyer, I am also happy to rate the product as a member of the community. The cycle becomes self-perpetuating, self-reinforcing and very powerful. The opinion of the crowd drives buying behavior.

Interestingly, although rating translations is part of our industry’s standard process, very little of this dynamic community element is deployed. Most often, ratings are limited to one linguist’s opinion of another linguists work. Although this is an important step, it misses the most important person of all, the user/buyer. What does the “community” really think of our translations and how should that impact our decisions/process/budget?

Cost and Collaboration

Collaboration enables members of a team to leverage each other’s work in order to increase productivity and drive down cost. Translation memory (TM) was probably the first collaboration tool in our industry, so let’s look at its progress. First, there was the desktop TM tool, then there was the server TM tool, and now the next logical step is the cloud-based TM. The TAUS TDA initiative shows real promise in this area. Words and their subsequent translation pricing is a commodity, so why not devise a way to leverage that commodity for maximum benefit? Does sharing translated words reduce competitive advantage? In certain cases, yes. But if both the source and translated text are publically available on your website, you can be sure someone is already crawling your site and building a corpus of your translated content. The TAUS TDA initiative offers third party, non-profit impartiality to govern, manage and leverage the publically available content that is already being shared by the crawlers.

The more we collaborate - the more we reduce cost. It is a brave new world out there.

Smith

Our Rapidly Evolving Industry

2010-05-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

Change is exciting, because what invariably follows change is opportunity.
I see the following translation industry macro-changes in process.

In general: I feel like our industry is somewhat like Henry Ford trying to build an assembly line with all of the parts and tools suppliers providing pieces of various sizes and dimensions, according to different specifications, at different time intervals – with a blindfold on!

1. An open translation platform raises all boats: I see a lack of uniform standards on top of an open and shared platform as our industry’s primary productivity and innovation barrier. It is interesting to see a company like Google sharing the same thoughts. “A well-managed, closed system can deliver well designed products in the short-run – the iPod and iPhone being obvious examples – but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best,” wrote Jonathan Rosenberg, a Google executive. I would like to see our industry associations take on a singular challenge faced by all constituents in the industry: a standard set of common protocols to exchange/interchange data amongst systems/tools. XLIFF, TMX, SRX and TBX are a good start, but there is still a lot of work to be done around standardized calls, published, documented and supported APIs and fundamental integration components between tools. These integration widgets and APIs should be open and shared by all, and one of our associations could make a name for itself by leading the effort to produce them.

2. Web 2.0 sparks a new “quality” question and radically changes the old QA model: The traditional quality process is centered around asking a reviewer to compare the quality of the source and target language in a side-by-side comparison. This is a necessary step in the QA process, but is it the central question around which the quality process should be built? What do end-users (the community) think, and shouldn’t quality expectations be built around their involvement/expectations?

3. A new, transparent relationship with translators changes all relationships in the chain: I attended many meetings in 2009 where clients and vendors collaborated on the key challenges facing the client. These meetings were very beneficial, but in none of the meetings were any translators in attendance. If we are to truly optimize the translation supply chain to improve time, cost and quality- translators must be part of the solution in an open way that harnesses the power of the community as a whole.

4. Collaborative “translation as a utility” leaves behind old “project” model: The majority of information and applications are moving to the cloud with the supporting delivery model being on-demand on any device. This has dramatically changed the translation and review process. Faster time lines and higher-quality are a requirement in this hyper-competitive, hyper-collaborative and ever-changing environment.

5. New business intelligence systems create “safety in numbers”: as the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t monitor. Many large companies find it difficult to even calculate their total spend on translation, and I have yet to see a company be able to justify translation ROI in simple terms and metrics. We have failed as an industry in not being able to provide our clients with a way to quantify both value and translation ROI across the supply chain.

6. Machine translation becomes a standard step in the supply chain process: quite simply, we will not be able to keep up with the rapidly evolving time, cost and quality demands without machine translation. MT is not a magic wand; it is a productivity tool.

7. Collaborate or perish: clients are demanding that the walls come down in the supply chain, because the silos are slowing down their businesses. Collaborative, community-enabled, extensible and interoperable supply chain solutions will determine the next-generation leaders in the industry.

Smith

Let’s Build a Translation Assembly Line

2010-05-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

OK, first of all, what is the definition of an assembly line? From Wikipedia: “An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods.”

Let’s begin with the preconditions we have that need to be factored into our translation assembly line:

1. It needs to be faster, better and cheaper

2. It needs to support nearly all of the world’s languages

3. It needs to support nearly all of the world’s electronic file formats

4. It needs to support nearly any tool one may choose to use

5. It needs to be able to be monitored and generate necessary budget to actual reports

Where do we start? Well, whenever I think about assembly lines; I think about Henry Ford. What did he do? What preconditions did he face? How can we learn from it?

Again, from Wikipedia: “Henry Ford was the first to master the assembly line and was able to improve other aspects of industry by doing so (such as reducing labor hours required to produce a single vehicle, and increased production numbers and parts). However, the various preconditions for the development at Ford stretched far back into the 19th century, from the gradual realization of the dream of interchangeability, to the concept of reinventing work flow and job descriptions using analytical methods.”

Reducing the number of hours required, reinventing work flow , increasing production, interchangeability – these all sound like the same challenges we face in the translation industry.

Here is another example outside of the automotive industry also from Wikipedia:

The Terracotta Army (circa 215 BC)

"The Terracotta Army commissioned by the first Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi is a collection of about 8000 life-sized clay soldiers and horses buried with the emperor. The figures had their separate body parts manufactured by different workshops that were later assembled to completion. Notably, each workshop inscribed its name on the part they manufactured to add traceability for quality construction."

Whether is it is Qin Shi Huangdi, Henry Ford or the translation industry. The challenges remain the same, how do we bring together a workforce, a set of materials and a set of tools and build something in a faster, better and cheaper way?

Challenge #1: The Materials

An electronic file is typically the first thing to enter our translation supply chain, and that file has typically come out of a different assembly line such as an authoring system, publishing system or a development system. In the automotive world, car parts are standardized so that they fit together predictably once they reach the assembly line. Same story with the Terracotta Army body parts. In our world, not only is there no standard, we typically have to disassemble what we receive to get it into our assembly line before we can even start work.

Challenge #2: The Tools

We need tools to automate repetitive tasks on our assembly line. In our auto and terracotta examples, both assembly lines have been designed with interchangeable tools and interchangeable parts according to proscribed standards. In our world, standards are weak, and there are only limited interchangeable tools and interchangeable parts.

Challenge #3: The workforce

Repetitive tasks have been automated in the successful automotive and terracotta examples leaving their workforces to focus on adding value to continuous improvement of the process. In our world, the workforce barely has time to think about improvement, because the friction associated with workarounds, dropped hand-offs, unclear standards and limited interchangeability leaves them barely able to keep up. Not to mention their piece rate, price/word, continues to go down.

My Suggested Solution

Open and shared tools, with standardized ways of connecting to and processing the materials (files) in an interchangeable way so that our workforce can be more efficient in producing faster, better and cheaper translations. This is the only way we will ever build a true translation assembly line.

Who can make this happen? Industry associations in partnership with academia and commercial organizations are how it is done in other industries. Let’s face it; most of the time we spend on this our industry is attending conferences (largely for networking purposes), and there has been only limited progress in interoperability, extensibility and efficiency to benefit the industry as a whole.

Smith

Q1 2010 Update

2010-05-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

As Warren Buffet mentioned in his recent shareholder’s letter, “Sing a country song in reverse, and you will quickly recover your car, house and wife.” I am sure many companies wish it were that easy when looking back on 2009. However, there are many changes from 2009 that we here at Welocalize would not alter, because those changes put us into an even better position for 2010 than we had hoped. Our Q1 2010 results highlight this fact with total sales up 24% year over year while our top-50 clients increased their business with us by 25%!

We made a very difficult decision in 2009. We decided to refer a large number of clients who had only sporadic needs to new providers who could better meet those needs. We then invested heavily in growing in tandem with the needs of our strategic accounts. Welocalize has built a global platform with a sizable infrastructure. We cannot be all things to all clients, but we do want to be everything to a specific group of clients - our strategic accounts where we have created a true partnership. As Mr. Buffet continues in his letter, “If Charlie and I were to go into a small venture with a few partners; we would seek individuals in sync with us, knowing that common goals and a shared destiny make for a happy business marriage.”

Our “business marriage” with our clients is built upon the foundation of our 4-Pillars: Customer Service, Quality, Innovation and Global Teamwork, and these principles should be self-evident in all of our relationships. Our goal is to reach #1 in each pillar for each of our clients, so please feel free to let me know how we are doing!

We have some exciting things planned for 2010.

• Keep an eye out for our next release of CrowdSight which will include powerful new community features which I call bridging the first and last mile of our supply chain.

• GlobalSight continues to gain momentum with eight new clients having begun implementations in Q1, and we have exciting integrations planned with other open source/open system products later this year.

• InSight is rapidly becoming the most powerful business intelligence tool in our industry with more new reporting features planned.

• MarketSight is meeting the need at Microsoft to manage distributed sales and marketing translation needs in a self-service portal, and with their input and others, we are planning some powerful new enhancements.

Our year has started in a very strong way, and I want to thank you for your continued support.

Smith

Crowdsourcing Translation

2010-03-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

I think the word “crowdsourcing” is creating confusion when combined with “translation”. Why? Because it seems the first thought the two words provoke is “free”.

The LISA report on Crowdsourcing had the following to say:

Companies are definitely not implementing crowdsourcing to reduce their costs…...rather, they're doing it principally for one or more of the following three reasons:

•To reach totally new markets

•To better serve lower margin markets that are currently under-served

•To increase the value of their global brand by further engaging their users

While crowdsourcing often involves participants offering their time at no cost, which I call altruistic crowdsourcing, I believe the true potential for crowdsourcing in the translation industry will be pay for performance in a community based, translation ecosystem.

Specifically, I believe a crowdsourcing tool such as CrowdSight, can be pointed to a community/crowd and act as the physical link between that crowd and the translation process, and this is what we have planned for CrowdSight.

For example, the translation quality process typically involves one linguist reviewing another linguist’s work. While this is a necessary step, it only captures linguistic opinion. What is missing is the opinion that matters the most – that from the person buying the product, the end user.

If we can incorporate end-user opinion into the translation QA cycle, I believe we can make more informed QA process and budget decisions by language and by market objective. And perhaps even better, we can use user opinion to end the frustration that often surfaces when the reviewer’s opinion differs from the translator’s opinion. As the saying goes: the client/buyer is always right.

Smith

A Database of 1,000s of Translators?

2010-03-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting book: The Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler. It reminded of the very large and inherent network dependency in our translation supply chain. It also reminded me of the ways translation agencies used to market themselves before the advent of the internet – at the core of many marketing propositions was the size of the translation agency’s “network of translators” with many offering a “database of thousands of translators.” “Any subject, any language” was also something I used to often see in the Yellow Pages when I first got started in this industry in 1997. Thirteen years later, many companies still emphasize the number of translators and languages they have in their “network.” But is this really a value proposition?

Having a pool of qualified translators is obviously necessary in order to offer translation services, but I suggest that quality and scalability is not defined by the size of the network, but instead by the “connections” in the network. Rating the strength of the network in terms of its connections instead of its overall size is a different approach to the same challenge: how to best find the right people for the job. Why? Simply because the best connections can get you to the best fit in the fastest time within a finite supply chain. Seems simple, right? Well, the not so simple part is that our translation supply chain involves hundreds if not thousands of people as the size of a project increases. The better the network connecting these people, the better the outcome in terms of time, cost and quality – basic productivity rules govern the system.

Early in our industry, our network and its subsequent productivity was limited by face-to-face meetings, phone calls, typewriters and snail-mail. Then came the personal computer and the fax machine. Then came the internet.

At first, the internet only made it easier to search for, communicate with and transfer files to -translators, but because search has been limited, until the advent of Web 2.0, to typically one individual or company finding one other individual or company – meaningful productivity increases over the network were not realized. Yes, a group of translators sharing a translation memory in a networked environment results in a productivity increase, but the dramatic increases we seek must come from something greater. They must come from the connections across the broader network, or community, itself.

Proz.com, the TDA super-cloud, open machine translation engines and the open source GlobalSight initiative are all examples of what I call network/community advances. These budding “communities” have the potential to act as productivity force multipliers. Through their connections, they are able to harness and leverage the greatest questions, answers, ideas and opinions and output from the “crowd.” And if we are able to harness the best efforts of the crowd in our industry and connect it to the “cloud”, the productivity potential for our industry’s network begins to rise rapidly. Our collective challenge is to connect these communities, and others, through “mash-ups” we are only beginning to contemplate.

Our desire at Welocalize is to actively promote and endeavor to lead these efforts, we welcome anyone who wants to participate, and we are inspired by what Mr. Benkler describes in his book: “Networked-based, distributed, social production, both individual and cooperative, offers a new system, alongside markets, firms, governments, and traditional non-profits, within which individuals can engage in information, knowledge, and cultural production. This new modality of production offers new challenges, and new opportunities.”

Smith

What do 206 Million Words and the Super Bowl have in Common?

2010-02-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

What do 206 Million Words and the Super Bowl have in Common?

I read an interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal. The biggest sports event in America is being held this weekend, the Super Bowl, and the article described the total effort in terms of hours necessary to reach this highest level of American football. The author of the article, Reed Albergotti, had this to say, “According to an operational study of National Football League teams prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Boston Consulting Group, the typical NFL season requires 514,000 hours of labor per team. That's about eight times the effort it took to conceptualize, build and market Apple's iPod, according to BCG, and enough time to build 25 America's Cup yachts. If both Super Bowl teams dedicated themselves to construction rather than football, their members could have built the Empire State Building in seven seasons.”

These are remarkable numbers. They are even more remarkable when you consider their return on investment. According to the author, “If you divide a team's total preparation time by the number of yards its offense gains on the field in a season; you'll find that an NFL team moves at the rate of about 32 hours per foot. And it's only getting worse: According to interviews with NFL personnel, the study's authors say the total prep time per team has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.”

Why is it taking nearly double the amount of time to accomplish a goal that remains exactly the same – making it to the Super Bowl?

Welocalize is in different game, but similar rules apply. Football teams must please their fans, and Welocalize must please its customers. In order to be an industry leader, we must continually put more time into producing the best possible results for our clients. And this is one of the reasons why it took us more time to produce 206 million words. This figure is the total number of words translated by Welocalize in 2009.

In reviewing our 2009 numbers, Welocalize full time staff worldwide worked a total of 239,685 hours. This equates to a production rate of 859 words per hour. Our 2008 production rate was 1,005 words per hour. But our 2009 sales, gross margin and revenue per head all increased, likewise, “revenue for the entire football league went from around $1 billion in 1989 to $8 billion today.”

So what is going on? Why is it taking more effort to get to the Super Bowl and also more effort to deliver 2006 million words? Our productivity is being pressured downwards, but our numbers are rising? How is this possible?

The answer lies in competition, innovation and efficiency.

Competition drives the need for both innovation and efficiency. And what may seem counterintuitive is nonetheless the outcome, innovation does not lead to less work – it very often leads to more work! The author goes on to say, “Indianapolis linebackers coach Mike Murphy, who has been an NFL coach for more than two decades, says he remembers when computers, introduced in the 1990s, first eliminated the hours coaches used to spend splicing game film. But instead of going home at a reasonable hour, he says, coaches started working more. The average NFL team has about 20 coaches today, up from around 10 in 1990, according to the BCG study.”

It appears that the initial innovation, such as the use of computers, results in a short efficiency burst, but it is quickly absorbed by the market as competitors rush to copy.

Once the rising tide lifts all boats, all are left to row even harder to keep pace.

What is interesting is that while effort and productivity move in inverse directions, well managed football teams, and companies alike, are able to convert the increased effort into increased revenue. Welocalize grew revenue per head by 11% in 2009 and according to the author, “While NFL teams splurge on the resources that go into planning a game, they have remained remarkably efficient. John Budd, a partner at BCG and the author of the study, says NFL teams may, in fact, have room to grow. The league's least profitable team generates more revenue per employee than Apple, Google and Goldman Sachs, according Mr. Budd.”

I realize this appears confusing. Effort is up, productivity is down, but efficiency is up as measured by revenue per head.

The cause is pricing. Competition is always driving down prices in any mature industry. A volume discount results in more work, for a lower rate per unit, leading to lower productivity (without an offset through innovation); but if an additional person is not hired – the result is more revenue per head and higher margins.

The challenge then becomes either to innovate or suffer either employee burnout, quality degradation, or both. “As a head coach, Mr. Mora, who appeared as an NFL Network analyst this week, says improvements in technology eventually allowed him to watch game film almost constantly—even right up to kickoff—and to resume immediately after the game. "At some point you get to the time spent (versus) value received point of demarcation and say 'hey, that's enough.”

So now what do you think about the Super Bowl and 206 million words? What do they have in common? Well, business and sports are not very different indeed, and in either endeavor, the team that finds a way to manage all of the challenges (competition, innovation and efficiency) most successfully, and consistently - wins.

What does the future hold?

2010-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

We have now started a new year, a new decade and a new phase in the maturity and growth of our industry. I see the following seven translation industry macro-changes in process:

1. An open translation platform: I see a lack of uniform standards on top of an open and shared platform as our industry’s primary productivity and innovation barrier. It is interesting to see a company like Google sharing the same thoughts. “A well-managed, closed system can deliver well designed products in the short-run – the iPod and iPhone being obvious examples – but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best,” wrote Jonathan Rosenberg, a Google executive.

Our suggestion: GlobalSight and other open tools and translation systems including machine translation as the basis for this platform.

2. A new quality question: The traditional quality process is centered around asking a reviewer to compare the quality of the source and target language in a side-by-side comparison. This is a necessary step in the QA process, but is it the central question around which the quality process should be built?

Our suggestion: What would happen if we asked a reviewer what they thought about the target language version only – within the context of what sales and marketing is trying to accomplish with the target language? In this regard, we are connecting translation to the desired business outcome and not limiting our decision making to linguistic feedback only. Machine translation is more easily considered within this context.

3. A new relationship with translators: I attended many meetings in 2009 where clients and vendors collaborated on the key challenges facing the client. These meetings were very beneficial, but in none of the meetings were any translators in attendance. If we are to truly optimize the translation supply chain to improve time, cost and quality- translators must be part of the solution.

Our suggestion: A translator portal for each client where all translators, regardless of vendor, can collaborate, train, share knowledge and share tools in order to increase productivity.

4. A new relationship with end-users of client services and products: The traditional translation process provides linguistic feedback and in-country subsidiary feedback, but rarely do we engage and receive feedback from actual users of the product or service.

Our suggestion: A big part of the potential in a crowdsourcing tool is to recruit, engage and reward end-users for their feedback about translated versions. The open source product CrowdSight can be such a tool.

5. Translation as a utility: The majority of information and applications are moving to the cloud with the supporting delivery model being on-demand. This has dramatically changed the translation and review process. Faster timelines and higher-quality are a requirement in this hyper-competitive, hyper-collaborative and ever-changing environment.

Our suggestion: An always-on translation utility built upon an open and collaborative platform using GlobalSight, the additional open source tools available and the TDA supercloud.

6. Business intelligence: as the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t monitor. Many large companies find it difficult to even calculate their total spend on translation, and I have yet to see a company be able to justify translation ROI in simple terms and metrics. We have failed as an industry in not being able to provide our clients with a way to quantify both value and translation ROI.

Our suggestion: Welocalize has developed a reporting tool called InSight. InSight is capable of pulling data from disparate systems in order to deliver the necessary key performance indicators which are vital to good decision making.

7. Machine translation: quite simply, we will not be able to keep up with the demand for translated material without machine translation. MT is not a magic wand; it is a productivity tool.

Our suggestion: Develop a program matching content types to desired business outcomes and invest in training translators to post edit. Translators will be more interested in machine translation if we can make it more productive/profitable for them.

Smith

Start the New Year with The Customer

2010-01-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting interview with Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon; and as we start the new year, I think his suggestion of “starting with the customer” is where any company should start. Here is an excerpt of the interview. His philosophy is the same philosophy we are pursuing here at Welocalize.

“We start with the customer and work our way backward. We learn whatever skills we need to service the customer. We build whatever technology we need to service the customer. We are inventors, so you won’t see us focusing on me-too areas. There are two ways that companies can extend what they're doing. One is they can take an inventory of their skills and competencies, and then they can say, "OK, with this set of skills and competencies, what else can we do?" And that's a very useful technique that all companies should use. But there's a second method, which takes a longer-term orientation. It is to say, rather than ask what are we good at and what else can we do with that skill, you ask, who are our customers? What do they need? And then you say we're going to give that to them regardless of whether we currently have the skills to do so, and we will learn those skills no matter how long it takes.”

Regards,
Smith

Crowdsourcing

2009-12-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

The Wisdom of Crowds

I read a story once about guessing the number of jelly-beans in a jar. The jar was on the counter in a candy store, and a sign invited anyone to drop their name in a box with their guess of the total number of jelly beans in the jar. After a month, over 400 people made a guess, but no one guessed the right number. However an enterprising math student, who ate too much candy and could not sleep that night, decided to average all of the guesses to see what number the “crowd” guessed. Turns out, the crowd average was correct!

There is even a book on this topic. According to Wikipedia: “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, first published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

So how do we harness the wisdom of the “crowd”? Well, one idea is organized communication and knowledge sharing across our industry from the translator level through to client's end-users, and I expect this concept of "crowdsourcing" will continue to grow. I know there are great ideas at all levels of our supply chain, so get excited about sharing, and you will quickly see that together we can guess the number of jelly beans in jar and even much greater things!

Smith

Our Changing Industry

2009-12-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has described the future of their company as "3 screens and the cloud." What this means is that Microsoft products and services are moving to the cloud (a subscription or software as a service basis for buying and using their services/products) delivered on-demand to 3 devices: PC, Mobile Phone, TV/Game Console. The services and products will be always-on and on-demand with steady, streaming and seamless updates.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, described it is a “fundamental shift in the computing paradigm.”

This also represents a fundamental need for a shift in the localization paradigm.

Here is how I see the shift from a high level:

The old world
Customer buys a license to a product or information service, installs the application on their PC, discards the hard copy installation and support material, calls the supplier multiple times with support questions, waits for the next release and wonders why it is not easier.

Localization Provider receives email with files from client, prepares quote, waits for client to approve quote, starts a project, starts a cycle of handoffs in the translation supply chain, waits for each handoff to complete, gets stuck in what is often an endless review cycle, sends invoice for the project, waits months for feedback, payment and the next release. Faces risk of losing business when a new project manager is hired on the client side, laments the fact clients don’t appreciate translation and is frustrated by the lack of true collaboration and partnership.

The new world
Customer subscribes to a product or information service in the cloud, goes to the online community for advice, support and training, turns-on the streaming updates offered by the provider pointed to the devices of their choice (Desktop, Netbook, Mobile Phone, TV, Game Console) – enjoys the latest and greatest anytime, anywhere on any device.

Welocalize collaborates with client to define and set-up an optimized translation supply chain, defines and sets-up the translation and end-user community, defines and sets-up the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) from the translator all the way through to the end user. Flips the switch of the “Translation Utility” built upon an open-source, open-standards platform, catches everything that streams through, constantly refines, adjusts and optimizes - and invoices the client once per month. Rejoices during Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) along with the client team and their VPs where all are cheering about how the amazing KPI is showing higher search engine page rankings, increased traffic, longer customer visits, lower support costs, increased customer loyalty and increased sales in-country for the client. Signs deep partnership deals and collaborates to produce amazing innovation and successful business outcomes for all.

Smith

The largest open source company, Google?

2009-11-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

I recently read two interesting articles. The first pointed out that a Gartner study found that 85% of companies are using open source software. The second suggested that Google may actually be the largest open source software contributor.

Welocalize has contributed 1.5 million lines of code to the open source GlobalSight product, but that is a small number compared with Google’s open source output.

According to Matt Asay who interviewed Chris DiBona, Google's open source and public sector program manager, about Google's open-source contributions. DiBona’s response was: “Conservatively, we've released about 14 million lines of code. Android tops 10 million lines of code, and then you have Chrome (2 million lines of code), GWT (300,000 lines of code), and about a project released every week over the last five years. Then you have a couple hundred Googlers patching on a weekly or monthly basis.”

Asay goes on to say “While DiBona was quick to suggest that Google doesn't claim the crown for Open Source Top Contributor ("We'd say we're 'among' the largest [contributors]"), it almost certainly is the world's largest open-source code contributor, especially when one considers its other open-source activities, including hosting perhaps the world's largest repository for open-source projects, with more than 250,000 hosted projects, at least 40,000 of which are actively contributed, not to mention its Summer of Code.

What does this have to do with the GlobalSight open source initiative? Well Asay points out the following, “We are all open-source companies now. Which also means that none of us are. Open source is simply a way that we enable some aspect of our businesses, whether we're Red Hat or Microsoft or Google or Facebook.

Or I might say, Welocalize. There are over 1500 registered users in the GlobalSight community now, and they are realizing that an open source initiative such as GlobalSight is the best way to enable an ever growing number of aspects in their businesses.

Smith

The Rosetta Foundation: Saving those in need through Translation

2009-10-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

The fact that the world speaks multiple languages drives the need for our business. However, this same fact also creates a situation where many people in the world are cut-off from life saving information simply because it is not available in their language.

In my view, this is a senseless tragedy, and I believe that it is our responsibility to appreciate not only the multilingual demand that drives our business but also the multilingual downside for those who cannot afford the services we provide.

Yes, globalization has been a welcome proposition to our ears as it drives more and more demand for our services. But the last 20 years of the current form of globalization, have shown a very clear decline in progress for certain segments of society as compared with the previous two decades. The following two areas are key examples:

• First, Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was considerably slower during the period of globalization in the last 20 years than over the previous two decades.

• Second, Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the most recent period of globalization.

These statistics are disturbing and without educated and prosperous future generations all around the world, our economics, our prosperity and our humanity are challenged.

My proposition is this - that not only will the Rosetta Foundation benefit the world’s poor, it will also benefit all of us, including business. Why? Imagine if we supplemented our efforts to hook the developing world’s children not only on fast food and soft drinks but also on education? Education is fundamental in building a healthy society. Without education there is no market opportunity. Without education there is no prosperity. Without education there is no market. Just look at sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in these areas and others in the developing world are not in school; 57 per cent of them are female. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. It is estimated that less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.

Yes, the profit motive is part of the problem given profit drives investment and access to resources, thus we need to recognize that the profit motive must be a part of the solution. 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest entities are corporations. Given they represent the majority of wealth, naturally, the solution must involve them. And if we want them to get involved in a large scale way, it must be in their best interest, meaning there must be potential for profit. As an example, the same is very clear in the global climate change challenge.

So where can we help and where does translation fit into the equation?

Let’s start with demand, demand drives investment and a strong middle class drives demand. A strong middle class is at the heart of every strong and growing economy. And what creates a strong middle class? I would argue that one of the most important factors is education. An educated workforce is attractive for job creators. Anytime you hire, you are helping to create demand in the economy for additional products and services, and the cycle is re-enforcing. An educated workforce and attractive business climate create greater demand for more jobs, more jobs create demand for more educated workers, more workers create a larger middle class, and a larger middle class invariably desires more products and services.

Just look at Ireland in the last 30 years. The country went from last in the EU to first in terms of GDP growth, at least pre-recession, based upon the combination of a well-educated workforce and job creation through low corporate taxes.

Again, one of the fundamental building blocks is education, and this is where translation comes in. The world’s information is in many languages. Thus, it is a classic Tower of Babel challenge. How can we educate the world’s poor when the educational materials are in a whole variety of different languages?

Our company has translated approximately 164M words through Q3 2009. Three one hundredths of a percent was into Bengali, the language spoken in Bangladesh, which is the world’s third poorest country. Thus, it is clear Bangladesh is not a target market for our clients. But at 162M people, Bangladesh ranks 7th in the world in terms of population.

So why are our clients not targeting one of the world’s largest countries? Well, there is a strong correlation between education and income, and without income it is very hard to be a customer for anything, and survival itself becomes the priority.

There are roughly 2.2 billion children in the world, and there are approximately 121M with no access to any form of education. Thus, is there any question why 2.2M die each year because of something so simple as lack of immunization? Many do not even know immunization is necessary because they have never been informed or educated on such a simple topic. 2.2M million a year is approximately 6,000 per day. Unfortunately, that means that approximately 75 children will die while you read this article.

So what do we do, well Google translate even misses the mark. 1.6 billion people, a quarter of humanity, live without electricity much less the internet. Good old fashioned printed material in their native language is the first step.

But here is the exciting part, we now have the internet, and technologies such as GlobalSight and CrowdSight, which can enable any translator in the world to help. The efforts of translators, the Rosetta Foundation and NGOs around the world can be combined to collaborate to innovate. By working together, we can find a way. Such a large challenge is not insurmountable and even the smallest of efforts from a single individual can be harnessed and leveraged to conquer this challenge of global information poverty.

Reading about it and hearing about it often makes it feel so far away and outside our circle of circumstance. But that circle is smaller than we think. A lack of education and multilingual materials contributes to needless death in the ranks of the world’s poor, but it also has the potential to inspire the ranks towards the darker side of the have and have not equation, fomenting frustration, envy and unfortunately hatred. Hatred and contempt are the harbingers of violence and terrorism. And while terrorist leadership may sometimes come from the developed world - the troops are recruited largely from the ranks of the uneducated, the disenfranchised and poor.

Every generation faces the same question of can we leave the world a better place than we found it. I believe that we, and this industry as whole, can. The time is now. We can all make a difference. I challenge you to get involved.

2010 Priorities

2009-10-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

2010 Priorities

Towards the end of each year, many companies begin a process of defining their priorities for the following year. This is a relatively simple process at Welocalize, because our priorities have not changed. Our priorities have been and will remain what we call our 4-Pillars:

· Customer Service
· Quality
· Innovation
· Global Teamwork

Something that does change each year is our set of goals, and I have set the bar high for 2010.

Our goal is to be rated by our customers as their top performing partner in each of the 4-Pillars.

All of our 9 offices and 393 people worldwide have been working very hard and doing a great job to fine tune processes for optimal performance, and I believe we are in position to strive for the top of the industry in each Pillar.

We will be reaching out to our customers at the close of each quarter to request their opinion and ranking of Welocalize in each of the 4-Pillars. The feedback we receive will be used in a continuous improvement loop to support our relentless drive to the top in each Pillar; and we will not stop there – we will do everything possible to push the boundaries of improvement to STAY at the top of each Pillar.

Smith

Next-Gen Translation

2009-09-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

The current economic reality has forced the language service industry to face up to its many limitations. Our customers are demanding change and forcing the pace of this change.

Welocalize is rising to this challenge and inviting clients to discuss how we reinvent the way we work together across the entire translation supply chain to improve time, cost and quality. This is what we call our Next-Generation program.

Next-Gen is about being an innovation leader, an industry leader and ultimately re-defining the way services are managed and delivered in our industry. It is about evolving from multilingual content task vendors to multilingual supply-chain partners. It is about offering a Next-Gen program for our clients to your unique supply chain configuration with measurable progress towards a seamless, frictionless, always-on supply chain that you can manage through a custom-configured, always-on KPI dashboard.

This chain starts at the content authoring/product development stage and concludes with our in-country end customers. The optimal chain enables our clients to deliver market-specific, in-language content and products where and when their customers demand at a cost, quality and time that is predictable, scalable, measurable and results in increased global sales of their product/service.

The ultimate strategic value we offer our clients is in supporting them to create a Globalization Program Office (GPO). The GPO concept is a simple one - understand our customer’s needs and collaborate to build a comprehensive program to satisfy them. At Welocalize we believe in programs, programs designed to meet business challenges, programs that are measurable and goal oriented and programs that help our customers succeed.

A Welocalize program is a supply chain engine configured in a hub & spoke model with all the relevant moving parts organized and optimized to the specific needs of our customers. It involves people, processes, standards, Service Level Agreements, technologies and a real time dashboard providing our customers with the relevant data to help them understand how well their engine is performing. It includes and leverages the various constituencies such as authors, developers, translators, reviewers, sales & marketing and end-users through web 2.0 concepts such as social networking and community building around technologies such as open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing.

A New Paradigm for Success

2009-07-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

“Collaborate or Perish" - A new paradigm for success

This phrase, “collaborate or perish”, was uttered earlier this year by Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a visionary call to action. And as we watch rapidly evolving, global economic and social forces align themselves in an extremely disruptive and subsequent “game changing” way, it is precisely this type of new, revolutionary thinking which will position companies for success both during and following the current global recession.

It can be argued that success is most often exclusionary in a winner-take-all paradigm. The Darwinian notion of “survival of the fittest” is often quoted, and as we currently read in the papers, a broad brush is used to paint the situation as a divisive battle of Main Street vs. Wall Street. The very foundations of Capitalism are being questioned. Perhaps rightly so, because no system is ever perfect. However, this conventional, narrow notion of success within the context of the next decade’s potential for innovative progress is rapidly becoming outmoded. New circumstances require a new way of thinking.

Collaborative success is a concept driving a new paradigm, and a unique set of technological, economic and social forces have started the dominos falling in a direction which will forever change both the economic and social contract between global networks of people and their cultural, business and social morays worldwide.

Contrary to some current opinions espoused in the press, the “Invisible Hand”, as put forward by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations as the natural guiding force of economic arbitration, is not a dead principle. Indeed, it is very much alive in a new, perhaps even more powerful way. Win-win is no longer a jingoistic business phrase, it is happening every day on the internet in places such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. For it is only now that altruistic production, for the sheer motivation of peer recognition, has been enabled to reach its true potential through the rapidly evolving and ultimate arbitrator, the Internet. Adam Smith certainly never dreamed the Invisible Hand might one day take expression in something we now call the Internet. As Warren Buffet’s mentor, Benjamin Graham once said, “the market is a voting machine in the short-term and a weighing machine in the long-term”. The visions with the most weight will win in the future.

As Microsoft experienced with the achievement of Bill Gates’ vision of “Windows on every desktop”, a common platform generates both enormous success for those directly involved and exponential innovation and productivity for all of those participating. In fact, it was this increase in productivity which the once demigod now target Alan Greenspan argued was the fundamental enabler of economic growth in what he deemed as the “irrational exuberance” of the late 1990s. Boom eventually led to bust, an all too common pattern, but that does not obviate the fact that common platforms, efficient networks and interoperability standards reduce the cost (friction) in a variety of both social and economic networks improving both productivity and quality of life – the ultimate measure of success.

Thus, I suggest that the objective of our company and our industry as a whole should be to improve the “quality” of the entire supply chain. Quality in this case can be applied as a defining principle to all ranges of economic and social output and subsequent satisfaction. People naturally feel good when their output quality is respected and recognized and business entities are routinely rewarded with more business when they exceed quality expectations. The result is more often than not a general increase in the quality of life of the entire supply chain. Both individual careers and entire companies are the beneficiaries.

There is an inherent collaboration which must take place in any supply chain for it to be successful and flourish. However, this does not change the fact that there is a constant struggle to fight the natural forces of entropy or status quo which eat away at the underlying fabric of all supply chains. Walmart is probably the best example of the antithesis of this debilitating factor given their vast network of supply chains are currently second to none in their scale and ability to constantly improve and deliver personalized satisfaction on a global basis where and when their customers demand. How has this been achieved? In simplified terms it has been achieved through unprecedented integration and collaboration between all resources in the supply chain.

Now let us return to Eric Schmidt’s phrase, “collaborate or perish”. In our GlobalSight open source initiative we call it “collaborate to innovate”. In either call to action, both our ability and impetus to collaborate has probably never been greater. There is an opportunity now, should we choose to accept it, to challenge ourselves in brand new ways to work together through innovative technologies and processes such as crowd sourcing, open sourcing and outsourcing. The conventional methods are fading quickly in relevance. Customers are demanding new ideas and aligning themselves with next generation partners in the supply chain.

What does a next generation company look like in our industry? It looks like Welocalize. Our company is at the center of the first open source translation management system our industry has ever seen. We are also leading the way in developing GlobalSight as the “platform” of choice for interoperability standards and connectors for other best-of-breed technologies such as crowd sourcing, machine translation and computer assisted translation. In so doing, we are challenging all constituencies of our industry supply chain: client, vendor, translator, academia and association to come together and leverage our collective knowledge. Now is our chance. Change is manifest. There is a unique alignment of driving circumstances. We are challenging everyone within and without to “collaborate or perish”.