A few years ago, I used to have to join tedious conference calls. They were regular and, in my opinion, a waste of time. But being a good corporate citizen, I had the required information prepared and waited my turn to talk about what was happening in my part of the business.

A colleague, who I shall call “Eric” to protect his identity, and I would try to make these calls more interesting by challenging each other to say particular words during the call. So, for example, he would ask me to say the word “cauliflower” in the context of my topic, which admittedly was a little childish, but it at least kept us awake. This is unlike another call where someone fell asleep and all we could hear was his snoring.

We realised that it was possible to fulfil all the challenges set. I took this to mean that any topic could relate to any other topic; rather than wishing to believe that our understanding of the world was sufficiently narrow and therefore potential links were relatively easy to discover.

So, on this presumption that anything can link to anything else, what do the Brazilian Team, the World Cup in South Africa and eTeamsCONNECT have in common? To help you, let us say a few words about each.  If you know the answer, you can jump to the end of this article and check!

eTeamsCONNECT, our technology environment, provides our clients with zero cost access to Translation Memory, Terminology and Business and Workflow software. It enables your in-house translation team and our linguists to have exactly the same access to advanced translation technology.

Although they are the only team to have won the World Cup on every continent the tournament has taken place, the Brazilian Team has the toughest group, Group G, ‘the Group of Death’ in which to play.  The Côte d’Ivoire and Portugal are strong adversaries and are able to upset the Brazilian game.  

In South Africa there is a frenzy of excitement. The TV newsreels and newspapers describe the marvel of this event, the prestige of building first-class stadiums, the role of Nelson Mandela and the wonderful plans for the opening ceremony to involve South African children.

So, what is the connection?  Of course there are many, but, I had one in mind, “Opportunity”.

eTeamsCONNECT gives our clients the opportunity to reduce costs from day-1.

For Brazil, there is the opportunity to win the title a sixth time and to show that although the English invented the game, the Brazilians have perfected it.

For the World Cup in South Africa, there is the opportunity for improved tourism and real national pride.

eTeams has direct control over one of these.  If you want to make better use of your translation expenditure and reduce costs, contact us.  If you also enjoy football, you can then watch the games knowing you have made a positive financial decision.

“eTeams – translations you can trust”

Like many people in our industry, we have read with interest the language used by IBM and Lionbridge as they promote their new collaboration – the development and commercial provision of real-time translations. We are concerned about the potentially negative implications for all our customers and our industry.

To assess the impact of this, we need to separate the “What” is being offered from the “Who”.

The “What” is Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) software from IBM which, combined with the proprietary Lionbridge Software-as-a-Service and its billions of translated words, enables the real-time translation of material such as blogs, IMs and emails, to a standard that is “good enough”.  

The “Who” are two companies that, due to their size and influence, can dominate how the real-time translation marketplace will develop over the next 3 years of their partnership.  During this time, IBM will also introduce Lionbridge to its customers as its preferred delivery partner.

These two companies can chase revenues and margins by ring-fencing their relationship, with the result that they could create a competitive landscape, which has the potential to undermine both business communities and existing relationships between customers and their language provider.

Ring-fencing could mean, for example, keeping developments to themselves; locking in customers by selling a service from a single supplier; creating a dependency on their service within selected business communities; and inviting customers and translation providers to pay a fee to be involved.  

Could another language technology company save the day?  Unlikely... If you ask a diagnostician to assess the health of a patient, he or she will focus on his or her area of expertise.  So, an oncologist will look for signs of cancer.  Similarly, asking another technology company to provide a solution for Machine Translation (MT) will result in an analysis and design around their framework, their future revenues and their market control.

Ring-fencing and technology-led solutions feel reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s when Value Added Networking companies offered to act as intermediaries between business partners. Unfortunately, some tried to enhance this role, attempting to control the supply chain.

The intellectual property of translations belongs to customers and not necessarily to their translation provider(s).  Each business community has the opportunity to make decisions about shared intellectual property and to drive forward its own vision for MT.  If it does not, IBM and Lionbridge could take the initiative and establish guidelines to ‘assist’ companies towards their own thinking.

So, how should the language provider community respond?  We can propose an open and collaborative approach for the translation supply chain for business communities, companies, language providers, linguists, workflows and technology.  This is far more than data access.

 Possible, but improbable.

In the meantime, IBM and Lionbridge could deliver thought leadership rather than trying to govern.

Possible, but improbable. 

'eTeams - translations you can trust'

A ship’s Captain, seeing that his First Officer was drunk, wrote in his log: “The First Officer was drunk today”. Upset at this, the First Officer retaliated by writing in his own log: “The Captain was not drunk today”, thereby implying that the Captain was drunk every other day.

Managing the flow of information between an organisation and its audience (spin doctoring) can result in the reader drawing the wrong conclusions.  Sometimes, headlines can hide detail which, if known, undermines the significance of the underlying message.

For example, if your translation partner announces, “We are ISO 9001:2008 certified and EN 15038[i] certified and we use qualified Project Managers only”, what does this mean?

Immediately, there are 3 qualifying questions that should be asked:

Q1.          List the offices and departments that have been excluded and included within the ISO 9001:2008 and EN 15038:2006 certification, giving reasons

Q2.          Confirm the name of the third-party audit company(ies) that carried out the accreditations

Q3.          Confirm the training received from an externally recognised Project Management organisation

You would want to see the following answers for these questions:

R1.          “All offices and departments have been included”

R2.          The name of the formal auditor, i.e. the short-cut of self-certification has not been taken

R3.          Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) training has been received by all our Project Team

From the responses received, you can determine the extent of investment being made by your translation partner in you.  If their answers are incomplete, it is reasonable for you to ask your translation partner why they have chosen to avoid external measures of their quality system and of their personnel.

So, what of eTeams...

In addition to ISO 9001:2008, eTeams has now achieved EN15038:2006 certification. Our Project Managers are trained to the rigorous requirements of the PMI and the PMP. So, in summary, our responses are:

R1.          All offices and departments have been included

R2.          Auditing was performed by ISO Competitive Edge Limited

R3.          The Project Management Institute Project Management Programme training has been received by all Project Managers

'eTeams – translations you can trust'

Will Your Partners Invest in Your Marketing Campaign?

So, are you one of the million or so people expected to buy an iPad? 

Before its launch, with what felt like the whole internet community marketing this product on behalf of Apple, the overwhelming answer seemed to be “Yes, we will buy this product”!

But then after launch, came a wave of disappointment, because the product didn’t offer a camera, nor multi-tasking nor...

Has it actually got anything to do with product functionality?  Could any product have met the high expectations set for this one?  Do the people who are most vocal and most willing to part with their cash believe that that they could have done better than ‘Steve Jobs’?

Apple wishes to extend its eco-system from personal productivity software, voice and video communications, movies, and music, through to the written word.  To achieve this, a product does not need to do everything; it just needs to do enough differently and at the right price point.  The iPad is such a product, with estimates of volume ranging from 1 million to 5 million units per year.

For most companies, this feeling of inevitable success does not exist.  Rather, marketing and sales programmes have to be developed to educate and communicate with your desired audience.  Given the international nature of products and services, such programmes have to be planned carefully in order to maximise revenues and minimise costs.

So what level of investment would you expect from your marketing partners?  Do you develop your plans and then invite them to discuss execution?  Or do you actively engage your partners through your thought development process?  And if the latter, do they expect to bill their time?

In our objective statement, eTeams emphasises that we collaborate with our clients.  This is one of those potentially warm and fluffy words, so the question that needs to be asked of eTeams is, ‘so, how do you collaborate?’

Collaboration for eTeams means investing our time and effort in understanding what our clients want to achieve and why.  We believe our role also extends to participating in planning the how of achieving your strategy.

Our approach is for one of our company directors to join your extended team. He/she will work with you to overlay the right language solution for your requirements.  By involving the highest-level of management from our organisation, you can be assured that your requirements are being considered seriously and that the appropriate resources will be committed to your language project.  We regard our contribution as part of our investment in you.

‘eTeams – translations you can trust’