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Building a roadmap to bring about change in the way your company handles localization

by Jonathan Slaughter Increasingly, localization “experts” are telling prospective clients (and anyone else who will listen) that the key to driving significant change in your organizations localization processes is finding a high-ranking executive to act as the champion for your cause. While that is a true statement, what is consistently missing in these “sermons from [...]

Getting to the Heart of Source Content Authoring Issues

In order to remain competitive in the global market, companies are consistently pushing in to international markets for new revenue streams. With the United States, and most or Western Europe saturated in a number of verticals, there is a significant shift to the Eastern European, Middle East and African market places.

Testing Translation Services the Right Way

More companies are using translation tests as part of their procurement cycle. Testing translation can be beneficial, but it is essential that you understand “what” you are trying to gain from the test. For a test to be successful, you must match your test translation requirements to the most appropriate vendor strategy for your organization. The [...]

What lies between commercial and endangered languages

I was at a client’s office a few weeks ago and we had a lively discussion on the problems they were having supporting a requirement for translation to Dhivehi. Dhivehi, also known as Maldivian and Mahl, is spoken by around 350,000 people in the Maldives and Minicoy. This particular client had been challenged for a [...]

What does the 2009 Fortune Global 500 tell us?

The Fortune Global 500 is a list of the worlds largest companies by revenue. The list was formed in 1995 – before which US and non-US companies had their own lists. What can we see from the 2009 list – and in particular is there anything we can we see that effects the localization business? [...]

How healthy is your localization partner’s supply-chain?

In the July/August edition, the Harvard Business Review had an interesting article entitled Just How Healthy Is Your Global Business Partner which highlighted how corporations were changing the way they assessed outsourcing relationships. Although the article profiled manufacturing I thought it was particularly relevant in the localization business which traditionally relies so heavily on outsourcing and subcontracting as [...]

Does localization strategy follow the business – or does the business follow the localization strategy?

Taken from an interview and Q&A with Michael Buckham-White of Premiere Global at one of SDLs recent localization best-practice events. Is it generally better for the business to drive localization strategy or do you find the business. Good question… so I will come at this from my perspective, from my experiences. My background is in [...]

Review of Localization networking event, Atlanta

More detailed Q&A with each of the speakers coming as soon as they are transcribed. I was lucky enough to sit on the panel alongside Scott DeFusco of Deltek and Michael Buckham-White of Premiere Global yesterday. I have met Scott a number of times in the past but not Michael. Michael is a 15-year veteran [...]

Managing Your Global Image

Brand image has always played a major role in establishing expectations and thresholds in home market success.  As corporations rely on international revenues to meet sales targets there is a temptation to push strong-performing domestic products in to each new market as quickly as possible.  While this practice is consistent across industry verticals it has a [...]

Localization Industry Expert Q&A, Atlanta June 3rd

Two leaders from the global operations and localization industry – Michael Buckham-White and Scott DeFusco – will be speaking in Buckhead, Atlanta next week.   Michael is a 15-year veteran of human communications profession and is an emerging leader in global interactive marketing.  He held positions with a number of telecommunications companies, including AT&T, and [...]