This year there were 37 countries represented on the G500 up from 35 in 2008 and 33 in 2007. Hungary, Israel and Venezuela are all newcomers. The EU and US dominate of course (163 and 140 respectively) but Japan, China, Switzerland, Canada and South Korea are all in the top ten. As Zia Daniell Wigder of Forrester put it in her news item

While there are still twice as many Fortune 500 companies based in the US as in the next country on the list (Japan), the number of US companies declined from 162 in 2007 to 140 in 2009. The number of Fortune 500 companies in Britain, Canada and the Netherlands also fell. By contrast, all other countries in the top 15 saw their numbers grow or remain flat. Out of the top 15, Russia, China and Spain showed the highest percentage growth in the number of companies listed.

This shows that although there is still a strong bias towards the EU and US, there is opportunities for companies wherever they are. This all looks good for localization – as more countries baptize global companies their populations will be more willing to accept brands created elsewhere – which means more localization requirements. Even in the depth of a recession many of the businesses here continue to grow – which again is good news both for the global economy and for us.

Question: So does Google Tool Kit spell doom for the localization industry?

I think my answer to Nic (and everyone else) is, “don’t panic and don’t be afraid” – much as it was last week when everyone thought the world of professional translation was dead due to crowdsourcing. In the right place the toolkit might be useful – but a systematic replacement for professional translators it isn’t.

Renato Beninatto had a pretty measured response in his own blog earlier this week.

Google Translator Toolkit is not perfect. There are valid concerns about using it, along with the predictable resistance to change by those tied to the existing model. However, Google has already changed our behavior in the way we look for information. Now, it is launching a platform that has the potential to revolutionize the translation process, especially if combined with Google Wave, which is expected to be launched soon.

Google has done a great job of making the world rethink its approach to information and if they continue to develop the workbench and resolve some of the not-insignificant issues around the intellectual property of TMs it might someday be a force to be reckoned with.

In localization circles there is much talk of leveraging crowdsourcing techniques to enable a global force of volunteers to translate, transcreate and peer-review.  Yet, there are significant challenges to meet in order to make this approach successful.

Effective crowdsourcing requires a passionate and motivated force of volunteers – if the crowd doesn’t put the work in, the project may grind to a halt. Additionally, if maintaining quality or accuracy is important, structures and processes need to be put in place.

These challenges are especially true of crowdsourcing when applied to localization since most of the crowd aren’t professional linguists. If you target professionals they will expect some form of recompense – as LinkedIn found out recently.

The challenges of crowdsourcing

On the surface, crowdsourcing seems like “free” translation but free translation comes with a price! Quality, maintenance of brand identity, meeting time to market deadlines and uncertainty of the ultimate costs must all be managed – as well as perceptions of management, the market and the crowd itself through the whole process.

Quality Control: When translations are performed by a volunteer community, it is difficult to control how users will translate the content. Community translations may be inconsistent in language, format or context.  Regional variations may not be taken account of (or may be) and you operate at the whim of the crowd itself. For example, a translator for a French site may be living in Canada and translating into French Canadian, while other translations are coming from people living in France, making the translations inconsistent.

Managing brand and identity: A crowd does not typically care about your brand (again with some notable exceptions where the crowd “owns” the brand). Brand protections falls into two categories; maintaining corporate brand (protecting trademarks and brand messaging) and enforcing brand-related standards (style, language). The latter is particularly important since the crowd will not necessarily care about the same social niceties (profanity, slurs, bias etc.) that your company cares about – and it is your responsibility to protect yourself from the vagaries of the crowd.

Keeping the crowd interested: If users are not interested in reading content in their native language, they will not be inclined to participate for free. Even volunteers need incentives to keep them motivated and you should be prepared to step in with professional help where the crowd cannot or will not meet the challenge.

Succesful crowdsourcing

To realize the benefits of crowdsourcing, care must be taken to put in place the tools, processes and techniques that ensure success. Despite the hype in the industry there are very few examples of successful crowdsourcing in localization – those success stories are succesful because they thought through the approach completely – and they had a use-case that supports crowdsourcing.

Here are key elements of a framework for crowdsourcing localization:

Creation of style guides (covering overall writing and translation guidelines as well as help with sensitivity and appropriateness) for volunteers supplemented with web-based or in-country training if required.

In-country review facilities to provide final review of content against the clients style-guides – even where crowd-based peer reviews are leveraged. This ensures that crowd-sourced content meets the language requirements both for content (accuracy and consistency) and for context (cultural acceptance).

A network of professional translators to kick-start or supplement the crowd. The enthusiastic crowd may not exist in all the countries you want to be – or they may need some encouragement.

A translation environment the crowd can use to perofrm their translations, assess quality (peer-review) and promote succesful translations along with the usability, functional and linguistic testing required for software systems and infrastructure.

Beyond this framework you need to be able to market to the crowd and give them a reason to contribute. That may be financial or it may be social – just don’t underestimate the effort involved in getting the crowd excited.

There are many aspects of how crowdsourcing techniques can be leveraged – this entry focused on social networking and volunteer crowds. Feel free to add your comments and experiences.

What is “Agile”?

Originally designed as a philosophy for software development Agile is moving beyond software and is becoming a useful method for managing any cross-functional teams. Long considered a small scale approach, Agile Development is gaining ground as a flexible methodology, scalable to even the largest of projects.

Agile evolved as a reaction to heavyweight software development methodologies – especially “waterfall” methodologies. Agile is not a formal standard but an evolving interpretation of the Values and the more fluid Principles.

Although there are many facets to an Agile project, three concepts illustrate the difference between Agile and other methods; adaptability, iterations and collaboration

Adaptability
Agile teams understand that business requirements change. The Agile methodology is adaptive rather than predictive and is based on that fundamental understanding and Agile development teams must be capable of thriving in that environment.

Iterations
Agile development cycles (iterations) tend to be short (weeks rather than months or years) and focus on delivering working software within that time frame taking into account each stage of the software development cycle within that time frame.

Collaboration
Agile teams are cross-functional and self-organizing, typically operating outside formal corporate hierarchies. This allows the team to decide for themselves how to operate most effectively during a development iteration. Additionally, teams include both technical and business members who work closely together to ensure each iteration delivers working software that meets the business need (for that iteration). To make all this work, there is a huge emphasis is on close-working and constant interaction.

Why does this pose a problem for localization? What can we do about it?

Although many translators and translation companies work successfully with Agile clients that isn’t the same as being integrated with Agile philosophies.

Collaboration between team members is a key element of Agile typically with teams located in close physical proximity. Since localization production is outsourced to teams that are global in nature care must be taken to foster close collaboration opportunities between the Agile development team, the localization project management team and the dispersed translation production team. To be Agile a a centralized “core” of leads have to work in close proximity. The disciplines of Project Management, Localization Engineering, Linguistic Analysis, Testing and Digital/Desktop Publishing as well as QA /QC management have to be managed in a collaborative team fashion. Beyond this core-knowledge team, care must be taken to work on a daily basis with the distributed translation teams in country using whatever means are necessary.
Ideally the core team is co-located with the Agile development team itself, however most Agile development projects are not large enough to host a permanent core-team presence so compromises have to be made somewhere.

The iterative nature of Agile also brings problems. Traditionally localization has been project centric and largely monolithic especially in the larger localization companies. To support Agile the localization team has to become accustomed to short timescales, small drops and relatively small changes within large code bases. In addition to the changes in working practices to support small iterations the localization team has to be able to leverage technology beyond simple application of TMs to discern what has changed and what needs to be localized. Overall the implications for translation are that the translation team must be able to execute smaller incremental changes in strings, prompts and content which have to be completed within the time allowed for successful release of the iteration. Especially significant are the implications for testing – functional testing needs to operate seamlessly within the iteration requiring very close co-working between the test team and development team.

and finally…

Agile has a great philosophy behind it but the way Agile teams work don’t mesh directly with the way localization works. It takes some care and attention – but mostly flexibility – on the part of the localization team but with some creative thinking we all learn how to support Agile customers better and more in line with their development philosophy.

Any posts from those of you experienced in localizing in an Agile world would be most appreciated.