Newsletter - Events
Impressions from Localization World Seattle 2005
Daniel Carter, GALA Board
Where else could you hear forecasts from CEOs of the two largest industry companies, the Director of localization from the hottest IT company in the world (Google), and the two leading industry analysts? Plus, hear firsthand from other vendors about their outsourcing, partnering and merging strategies and experiences AND get to network with 400 other industry insiders? Not to mention attend the GALA Annual Meeting, meet the new Board members for 2006 and hear about all the exciting things going on in GALA? Localization World just keeps getting bigger and better.
Localization World took place October 25-27 in Seattle. I won’t go into detail on any of the sessions or workshops. But I want to share a few of the highlights from this year’s conference:
During the Opening Keynote session, Lionbridge's CEO Rory Cowan and Mark Lancaster, CEO of SDL, debated the future of the industry. Don DePalma of Common Sense Advisory succinctly summarized the debate on his blog, Global Watchtower:
- Rory Cowan’s vision is of "language as a managed service in which customers outsource their translation, localization, publishing and language engineering functions” in an internet-based ASP model with Language Service Providers (LSPs) working in a black box model.
- Not surprisingly, Mark Lancaster had a more heavily “technology-centric” approach to language services in which he focused on technology driving cost savings and efficiencies.
For all the smaller vendor company owners who have been under pressure the last few years, you can breathe easier. During the keynote, Cowan stated that he believes there will be a market for smaller vendors that offer high levels of service. Whew! I had been worried there for a few years that the big guys were taking over.
Don DePalma and Renato Beninatto from Common Sense Advisory followed up the next day with an entertaining and insightful market forecast including three possible futures for the industry. One of the side points that may be nice for all of us to hear is their observation that the language industry “always leads the pack when it comes to technology and social trends”. For example, with the adaptation of personal computers, the Internet, Telecommuting, Outsourcing, Off-shoring, Globalization and Online sourcing. I would have to agree that we typically have been 5 to 10 years ahead of the rest of the business world and society in using or applying these trends within our industry. Getting into their market forecast – and they clearly foot-noted with the caveat that we’ll all be able to look back on this in 20 years and laugh about how wrong they (we all) were in 2005 – here are 3 possible outlooks:
- “Business as usual” – We’ll basically just keep meandering and nothing will change. Here is my over-simplified summary: Buyers will continue to demand more (translation) for less (money) and vendors will continue to respond by increased off-shoring to low cost lands. In this future, they see increased use of hosting or managed services, increased online sourcing, and more portals. The only bright side of this option is that they believe prices will stabilize as demand increases and the supply of human translators remains roughly the same. They also noted that the supply of programmers and translators in China and India is not unlimited, thus giving some hope to those worried about every job being outsourced.
- “Technical wizardry” – Language technology will continue to evolve, with Machine Translation (MT) merging with Translation Memory (TM) and Workflow tools will continue to improve the efficiency of project management. They put special emphasis on the use of statistical algorithms in advancing state of the art MT.
- “Localization goes Mainstream” – Yes, utopia. Finally, all the buyers will begin to listen, localization will become mission critical, and it will get the attention that we have all been asking for the past 20 years. And, we’ll all be heroes and become wildly rich and famous. (Note: I added the last part myself for dramatic effect.) As for the likelihood of this future, they ranked it right up there with the U.S. playing Cameroon in the FIFA World Cup Final.
But as funny as these guys can be, they did conclude with the following 5 points to guide us through 2010:
- The business of localization is changing as we speak;
- We’ll see more of the same, but it’s all happening faster;
- Technology will change the way we work as well as what we do;
- Better process management is the key to success in the coming years; and
- The future will be driven by client demand -- there’s nothing magical there.
Photo: Don DePalma (Common Sense Advisory) shares his predictions on the future of the industry.
Adam Freed, Google's director of international product management, gave an interesting and lighthearted presentation of Google’s hybrid “professional” and (managed) “open source” localization model. In a very candid and open session, he talked about how Google has turned to open sourcing to make more languages available by asking volunteers to provide the translation. Some languages are still managed by their staff and require paid translation, but to increase the number of languages their users can access, they have turned to the open source community for translation into many languages. Although each open source language needs to be somewhat “self policing”, Google does provide tools, support and some amount of management or control. I can see how this would work for a company of Google’s stature, but I doubt that we’ll ever see open-source translation replacing vendors.
The GALA Annual Meeting demonstrated that GALA has momentum and traction in the market. In addition, the new 2006 GALA Board members, Christiane Bernier from Merrill Brink, Matthias Caesar from Locatech, and Stephen Ryan from Moravia were introduced and offered (actually they were blindsided and forced to talk about!) their idea of what they will bring to GALA over the next 2 years. And the 3 outgoing board members, Hans Fenstermacher, Renee Sztabelski, and Daniel Carter, had the opportunity to talk about their key, or defining, moments in GALA.
Also, ENLASO announced an interesting new open source framework for localization tool development (see Okapi framework - http://okapi.sourceforge.net/). GALA and Cal State Chico announced collaboration for summer training programs and an internship program for member companies and Cal State Chico students. And, a number of member small group discussions led to creating new and furthering current initiatives that will continue to keep this association both interesting and relevant.
Photo: Yves Savourel (ENLASO) details the new Okapi framework.
GALA organized "Creating a Win-Win: How Vendors Can Collaborate for Better Results", a session on collaboration between vendors, including the issues, problems and advantages of a range of collaboration models including translation outsourcing, partnerships, consortia, and even acquiring companies, or being acquired. Gordon Husbands from Wordbank opened the discussions with a compelling statement that as the big vendors have gotten bigger, it has created the need for smaller vendors to find new ways to compete. And he is using outsourcing and partnerships as one of his tools. Matthias Caesar from Locatech shared his company’s experience with a 4-company consortium, how it was initiated, and how they manage group projects for some clients, but remain independent companies that sometimes even compete on other bids. And Mark Johnson from Translations.com spoke about what it is like to be acquired by another vendor, some of the pitfalls, as well as what his company would be looking for in future acquisitions.
Of course, with three days of interesting sessions and lots of social interaction, there was much more to be enjoyed, but you really had to be there to get the most out of the conference. I’ll end by saying that I had a really enjoyable, and productive time in Seattle. I hope to see you all sometime at an event in the near future.
Daniel is a founding member of GALA and has been on the GALA Board member since its inception. He has been in the localization industry for over 20 years with experience on both the client and supplier sides. Daniel is currently an independent consultant and business coach. He works with both buyers and vendors on their strategy, production process, vendor selection, marketing, and sales tactics. He can be contacted at daniel@allcarters.com.