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FIVE TIPS TO CUT TRANSLATION COSTS BY 25 PERCENT OR MORE

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Companies in the international arena face an even larger

challenge. Maintaining efficient control over the writing, editing

and publishing activities for a single user manual in the source

language may be fairly manageable, but when the process is

multiplied across dozens of deliverables and multiple languages,

it becomes time-consuming, expensive and risk-exposed. This is

especially true if such documents are not created and managed

within a centralized content management environment.

Technical publications, regulatory, training and marketing

professionals have long recognized the benefits that can be

gained by deploying a centralized Content Management System

(CMS). But many organizations have not been able to justify the

high cost and long implementation cycles required to purchase

and implement an in-house CMS.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW OPTIONS

Over the last few years, a number of new CMS providers have

entered the market, offering users a range of off-the-shelf and

customized solutions, from full on-site installations to Web-

based systems. But do these new systems truly deliver greater

efficiencies and reduce costs? Do they incorporate multilingual

content management into their overall design?

Which solutions have been architected using the latest

technologies, with future use in mind? What should buyers

look for in terms of “must-have” functionality?

Create, translate, localize and publish better quality content more productivelyGiven the current economy, companies large

and small are looking for all possible means

to reduce costs and maximize revenues.

One area where costs can always be saved is

in the creation, management and delivery of

content – in the form of user guides, online

help, product labeling, training materials and

marketing collateral.

All too often, the production of these

materials is laden with a significant

duplication of effort, high administrative costs

and a lack of quality control tools that can be

applied uniformly across all projects.

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The following tips can help you streamline multilingual content

management into a cost-cutting, single-source solution for

document creation, translation and localization.

REALIGNING TRANSLATION PRACTICES TO ADDRESS TODAY’S COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

Advances in design-to-manufacture technology have

accelerated a product’s time to market, leading to a shorter

product development cycle. At the same time, companies are

also seeking ways to expedite the creation of content needed

for the sale, distribution, and safe and successful use of these

products. The teams responsible for this content – technical

publications, regulatory, training and marketing – have been

faced with the dilemma of how to efficiently manage the

ever-increasing volume of work involved – without increasing

costs, but still maintaining quality.

Numerous cost-saving opportunities have been identified, but

until recently, have remained just that – opportunities. For

example, in addition to translation services, many companies have

traditionally relied on their language service provider (LSP) to

format the translated documents. According to industry experts,

outsourcing these processes increases the translations budget

by a minimum of 25 percent.

Managers have long recognized numerous financial and

operational benefits of bringing formatting and composition

in-house. But the limitations of traditional systems and high

implementation costs have prevented it from happening. Another

area of opportunity lies in eliminating redundant processes for

content development.

For example, materials such as product sheets or user manuals

are typically developed using an off-the-shelf or proprietary

publications tool, while on-line help systems are created using

another. Traditionally, companies must dedicate resources to

the time-consuming and costly process of duplicating and

reformatting of content for each environment.

However, with the emergence of new technologies and Web-

based content management solutions, challenges such as these

can now be easily and cost-effectively solved. Companies are in a

much better position to reduce translation costs and gain dramatic

efficiencies in document creation, management and delivery.

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FIVE KEY CRITERIA FOR TODAY’S SOLUTIONS

The key to success lies in partnering with a Language Service

Provider (LSP) that not only provides quality translations and

localization services but offers a hosted CMS solution that has

been optimized for multilingual content management. Buyers

should give careful consideration to the following five criteria:

1. Does the solution enable you to integrate authoring, content

management, translation and rendering?

2. Does it conform to the development, convergence and

adoption of open standards for the global information

society?

3. Can the CMS solution be up and running in a matter of

weeks – with a minimum of customizations?

4. What upfront investment is required? What is the return on

investment (ROI)?

5. Does the new solution drive down costs and increase

employee productivity? Are these benefits quantifiable?

1. Integrate authoring, content management, translation and rendering (output). The term “content management” is

one of the most ambiguous terms in the industry. There are many

different types of systems out there that purport to do “content

management,” but are designed for completely different purposes.

Before you can select a CMS, you must first ask, “What business

problem are we trying to solve?”

Do you want a system to enable the dynamic update of your

corporate Web site? Are you looking to manage your corporate

digital assets and marketing/brand information? Do you want to

streamline your editorial, translation and localization process?

Determine your business problem and then look for solutions

that are specifically designed to solve that problem.

For example, a Web CMS or Digital Asset Management system will

not be well-suited to manage an editorial/localization/translation

workflow. The gold standard for multilingual publishing is a

system that:

• Includes a strong authoring tool for technical writers.

• Has a robust and XML-based content management engine to

manage multiple and continuous content revision.

• Integrates with an LSP’s production and workflow system.

• Allows for output in whatever format you desire, such as

PDF, HTML and online help.

• Is offered on a subscription basis (pay-as-you-go), eliminating

the need for upfront capital expenditures.

A corollary to this rule: if possible, don’t just implement a solution

because it is the “corporate-approved standard” for content

management. You may end up spending more time and money

trying to force-fit a system to go beyond the limits of what it is

designed for.

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2. Always look for a solution that conforms to international standards. The biggest danger with many

traditional software applications is that they are based on a

closed, proprietary architecture.

If this is the case with the software you are depending on and

it becomes obsolete, you face a potential nightmare as you

attempt to migrate your proprietary content format to a new

system. Whenever possible, a CMS solution should conform to

international standards approved by well-regarded industry

groups such as the Organization for the Advancement of

Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the World Wide

Web Consortium (W3C). This will reduce your reliance on

specific tools, making your content the most important thing.

As a side benefit, this will also prevent “supplier lock-in.” If you

decide to switch tools at a later date, the migration of your

content will be much easier (as long as the new system also

conforms to international standards).

In the world of publishing and technical documentations/

training/help, Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Darwin

Information Typing Architecture (DITA) have become the gold

standard for creating and managing content. The benefits of

having your content in XML are numerous and include:

• Separation of content structure from the content format.

• Ability to add metadata to increase content intelligence (e.g.,

better search results).

• Support for all target languages including bi-directional.

• Reuse and repurpose content at the “component” level.

• Facilitation of true single-source publishing to multiple

output formats.

3. Keep software customizations to a minimum. A typical

CMS implementation involves the integration of several types

of tools, including authoring, database, workflow, translation,

localization and publishing applications.

It is rare to find all of these features in one product, therefore

some level of custom integration and development is often

required to fully meet a client’s requirements.

To make matters even more complicated, many companies believe

that their process is highly unique and that a complete CMS

implementation must support every aspect of their environment.

This is a misguided outlook that can lead to problems and

unnecessary costly mistakes:

• Integration and customization can be extremely expensive

and take many months (or even years) to fully implement.

• Heavily customized environments are difficult to support.

• An upgrade to one product may impact other products in

the mix. Similarly, a change to one product’s application

programming interface (API) could affect some of the custom

integration code that is necessary to make your environment

work seamlessly.

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• An upgrade to the standard you are using, such as DITA, may

require you to upgrade all of your tools. If your system has

been heavily customized, the upgrade process can be highly

complicated and not altogether successful. You are usually

responsible for managing this upgrade effort.

• Due to the expense and complexity of the modifications

made in a customized environment, it’s possible that you

will be required to maintain the integrated system well

beyond its useful (and even usable) life expectancy.

4. Look for the quickest ROI. Suggestions for achieving the

most rapid return on a CMS investment:

• Start with a production-quality pilot project. This approach

allows you to quickly demonstrate the benefits of the new

system, work out any kinks and begin realizing the cost and

time savings.

• Choose a solution that can be quickly deployed, so that a

CMS is in place within weeks instead of months.

• Consider a hosted, full-featured “pay-as-you-go” subscription

model as an alternative to software procurement. In the

hosted CMS solution the software application sits in a

centralized, secure data center and is served up to end users

completely via a Web browser. All you need is access to a

Web browser and Internet connection.

5. Drive down costs and increase employee productivity with hosted XML content management. Technical

publications, regulatory, training and marketing professionals

have recognized real cost reduction and elimination of duplicate

efforts from hosted XML content management environments.

Examples include:

• Storing “chunks” of reusable content (e.g., a “topic,” a “task,”

a “concept” or a “warning”) that can be shared by multiple

documents eliminates the inefficiency of copying and

pasting content.

• Consistency of information across multiple deliverables is

realized. You can change a component of shared content

in one place and everything that points to it will be

automatically updated and accurate.

• Reuse of components and entire sections of documents, as

well as any corresponding translations. Metrics indicate that

many customers reuse 70-90 percent of content.

• Automatic link validation reduces time and effort in the

quality assurance (QA) process – no more manual checking!

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• Version control reduces time spent moving files between

locations, and helps eliminate the possibility of multiple

people making updates to the same content at the same

time – and no more searching for files!

• Single-source publishing allows you to update content once

and automatically publish to all required output formats

such as PDF, HTML and online help.

• Formatting is eliminated – no more time troubleshooting

files, authors can instead spend time increasing the richness

and usability of content.

• Dramatic reduction of translation and localization costs due

to content reuse and elimination of desktop publishing –

costs savings for clients’ ranges from 25-70 percent!

• Shortened time to market.

SUMMARY

If you are considering an investment in a CMS and you also have

translation and localization needs, look to an LSP who can provide

you with one comprehensive, hosted solution.

Most importantly, make sure that solution will drive down your

costs by at least 25 percent, increase employee productivity

and provide you with a quick ROI. In addition, make sure that

solution does not rely on closed-proprietary architecture that

could “lock” you in with a supplier. In the end, the best CMS

solution is the one that is right for a particular organization’s

needs, both today and tomorrow.