The document discusses the history and evolution of the localization industry from the 1950s to the present. It covers early localization methods using tools like mainframe word processors and cut-and-paste on paper. It then discusses the growth of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of computers, networks, and the internet, and the development of early localization companies and tools. It also looks at future trends in the industry like increased use of machine translation and shared language data repositories.

1. The Localization Industry: Past, Present and Future
Published in 2007!
The same can still be said today – 2014!

2. Disclaimer
• Subjektive nicht objektive Sicht.
• Lücken, nicht vollständig.
• Das Eine oder Andere ist vielleicht nicht richtig.
• Einige Folien habe ich von Jaap van der Meer geklaut.
Danke Jaap!
• Als Anstoß zum Weiterreden gedacht…

3. 1950‘s Business Tools

4. 1960‘s Revolution:
Computers for Companies

5. 1980‘s Revolution:
Computers for Individuals

6. 1980‘s Revolution:
Privately Networked Computers

7. 1990‘s Revolution: Publicly Networked
Computers, Web and Internet

8. Business Tools in 1990‘s
• Internet
• Web
• Modems
• Bulletin Boards
• FTP
• Fax machines
• Courier Services
• Zip disks
• Networks
• Cell Phones

9. Business Tools in 2000‘s
• I do everything
(except cook…maybe next year!)

10. The Original Problem

11. An Early Solution (196 BC)

12. Famous Translators (note tools)

13. Translator Tools in 1950

14. Globalization Tools in 2000‘s
• Workflow Engine
• On demand MT and TM
• Speech recognition
• Portals
• Corpora
• GMS
• TMS
• GIM
• CMS
• XML
• SOA
• CRM
• XLIFF

15. 1950-1980 Translation Industry
• Inhouse translation departments (IBM, DEC, XEROX, etc.)
• Little or no outsourcing
• No tools (well, mainframe word processors and SGML)
• Updates cut-and-paste on paper or manually retype
• DTP (typesetting) a separate, expensive science
• Local Translation Agencies with Freelancers for personal
documents
• Fax machines and modems were huge innovations!

16. 1980-1993 INK leads the way
• 1980-Jaap van der Meer starts INK in Amsterdam, which
provided translation, writing and localization services
• 1987-INK develops its own computer-aided translation
software and dictionary management tools
• Quickly expands with offices all over Europe
• Becomes the blueprint for localization companies with
distributed offices and freelance translators and other
resources
• 1993-sold to R.R: Donnelley

17. The 90‘s Big 3, 4, 5, …
• US and European based
• Berlitz, Alpnet, INK, SDL, Lernout&Hauspie, Xerox
• Then Lionbridge, Bowne Global Solutions
• Now Asia: TOIN, watch out for India and China…

18. The 1990‘s – Dublin Becomes World
Software Localization Capital
• 1970‘s and 1980‘s Irish government provides great tax
incentives to foreign corporations
• Hungry, English-speaking, well-educated, low-cost workforce
• Many multinationals move their European HQ to Dublin
• Easy to get Visas for foreign workers (translators!)
• Universities offer advanced translation training, and
especially software engineering
• Microsoft also has localization HQ in Dublin

19. Interlude:
The Softrans-Berlitz Story

20. Berlitz
• 1878 German immigrant Maximillion Berlitz establishes a
language school in New York
• Develops the „Berlitz Method“ of total immersion language
teaching
• Company grows through WW II, begins offering translation
services on the side (mostly personal docs)
• Establishes language schools all over the world
• Berlitz acquired and sold by big publishing companies such
as R.R. Donnelley
• 1987 Berlitz acquired by Fukutake Publishing (Japan!)
• 1988 Berlitz Translation Services becomes independent
Business Unit

21. Softrans
• 1986 the „fab four“ get tired of working for Apple Computer, see
a „Marktlücke“ for software localization services and found
Softrans in Dublin
• Rapid growth with huge contracts from many of the Ireland-
based European HQ‘s of big multinationals
• Company is engineering-oriented, technically savvy, but Euro-
centric, needs Asian reach, scalability, access to US customers
• 1993 Berlitz acquires Softrans:
a match made in heaven and
lubricated with copious amounts
of Guinness

22. Softrans + Berlitz =
Berlitz GlobalNET
• BGN becomes one of the top 3 localization companies with
26 offices in 24 countries, and the first to crack the $100
Million revenue barrier
• Grows, acquires geographies, technologies, resources
• 2001 Berlitz International (Fukutake) decides that their core
competency is language instruction, not localization
• 2002 BGN acquired by Bowne Global Solutions (which was put
together out of acquisitions of Mendez, GECAP and others)
• 2004 BGS acquired by Lionbridge (which was put together
from acquisitions of ALPNET, ITP, …)
• 2008 Lionbridge acquired by VIPRO ???

23. Sideswipe:
Microsoft Dirty Laundry
• Microsoft became an early driver of software localization
and has continued to be one of the first companies to
tackle new, obscure languages
• MS early strategy was to completely dominate a small, in-
country translation company demanding complete
transparency
• MS dictates everything from human resources to
processes to tools to allowable margins to timelines to
total profitability
• Of course everyone wanted to work with MS, but MS
destroyed many excellent, small in-country vendors and in
the early to mid 1990‘s many vendors refused to work with
MS because they feared for their lives
• MS continues to be aggressive and quasi-dictatorial, but
they have learned that they have to treat their suppliers as
partners or else everybody loses

24. How do I Get Into the Localization
Business?
• Sideways, no real training for localization specialists or
engineers or DTPers or Project Managers or other resources:
parallel to the early days of technical writing or software
engineering; new industry, no standards, no best practices
• By accident
• Training starts in earnest only in the late 90‘s
• University of Limmerick, Dublin, Rosario, etc. Translator
training
• Localization training Monterey, University of Limmerick
• Localization Certification: CSU CHICO, Localization Institute,
etc., LISA

25. Information Pyramid
Corporate
Products
User interface
User documentation
Enterprise information
Communications, Patents
Support, Knowledge Base
Corporate brochures 2,000
words
Product brochures 10,000
words
User interface 50,000
words
Manuals, online help 200,000
words
HR, Training 500,000
words
Email, IM, Reports 5 million
words
Call center 10 million
words
Partly
multilingual

26. 1
Translation
•Glossary
•Proofreading
Localization
•TM tools
•Linguistic verification
•Functional testing
•Project tracking
•Vendor management
•Quality assurance
Globalization
•GMS, CRM, CMS integration
•Workflow, TM Server
•SGML-XML standardization
1950
1985
2000
“must”
booklet
cost
opportunity
product
quality
strategy
enterprise
time
Evolution of the Translation Market

27. Translation?
Languages Spoken by Number of speakers Percentage
8 > 100 million 2.3 billion 40%
75 > 10 million 2.2 billion 80%
264 > 1 million 825 million 93%

28. Clients
MLV’s
In country
offices/partners
Distributed
translators/authors
4 to 30 vendors
10 to 40 languages
100’ to 1000’s
translators/authors
Vendor Management Project Management
Quality Assurance Translation Memory
Account Management
Resources Management
Quality Assurance
Project Management Translation Memory
Resources Management
Quality Assurance
Project Management
Translation Memory
Quality Assurance Translation Memory
Cascaded Supply Chain

29. Translation
•Glossary
•Proofreading
Localization
•TM tools
•Linguistic verification
•Functional testing/Project tracking
•Vendor management/Quality assurance
Globalization
•GMS, CRM, CMS integration
•Workflow
•SGML-XML standardization
1950
1985
2000
“must”
booklet
cost
opportunity
product
quality
strategy
enterprise
time
Transmutation
•ontology, taxonomy
•search, MT
•customer self-service
•two-way direction translation
utility
embedded2008
From Globalization to Transmutation

30. From localization
… to enterprise wide
globalization …
… to “translation out of
the wall”
Cheaper
Faster
Real-Time
Tide is Changing

31. Customers’ needs
are
instantaneous…
Tide is Changing….
Grrrr… I can’t read

32. Integrated Hybrid Translation Model
TM
MT
Shared
TM
C P-E
T R
Terminology
Workflow
P r a c t i t i o n e r s
Source Control

33. Translation
Localization
Globalization
Transmutation
• ontology, taxonomy
• advanced leveraging
• search, MT
• customer self-service
• two-way direction translation
The Vision
“Translation is just a language transfer”
Four Scenarios for Change
• Fully Automatic Useful Translation
• Language intelligence
• New payment models
• Sharing language data

34. Embrace the Imperfection of Machine Translation
• Benefits
 Security
 Quality
 Expand customer base
 More job opportunities
• Needs
 Standard interfaces
 Develop best practice in post-editing
MT
 Learning MT systems
 Hybrid MT systems
Everyday more words are translated by machines than by professional translators…
Integrate MT in existing translation infrastructure and other applications (search, intranet, support)

35. Develop Language Intelligence
Translation 1.0
(translation)
Cost
Translation 2.0
(localization)
Opportunity
Translation 4.0
(transmutation)
Embedded
Translation 3.0
(globalization)
Strategy
Market size
Languageintelligence
Translation
Proofreading
Glossaries
Project management
Translation
Memory
Terminology
management
Functional testing
QA
GMS
Workflow
TM Server
XML
CMS
CRM
Taxonomies
Ontologies
Unified
Terminology
Search
MT
Semantic
Technology

36. Introduce new Payment Models
0,00
0,05
0,10
0,15
0,20
0,25
0,30
0,00
2,00
4,00
6,00
8,00
10,00
12,00
14,00
16,00
18,00
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Wordrates
Marketsize
Translation industry
How low can you go….?

37. Why do we communicate?

38. Natural Next Step
from desk-top TM …..
to …. Enterprise server …..
to … Industry-shared language data repository

39. Industry
Sub-sector
Company
Product line
IT
Financial
Oracle
Intel
Telecom
IMF
PayPal
Siemens
Medical
Molina
Public Index
Private Indexes
DomainIndexes
Data Structure: Cooperation

40. How the Co-operative Works
User scenarios
o Language search freely available on public index:
 Translation matches of terms and phrases
 Possibly an attribute for domain
 No attributes for organizations or products
o Language search on domain and private indexes (only for members):
 Translation matches with attributes for domain, company, product, date of
use and other metadata
o Advanced leveraging:
 Process documents to retrieve best matches for all terms and phrases
 Output in industry standard format
o Automatic translation:
 Automatic translation engines trained on domain and private indexes
 Output in industry standard format

41. Languages and Global Coverage
“We have around a billion users today – what we’re all interested in
is where the next billion users are coming from.”
Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel at a United Nations Meeting of
technology leaders and representatives of developing countries, March 2007
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: Microsoft boss Bill
Gates wants to double the number of computer
users to 2 billion by 2015.
What languages will the next billion users speak?

42. Vielen Dank