GTS Blog

Whether you are a company manager who needs to order a translation project or a project manager at a translation company, here are 10 simple rules that will help you be successful and avoid hiccups in your project:

Don’t order unless you know the final price. Always get a final and fixed price before you order. Find out if there are any hidden costs in the proposal. For example, if you anticipate extra rounds of proofreading, let your vendor know in advance and make sure that it is included in the price.

Don’t use companies or translators that are a long way from home. Ordering a French translation? Don’t be tempted to order from a company or translator located in the South Pacific. French is not widely used there.

Don’t assume anything. Spell out the details of your project to the smallest detail. Does your requirement have a regional preference (e.g., Spanish for the USA, Portuguese for Brazil)? Does your file have any specific DTP requirements? Avoid surprises by getting all the details to your vendor in advance.

Don’t wait until the last minute. Since translation is a human process, delays can occur (e.g., sick translators, quality issues which require extra time). Try to factor in some extra time in the process to allow for the unexpected. Give your translation vendor a deadline which is sooner than the real one.

Don’t get complacent. No news may be good news but not when managing a translation project. Stay on top of things by sending frequent reminders to your people and ask for status updates. Often, people assume that the work is due today only to find out that the project started late or did not start at all.

Don’t send many different file versions. Many times clients send files for a price quote and then replace the files with new ones when the project actually starts. This confuses the translation people and can lead to errors. If you pulled a switcheroo on your vendor, make sure that they are working on the correct version of the document.

Don’t start to evaluate the translation only after it is done. Ask your translation vendor for a partial delivery at the beginning of the project cycle and evaluate the translation carefully. It is much easier to provide feedback, change terminology etc. at that point then at the end of the project when everything has been delivered. If the work is very poor, it may be possible to cancel an order at the beginning. Once the vendor has sent you the 500 page manual, it may be too late to do anything about it.

Don’t antagonize your translators. Professional translators take pride in their work and some will get insulted if you provide critique on their writing style or use of words. Remember, there are usually a 100 ways to correctly write a sentence and anyone can mark up copy with a red pen. It is legitimate to get a second opinion but a smart project manager will be diplomatic and avoid confrontations which can harm teamwork later on.

Don’t delay payments. Translators and translation vendors like to get paid on time. They tend to get pissed when they are paid late and may not be happy to work with you again if that is the case.

Don’t be afraid to pay compliments. I find that people like to get feedback on their work and that a sincere compliment can help establish a good relationship that lasts long after the work has been completed.

I came across an interesting page on the Apple website about internationalization of Apple apps. This page provides some good links to localization resources. But more interestingly (to me at least) is the list of recommended vendors. How does one get on that list? It would be nice if GTS could get on it.

I wrote a blog post last year about Google’s list of recommended translation vendors. Now Apple has published one. I suppose Facebook will be next?

UK translation company Applied Language Solutions has announced a new MT-in-the-cloud system called SmartMATE (www.smartmate.co). And they are offering a free-30 day introductory trial. After the trial is over you will need to pay a monthly fee or a per-word cost.

This is not the first company to offer this concept. Another European company named LetsMT! is doing something similar.

Disclaimer: we did not test this system because it requires you to upload a TM and forfeit any proprietary rights to it once it is uploaded. The following excerpt is from the SmartMATE T&C:

You agree to have your content data (“non personal”) stored within the ALS environments and as such allow ALS to use this data for analysis to enhance the service provided to you.

Furthermore, it appears that the system does not offer any baseline MTs and you can only use an MT of your own creation. I am not sure how attractive this will be for the companies that value and safeguard their intellectual property carefully.

ALS is a veteran translation company that was started by Gavin Wheeldon who started his career in the translation industry working for thebigword. Initially, ALS was an Internet translation company which ran a strong second place for years to Worldlingo and promoted itself by giving away a free website translation widget and other free translation services. The company eventually morphed into a full-service translation company and also embarked on an aggressive MT development program which has culminated in the SmartMATE offering. Recently, ALS was acquired by a financial firm in the UK. I am sure that ALS will promote this product among their own client base and try to widen the circle by offering this system to new clients. I wish them luck in this ambitious program.

The Google Official blog featured a post last week entitled: Breaking down the language barrier—six years in. This blog post was a ‘State of the Union’ address about Google Translate, written by the head of the Google Translate team Franz Och.

But where is Google Translate headed? I found nothing exciting in the blog post, nothing to indicate any kind of breakthrough or imminent product announcement. Why did Mr. Och write that post? To tell everyone what a great job they had done in the PAST? It is the FUTURE we are interested in. Everyone knows that Google revolutionized the field of machine translation. And half the world uses it. But why write a blog post about it?

We want to knock down the language barrier wherever it trips people up, and we can’t wait to see what the next six years will bring (from the blog post).

A lofty goal indeed. Everyone would like to see that. But how does Google get there? Can you provide some concrete milestones which you plan to achieve in your ambitious journey? Doing so would make your statements more believable. As it stands, these statements sound like campaign promises in an election year.

When Larry Page took over as Google CEO, he cut spending on R&D programs which were not part of Google’s core activities and that included machine translation. I think that the blog post by Franz Och reinforces the fact that there is a budget freeze in his department. In the year since Google announced that it was shutting down the Translate API, no significant product announcements were made by the Google Translate team. Reading the blog post, it appears that nothing significant will happen in the next year either. Which raises a question: what will Franz Och be doing at Google? Arguably one of the top people in the world in MT research, Mr. Och should be getting back to the future.

In this video clip which was released today by Vikram Dendi and his team at Microsoft Translator you can see a new Windows Phone app which brings together a few mobile translations technologies that have become popular on many Smartphone platforms.

Augmented reality: this is the same technology that made Word Lens the rage of the Internet at the end of 2010. If it works like it does on the video and if Microsoft comes up with an iPhone app will it be the end of Word Lens? Probably. Who would want to pay $10 for an app that you can get for free? This feature will translate road signs, menus and other short texts instantly.

Speech-to-speech voice mode: this has been a hot topic in recent years and Microsoft has been on the cutting edge of it as I have reported in the past.  The iPhone has had this capacity for over a year, courtesy of the Google app. Will other apps from smaller companies like Vocre be history? Probably. The question again is: will Microsoft port this app to the iPhone?

Offline Translation Mode: this feature is great, as it provides translation when no Internet connection is available. I don’t think any of the other apps offer this, with the exception of Word Lens which is only limited to signs and such.

The video clip itself is very professional and the user interface also looks very polished. Hats off to Microsoft for this promotion. But I want to point out one thing that Vikram says in the clip:

Windows Phone was the perfect platform to showcase these technologies

Well that may be true. Windows Phone may be a good platform to showcase this app but is it a viable platform commercially? I myself do not use Windows Phone and I can’t say that I know anyone who does. Windows Phone has about a 1.5% market share, so who exactly will be using this great technology? I really hope that Microsoft will bring this great app to the iPhone and to Android-based smartphones so that people will be able to use it.