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FIVE TIPS TO CUT TRANSLATION COSTS BY 25 PERCENT OR MORE
eBooklibrary
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Companies in the international arena face an even larger
challenge. Maintaining efficient control over the writing, editing
and publishing activities for a single user manual in the source
language may be fairly manageable, but when the process is
multiplied across dozens of deliverables and multiple languages,
it becomes time-consuming, expensive and risk-exposed. This is
especially true if such documents are not created and managed
within a centralized content management environment.
Technical publications, regulatory, training and marketing
professionals have long recognized the benefits that can be
gained by deploying a centralized Content Management System
(CMS). But many organizations have not been able to justify the
high cost and long implementation cycles required to purchase
and implement an in-house CMS.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW OPTIONS
Over the last few years, a number of new CMS providers have
entered the market, offering users a range of off-the-shelf and
customized solutions, from full on-site installations to Web-
based systems. But do these new systems truly deliver greater
efficiencies and reduce costs? Do they incorporate multilingual
content management into their overall design?
Which solutions have been architected using the latest
technologies, with future use in mind? What should buyers
look for in terms of “must-have” functionality?
Create, translate, localize and publish better quality content more productivelyGiven the current economy, companies large
and small are looking for all possible means
to reduce costs and maximize revenues.
One area where costs can always be saved is
in the creation, management and delivery of
content – in the form of user guides, online
help, product labeling, training materials and
marketing collateral.
All too often, the production of these
materials is laden with a significant
duplication of effort, high administrative costs
and a lack of quality control tools that can be
applied uniformly across all projects.
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The following tips can help you streamline multilingual content
management into a cost-cutting, single-source solution for
document creation, translation and localization.
REALIGNING TRANSLATION PRACTICES TO ADDRESS TODAY’S COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT
Advances in design-to-manufacture technology have
accelerated a product’s time to market, leading to a shorter
product development cycle. At the same time, companies are
also seeking ways to expedite the creation of content needed
for the sale, distribution, and safe and successful use of these
products. The teams responsible for this content – technical
publications, regulatory, training and marketing – have been
faced with the dilemma of how to efficiently manage the
ever-increasing volume of work involved – without increasing
costs, but still maintaining quality.
Numerous cost-saving opportunities have been identified, but
until recently, have remained just that – opportunities. For
example, in addition to translation services, many companies have
traditionally relied on their language service provider (LSP) to
format the translated documents. According to industry experts,
outsourcing these processes increases the translations budget
by a minimum of 25 percent.
Managers have long recognized numerous financial and
operational benefits of bringing formatting and composition
in-house. But the limitations of traditional systems and high
implementation costs have prevented it from happening. Another
area of opportunity lies in eliminating redundant processes for
content development.
For example, materials such as product sheets or user manuals
are typically developed using an off-the-shelf or proprietary
publications tool, while on-line help systems are created using
another. Traditionally, companies must dedicate resources to
the time-consuming and costly process of duplicating and
reformatting of content for each environment.
However, with the emergence of new technologies and Web-
based content management solutions, challenges such as these
can now be easily and cost-effectively solved. Companies are in a
much better position to reduce translation costs and gain dramatic
efficiencies in document creation, management and delivery.
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FIVE KEY CRITERIA FOR TODAY’S SOLUTIONS
The key to success lies in partnering with a Language Service
Provider (LSP) that not only provides quality translations and
localization services but offers a hosted CMS solution that has
been optimized for multilingual content management. Buyers
should give careful consideration to the following five criteria:
1. Does the solution enable you to integrate authoring, content
management, translation and rendering?
2. Does it conform to the development, convergence and
adoption of open standards for the global information
society?
3. Can the CMS solution be up and running in a matter of
weeks – with a minimum of customizations?
4. What upfront investment is required? What is the return on
investment (ROI)?
5. Does the new solution drive down costs and increase
employee productivity? Are these benefits quantifiable?
1. Integrate authoring, content management, translation and rendering (output). The term “content management” is
one of the most ambiguous terms in the industry. There are many
different types of systems out there that purport to do “content
management,” but are designed for completely different purposes.
Before you can select a CMS, you must first ask, “What business
problem are we trying to solve?”
Do you want a system to enable the dynamic update of your
corporate Web site? Are you looking to manage your corporate
digital assets and marketing/brand information? Do you want to
streamline your editorial, translation and localization process?
Determine your business problem and then look for solutions
that are specifically designed to solve that problem.
For example, a Web CMS or Digital Asset Management system will
not be well-suited to manage an editorial/localization/translation
workflow. The gold standard for multilingual publishing is a
system that:
• Includes a strong authoring tool for technical writers.
• Has a robust and XML-based content management engine to
manage multiple and continuous content revision.
• Integrates with an LSP’s production and workflow system.
• Allows for output in whatever format you desire, such as
PDF, HTML and online help.
• Is offered on a subscription basis (pay-as-you-go), eliminating
the need for upfront capital expenditures.
A corollary to this rule: if possible, don’t just implement a solution
because it is the “corporate-approved standard” for content
management. You may end up spending more time and money
trying to force-fit a system to go beyond the limits of what it is
designed for.
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2. Always look for a solution that conforms to international standards. The biggest danger with many
traditional software applications is that they are based on a
closed, proprietary architecture.
If this is the case with the software you are depending on and
it becomes obsolete, you face a potential nightmare as you
attempt to migrate your proprietary content format to a new
system. Whenever possible, a CMS solution should conform to
international standards approved by well-regarded industry
groups such as the Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C). This will reduce your reliance on
specific tools, making your content the most important thing.
As a side benefit, this will also prevent “supplier lock-in.” If you
decide to switch tools at a later date, the migration of your
content will be much easier (as long as the new system also
conforms to international standards).
In the world of publishing and technical documentations/
training/help, Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Darwin
Information Typing Architecture (DITA) have become the gold
standard for creating and managing content. The benefits of
having your content in XML are numerous and include:
• Separation of content structure from the content format.
• Ability to add metadata to increase content intelligence (e.g.,
better search results).
• Support for all target languages including bi-directional.
• Reuse and repurpose content at the “component” level.
• Facilitation of true single-source publishing to multiple
output formats.
3. Keep software customizations to a minimum. A typical
CMS implementation involves the integration of several types
of tools, including authoring, database, workflow, translation,
localization and publishing applications.
It is rare to find all of these features in one product, therefore
some level of custom integration and development is often
required to fully meet a client’s requirements.
To make matters even more complicated, many companies believe
that their process is highly unique and that a complete CMS
implementation must support every aspect of their environment.
This is a misguided outlook that can lead to problems and
unnecessary costly mistakes:
• Integration and customization can be extremely expensive
and take many months (or even years) to fully implement.
• Heavily customized environments are difficult to support.
• An upgrade to one product may impact other products in
the mix. Similarly, a change to one product’s application
programming interface (API) could affect some of the custom
integration code that is necessary to make your environment
work seamlessly.
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• An upgrade to the standard you are using, such as DITA, may
require you to upgrade all of your tools. If your system has
been heavily customized, the upgrade process can be highly
complicated and not altogether successful. You are usually
responsible for managing this upgrade effort.
• Due to the expense and complexity of the modifications
made in a customized environment, it’s possible that you
will be required to maintain the integrated system well
beyond its useful (and even usable) life expectancy.
4. Look for the quickest ROI. Suggestions for achieving the
most rapid return on a CMS investment:
• Start with a production-quality pilot project. This approach
allows you to quickly demonstrate the benefits of the new
system, work out any kinks and begin realizing the cost and
time savings.
• Choose a solution that can be quickly deployed, so that a
CMS is in place within weeks instead of months.
• Consider a hosted, full-featured “pay-as-you-go” subscription
model as an alternative to software procurement. In the
hosted CMS solution the software application sits in a
centralized, secure data center and is served up to end users
completely via a Web browser. All you need is access to a
Web browser and Internet connection.
5. Drive down costs and increase employee productivity with hosted XML content management. Technical
publications, regulatory, training and marketing professionals
have recognized real cost reduction and elimination of duplicate
efforts from hosted XML content management environments.
Examples include:
• Storing “chunks” of reusable content (e.g., a “topic,” a “task,”
a “concept” or a “warning”) that can be shared by multiple
documents eliminates the inefficiency of copying and
pasting content.
• Consistency of information across multiple deliverables is
realized. You can change a component of shared content
in one place and everything that points to it will be
automatically updated and accurate.
• Reuse of components and entire sections of documents, as
well as any corresponding translations. Metrics indicate that
many customers reuse 70-90 percent of content.
• Automatic link validation reduces time and effort in the
quality assurance (QA) process – no more manual checking!
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• Version control reduces time spent moving files between
locations, and helps eliminate the possibility of multiple
people making updates to the same content at the same
time – and no more searching for files!
• Single-source publishing allows you to update content once
and automatically publish to all required output formats
such as PDF, HTML and online help.
• Formatting is eliminated – no more time troubleshooting
files, authors can instead spend time increasing the richness
and usability of content.
• Dramatic reduction of translation and localization costs due
to content reuse and elimination of desktop publishing –
costs savings for clients’ ranges from 25-70 percent!
• Shortened time to market.
SUMMARY
If you are considering an investment in a CMS and you also have
translation and localization needs, look to an LSP who can provide
you with one comprehensive, hosted solution.
Most importantly, make sure that solution will drive down your
costs by at least 25 percent, increase employee productivity
and provide you with a quick ROI. In addition, make sure that
solution does not rely on closed-proprietary architecture that
could “lock” you in with a supplier. In the end, the best CMS
solution is the one that is right for a particular organization’s
needs, both today and tomorrow.
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