GALA Blog

Common Sense Advisory is surveying buyers and users of translation, localization, and internationalization software about their experiences with the products and the support they’ve received. Let your voice be heard. Take the survey!

Whenever we plan to buy something, we often look to Consumer Reports, J.D. Power, Underwriters Laboratories, Good Housekeeping, or their national equivalents to get a sense of quality, performance, and customer satisfaction from previous buyers. None of these companies have asked purchasers of translation, localization, and internationalization software how satisfied they were with what they bought, so Common Sense Advisory is stepping into the breach to ask. Voice your opinion and take our survey on customer satisfaction with language software.

Over the last few months, globalization software vendors have released a wave of new products and updates, many in just the last few weeks. Some of these new versions debuted quietly, sliding in to replace earlier versions without anyone noticing. Others called attention to themselves, heating up the message boards as translators shared their concerns about changes in license policy, interfaces, and pricing. Still others escaped notice altogether, testament to their esoteric or tiny communities of users.

It’s time for you to tell us what you think about the language software that you use in your company, at your agency, or in your freelance practice. Take our customer satisfaction survey, in which we ask about your strategic translation and localization vendor, the products you use, and whether you’re satisfied with the product itself and the service and support you’ve received. We’ll post a summary of results in an upcoming Global Watchtower entry and here in the GALA blog.

Today more than ever clients want to see their brand maintained across all markets and in all languages. The problem is cost. No matter what system that exists there is a simple truth in transcreation terms. People have to do something as no machine tool exists that is capable of making decisions based on context, content and and above all local “Speak”.

True WISYWIG or visual localisation of artwork is today a capability of many systems, but in a design based, product lead marketing piece the clear opportunity is to create single source setting and content localisation whilst at the same time allowing users and studio alike to work concurrently on the same file via an on line real time system.

Problem solving and solution delivery

How many people out there have used a Papermate Pen, the worlds first pump action ballpoint. this Pens claim to fame and in deed its inception was space travel. Built so the US astronaut could write in space. The Russian Cosmonauts had a similar problem to the Americans. But, instead of spending millions of dollars on a Pen, they used pencils.

Today technology in translation is taking a far greater role than the translation itself, we read that Machine translation is now getting good enough and probably in some instances it is?

The real challenge that users face is a simple one, Use and re use of language based assets, removal of duplication and replication and in artwork terms, which after all is the client brand and finally the integrity of the artwork in both market and language terms.

Evolution and not revolution

System that manage transcreation need to work the way users work, do what users do, just do it automatically, simply and easily. This way a system will evolve around working practices and this means users will happily use them.

StorePOINT International Ltd

If you are new to software localization and visit the web sites of software tool vendors, they will tell you that What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) is an extremely important feature. We all know it is important for desktop publishing. WYSIWYG editing eliminates the need to print a flyer again and again to see how changes look. But why is WYSIWYG important to software localization? [Read More on The Localization Tool...]