Join Marie Salet of Autodesk, Megan Leney from Symantec and Kåre Lindahl of Venga Localization for a webinar spotlighting “real life” examples from software companies on how their localization and content development processes have been adapted to take advantage of agile development. Learn about the benefits that come from agile and localization working hand in hand.

Marie Salet, Principal CMS Engineer at Autodesk, has been working for the Language Technologies group at Autodesk for four years as a CMS/Programmer Analyst. She is part of the Content Management System and Language Technologies team supporting the Localization infrastructure, including development of the data model, processes and workflows, and reuse strategies. Prior to Autodesk, Marie worked many years in the Electronic Design Automation industry, both as a software product engineer and as a Content Management specialist.

Megan Leney, Senior Information Developer at Symantec, is an Agile enthusiast and Certified Scrum Master. Megan led the integration of VeriSign’s documentation team into the developer-run agile scrum process. She has extensive software documentation experience from her current position, as well as from her previous work at VeriSign and Apple. Megan has presented on agile documentation for the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and at the LavaCon Professional Development Conference. Megan is a member of the Silicon Valley STC Chapter.

Kåre Lindahl, CEO at Venga Localization, has over 20 years’ globalization experience working in the ERP/SaaS industry. He has served in executive roles within global information content development and globalization for such companies as Venga, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Hogia, which gives him a unique perspective from both the client and vendor side. Based on his work in globalizing the information content development chain and localization of ERP and SaaS offerings, he has extensive first-hand experience working with requirements from most countries around the globe. Kåre grew up in Sweden and lived in the UK for 10 years before relocating to the US in 1995 to join Oracle’s applications division.

Join us. Register for this session.

Venga is delighted to announce that Robert Forloine has joined us as our Vice President of Sales and Business Development. In this role, Robert will manage Venga new sales efforts and will supervise our outside sales team. Robert comes to us from Argos translations, where he led U.S. market sales development as their U.S. Sales Director. We are pleased to say he has relocated from Chicago and will be in the Venga San Francisco office full time.

Venga clients will appreciate that Robert has special expertise in the globalization issues associated with the high-tech field including conventional software, Saas, agile, cloud, and other development environments. This dovetails nicely with the Venga business focus on helping high-tech companies go global.

Venga’s rapid growth merits the attention of a seasoned and expert development lead so that the rest of the team can concentrate on managing localization projects and ensuring the highest high-quality for our clients. We are so pleased to put Venga’s sales growth in such able hands.

Welcome to the team Robert!

Though these days we may read or hear dire predictions about the imminent doom of the localization industry as many of us know it, there is still a lot of activity and room for growth and innovation in the field. You may have heard that translators are facing impending extinction, or that LSPs are fast becoming redundant in the supply chain. It may seem that the future is grim for those on the lowers rungs, but there is hope.

Much of this cynical chatter stems from anticipated advancements (real or perceived) in MT technology and the likes, with the expected result of all translators being dutifully consigned to the dustbins of recent history, or gang-pressed into working as post-MT editors for a fraction of their former wages, indentured to the MT machine. Without translators who needs LSPs? So good riddance to them as well. Goodness, this is a bleak outlook.

Fortunately there is hope on the horizon in emerging markets that need help. Not the fancy-pants, let me fleece you with an “amazing” technical solution that isn’t really compatible with any of your current set-up sort of help. No, I’m talking old-school, back-to-basics localization: helping people communicate across languages and prosper in new markets.

“Where is this Shangri La?” you ask. Well, Indonesia for starters. With the fourth largest population in the world and rapid development, they may not be aware they need help, but for anyone who has traveled through Indonesia, the need is clear. At the lowest level, there are the standard issues – menus, signs, packaging, etc., which are replete with quirky spelling errors. Up a notch are poorly localized (both linguistically and technically) multi-lingual tourism websites. A personal experience of trying to reserve a room online only got me repeatedly redirected to a random page in German. All this can be equally entertaining as tiresome. However, the eventual end result is the same: a poor user experience that hinders repeat business and the possibility of positive reviews.

As Indonesian awareness of the need for professional localization grows, so in turn, will the demand for those who can provide assistance. Moreover, this assistance will come in the form of experienced localizers. This will prove especially true once Indonesia becomes a significant market destination for fortune 500 companies. After all, Pringles makers, Procter and Gamble, were Johnny-on-the-spot with their seaweed flavored chips. How is that for understanding the consumer? More importantly, how is that for grabbing early market share?

Though, pessimists’ prognostications may come true in some markets, there are many others where basic professional localization will still prove to be an invaluable asset. Whether in potato chips or tourism, good quality localized products open a whole new market, and experienced localizers have the knowledge to reach those markets.

Many thanks to our guest blogger, writing in from across the globe:
Peter Hyllekve-Baker
Localization Professional
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/peter-hyllekve-baker/4/648/973

Kåre Lindahl, CEO of Venga recently ran a webinar together with Val Swisher, CEO of Content Rules. Together they took a fresh look at language assets and why second hand words could be worth more than gold. Much focus is spent on optimizing the translation tools or processes, but sometimes we forget to look at what assets we already have available and to optimize those.

Common problem areas that we grapple with everyday are:

• > Content producers that are constantly reinventing the wheel
• > Authors that use new words to describe the same thing, over and over again
• > Consistency lacking between departments

The webinar showed that by focusing on the words you already have you can:

• > Save money
• > Improve content quality
• > Decrease time-to-market

Three main language assets are source content, translation memories, and terminology. This is a huge topic area. Since surveys show that over 90% of translation quality issues stem from terminology inconsistency that is where Kåre and Val started.

Introducing a source language term that is inconsistent with how other company products use the same term has an exponential effect on quality when translated. According to a survey by Common Sense Advisory, one error can multiply to 1,428 errors in the fully translated and published versions of a text. By putting a value on each error and calculating how many such errors occur in a month, you can see why this is an area where really big savings can be made.

If you missed the webinar, go to the Venga knowledgebase to watch the recording or to download the presentation.

Every localization solution provider has a unique way of getting from A to Z in a localization project. While some continue to rely heavily on email and file shares to manage the linguistic, engineering and testing phases, this method might soon be a thing of the past.

The rate at which clients are producing content today and their ever increasing need for rapid localization is putting pressure on LSPs to step into the realm of workflow automation. The larger a project is, the more important it is becoming for a client to be able to push content automatically from their CMS to the LSP’s workflow managements system. With the right customization of APIs, many of today’s workflow automation tools can meet this need. Hence, LSPs can respond within minutes or hours to project updates or new project requests.

The shift from time-consuming emails and spreadsheets to project automation is not always easy, and LSPs inevitably experience the growing pains of migrating data to the new system, as well as learning how to make the system meet their specific needs. Nevertheless, the time and money saved in the long-run is well worth the effort. Automation tools increase project managers’ efficiency on a variety of levels:

• >Streamlined vendor management: project locale and subject matter specifications govern which linguists should be used for a given project. Automation tools can quickly sort through each linguist personal profile to provide only the best-suited providers for project managers to select from.
• >Automated file transfer among team members: starting and delivery dates for each step of a workflow are controlled, while project content is moved seamlessly from one team member to the next.
• >Invoicing and finance: invoice templates can be automatically populated using pricelists for vendors and clients, depending on project specifications.
• >Data in central location: all contact/billing information and project data can be stored centrally for easy access by the LSP team and clients can access real-time information about projects.

Unfortunately, no one tool on the market today handles every possible challenge that may come up during a project. It is up to the LSP to do its homework and find the tool with the right mix to meet its workflow standards. Likewise, clients will have to ask the right questions to find out if their LSP’s system will meet their needs. Whether on the client-side, or the LSP-side of the localization industry, project workflow automation is the wave of the future and we are sure to see plenty of innovation in this field.

On September, 15 at 11:00 EDT (17:00 CEST) Kåre Lindahl from Venga and Val Swisher, founder of Content Rules, will discuss the value of language asset optimization through TM management and upstream authoring support.

Are your content producers constantly reinventing the wheel? Do they use new words to describe the same things? We all know the value of running new translation projects through an existing translation memory (TM), but how much time do we actually spend on optimizing our language assets? What would the process be like if we could push the contents of the TM upstream to the content developers? If you are responsible for demonstrating bottom line savings in translation, you will want to join Val Swisher and Kåre Lindahl for this webinar offering a fresh look at language asset optimization.

We all know the value of running new translation projects through an existing translation memory (TM), but how much time do we actually spend on optimizing our language assets?

This webinar will focus in on the most important language assets and discuss the ROI of managing and cleaning them regularly. We will cover the good and bad ways of consolidating and managing your TMs and term bases, the expected shelf-life, how you can clean and optimize, both manual and automated. And finally what are some of the steps you can take to get started in optimizing their TMs. Val and Kåre are lively presenters with business savvy and a wealth of experience on this topic.

Val Swisher founded Content Rules in 1994 when she realized that even the largest companies often do not have the technology, people, and expertise to create content that is ready for the global marketplace. Under her leadership the company has grown to encompass 20 full-time employees, 200+ customers, and an extensive network of over 2,000 consultants. Content Rules is an authorized reseller of Acrolinx IQ and is the only company to offer ContentRules IQ, the SaaS version of Acrolinx IQ in the cloud.

Val is a past member of the Society for Technical Communication and the Localization Industry Standards Association, and a frequent speaker on how to create, standardize, and get your content ready for the demands of the global market place Before Content Rules, Val held management positions in technical documentation and training at SynOptics and 3Com.

Kåre Lindahl has over 20 years of globalization experience working in the ERP/SaaS industry. He has served in executive roles within global information content development and globalization for such companies as Venga, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Hogia, which gives him a unique perspective from from both the client and vendor side. Based on his work in globalizing the information content development chain and localization of ERP and SaaS offerings, he has extensive first-hand experience working with requirements from most countries around the globe. Kåre grew up in Sweden and lived in the UK for 10 years before relocating to the US in 1995 to join Oracle’s applications division.

Register here.

Venga CEO, Kåre Lindahl, will be hosting a conversation about content mangement systems at this year’s Localization World Conference, where Jose Palomares and Angelika Zerfaß will explore how a CMS affects process, workflows, and language assets.

The idea of a content management system (CMS) is to manage text modules for reuse in the source language (consistency) as well as to reduce translation cost by sending out only changed or new modules for translation. But this way of working is fundamentally different to any previous workflow where whole documents were sent out for translation and reviewing. In addition, the implementation of a CMS also means a change in file formats, mostly toward XML. These items will impact the way authors work: the reusability of language assets like translation memories — especially if they were created with texts from a different file format; the translation and review process; process automation or customization of interfaces between CMS, translation environment and project management systems; and having terminology management start in the source language. In our workshop, we will look at the implementation of a CMS from both sides — the customer side and the vendor side. From a customer’s perspective the system should help to reduce the cost for translation and improve consistency, but will change the way the authors are working and how the text is sent out for translation. From the vendor’s perspective, a CMS brings new file formats, shorter translation cycles and the need to re-design the translation workflow and the review process. We will give you an insight into the projects we have worked on so far, what the initial ideas were, what tests with files and workflows showed and how some of the challenges were overcome.

Jose Palomares

Jose Palomares has been an active member of the localization industry since 2000, when he managed the localization process of two CAT tools as part of a university scholarship. Since then, Jose has developed a number of different roles along the supply chain, ranging from production tasks to executive management, training and operational consultancy. A translator himself, Jose has contributed to the localization of hundreds of products for Windows, Macintosh and mobile platforms, trained both in-house and independent professionals and assisted companies of all sizes to implement or optimize their translation and localization workflows. He has obtained a unique and holistic perspective of what it takes to make a translation or localization business successful.

Angelika Zerfaß

Located in Germany, Angelika Zerfaß is a freelance consultant and trainer for translation technologies. After finishing her degree in translation (Chinese, Japanese, computational linguistics), she worked for the Japanese embassy in Germany and then joined Trados in 1997. She was the Trados specialist at Microsoft in Japan in 1998 and in the United States in 1999 before she went freelance in 2000. She regularly lectures at various universities; writes articles for industry-specific magazines; holds presentations at several localization-related events each year; and supports her international customer base with consultancy, technical expertise and training on tools and processes in localization.

Join us, October 10-12, 2011, at:

Registration information:

http://www.localizationworld.com/lwsv2011/registration.php

Last week’s ALC webinar “Marketing Best Practices and Keys to Success in the Language Services Industry” attracted double the usual number of ALC webinar attendees, indicating that smaller companies are joining the ranks of larger ones in recognizing the potential that marketing has for revenue impact. Venga’s Shelly Priebe co-presented with Keri Robinson, the PR & Marketing Communications Manager at Language Services Associates. The one hour presentation “Marketing 101 Primer” covered a lot of ground on these topics:

* The real difference between marketing, PR and advertising
* Tips for a powerful marketing message
* Developing an effective and profitable marketing plan
* The role of social media in marketing
* The importance of establishing a Unique Selling proposition
* Why sales and marketing need to work together
* How to measure and evaluate your marketing goals
* Tips for moving forward with measurable marketing tactics

Priebe shared some highlights of the content-rich webinar:

1. Even small companies can implement a marketing plan that makes a difference. Immediate steps can be taken that don’t require a huge investment. The requirement is for strategic focus and thoughtful organizational design.
2. One way a small company can accelerate its marketing activity is social media. Social media is a component of the marketing plan with ever increasing potential for impact, and it also levels the playing field. A small company with social media savvy can get a lot of bang for its buck.
3. Marketing creates “pull” from the target audience, as compared to the traditional “push” of information from sales. This is why marketing should be closely aligned with the needs of the target audience. Ideally, good marketing will result in sales being invited in the door to share a solution. Or, it may mean that the door is not barred and locked when sales goes knocking. The goal that marketing and sales share is real conversation and problem solving with prospects and clients.
4. It is no coincidence then that the five steps for creating a marketing message presented by Keri mirror the solution and consulting sales approach. Know your audience, understand their problem, offer a solution, support your ability to deliver the solution, and differentiate!
5. Ahh…..differentiation. Some business buzz words come and go but Wikipedia tells us that the term USP (Unique Selling Proposition) was first introduced in the advertising world in the 1940s. Today, differentiation is still the cornerstone of marketing messaging. Too many companies hesitate when asked the most basic question “How are you different?” This is especially important in an industry challenged by real or perceived commoditization.

Priebe says, “It is encouraging to see a groundswell of appreciation for what marketing can accomplish. Marketing complements sales and the measure of its success is a net increase on the bottom line.”

It is important to have a clear marketing message and be able to communicate how your product differs from the competition. In an increasingly global market this also means conveying that message across languages and cultures.

Shelly Priebe VP Strategic Business Relationships

When was the last time you wanted to find out how to do something in a program or on a website and got lost in the maze of different help files?  Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone just tell you what you need to know in an easily understood, engaging manner?  This is where Support 2.0 comes in, harnessing the power of interactive media to make life just a little easier.  Yet we must be careful not to alienate customers by turning support into too much of a game.

The whole idea of Support 2.0 is to foster an interactive community that empowers users and developers to produce relevant help content.  After all, who better to help then someone who has already struggled with the same issues and found solutions?  However, these knowledgeable users need incentives if they are to spend their valuable time helping others.  While some members of the community will be motivated solely by their desire to help others with problems that they themselves were plagued with, others need prizes to inspire them.

Google offered tee-shirts and TVs in a sweepstakes open to those who participated in their Demo Slam, where users submitted demos of Google products, and viewers got to vote for which demo they liked best.  Users were competing for prizes, but also for the bragging rights associated with beating-out other competitors.  The game development company, Zynga, offers 200 zPoints (redeemable for games) to users who review the main points of their privacy policy in a “game” called PrivacyVille.

Gamification is appropriate in this case because Zynga makes games.  However, turning support into a game is not always the right choice for every company or product, as Ryan Kim pointed out on gigaom.com.  Integrating real-time support from users and developers with traditional help documentation to offer fast and easy access to relevant information is the goal.  Keeping users engaged is the key to meeting this goal, but Support 2.0 providers must be careful not to push away their target audience.  Support 2.0 can make getting help rewarding, as long as it is managed properly.

Support 2.0 is the newest way to provide customer support.  It goes beyond simply providing support content as a must, to creating an active online community of users and developers that share information.

These online communities are centers for building knowledge and enabling collaboration between writers, developers, and users in a way that helps all those involved.  More customer interaction can build brand loyalty and improve the gathering of customer feedback.  Customer feedback, in turn, fuels quick product improvements and informs social analytics that can be used to create a better support experience.

This increased body of knowledge that spans languages and geography comes with its own set of challenges.  Potentially large volumes of user-generated content and an environment of both professional and non-professional authors are some of the new challenges facing companies employing Support 2.0.

Today’s help user wants a relevant support experience that combines social media interaction with a searchable knowledge base of product information.  The variety and volume of content using the Wiki Support 2.0 model is rewarding and challenging all at the same time.

Join us for a discussion of this brave new world of Support 2.0:

GALA Webinar: The Wild Wiki: Localization Challenges and Triumphs of Help 2.0 in an Agile Environment

30 June 11:00 EDT (17:00 CEST)

Join Stanislav Kalianov, Localization Manager at Schneider Electric IT and Kåre Lindahl, CEO of Venga Corporation as they explore the challenges and triumphs of Help 2.0 in an Agile Environment.