Localization Project Management Best Practices

This page contains the talk of Frank Bergmann at the 27th Unicode Conference in Berlin on April 8th, 2005.

There is a Wiki available with supplementary information about the best practices presented in this paper.

In this presentation I am going to address the subject of “best practices” in the management of localization projects (the process of translating and modifying a software product in order to adapt it to a specific cultural environment).

The term “best practices” is frequently used when a subject area is not very well understood scientifically and refers to a number of “lessons learned” and “war stories” from previous experiences.

The best practices that I’m going to present in this talk are derived from my personal experience as a software developer and localization consultant. These experiences have led me to initiate “]project-open[” in order to “tackle” some of the issues that we have encountered in this field. So please consider that my views may be biased. The vast amount of feedback we have received from customers, however, mostly confirms our interpretation.

In this talk we are going to take a “unified” view of l10n PM, covering all parts of the project value chain without distinguishing between PM at the customer level (the software company) and PM at the provider level (the translation agencies). The exact distribution of work between the customer and the providers depends on each customer’s sourcing strategy and is beyond the scope of this talk.

]project-open[ is an open-source based project management application. ]project-translation[ is a specific version of ]po[ that includes several translation specific extension modules such as:

• Translation memory (Trados) integration
• Translation workflow
• Semiautomatic invoice and purchase order generation

]po[ is free and mostly licensed under the GPL open-source license. In order to generate revenue, however, we are offering closed-source extension modules for ]po[ and professional services such as installation, training, support and customization.

Before entering into the details of Localization Project Management, we want to demonstrate the relevance of the subject using the example of a medium sized company that has invested about 10 man-years into the development of a software product. This company may experience that localizing this product into 10 languages will cost about the same amount as the cost of the project’s initial development. Difficulties during the localization of the product due to poor l10n PM can lead to a reduction in translation quality.

However, an equivalent quality might have been accomplished using a cheaper translation process, for example by skipping the terminology or final review phases of the project. Translation agencies, on the other hand, need to charge higher prices than inexperienced software companies due to the increased overhead and the risk of potential rework common in the translation field.

(The slide above contains an error. It should read 500.000 words of documentation.)

In order to understand best practices in l10n PM we first want present the challenges that can be found in this type of project.

The complexities of l10n PM are very different from the complexities of software development projects. Unlike software development projects, l10n projects are usually well defined and scoped, there are few interdependencies of tasks (as we will see later on) and there exist well-established and precise procedures to estimate time and costs.

Instead, the complexities of l10n projects arise due to the number of participating parties, their cultural diversity and the provision of large numbers of files to the participating parties. Also, important project stakeholders frequently lack the awareness of these complexities.

A number of best practices have emerged to tackle these challenges. However, we won’t be able to enumerate and explain all of these best practices in this talk. Also, many of these best practices can be found in the literature about generic project management.

This is why we want to focus in this talk on the complexities underlying these best practices in l10n PM and have included a list of best practices in this handout as a reference. For a detailed best practices list, complete with examples, please refer to the URL http://projop.dnsalias.com/l10n-pm/.

The most obvious element of complexity in l10n projects is the number of parties (companies, or persons) involved in it and their geographic distribution (see the typical example in the slide above). The geographic distribution of the parties is due to the fact that translators and the distribution organization are located close to the target markets.

For each language, we will find:

• One or more translators
• One or more copy editors or proof readers
• One or more distributors in the local market that are the “final customers“ of the localized product

Managing a large number of parties across several time zones already presents a lot of challenges. Cultural differences are an added difficulty. The differences include:

• Transaction-oriented cultures vs. relationship-oriented cultures
• Different priorities in the balance between work and leisure
• Different perceptions in the importance of commitments

And these differences become even more important when there are difficulties in (English) language comprehension and the absence of face-to-face conversations.

Two other types of communication issues are related to the typical division of an l10n projects into a “customer organization” and a “provider organization” as depicted above (one main contractor working with one subcontractor for each language). These two organizations normally do not communicate with each other because the main contractor fears that the subcontractors will start working directly with the customer in the next project.

• The lack of contact between the customer (marketing, software development, etc.) and the providers (language experts) leads to a poor understanding of each others’ needs. The customer’s staff typically doesn’t understand the importance of cultural and language issues, while the providers frequently fail to see their work within the greater business context.
• The lack of contact also proves to be very inefficient during the execution of the project because all communication passes through the bottleneck of the two main PMs.

However, unlimited communication can also result in chaotic situation with unclear decision structures, so best practices in this area include Internet discussion forums and web-based incident management software that carefully structure communication.

A second main source of complexity in l10n project is due to the high number of documents that need to be distributed across the project participants. The files are frequently sent as ZIP files via email, providing abundant space for human errors, both for the translators and the project managers.

“Acceptance deciders” – the sales & distribution organization in the target markets –have to conduct the final check of the documents, leading to partial repetitions of the document loop with the appropriate corrections.
This situation is even further complicated when changes are made to the original English texts during the course of the project. These “late” modifications need to be introduced manually into the translation chain and lead to the existence of multiple versions of the same set of files, which in turn leads to frequent errors and substantial management overhead.

Best practices in this area include techniques to avoid late changes and translation workflow solutions that automatically handle the distribution of documents.

A third main complexity issue in l10n projects is the synchronization of translation memories (“TM’s”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory) and glossaries between translators who work on texts of the same language.

TM and terminology synchronization issues become more relevant as a function of the required translation quality and of the project size, the number of translators who are concurrently working on every language. Synchronization requires a “language leader” someone who is in charge of collecting and integrating TMs. It requires N:1 (collection) and 1:N (update) communication patterns. Best practices in this area include the provision of glossaries and “context” early in the project and web-based applications for managing the TM synchronization process.

Please find below the current version of the l10n PM best practices list (we are not going to explain these best practices during the talk). For details and to see an updated version, please visit the link: http://projop.dnsalias.com/l10n-pm/.

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