The demand for translated, locally-relevant content is growing exponentially across the world. As both cause and effect of this, multi-national companies are churning out, sorry, producing unprecedented quantities of multi-lingual marketing documentation, both on- and off- line, with a view to reaching the new markets that Web 2.0 has opened up.
This collateral, or ‘content’ as it is known within the industry, generally follows a well-defined and relatively easy-to-anticipate life-cycle, which integrates various different stages, from creation and gestation, to translation and localisation, to publishing, to obsolescence.
Although these different stages vary in length, and change with time, the life cycle itself is well understood. You write something, you use it to sell stuff, and then the product or the market changes and you need to rewrite it or start from scratch.
Despite this, much content moves through its lifestyle in a rather haphazard, inefficient fashion, circulating via a dizzying spiral of attachments and CCs. Time, energy and mouse-clicks are wasted willy-nilly, and the whole process smacks of the bad old, pre-cloud, days (c.2008).
For this reason, curve-straddling companies have started to use what is known as globalization management systems (we will stick with the US spelling here), or GMS – globalization being a new buzzword used to describe the integration of translation and localization.
In combination with the proven linguistic expertise and technological know-how of a qualified language service provider (LSP), GMS can radically transform the whole process, streamlining and cost-cutting like nobody’s business.
But alongside this, there are a series of useful points to be borne in mind, all of which in combination will make your localization efforts effective and efficient, as well as visibly reducing costs to your company. Check back tomorrow!
