Arle: What are your thoughts on this announcement from Lionbridge and IBM?
Bill: Well, I’m very excited about this move. In a very real sense it removes language as a limiting factor within the enterprise. Although we don’t usually talk about it that way, language has remained as one of the most difficult barriers that businesses face, both internally and externally. IBM’s Real Time Translation Services (RTTS) offer us the opportunity to treat language as an enabler for international business, one where language technology goes beyond lowering the height of barriers and actually opens up entirely new opportunities for the enterprise.
As you might expect, I know IBM’s RTTS technology pretty well: My team has been partnering with the IBM Research team for some time helping them use our massive translation memory and terminology databases to create and improve an incredibly smart suite of engines. And of course you’ve read that RTTS was the engine behind an internal company-wide project called n.fluent that allowed us to leverage the talent of our worldwide teams to improve results. Lionbridge brings its own strengths to the arena, of course: their Translation Workspace cloud-based translation memory system is a perfect fit. Together we hope to provide a highly customizable, extensible, SaaS-based platform.
Arle: Since not all our readers will be familiar with RTTS, can you describe some typical usage scenarios for it?
Bill:We see three primary usage scenarios:
- External Enterprise Applications. Here the service provides multilingual enablement of any or all external content in an enterprise: websites, eSupport, FAQs, knowledge bases, blogs, forums, and community-generated content. Let me give you some real-world examples:
- A customer is having a problem with his mobile device so he contacts the manufacturer’s eSupport site and starts chatting with a customer service rep on IM. The Customer service rep is based in India, but the customer is based in Japan. They can both have a chat in their native language (real-time) and solve the problem that could not have been solved traditionally without a native speaking customer service rep. The customer rep then directs the customer to the knowledge base page that has additional supporting information where the customer translates the web page into Japanese (real-time).
- RTTS could be used for Marketing 2.0 materials—Blogs, forums, communities, etc. The shelf life of content in these environments is very short and traditional translation processes are simply too slow to help in this environment. Just imagine if your marketing team finds out about some event (maybe a partner sale or something like that) of real interest to your customers on the same day it will happen and she wants to get the word out about it. How would you reach your international clients if you’d have to wait 24 hours to get an email blast or Twitter post translated, particularly if you don’t want to use Google Translate but instead want a solution that reflects your brand and company requirements?
RTTS can provide marketers a way to stay on top of translation without sending it through the traditional translation process, ones that are too costly and take too long to produce results. RTTS eliminates this hurdle where “good enough” is appropriate for this type of medium.
- Internal Enterprise Applications. For internal use, RTTS enables collaboration applications like email, IM/chat, and intranet portals to be used in multilingual environments. Here are some typical examples of what I mean:
- Imagine that in the customer service situation I mentioned a moment ago that the customer service rep wants to provide content to the customer on how to use a certain feature of the mobile device. He himself does not have the answer, but the person who does is a product manager. The customer rep emails him the issue in Japanese that is now translated into English. The customer support person then gets a reply back from the product manager with an appropriate answer and further information on the company’s internal knowledge base. From there, the rep pulls the information from both the product manager and the knowledge bas and translates it into Japanese, ready for the customer to us it, all in real-time without the need to make the customer wait for an answer.
- Email and IM have obviously become major media for internal business communication but they rely on all parties speaking the same language (usually English). While most US-based companies try to get around these issues by mandating that employees use English, language issues can still be a real barrier when they keep staff from participating fully in corporate planning and initiatives simply because they aren’t as comfortable in English. RTTS can be used to promote this sort of internal communication across geographies. This communication could be between employees, partners, resellers, or distributors, but what matters is that RTTS enables communication to take place that didn’t happen before.
- OEM for 3rd party software providers. RTTS capabilities can also be integrated into third-party products and services where it becomes part of their feature set. I could see that many developers of e-Support and mobile device applications would want to embed the RTTS technology within their software to add value to their solution and enable them to sell their products in more markets.
Arle: Does IBM plan to use RTTS for its own translations?
Bill: We already do, but in different ways for different cases. You know my views—the trickiest part about MT is knowing when, how, and on what to use it. It can be used effectively in a standalone mode in many cases. But we also use it as part of an end-to-end translation process that includes human post-editing when we translate what I call “precision information”—product information where accuracy is critical to our customers’ success.
Arle: What sorts of companies on the industry’s client side will benefit from this partnership? Who is the target audience for this service?
Bill: Any global organization that has customers, employees, or partners worldwide should benefit from this combined product. Industry analysts indicate that most organizations only translate a small subset of content. They tend to reserve their translation budget for mission-critical information that I just mentioned. But, there is growing demand for a cost effective solution to address the vast majority of enterprise content that can’t be translated due to the cost of traditional services and the lack of quality of free translation tools. Organizations want to be able to translate all types of content economically—eSupport, user generated content, community forums etc. Content that could be translated in real time as a user needs it. That’s what this combined product will address.
Arle: How do you see this partnership affecting the industry in the short run?
Bill: Let’s face it: information is exploding at a pace that exceeds our ability to translate it with professional human translators. And it’s constantly and rapidly changing. As a result, there is a lot of enterprise content that never gets translated. This presents a massive opportunity for machine translation: to broaden the opportunity for translation. But MT does not diminish the importance or eliminate the need for skilled translators. On the contrary, the system will tolerate—in fact it demands—both human translation and technology. And both approaches call for new methods like crowdsourcing. In my opinion, the critical factor for effective automation is the ability to manage the process that surrounds the technology, making it flexible, secure, and most importantly consistent. I think the new IBM/Lionbridge offering does just that.
Arle: It seems clear that this partnership has the potential to shake established practices up a bit. What do you predict will be the longer-term impact of this approach for globalization in general?
Bill: I think the impact will be quite positive. This RTTS technology is best used for that large volume of content that isn't being translated today. I’ve seen claims that less than 5% of enterprise content actually gets translated. As I mentioned, traditional translation services won’t go away; they're still needed for precision work. But our real-time multilingual communication solution will provide a real time “good enough” solution for other types of content.
Arle: Where do standards fit into this picture?
Bill: Well, you’ve heard me rant on the subject of the fragmented GILT industry before, so I’ll spare you a reprise. Both IBM and Lionbridge are strong supporters of XLIFF and XML because they grease the gears of interoperability—they make it possible for customers and practitioners to choose their language tools. As you might expect, then, the new offering is based upon those (and I hope other future) standards.
Arle: Any last thoughts?
Bill: Some of the discussion I’ve seen out there makes it sound like this is some plot by IBM and Lionbridge to take over the industry. I don’t see it that way: This is really something new, an extension of the industry that will benefit everyone, on both the client and vendor side, by raising the bar and opening up new areas for growth. We aren’t fighting over smaller and smaller slices of the pie. With the collaboration behind this announcement we are instead creating a larger pie.
Arle: Thank you, Bill.
Source:http://www.lisa.org/globalizationinsider/2010/04/whatas_the_deal_1.html