Global Information Management

24 Ways To Shut Down The Application(and 101 other apocryphal stories)

David Ashton VP Global Information Management SolutionsSDL International

24 Ways…

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And other apocryphal stories

The mobile phone handset manufacturer where docs are authored and published in US-EN with no concept of how they will get to the 50 other countries (that’s a different department…)The consumer device manufacturer that didn’t synchronize the device languages with the doc translations.The life sciences company that asked prospective Spanish employees to “Work hard and Gamble” The global soft drinks manufacturer who can’t communicate concepts between one marketing department and another

Best Practices Presentation © 2007 SDL International. Company Confidential. Forward-looking information is based upon multipleassumptions and uncertainties and does not necessarily represent the company’s outlook.

When the Wheels Fall Off the Bus…

Famous Examples of Bad Translations

Coca Cola

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-ke-ken-la.

Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse

stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le,"

which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."

Pepsi

Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into Chinese turned into…

"Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave"

Got Milk?

The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign

"Got Milk?" prompted them to expand

advertising to Mexico.

It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish

translation read

"Are You Lactating?"

Gerber

Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's

inside, since many people can't read.

When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the

smiling baby on the label.

To add insult to injury, the word “ Gerber” is also the French word for vomiting.

The Business Impact

“There is no common vocabulary at Microsoft… Our lack of standardization undermines our trustworthiness.” Craig Mundie, Chief Technical Officer

Solution: Trustworthy Computing initiative

“… The customer expects to see consistent and timely information regardless of where and how it is published.” Alison Toon, Translation & Localization Manager

Solution: One World initiative

“New products need to be launched simultaneously across all markets… Our quality and consistency were suffering, leading to poor communications with customers and potentially damaging the Philips’ brand.” Luuk de Jager, Global Content Management Senior Manager

Solution: One Face to the Customer initiative

Why does it have to be this way?

Sales Ecosystem

SupportEcosystem

EngineeringEcosystem

MarketingEcosystem

Corporate

Each ecosystem is a natural silo

Creates its own language Builds its own content supply

chain Builds it’s own vision Shares ideas with other

ecosystems through personal relationships

R&D/Engineering Core product User interfaces Labeling Documentation & help

Marketing Advertising Promotions Web presence

Service/Support Consumer information Customer contact Web FAQs Day to day contact

Operations Compliance docs Bill of materials Custom documentation

Sales Sales collateral RFP/RFP Proposals

Why it is this way.

Sales Ecosystem

SupportEcosystem

EngineeringEcosystem

MarketingEcosystem

Corporate

Content

ContentContent

Content

Ecosystem Ecosystem Ecosystem

EcosystemEcosystem Ecosystem

Problems of the multinational strategy

What’s happening underneath? Time to market and growth problems.

• Pockets of information trapped in regions held in ‘foreign’ languages while much Intellectual Capital held only in ‘source’ language

• Content is repeatedly recreated adding inconsistencies, inaccuracies and cost each time

• Solutions presented are based on information to hand, not the sum of corporate Intellectual Capital

Customer Satisfaction Issues• Call centers and support centers create or parse content in isolation• Consumer/customer response teams present inconsistent

information to customers Inconsistent ‘brand’

• Strong regional or divisional managers ‘know better what OUR customers need’

• Product groups put product-brand over corporate interest• Sales, Marketing, Web/IT, Procurement, Legal, Engineering,

TechPubs etc all have their own view of the ‘right’ thing to say

Content is global from the day it is written

Global markets are an assumed part of corporate strategyNA itself has (at least) three languages

Once content is provided through the internet anyone/anywhere can access it

BUT

Content is often written by non-native speakers in a unmanaged style, Then translated by non-professional translators on an ad-hoc basis

Content has different readers Technical and non-technical audience Native and non-native English readers Non-English reader… how are we getting this content to them?

Significant business impacts Brand perceptions through consistency Customer satisfaction Regulatory and legal compliance

The source of content impacts the quality of translated output, particularly automated translation

Existing linguistic tools work better with consistent source styles A machine translates more effectively if terms are consistent and sentence

constructs are correct

What do we need to think about?

Would the ‘real world’ please step forward?

Bill BrownBusiness Owner

• ‘Owns’ content creation• Authors write in English:

• Arbortext• Word• FrameMaker

• Reviews and authorizes

Doesn’t really understand why it takes so long to get the translation done OR why there are so many mistakes.

Robert HimmelLocalization Manager

• Coordinates localization efforts• Determines costs• Authorizes translation• Plans and schedules• Coordinates resources• Manages linguistic resources• Reviews translated content

Very busy. Tries to act as the middle-man between business owners, other stakeholders (legal, marketing etc.) and vendors.

Kelly MartinTranslator

• Works for translation vendor• Translates English to Chinese• Comfortable with known tools

Paul SmithValidator / Reviewer

• Works in China• Validates / reviews for Robert

The problem with “Bill” and “Robert”

Bill’s problem around authoring Bill’s feedback from customers is that the product documents don’t match

the products themselves. This is bad enough in the English language but terrible in other languages.

Making the content available in other languages is time consuming, expensive and the resultant content is often of poor quality.

Impact Content is created and re-created in each authors own language with the

authors departmental bias with no global audience context. Cost of sale, time to market and customer satisfaction all have

quantifiable cost to the organization. Solution

Provide authors, reviewers and managers access to same linguistic, terminology and stylistic guides that are available to the translation team.

Provide those resources inside the applications the authors already use.

Engineers, Technical Writers, Lawyers, Sales, Marketing, Web/IT, Regional Business Managers, Procurement, Project members etc.

Global Authoring Management

Central server-based access for enterprise-wide consistency

AuthorAssistant

24 Ways…

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