GALA Blog

• Are you tired of spending your thin budgets without any reliable data on effectiveness?
• Do you want to save time and money on research?
• Is the vast variety of technologies and tools available too much to keep track of?
• Do you want to refer to industry standard metrics on quality, costs, services, or technology in order to demonstrate that you are delivering value and meeting best-practice requirements?
• Do you want model documents and answers for questions on RFPs?
• Do you need a starting point for conversations about how to improve processes?
• Do you want to know industry best practices and be sure that you are following them?

Participate in the GALA standards initiative to share your experiences and trade knowledge with your peers.

Content creators are interested in solving problems, not buying services. Addressing problems requires talking about them in a non-sales environment. When vendors are asked to share their experiences, they need to provide useful answers rather than push a story about what they’ve done and how. These answers will naturally feed into the conversation based on a service providers’ value to their customers.

Both LSPs and their clients are looking for meaningful ways to gauge their processes and the technologies used to make their content global.

The GALA standards initiative is a program that will help with some of these traditional pain points.

Here are more reasons for participating in the GALA standards initiative:

• Participating in the GALA standards initiative increases your visibility. The GALA standards initiative helps you demonstrate your knowledge and thought-leadership and gain visibility by contributing to the betterment of the industry.

 

• Participation will ensure that your needs are met in the standards environment and that you can find the resources you need to meet your goals.

 

• Participation demonstrates your value to internal and external partners and stakeholders. Regardless of your industry profile, showing leadership will help elevate your profile and demonstrate value to partners and stakeholders. Volunteers and company supporters will be recognized throughout the program and will be visible across the industry.

 

• A commitment to standards sets you apart from the crowd. If you are an LSP, it helps you demonstrate that you can offer real value for your clients and attract clients who value excellence. If you are a content creator it helps you improve your processes to eliminate inefficiencies and achieve optimal outcomes.

 

• Participation ensures that you know about the latest developments in best practices for standards-based technology. In an ever-changing technical environment understanding the latest technology and standards can help you save money and achieve the best quality.

 

The GALA standards initiative: a perfect tool for research, networking, and meaningful connections between language service providers, tools developers, and clients!

-Serge Gladkoff, GALA Standards Initiative Advisor

Welcome to our first PR Corner blog.

Previously provided to the GALA membership as a regular email digest, the GALA PR Corner has now moved to a blog format, offering the same information on association PR and marketing activities while reducing the number of emails we send. GALA members, this is your chance to participate more fully in PR opportunities. All communications on activities listed and feedback on the PR Corner should be directed to Rebecca Petras: rpetras@gala-global.org.

Current and Recent Activities

GALA 2012, 26 – 28 March, Monaco: Save the Date
In addition to providing quality education and practical insight into solving today’s multilingual content challenges, our annual Language of Business conference is a great opportunity to market your company and participate in a variety of networking opportunities. The dates for our fourth conference next March have been set. Mark your calendar now — more information will be available soon.

ASAE Global Link
The Center for Association Leadership produces a newsletter for the internationally focused segment of its membership to address the many issues faced by associations and non-profit organizations working on going global. GALA is providing a series of articles on localization since localization is key for international associations trying to increase their memberships. The first article was written by GALA-member Gary Muddyman of Conversis Global and is posted on the GALA In the News page. A second article on how to find the right localization partner will be written by Silvia Avary-Silveira of Symantec and will appear in June.

tcworld Magazine
We continue our Localization Bulletin series in the tcworld newsletter. Recent articles have focused on the quarterly GALA Member Pulse Survey findings as well as on the new GALA standards initiative. If you have a topic that you would like to submit to tcworld for GALA’s localization bulletin series, please let us know.

tcworld Exhibit
GALA will also be hosting a group exhibit for members at the tcworld conference trade fair 18 – 20 October. It’s a great opportunity to gain visibility without the hassle of coordinating your own exhibit. If you’re interested in this activity, please contact Allison Ferch.)

GALA 2011 Coverage
We were fortunate to have a number of GALA 2011 attendees write reviews of the conference on their own blogs. It was also enjoyable to see the numerous photos posted by attendees. To see photos from the event, you just need to “like” the Globalization and Localization Association Facebook page or visit GALA’s Flickr pages. The blog postings can be viewed on our GALA In the News page.

GALA Presentation at the Center for Association Leadership
In addition to the articles we have developed for the Center for Association Leadership, GALA will be presenting at the association’s annual meeting, 06-09 August in St. Louis. GALA will be represented at the event by Managing Director Laura Brandon and Board Chairman Hans Fenstermacher, who will speak on the importance of localization when creating and maintaining an international association. Laura Brandon additionally served as a member of the programming committee for this first international track at the association’s annual conference, which attracts over 2900 association executives.

GALA at WTIA GoGlobal Event
GALA is association sponsor of the upcoming Washington Technology Industry Association Go Global event, 09 June in Seattle. This event is open only to senior executives of Washington technology companies looking to expand their businesses abroad. Managing Director Laura Brandon will represent GALA at the event to help build awareness of the need for professional language services when exporting or “going global.” If you know of similar events where GALA should represent our industry as a whole, please let us know.

Take Advantage of TAKE FLIGHT: GALA’s First Endorsed Member Service
Need to launch a PR program for your company? Maybe GALA can help! The TAKE FLIGHT endorsed member service helps GALA members establish the most difficult parts of a new public relations and marketing program: the “take off.” Once completed, members will be equipped with the tools and guidelines they need to ascend even further in their own promotional efforts. As an Endorsed Member Service, TAKE FLIGHT has been vetted by the association for quality and success. For information about the new GALA TAKE FLIGHT Program, click here.

GALA Webinar Series
One of our main goals as an association is to be a resource for our members. GALA offers many educational webinars through its GALA Webinar Series. The webinars give members a chance to connect with industry tools, technology, ideas and discussions in a sales-free environment, right from their desktops. Upcoming webinars are listed on our GALA Webinar Series page. Consider sharing your expertise in this popular online series. We are currently seeking speakers to present on new trends in quality assurance and project management.

Upcoming Opportunities

Localization in Developing Countries
We are developing an article for a content management magazine on localization issues specific to developing countries. Some of our most innovative and progressive member companies are beginning to make major strides in improving the localization and translation processes in areas where efficiencies have lagged far behind more developed countries. If this is an area of focus for you, or if you are interested in being part of this article, please let me know.

GALA Blog
We are very interested in having guest writers for the GALA Blog. We highly encourage member involvement in the blog, both as content providers and as ‘commenters.’ If you have an interesting topic and would like to write something, contact us!

Social Media for Localization Companies
How do you use social media for your business? We are writing an article this summer for MultiLingual Computing magazine on the social media practices of GALA members. How are you using social media? Send me your thoughts to be included in this article.

Connect with us!
Make sure that you follow GALA on Twitter and on Facebook. When we have an immediate public relations opportunity, we post it directly to Facebook. We also post new membership offers and benefits directly on Facebook. So make sure you “like” the Globalization and Localization Association page to keep abreast of membership benefits.

The Unicode Consortium has announced the Unicode Localization Interoperability Technical Committee (ULI) a new technical committee to focus specifically on developing standard profiles for the use of certain core localization industry standards: TMX, SRX, and XLIFF. ULI is seeking to address the problem that implementers of TMX and XLIFF often implement the standards in divergent ways, resulting in major interoperability losses  and that SRX lacks default language-specific profiles that can be used to make sure that text is segmented consistently between tools. ULI will develop standard profiles for these standards and suggest extensions to the creators of these standards that can be used to promote data interoperability.

ULI will be hosting a kick-off meeting on Friday, June 10. This meeting will be open to non-Unicode members who may be interested in this project. The GALA standards initiative encourages interested parties to learn more about ULI by visiting the ULI website or contacting Helena Chapman (IBM), chair of ULI.