GALA Blog

Yesterday an announcement went out that the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) “has agreed to accept responsibility for the LISA open standards works.” This statement has raised a lot of questions about whether this means that yet another group is wanting to take on some of LISA’s mantle and work on standards for the localization industry. Others have seen this is presaging a rift between GALA and TAUS on the one hand and ETSI, an established standards body, on the other. As someone who has been closely involved with the events referred to in the announcement, I wish to clarify the situation and what it means in practical terms.

Since the announcement that LISA was ceasing operations, LISA has been trying to find an appropriate home for its standards portfolio. Initially LISA had planned to simply put the standards into the public domain, but for legal reasons this action was not possible and LISA had to pick a successor to donate the standards to. I was charged with soliciting feedback about where the standards should go. Public opinion in our community was divided between ETSI and OASIS, with larger users tending to support ETSI and tech developers tending more to support OASIS. In the end, it seemed that ETSI had more flexible policies with regard to participation (it is possible to work actively on standards in an ESI Industry Specification Group (ISG) at no fee and ETSI has good relations with OASIS) and the decision was made to donate the standards themselves to ETSI.

Note that this donation has not actually taken place yet as there are still some legal issues to resolve, but it is expected to take place very soon. What that means is not that ETSI is taking over LISA’s mandate, but rather that current versions of the LISA standards will have a permanent home where they can be obtained free of charge under the same royalty-free, open access policies that LISA supported. If ETSI wishes to undertake development of new versions of the standards, ETSI may do so, and we expect that ETSI’s new ISG will work on at least some of the standards. On the other hand, if another group, such as OASIS, wishes to take up one or more of the standards that ETSI is not working on, it may do without hindrance, so the current arrangement allows for maximal flexibility in standards development and is a positive step.

ETSI will also be able to continue LISA’s dual-license arrangement with ISO whereby LISA could distribute copies of its standards at no charge and ISO could sell copies of LISA standards that were accepted as international standards. So far this arrangement applies only to TBX, but SRX is currently in the ISO process and will be released under the same terms, thus ensuring that individuals who wish to obtain this standard at no charge can continue to do so, while those obligated to purchase ISO versions may do so as well.

Both GALA and TAUS are planning on working with ETSI where it makes sense for them to do so and there is no conflict between ETSI and either group. GALA fully supports the goal of finding a permanent home for the LISA standards and continuing their development, and we believe that ETSI can carry out this vital task in partnership with other standards bodies. The GALA Standards Plan includes active participation in the ETSI ISG and we encourage others who are interested to do so as well. (Note that the ISG is still being set up, so it may take a little while before it is fully active.)

Note as well that the standards being donated to ETSI comprise technical standards for data representation. GALA will be active in many areas outside of this particular area, with a focus on promoting business, process, and quality standards, as well as education and promotion. These areas are all complementary to the particular areas that ETSI will address as a standards body, and we hope to work close with ETSI (and others) to ensue a coordinate response to the industry’s pressing need for standards.

We expect that a formal announcement regarding the standards will come from LISA very soon, at which point GALA can make a formal response.

When GALA first set out in 2009 to create a unique annual event for our members and the broader language community, we established a few goals that we hoped to meet in the first five years. At our third conference, held in Cascais in March, we made great strides toward achieving those goals.

At GALA 2011, we built upon the work we began at our first two conferences in Cancun and Prague and forged GALA’s reputation as an organizer of dynamic, productive, and refreshingly different conferences.

Critical mass. The GALA Language of Business conferences are designed to bring together the full community of professionals involved in global content delivery.  This includes language service providers, which are our main constituents as an association, as well as technology developers, localization buyers, educators, and more.  GALA 2011 saw significant attendance growth over last year’s conference, with 45 percent more participants and a truly global audience.  Attendees came from 39 countries and 50 percent of the professionals in attendance were company leaders or senior-level executives.

While we do plan to grow the conference further, we are searching for a happy medium: one which will offer wide-scale industry representation while still preserving an intimate setting for real, face-to-face exchanges among peer groups.  One of the elements our attendees appreciate most about the GALA conferences is the small group format, which is well-suited for in-depth, frank discussions.  This is key to the spirit of GALA and the needs of our members.  The GALA conference brings together some of the brightest minds in the industry – veterans who need the space and opportunity to dig deep on core issues relevant to their businesses.  Providing programming that allows for this depth will continue to be a part of GALA’s conference series.

Relevance.  When we began planning for an annual conference, GALA members were clear that the event must be highly professional and relevant to their business needs.  Top quality educational programming and peer-to-peer exchange were the two main reasons attendees visited this year’s event.  Our program committee, volunteers, and staff were devoted to creating an overall program that answered to those needs with a mix of in-depth, strategic-minded programming and practical, hands-on sessions.

Feedback from GALA 2011 has shown that indeed, we hit the mark. According to the conference attendees’ survey responses, 88 percent of attendees learned concepts or strategies that will help them in their businesses.  And overall, 93 percent asserted that the conference offered good value and a good use of their time.

Refreshingly different. In Lisbon we also demonstrated our commitment to maintaining an air of relaxation and fun. We all communicate better and learn more in a stress-free, sales light, collaborative environment.  GALA also wants to make sure that when you come to a GALA Language of Business conference, you experience something different…something that justifies the backlog of work you’ll accumulate while you’re out of the office… not to mention all those brilliant ideas you’ll have to find time to implement when you return!

As part of our effort to create a dynamic event, this year we explored some new programming ideas including small group discussions following key presentations, a technology bonanza to showcase our tech providers, and, of course, our zany GALA Film Fest – an entertaining chance for participants to show off their creativity outside of translation and localization activity.

I’d like to thank all of our member volunteers and supporters who make the event happen.  Our program committee:  Daniel Grasmick, chair (Lucy Software), Robert Etches (EICOM, a TextMinded company), Wouter Leeuwis (Waters Corporation) and Serge Gladkoff (Logrus). Thank you also to Andrew Lawless (Dig-IT Consulting) for the expertise and insight he provided during the proposal review process.  And thank you to our many sponsors and exhibitors of the conference, in particular our medal sponsors: L10N Studio (Platinum), GeoWorkz (Gold), and Moravia Worldwide (Silver).

As we develop GALA’s next conference for 2012, we will continue to keep the best and modify the rest.  Mark your calendars for 26-28 March 2012 in Monaco, where we will follow our established recipe for success while also sprinkling in a few new ingredients to keep the event interesting and fun.  I look forward to your being a part of it!

Laura Brandon

GALA Managing Director

Earlier today we hosted a webinar on GALA’s standards efforts. For obvious reasons, there are a lot of questions about what we intend to do in this area at GALA. One of the questions that came up but which we did not really get to address in the webinar was who, exactly, it is that opposes standards. Such questions are often loaded with an obvious expected answer, but the answer isn’t actually as obvious as may be intended.

In subsequent discussion on LinkedIn, Bill Sullivan (IBM) addressed this issue, and I think his comments (http://linkd.in/eDjdRS) hit the nail on the head: nobody opposes “standards” per se, but very often they oppose specific standards if they get in the way of a particular business purpose. We’ve actually seen this problem in practical terms with tools that use TMX or other standards as a way to import data into the tool, but that export TMX that is hardly usable: in other words TMX is seen as a one-way street rather than a vehicle for interchange because getting data in serves an obvious business purpose for the developer, but getting it out does not.

More recently I’ve become aware of multiple initiatives and individuals that claim to support openness in standards but which define that openness by excluding various vendors or parties. While I suppose some may fear that those parties will dominate the discussion, excluding them is hardly a way to build goodwill or true interoperability. You cannot expect companies to support something in which they have no stake and which may well have been created as a club with which to beat them.

So, in response to the question “Who doesn’t like standards?” the answer could be almost anyone. At the same time, even if we all really “♥ standards,” there are a lot of reasons they can fail. Bill outlines many of them in the post I linked to (and I encourage you to read it), but there are also others, such as:

1. Standards may try to do everything/too much. Take a simple problem and hand it to a committee that expands the scope and pretty soon you end up with a standard that is neither fish nor fowl. It’s classic feature creep. Or perhaps it’s “jack of all trades, master of none.” When you have competing interests, the consensus-building approach of standards bodies makes it natural to try to appease them all, but the result may be standards that are so loose and rich in features that the original purpose gets lost. Take XLIFF, for example. I would argue that it is the best thought-out localization standard we have (and I mean that as a real compliment to the XLIFF community), yet an examination of feature support shows that no tools implement all of its features and that some have scarcely any overlap with others. I know that some users actually have XLIFF ↔ XLIFF filters (seriously). What does it mean to use a standard if you have to convert between versions? So one of the tasks we need to consider is how to make standards into standards that work. (Lest anyone think I’m sniping at XLIFF, the same could be said of TMX as well, and its scope is even more limited so that result is even less acceptable!)
2. Technical standards are yet another format. Unless everyone uses a standard format, it may be just another format you have to support. Many translators, in particular, are skeptical of standard formats because they still have to support all the non-standard formats and deal with them as well. We have to show the particular value of using a standard versus business as usual, and this task can be difficult since standards have to be both flexible enough to accommodate real-world issues and firm enough to actually work. It’s an inherent tension, and if you get the results wrong, people won’t use standards. Unless standards solve problems, they are just an added burden.
3. Standards are often theoretical, not practical. This issue is another way of stating what Bill called the “Superabundance of Genius” and is hardly limited to localization. The people who create standards are the ones who care passionately about the issues. Because they care, they want to get things right (rather than get things done). To use the old saying, we shouldn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Having a theoretically perfect standard that is too complex results in something nobody will use.
4. Sometimes you can’t square the circle. This is the thorniest problem of all. Suppose Tool A requires W, X, and Y to do its job and Tool B requires W, X, and Z to do the same job. In other words, they have a fundamentally different approach to the same task. As a result, Tool A can’t produce Z (or use Y) and Tool B can’t produce Y (or use Z). So how do you interchange between them? No standard will be able to resolve that difference. We’ve actually run into that issue in localization with standards like TMX and these issues can create real problems. I don’t know how to solve this problem.

There are other reasons why efforts may fail. Some of the problems are more serious than others. But what we do need is a concerted (and funded effort) to address these issues and the one Bill raises. Such an effort cannot be (only) grass-roots, although it must have real support and commitment from the community.

I often find myself in the odd position of being the supporter of standards who has to play devil’s advocate against them in order to clear up what I see as misconceptions, but I believe if we don’t understand the issues that create problems for us we cannot overcome them. The GALA plan we are working on is being designed to overcome these problems and the ones Bill described as much as possible.