Working as an in-house localization consultant is rather unusual. Hüseyin Mergan created this position for himself at Sony. What is localization consulting about?
You can learn that in this interview with Hüseyin, a man of curiosity. Are you curious about what else we discussed?
- What does a localization consultant do
- How can you optimize processes
- How to do a proper Root Cause Analysis
- What can Lean Six Sigma do for localization
- What is RPA?
- Basics of the Pomodoro technique
- Robots optimizing… marriage?!
This is episode 32 of my social practice, also known as The Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization and #translation insight delivered to you by the power of voice, this time with Hüseyin Mergan.
Andrej Zito
Hüseyin, welcome to the podcast, it’s great to have you again.
Hüseyin Mergan
Thank you very much. It’s my pleasure.
Andrej Zito
I was so pleased having you on the session with Veronik. So we decided to have a follow up and have a full interview with you. So I’m really looking forward to learning as much as possible from you. That’s the impression that I got.
Hüseyin Mergan
thank you very much. Thanks for that.
Andrej Zito
So first, maybe give us a recap of where you work. So you work for Sony electronics?
Hüseyin Mergan
Yes, I am working for Sony electronics on the Sony Europe, Global Business Services. And we are located in Istanbul. And now I am working as a localization solutions consultant within Sony.
Andrej Zito
Can you maybe give us an idea what Sony electronics means? When somebody says Sony, to me, the first thing that comes to mind? Is PlayStation five. Yes. Is that the correct division that you’re part of? Or is it something else?
Hüseyin Mergan
Of course, it means more than that for me, because it means you know, innovation, it means, you know, our limited boundaries. And it also means, you know, a passion. Because we are always motivated to work with passion, we are always motivated to bring innovation. And our management’s always open to innovations, new ideas. So that motivates us. And that always puts the goals in front of us even sometimes we put our own goals, and have you tried to catch them. That means something for me.
Andrej Zito
I had this question, but I lost it. Yes. I’m still wondering like, so. I remember from your LinkedIn profile, that it says that you worked for Sony before. And then you change to Sony electronics? Are the two different or,
Hüseyin Mergan
No, actually, that same. But the thing is, there are two entities in LinkedIn. I don’t know how they’re managed. But then you type Sony, Sony and Sony electronics Comm. I just updated my profile, and I get a promotion. And it turns out Sony electronics, all of a sudden, I don’t know how much in terms of legal entity, nothing changes, that I am still the same company since 2012.
Andrej Zito
So you work from Turkey, you also teach at the Turkish University. Right? This was the land before. I’m wondering, how did you get into localization in the first place?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, it’s about linked with my academic life. Because now I am teaching at university I start learning translation and localization. And my you know, attribute localization, it’s kind of funny, because at the time, when I started, I was a translation student, I was doing translations assigned by our professors. But we had technical translation yahoogroup at trans professional translators trying to join this group, I was rejected. I was the admin, and my editor and I had a friend, he was another admin and he accepted him. And he started typing, okay, this is student group, what’s your interest and so on. And he invited us and we met him, we met him and he taught us about fest. And my interest started that I start using Word Fest in the assignments, and all of a sudden, I start searching other alternatives I found through those I installed through those demo version. And I looked at this is, this should be limited. And I contact you to one of the localization companies in Turkey. And they accept me for the internship program. And I started working as an intern and an opera while they offered the part time job. And throughout my university life, I just worked as part time translators, when they have projects.
Andrej Zito
How old were you then when you started working for the company?
Hüseyin Mergan
I was around 30 so I was around 24 Yeah.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, I was also I also started working in the industry while I was studying at Monrovia. I think I was 20 years old. And I never translated ever.
Hüseyin Mergan
Yeah, but I started translating Actually, I just start translating. But my interest I mean, my biggest power is my interest and my curiosity, because at the end of day t teach you one per se, but I always search for other software types alternatives start using, I even tried to look like my old computer, and it just corrupted it some dll file. It was Windows XP didn’t work, I had to format it.
Andrej Zito
Okay. That’s funny. Where do you think the curiosity comes from?
Hüseyin Mergan
It’s about passion, and value, try to learn more about your job. If First of all, you have to, like you have to be passionate about your job, then you become efficient. You always want to learn more. It’s about you know, reading a book or watching a movie. When you watch a movie, if you like it, you keep on watching, and you even forget about the time. So this is like that. So when I start learning it, or when I have a patient about a topic, I started reading it and all of a sudden, I lost myself, I lose myself in the time. And I always try to learn more test more to try more. That’s the kind of passion for me.
Andrej Zito
Did you have the Curiosity since you were younger? Or is it something that you discovered later once you started working in the university?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, I decided to be translated later, in my high school, I was claimed to be a teacher. But I had a very good score at university entrance exam. And I was, I had only one test, this was etymology. And I start searching the university curriculum. whether any university gives etymology class, I noticed that my department was given a topology close. So I just selected for that purpose. My initial goal was to be teacher and etymologist. But later, I noticed that I am not suitable for etymology. Because it was was one of five verse calluses. And I start into my interest starts for localization. And I stopped learning for two years, I improved my computing skills. And then I start testing tools. Just a kind of illusion for me, it’s not a kind of one day decision, or it’s not something I decide to be. And then I turned out, no, it’s the kind of evolution first I learned computer and then my internet growth or localization. And so
Andrej Zito
Now I’m wondering about your current job, which is a localization consultant. My question is, what exactly does a consultant do? I think I tried to be a consultant at one point, as a freelancer, it was very difficult for me to find some clients that I could be working with, but you are a consultant internally, within Sony. So what do you do as a consultant exactly.
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, this was my first reaction when I was promoted to be consultant because the position is created after me, and to my knowledge consultant, someone who provides freelance consultants to the companies, but company creative gave a privilege for me and created this position. And, and they offer this to me, and they explained that they want me to play a key role consultants role in the projects, because normally you don’t, you know, recruit consultants in your company. And my role was to manage the key projects, as a project manager, but also kind of building a workflow operating in and delivering to business as usual teams. And my initial goal here is to streamline the process, improve the process, read the best practices to Sony, and try to, I don’t want to use the word self, but try to sell it across different departments. For example, I noticed that there are some translation feedbacks. And I have meetings with stakeholders and islands that they don’t have a terminal to process. So I am setting up a terminology process for them. Or sometimes they do any project, they set up a new CMS, and then I am telling them how CMS CMS should be. Because I know translationsite, and I gave requirements that may affect the translation, or they may improve the translation cost. Or I do content analysis. And then I am just telling them not distribute the standard translation, this should be transcreation. So it’s a kind of multi phase draw. So you have technical you have linguistic role. And you have also business role, because in the meantime, I have to manage the budget.
Andrej Zito
Does Sony have, are you part of some central group that takes care of all the localization requests, or how do you achieve that streamline operations? Because to me, it looks like like you have to go from team to team and look at their processes and advise them like what should be the best way. How does that work?
Hüseyin Mergan
It’s funny, we are a central team. We are shared services, global business services are mighty names Global Business Services, I’m here to shave service team. And we are central what we do, we are going to departments or sometimes department come to us. And they explained the translation requirements and I listened. And I after Listen, I am just checking their needs these requirements and try to adapt translation realities into the realities or vice versa. Right, because translators have sunroof, but on the other end business have a sunroof. So I am just trying to breach them in from that perspective, it’s I am acting like an analyst, because analyzing the requests and then deleting them, sometimes, I am talking to developers, because these requirements is not possible with translation management system. So some internal developments can make job easier. Or sometimes I am asking developers to change the system, internal system, Sony’s open from that perspective. So you can get feedbacks. And you can discuss for the changes. And as a central group, mindful, it can be for example, one of translation requests, HR tricky, it can be legal documents, we are just translating into it, as many companies do. But on the other hand, it can be a kind of website, and this website has some background, for example, it has style guides, it should have a style guide, or it should save terminology also is a central tip, I have an advantage, I can see the big picture. Because imagine that I am translating the consumer website, and next day, I know that support content will be coming about that. Or next day, I know that that is any product, I know there’ll be some PR content. From that perspective, my role is to kind of connect different stakeholders to each other, and bring the consistency across all the content.
Andrej Zito
Just yesterday, I was recording the next localization news with Vera from Corby, and Ellen, from the get translations. And we were talking about the problem that some of the clients have that their teams are sort of siloed. And even though they have a central localization hub, which has all the knowledge, all the processes, all the tools, there are still some teams who act on the rogue level, and they do their own things. Is that something that you’re also dealing with? at Sony? Are there people who don’t even know that you exist, and that you could help them
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, at some point, they have translation requests and they go to procurement and procurement either way, we have a central translaation team, that is one aspect, another aspect is a kind of worked out. So we are doing a project and someone is mentioned about the project and all of a sudden other team becomes aware of us. And also we are closely working with IS teams. So when a project lands to IS
Andrej Zito
What is IS?
Hüseyin Mergan
Information systems team, IT teams and IT teams notify that stakeholder that. Okay, there’s a translation team, so you can contact them. But right now I can tell that we are we are very famous team inside Sony. And everyone knows about us. And even though they don’t know, we have some contacts who can reach out to us and then they can lead to us.
Andrej Zito
Mm hmm. How do you promote yourself within the organization? or how did you became popular with everyone?
Hüseyin Mergan
First of all, it’s about customers. It’s about being customer oriented. We call them internal customers, all of our requesters are our customers. I am customer oriented. And I always take on behalf of them. So I listen to them. I try to understand the needs. And I’m always transparent with them if they ask something. And if this is not possible in translation, I am just anytime it’s not possible, it’s not feasible. And I am not just saying no. I am going always with an alternative. So that makes me publish another thing. Maybe they see the passion in me and they just make the point that I’m I’m just a regular consultant and I leverage knowledge.
Andrej Zito
That’s that’s probably the basis for you having good relationships and becoming popular is when you do it when you deliver quality work. I was also thinking about if you have some like internal website or if you share like a newsletter, or how do you share what you have maybe learn from one project that other people could benefit from How do you communicate internally? And market yourself?
Hüseyin Mergan
Yes, I understand actually a we are belong to Sony Europe region. But there are some other regions South America, South Africa, Asia, or North America, South America. Photos time our department publishes internet newsletters, about two projects about achievements we do or about the projects we deliver. And that makes us known across all 20 companies. That’s another thing and also we have a approach, we call it one GBS approach. So, then we reach out to a department if we understand some another, another team can help them you are trying to introduce introduce them, for example, I am talking to one of my customers or my of my contacts, and they are just telling me that they have some issue needs. And if I have an issue to internally, I am happy to communicate each other, even though they don’t work together. We have knowledge exchange we have, we share our knowledge, and we are open to that. And we provide support to them. It is a widespread knowledge about us.
Andrej Zito
One more question about this is I’m curious, do you prefer to have internal resources working on the project? Or are you full on the vendor strategy?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, it’s about vendor strategy time time, it also it depends on the dynamics of the projects and requirements of the business. For example, if you are working on a very confidential content, you cannot skip the set your content your vendors, or in certain conditions, your vendor should do that at the end of today, as this one is a central theme. We are translating many works. And we cannot recruit all the translators internally. So this will be more costly than current work is that we are just trying to build for example, for certain roles we are eternally handling and for certain roles, we are relying on vendors, and also it’s about scalability of the organization. It’s about how to scale your organization. For example, imagine that, we decided that our vendor approach strategy, and we decided to recruit all languages internally. But sometimes we are delivering 10,000 words per day. So it is not possible with one person with two people. Even with two translators. It’s not possible. So it’s about scalability. And it’s about balancing work. For the time being, for example, we don’t have any internal translators, we all have localization project managers, and we work with vendors. But mayb e one day we decide to recruit someone, is it translated for certain languages?
Andrej Zito
In your LinkedIn profile, it says that one of your core duties is to optimize localization processes, and to bring in more automation. And I’m really wondering, how does this process even start, like how do you optimize something?
Hüseyin Mergan
In my opinion, it’s about questioning the system and not being happy. As a person I’ve kind of always open I’m always criticized processes, because I believe he can be better to me to better processes can be better tools can be better. And this creates a kind of eye for detail eye for innovation. And another t you challenge with many T’s with your job, for example, robotic Process Automation or the Six Sigma, they are all the practices implement outside translation testing. But if you are flexible enough, you can connect many T’s that is what I believe. So, process optimization, if there are some issues, if there are some problems in the process, that means there are some place for improvement. So from that perspective, what I do, I am creating workflows, but for me, they are not and they are always open to improvement. So when there are new changes, I can introduce them to my biggest advantage is a localization consultant. I am the first contact person, when we do a project, I set up the environment, and that I deliver it to project managers and then they start using it after go live. So when there are new innovations, new developments, new best practices, I translate them. So for example, I can tell them, hey, this development champion implemented in that workflow. So I am just trying to persuade my stakeholders about using that At also, I am open to people’s feedback. So I designed the process, but this is my idea, maybe one of my co workers better idea. So I always try to initiate brainstorming. And sometimes, for example, what they suggest can be not applicable in that scenario, because I also believe that everyone has a background. So we should keep that background for example, I, I am open to changes, but I am always embrace the changes with attached with attention because some rules are set off to certain experiences. For example, you set up a new stage in a translation workflow, but you need to understand how this was set up. Maybe there’s initial business requirements, and sort of that, for this creates an eye for improvement I for optimization. Also, my, as a central translation team, most of my stakeholders don’t know about translation they are marketing people, they’re engineers, so they don’t tend to know about the translation, but they have requirements. So, I am always discussing with them what they can do what they cannot do, they are shelties. So while discussing, I am trying to optimize, imagine that I have a new department, they want to check the translation. They want translation to be checked by the country’s sales companies, marketing people, and they want to send Excel files. I am just delete them. No, we can’t do that, of course, but we have a translation management system they can see to check that are efficient. This organically and naturally grown idea. I mean, you don’t have to work about that.
Andrej Zito
I have been in that exact position. Where we were still sending, I think was not even extra sheets, it was Word documents, sending them for review. It was actually a table within the Word document. So instead of using an Excel spreadsheet, we put the source and the translation in a Word document and we send it to the encounter people because we were afraid that they would not want to do the work in the TMS directly. Yeah, because it’s something like out of the world. And we want to give them something very simple to look at and maybe command and maybe make changes to the translation. So I’m glad that you made it work. Was it maybe struggle? Getting them to use TMS?
Hüseyin Mergan
Yeah, actually, at the very quickly, it was some trouble. But in order to streamline the process, okay, I have an SLA. Imagine that five business day SLA. And those people have other duties, the primary role is not sufficient. So that what I do, I try to bring two parties together. So instead, I prepared a video for training video, I create the account for them. I did some test jobs, they kindly accepted this. And they did this. And next day, I create a condition. If they don’t check thetranslation for 48 hours, it should be delivered. Or Vantage ticket translation. If they add a comment, it should be sent back translators. When they check it translation. If they don’t add in command, it should be delivered again. So what I do, I am also supporting them if they are busy, and they are not able to check translation. Okay, that’s fine. Just skipping, and I can see the reports and I am just typing them from chat to Hey, I noticed that you didn’t check translation, maybe you want to check it. And if they say that’s okay, I am a few translation work. That’s okay. And another thing is to facilitate the feedbacks, if you use the feedback to trade the translators, that’s the biggest advantage, because most types of status will deliver what they want.
Andrej Zito
Exactly, yeah, they need to invest some sort of their time to increase the quality.
Hüseyin Mergan
That’s what I’m telling them. This is learning curve. And if you train the translators, after a while, you don’t need to check translation. So David, the databases.
Andrej Zito
It’s funny now that you mentioned it yesterday, when we were recording the localization news, one of the things that the guys brought up was close collaboration between the content creators and the developers on the client side. So this would be you and connecting them directly with the translators on the vendor side, is this may be something that you’re working on, or did you have implemented so so the people translating the content can directly communicate with the people who create the content, again, to have a better quality in the end and more Streamlight operations.
Hüseyin Mergan
In Sony, we are lucky we can do that we have, for example, I know copywriters and they know me, then they write a copy, they can contact me, for example, even sometimes some copywriters reach out to me say that, hey, I don’t want this word to be translated. Or sometimes I am telling them, hey, when you want to write copy, you need to consider translation. For example, when we first create our website, global website, we were having a cadence meetings with copywriters, we were sharing our feedback, for example, we were telling them, you are writing so long, so translators have to shorten translation, and this impacts the quality. And then they become aware of that and they start writing short, VR training data. And this is also good for them, they have visibility, because when they write the copy, their copy should be translated Well, in order to in order to bring to customers in order to meet the audience. So from that perspective, our stakeholders always encouraged us to communicate. Of course, this is not the case, always. But most of the time, we can communicate with them. This at our feedback system, for example, a few years ago, we started an initiative, and we merged our style guides, emerged translation style guide and editorial style guide, attended both processes, content creation, translators also created content. And as long as they are aligned, that’s meaningful, and this is consistent. So now, copy translators have visibility instruction, copywriter state, and copywriter say visibility for translation. And so they always constitute both sides.
Andrej Zito
Somebody has a speech in the background, but he’s going-
Hüseyin Mergan
Say this guy says some stuff outside.
Andrej Zito
Looks like he finished. Yes. Okay. Um, yeah. But my question was also related to, are the translators on your vendor site able to communicate directly with the content creators? Or are you always in the middle or somebody from your team?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually direct committee they are always in the middle. And because sometimes is wrong, instructions can be pressed to both sides. So we want to be in the middle and we want to become aware of what’s going on. Actually, even sometimes the direct rejected instruction, we direct rejected requests, we are just telling them, no, you they come to that, from that perspective. We always preach translators and countries together. We always encourage them to meet. But on the other hand, copywriters have that visibility. So copywriters can talk to us is a translation management team. And we converted instructions into translators instructions. also reflect translators pains to them at from translation agency, we have program managers, we have project managers, and we always bring them together so that they know each other, and they can share the concerns, questions.
Andrej Zito
Great. When you were talking about the process optimization, you mentioned that one of the first signals to start a process of optimization is when a process has issues. But I would say that, in my opinion, it’s this is the dangerous thing, because many people can think that the process is working for them. And they’re not aware that there could be a better alternative, you know, so they probably wouldn’t come to you and say, Hey, something’s not working. Because my experience usually, when the project managers on let’s say, the vendor side, like the client is happy with the deliveries, the pro the projects are delivered on time on budget, quality is fine. In most cases, I would say probably people will not be looking for ways to optimize it. Like don’t break something that’s, that’s working. Yeah. How do you go about this? Like, do you have maybe some, I don’t know like some regular revisions of the processes, even if nobody comes to you and say something is not working, how do you feel about looking into something that is supposedly working?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, the as you said, I mean, you cannot always evolve the processes or change them. But on the other hand, recent I read an article from Harvard Business Review, and it was saying, I mean, companies should frequently update these processes because this is for improvement. But in order to do that, we are utilizing it to we are recording defects issues, and we are doing root cause analysis together. After discussing root cause doing root cause analysis, we find the reason and if this is the process change, okay I have to I am just updating process, but this is not something I am just changing and then implementing, but this is what it comes out of analysis, root cause analysis done jointly. And also another thing, maybe I should show the benefits of the change. If this is financial benefit, I should calculate it. If this is turnaround time benefit, I should show this. And maybe for exam sometimes I am just winging an idea and this is rejected. That’s also possible, and they don’t they say, I am not interested in cost benefit, I am not interested in process time retirement. So, okay. I am just saying, okay, I don’t have anything to do. But I should show them the benefit in terms of lead time, error provenance and also cost.
Andrej Zito
Mentioned the root cause analyzes? That’s oneon the defect. What kind of defects? Are we talking about? Is it during the localization process? Or maybe if one of the end consumers complain about something, what do you guys actually analyze?
Hüseyin Mergan
For example, imagine that. Imagine that part of the agency is constantly delivering late or imagine that some translators don’t change the placeholders in photos and disclose the quality issue, you are seeing wrong numbers in the front end. So this escalates to us, and we do an analysis and we noticed that translators dead were drunk or translated or late, we are looking at effect for that. And after a while, as a Business Excellence costs as the Business Excellence partners within our team, I am taking those defects I am analyzing and calculating the cost impact, and voc impact. And I believe I can organize a meeting with project managers, translators, agency, project managers, and even sometimes with our internal customers. And we start discussion, I am always asking, why, why, why, continually asking why sometimes it turns frustrating for others. But this is the essence of the channel channelizes. Yeah, I’m asking and then I reach a point to why is are meaningless, that I am stopping asking why but I found the reason at this time, I am asking how we can avoid this, how we What should we change, how we can not repeat that is people’s idea. And we start doing brainstorming, for example, someone says, Okay, if you add up offers, you won’t have delay. And my project means you say, No, I can’t add buffer because I have a standard SLA with my party. And someone says, I am experiencing delay, because I do many jobs manually, then we are looking into automation, that it is possible or not. Or someone says, Okay, I am using the wrong version of the tool that we are asking them to upgrade. We are recording all those actions, we are assigning them to people. And that regularly, we are having meetings to follow this up. When you look at the overall plan at the end of today, you change your process, you change your approach, you change your way of working, because those actions start to a reality. And people start following those actions. For example, hhd, they change their approach, or they change how they work. Because I mean, process change is not something you are just building process from scratch, you are removing some steps or you’re adding some steps or you are designing for No, actually, this is just bringing this steps or removing some steps or it’s about sometimes changing how you treat.
Andrej Zito
You mentioned delivering late as one of the issues that you will be looking into. So that made me curious about KPIs. Are there any central KPIs that you monitor?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, in our team, every VR just Steve Jobs according to experts, for example, consumer websites is managed by someone professional websites managed by someone, and they have different KPIs. Those business people have different KPIs. So we are flexible to convert our KPIs into that expectation. But of course, overall, we are putting some KPIs in front of our vendors and they have to follow that what is cost. The other one is automatically is the turnaround time. So we have standard SLA s with them and they have to fulfill that and we are continually measuring those lead times. If we see a kind of change in the overall trend, we are approaching. Another thing I like in our team. This is something my managers initiated, we are having regular meetings with our vendors. And this is, every year, we are having regular meetings with our vendors, see every six months, and one of the targets of that meeting is to bring an idea. So we encourage our vendors to bring an idea to us.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, I’m smiling. Because when I was working at Autodesk, so that was my only time when I was working on the client side, I had this idea that we should start this initiative, which I called box of ideas. And Autodesk at that time, had four vendors. And I basically wanted them to do the same thing that you just mentioned that we would kind of like make, like a, we would gamify their effort to bring in some innovations and some suggestions back to us. And maybe like have like a leaderboard, like let’s say this vendor came up with this many ideas, and came up with this many ideas. And that would kind of like propel the the innovation, you know, so that the vendors don’t feel like they just have to be on the receiving end of the innovation. Because many times it’s just the client that things like they know better. But this would be like an open way, and collaborative way and also a little bit competitive way, how you can you know, leverage the expertise of the of the whole team that’s working on it?
Hüseyin Mergan
Exactly. Also, sometimes we start discussing the idea. And you’re just for example, we are Christians. And this also helps them to understand our site. From our questions, they can get that. Okay. I mean, these are the requirements for GBS. So these are the how they work, and they understand us better this initiative, kind of initiate the communication.
Andrej Zito
You seem to me like you’re a very professional and calm person, you always approach everything with a cold head. But I’m curious if you had experience with people underperforming? I would assume on the vendor side? And do you sometimes like lose your emotions? Do you get emotional about the work?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, I was not. I was not I was like kind of exact person. But I just took some classes just took some trainees in order to control my emotions. Because being a consultant is to moderate, you have to moderate and you have to construct from all perspectives. And you shouldn’t be emotional, the social reality of professional life. So now I am a kind of moderator, approaching to business stakeholders telling them of course, I don’t fight with anyone as in the office. And this is not up to me. But sometimes I warn them, if they do something wrong on purpose, or if they do something which impacts my client, I want them and I asked them to do a root cause analysis and ask them to bring your solution to me about activities. At the end of day we are human human is to F there’s the thing like that. So anyone can do a mistake. But the thing is, these mistakes shouldn’t be repeated. This also comes from our DNA. I mean, we love the defects not to find a scapegoat, but we love to defect to find the issue. I mean, if the first process is human dependent, this is not reliable, this is not sustainable. So this process should be human independent. And I mean, anyone shouldn’t all perform in order to run the job, and process should be lean.
Andrej Zito
Do you have someone on your team? Or are there plans to grow a team around you or
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually I’m not a standalone person in the team. I am directly reporting my manager, I am consultant and we have an analyst in the team. And I have closely working with analysts. Also we have project managers and delivery managers in our team, Delivery Manager and his team her team is responsible to do daily deliveries. If she’s website content website contact this this is HR to HR. My role is to set up the processes to manage the technology or predict the best cases or to understand customer needs. For example, we are having if there’s a kind of view job or different job comes to our team. My team comes to me and tells me about my job and I try to understand what it is. And if I have an idea I suggest sometimes my miniatures others department approach to my manager for the localization project. And she involves me, and then I start, try to understand what’s going on and how we should treat and better we should treat or not. Or sometimes I can even say, Okay, this is not human translation, just patient translation will be enough. And it doesn’t have to be done by translators. So my role is like that is to build the workflow and set up and operate it for a while. And until it becomes a staple. And after that, I am just delivering to Delivery Manager and-
Andrej Zito
Let’s talk about six sigma. Yes. So this is something you already mentioned. It’s not typical for localization. It doesn’t come from localization, it comes from production, if I’m not mistaken manufacturing. Yeah. So please tell us what this Six Sigma is about. And how do you see the adaptation to localization.
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, Lean Six Sigma is not something I just learned on my own. But in our organization, we have a Business Excellence consultant. And she, her role is to improve the nature of organization implemented the Six Sigma methodology. And she helped me to learn, I took some classes company encouraged me to take some courses, I attend some on site trainings. And then I noticed that I’m in a kind of mindset, this is not about manufacturing, or this is not about prediction, but it’s about mindset, you always and initial principle of Six Sigma is continuous improvement, you can always improve the process, you can always change things. And in order to do that, sometimes you take longer routes, sometimes you take shorter route. I mean, when we say improving your process, we always teach that it’s about shortening the process. But I mean, it’s about your goal, if you want to improve the quality, you can add some other steps. And with at least six sigma, we start implementing a defect logging system. And with that defect logging system, we start implementing root cause analysis. It’s like a, you know, a snowball. It’s growing, and how I how I do that in look at it, I was I was translators, I also worked as a project manager, I also worked as a kind of salesman in translation industry. So this taught me anything can be improved. And translation and localization does is not perfect, there are many things to improve. So the Six Sigma, create a kind of initiative for me, so I decided to share this knowledge with anyone. So that’s why I wrote an article. And this is also about how you can improve your maturity, because you asked me how you catch the innovation, how you catch the optimizing the process, this is how I tested optimization, I am always looking for improvement, I am always looking for continuous change. That is the Six Sigma taught me and this is how I approach how I reach two processes.
Andrej Zito
Is there anything more for you to implement, other than the root cause analyzes and logging the defects?
Hüseyin Mergan
Sure, actually at least six sigma as many tools for example, one of the tool is called ss matris. Ss matches in SS matches what you do, you are just changing. You’re just listing some outputs that results. And then you’re also listing all kinds of possible reasons. And with a tip you are scoring at after scoring them, which you can start changing the first thing on the list with the highest score. This useful to another tool is you’re just calculating these priority numbers in the process. while designing your process, you are still with your team, you are putting your process map and you start discussing the possible issues. For example, one say, okay, we can explain this ttranslationdelay here because of that, okay, and then you’re just calculating your risk priority number, which describes number is calculated by severity, frequency, how you how frequent you do it, and at the end of the day, you receive this priority number, you try to mitigate those risks. And another two, I didn’t like this type of you are just throwing your process You are listing inputs outputs and suppliers and also you are listing all clients customers, I mean customers here does not mean that the person who gave you the money the customer he is is the one who delivers your output. For example, I am a translator I deliver translation proofreader is my customer proofreader, Qantas job delivers job to project manager, project manager is the customer project manager sends the job to position called agent ish localization engineers, the customers. So, that creates an ecosystem brings all stakeholders together and you have full or full map what impacts who as you start discussing together, and you find the bottlenecks in the process. And any another tool is sort of common in a business world, BVC voice of customers, you circulate a survey, you get the results. And from that results, you are just defining measurable, measurable outputs critical to quality t t to be called MC t Q. For example, imagine that you are preparing a coffee. And your customers told you my coffee is bitter, my coffee is not dark. So, bitterness, you cannot measure it. So you are just trying to convert this into a measurable format. For example, you tell them, if I put wants to pull off coffee, it won’t be British. So once kind of coffee is measurable, everytime you calculated you put fans can have coffee or nuts or sugar you are you can measure it. The core of the six sigma is something and it says you cannot improve the things you cannot measure if you don’t measure. So in order to improve it, you have to measure it. So that leads to a mindset to record everything to measure everything. And to improve everything.
Andrej Zito
As you mentioned to measure everything. Are you buying insurance utilizing Big Data somehow for localization?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, big data is something you know, has to work it was using that but I mean, but big data, we are just using some translation management report visual system reports for example, lead time that pages translators lead time, even rip reports that shows us how long does it take to go from one stage to another stage. Also, we have reports that measures measure the issues experienced on the process, for example, you upload the file to TMS and all of a sudden interval to recover your exception. We are hearing reports about those and we under try to understand why we have them. Also we have reports that shows us response time the apple chapter TMS, and I can see that the translators get the job. So if the translater, got the job one day later. I mean, project manager cannot tell me, he just did the delays, because you sent the job one day later. So from that perspective, we are using data. I am not sure whether it is big, or it is as big as you expect. But we are using some system management system reports.
Andrej Zito
Mm hmm. Yeah. Now that you’re talking about the translation management systems, do you have any one preferred solution? Or do you try to use different tools for different teams based on their requirements?
Hüseyin Mergan
We are currently using one tool one translation management system, but it is solely for websites. We built our own translation management system. It’s an automated system. And this automated system talks to our translation management system where translators translate. Our internal translation management system is not for translators. It is like an edit or it’s like a hub and the our translation management system, we deeply customize it and we are not using it out of the box but we implement many customization sometimes it is not manageable, I accept but at the end of a busy city and we are just trying to implement
Andrej Zito
is it just to monitor the the website localization progress or is it to send the content to the TMS?
Hüseyin Mergan
internal team is to send content to TMS because we are centralizing translation memory in our internal system. So many different translation management system, if they share the same data, they are using it. Why we don’t at TMS, maybe you can ask that because at the end of day, this translation memory that internal translation management system increases speed. Also, it managed the repetitions. So we don’t have to implement Crossfire repetition or TMS. Or sometimes we can change the frick urgency of the job from internal system. So this is for automation. And with the help of the tool, we don’t have to manually create the jobs in TMS, it’s automatically sending and receiving and sending data to CMS, we are monitoring tool, and we are updating the tool for example, another benefit of this tool, imagine that we decided a trademark for vantur, we can download all the translation, we can simply trademark for all the terms and we can upload it and all of a sudden, all translation will be updated. And CMS will be updated. So you don’t have to send it to translators and then manually change them.
Andrej Zito
Mm hmm. One thing that I’ve noticed on your profile is that you lead translation stream for key digital projects, what what is a translation stream mean?
Hüseyin Mergan
Translation stream actually Valley to transfer digital projects, there are many stakeholders. One of the stakeholders is content management to other stakeholders, information systems, IT systems, IT teams, and other stakeholders. And we call all of those stakeholders responsibility areas esteem. So my role is to manage translation and localization strip. So I am managing all kinds of operations in that area. I am the person who create term lists, I am the person who creates style guide, I am the person who manage the translators. But that does not mean that I am just working individually and isolated. So all those teams come together, share the experience and feedbacks and work together. That’s why we call them stream because it helps us to lead in the project.
Andrej Zito
How do you remember starting and implementing machine translation? And where where are you now? As a Sony, do you have your own engine? Do you utilize something?
Hüseyin Mergan
We don’t have our own engine, but we are working with our vendors and we start to implement machine translation tanton that is required, they implemented and the utilizing that way. And for mission translation, we are always open we are we are not, for example, you we don’t use pure mission translation. Sometimes we use positivity. Because we have public data and you cannot just publish and the what is different in our area, we sell hard leash. So if you put the wrong copy dash, it may end up with a legal case. So that’s why we are careful about content quality. But of course, there are some scenarios that pure machine translation can be used. And all such cases, we are utilizing some machine translation tools hosted by our vendors.
Andrej Zito
You already mentioned the robotic process automation. And you even wrote an article about that. Could you describe as what what what it is about?
Hüseyin Mergan
Robotic Process Automation is you can imagine as a kind of macro. Okay. And this what this macro does, you can apply it in any place. The main idea behind this writing this article to attract attention of localization community and increased awareness of property events are about mission robotic process automation. Because, you know, maybe someone’s applying from some position committee but robotic Process Automation is what you do, you take a process, and you find the non video add tasks. For example, you have a you are creating a report in databases to see the status of your transactions. So you are spending some time to create this report. And this doesn’t add any value to your job. Because your customers does is not aware of that. Or it doesn’t add anything to your customers due to that report for your own purpose. So you can ask the robot to create it. And you will say two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is. Or imagine that you’re just having to file excellent. flat file and you have to take one sentence and then you have to paste it to exam one by one, you don’t like it. And it doesn’t add any value to your job. And it is not meaning of your life, right? So you can ask trouble to do it to mean it behind George crueset mission, you are analyzing your process. And you’re just asking robot to automate the processes that doesn’t have any value at all. So that doesn’t require any decision. Such as, imagine that I How can I apply that to your localization industry, you are a translator. And there’s the marketplace. First come first serve, job is posted marketplace. And you always have to refresh the website. It’s not enjoying, you have to do your translation. So you can set up a report as robot and it can refresh on your behalf and Vantage outcomes, it automatically accepts. Alright, this is how we can see. Or imagine that you are to translation jobs, and you have to upload them to your TMS. At the end of the day, your way here is to translate your way is not to upload the translation. So you can put your translations into a folder, and robot can take them and upload them on your behalf. So there are many steps we follow. And they don’t have any value, they don’t add any value. Some of them are very enabling, but not really added. So we can use people’s energy and brain for decisions for more creative works. So robots can do such kind of non video tasks or easy tasks or the test people don’t have to do.
Andrej Zito
The word robot is a little bit abstract to me. I can just imagine some, you know, actual robot doing something. But how would you automate something or robot eyes something when it comes to translation? Are there any special tools that where you will record the sequence of the steps that you do on a computer and it remembers?
Hüseyin Mergan
Ah Yes, actually, the robot is not a physicalty. It’s a soft fish. And it looks like a person it is hosted on a server or all your competition. And you just trigger the action. And that sort of starts running. It works like a macro and common tools. There are many tools in place. But my favorite tools you iPad, I like it because it is just drag and drop. I am not a programmer. So I am just creating report by dragging and dropping. And other tool that’s famous is blue prism. It is more enterprise more expensive, more expensive. UiPath is a free version, for example, you can apply it as what you do. First of all, you have to create your process. And you have to create your sequence of steps at keystroke level. And you map them in the UI pad interface. And you define the action type. For example, action can be read email, action can be sent email action can be refresh, you are just defining those actions. And then it starts to eat what you want. For example, once I did a report robot for my wife, she was getting some names from one website and not pasting them in Excel depsite does not give me an export. She is refreshing copy pasting, refreshing, copying, pasting, refreshing, and she asked my head and I don’t like such kind of teeth. But instead I started investigating. I said maybe there’s a macro. And I found this RP two. I did a small to and I just said okay, it will finish in 10 minutes. And she said No, it won’t. I said yes. Yes. No worries. This. I said dinner and she said you didn’t do it. I said okay, it’s doing Don’t worry. I showed I showed her my screen. And my you know, my mouse pointer was just we get out screen on its own. It was refreshing copying and pasting, efficient copying and pasting. For example, they For example, we apply this robot for certain supports. I mean, we use it for our own purpose in our follow up day jobs. So why should I try to create a report every day and robots creating a sending an email to me?
Andrej Zito
Thank you for the tip for the successful marriage or robotic process automation. The other article that you wrote about and this is what I’m really curious about because I’m open to try it. about right now is about the Pomodoro Technique. So I’m really curious how you apply Pomodoro Technique. So maybe first give us a quick introduction to pomodora technique, and then how you apply it during your day.
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, Pomodoro Technique is not something you can utilize your country’s job, for example, while calculating a bunch of you can’t use it, because you don’t have to be you don’t have to be interrupted. But while during the translation, you can use it while to get engineering work, you can do it and how I get that politic, let me first introduce promoter techniques, you are splitting your day into faces, short breaks, for example, you are just thinking that I will work continuously without any interruption for 20 minutes, and then it will take five minutes break, you take five minutes break, and then you stop in under 20 minutes, five minutes break turret to enemies work. And then this time you take 10 minutes. And what I noticed that I was you know lecturing at university, I have to prepare some slides, and I am not able to focus. So I have, I had a focus problem. And meanwhile, I want to read some books, but I am not able to focus. So I just thought I should find a technique about that. While talking to a friend. He mentioned that there is a technique called pomodoro. I start searching for what is the kind of tomato in Italian, there are tomato timers. And I start I just search an application. I am sure someone invented it. And I noticed there are some apps are installed easy. The easiest one, I set up three minutes and five minutes break 20 minutes, five minute breaks, I started I noticed that it is effective. And you can use it. And I remember today if I was translators, I saw for example, I was translating, I will start searching a term. And then I ended up a forum reading something else. This is how translators are facing disruption or the disturbance. So I thought it can be helpful for translators. That’s why I decided to wrote about it. And this is I hate how I applied pomodoro in my life.
Andrej Zito
How does the timer help you focus that part, I don’t understand?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, you set the timer and you leave it around. And after that point, you have to pay attention, you shouldn’t care about integers, you should don’t touch your phone, you shouldn’t play to things on your desk, you should only focus on the things you set. And imagine that you are to get five pages of translation, and you only do the five pages of translation, you are not watching Netflix or you are not playing video game or you are not playing with the Facebook account, you only do the translation after 20 minutes time with bells, you heard the voice you have to reach and then you stop. And during five minutes, you are not this time you are not touching the test. You are not looking to translation. But you do what you want. At the end of five minutes, the timer again rings. And at this time you are going back to work. And then you start working again. It works like that. So SSC, is not the tool or is not the time of SSC, it is the ambition to stay focused. And you are paying attention not to distract.
Andrej Zito
Right? But you can do that even without a timer. Right? Does the timer help you like you set yourself a goal to achieve within that one pomodoro. And that’s why I’d say maybe you give yourself a time limit. So that puts a pressure on user you like instead of doing similar things you want to actually complete and focus on that one task.
Hüseyin Mergan
Exactly. That’s what the tool does. For example, when you start a task you are say, I can complete that test in five pomodoros. So you plan your day in that way. And you set up five pomodoros in your app. And then you start working first pomodoro then second, third, fourth, fifth, you should complete it. So in order to catch a time you are always you always stay focused.
Andrej Zito
Do you use it yourself? Because you mentioned that for continuous work and I’m not sure what exactly you meant by that. To me, it’s more like when I’m in the momentum when I’m in the zone when I’m really doing something that I cannot finish within let’s say 25 minutes, then I don’t want to be interrupt.
Hüseyin Mergan
For example, sometimes I’m preparing a budget in budget you have to consider meetings, you have to talk with other peoples. And you have to be careful. And you do a calculation in the middle of the competition. Imagine that the boundaries.
Andrej Zito
Yeah.
Hüseyin Mergan
So you don’t want to be disturbed. That’s why I say unusual treat a continuous works of some calculations that you should treat more stable. And you should treat me standard chops, rather than to any kind of changing or fluctuating jobs or, for example, you have to have a meeting, you cannot treat it kamatera. Because at one point meetings can take longer than expected.
Andrej Zito
Right? Yeah, I know that we were supposed to have our interview yesterday, but you were busy with the meetings? Is that how most of your day look like? Is it mostly meetings? How do you start and schedule your day?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, I’m a project person, I don’t have business as usual, I don’t have standard translation duties. That’s good thing I like about my life, I don’t like duties. So, I always have new projects, I always have some tasks. And on the weekly basis, I am putting some tasks we are discussing with my managers, and it says together and those tasks should be completed certain time. So I always my plan in front of me, I am checking them. And then I start working on them. I am planning my day. The first thing I did in the morning is to plan my day. So I put all my meetings in calendars, I also put the tasks and I assigned some estimated time for them, I start doing that I attend meetings, actually, for few years, my life is more standard. I don’t have unexpected meetings frequently. But sometimes it happens. I spent most of my time by attending meetings, because sometimes there are some jobs that they have issue or there are some jobs they need improvement or there are some jobs, our customers are not happy or there are some jobs, customers are super happy and want to do something else. And I am attending such meetings to understand the need or to guide them or to tell what is possible not not possible or how we can implement such kinds of discussions and this is how my life goes on. And other than that, of course, I am supporting my friends teammates, sometimes when they have an issue, they come to me and I am supporting them, this is how I work.
Andrej Zito
This is a good question for you. What are you curious about right now?
Hüseyin Mergan
I am curious about right now about intelligent robotic Process Automation
Andrej Zito
This next level
Hüseyin Mergan
Because RPA is now all technology they call it all technology for me it is new, intelligent robotic Process Automation improves the brain state decision making into robotic process automation, this just does not exist in forge cross automation. And also, I am trying to say
Andrej Zito
Is it sir, is it implementation of AI into the
Hüseyin Mergan
Yes, exactly, exactly. It’s the foundation of AI, because system tries to mimic your behaviors and decisions. And in order to do that, you have to have full map full with unhappy paths in the process and exceptions. So, system makes some decisions in that you can imagine like that, you are having a standard translation job. And you say, if the word count is more than that, set it up deadline in this day, and if the content is legal, assign it to that translate. It works like that. So human decision was taken by a robot, but they are not advanced decisions. They are primitive decisions. Mm hmm. Another thing I am focused on is mindfulness. I am trying to learn mindfulness and apply it in my life from here. Yeah, it is very important. I noticed that it improves situational awareness. Also, it brings more quote to your life. It is good to become aware of your life and a lot of things around you.
Andrej Zito
How do you go about that? And what have you learned so far?
Hüseyin Mergan
Mindfulness, first of all, I learned you have to listen to yourself. That’s how I start that I start reading your book, just out of curiosity, and I just started testing. And then it took me to emotional quotient EQ, I started reading about that in order to improve my empathy. Fast I was lack of empathy. And then I just thought, I start searching some courses and I found some Coursera course it was very close. I mean the instructor gave you some insight assignments you have to complete them there are peer reviews, and you start discussions and so on. It’s so effective. Now, I am trying to find some books and I am trying to know myself. Also, there are some practices you can apply in your home such as meditation as well. So I am doing those. He is not something I am totally here. Once I was practicing Aikido, in the essence of Aikido, you have to become aware of yourself and your neighborhood. So it attacked by attaching now I am trying to learn it better and applied to my life.
Andrej Zito
Have you read the book The Power of Now? That’s the one I read about?
Hüseyin Mergan
No, not yet. I will lead it. But I just did some touch books.
Andrej Zito
What do you think is wrong with our industry?
Hüseyin Mergan
I don’t want to say it is wrong. But of course, there are some improvements in coming to my point. Because you know everything is built with an experience. So we cannot call them wrong, but we can call them outdated, we can call them needs to be improved and so on. I mean, for example, we can bring more automation and DTP process can be better for I don’t like the TP processes and they are so long, that should be way of streamlining them. Or that time standards about DTP tools. For example, you either have to InDesign you either have to each and so on. So there should be standards about that. And CMS antivirus integrations can be standardized, for example, there are many CMS and they are all have different protocols that can be standardized. Those artists that needs to be improved. At other times, I don’t think there are bad things in our industry. But there are points to improve.
Andrej Zito
How are you thinking about improving the DTP processes?
Hüseyin Mergan
I mean, there should be standard about it. I mean, we shouldn’t rely on the tools, for example, applications. When I first started translation, we were doing screen tests, we were doing software tests. And now, I mean, you don’t experience trans truncation in the software, because internationalization improved that you don’t experience you know, image only because responsive designs find an answer to that. So I mean, Tasha p v, have mentioned that in TTP processes. So this is not about translation, but this is about the truth, very creative, creative content collaterals. So standardization start should start from that. And all to all the typicals should export an XML file, maybe same kind of XML attributes are well defined. And those examples should be used by translation tools. And in that it can be standardized.
Andrej Zito
What are you excited about in 2020?
Do you ask my honest opinion or optimistic opinion?
Andrej Zito
You can give us both.
Okay, my honest opinion, I set my expectations at minimum for 2020. It didn’t start well. It’s not going well unspeaking. Because we have pandemic and we are just locked in the house, we are not going outside. My biggest excitement about 2020 is to finish it as early as possible is to have 2021. So this is my honest opinion, but my optimistic opinion is, and we are just trying to get used to new way of working. And we become more flexible. And this also transform to companies about workforce about workplace. And this is good. For example. I know from my friends, in the past, some companies are not familiar with it work from home, or they’re not always skeptical about that kind of approach. But now, they have to all work from home. Luckily, our organization is always you know, supporting work from home. So on first day of working from home, we didn’t even have an issue with quit started. We didn’t have an issue. We already have our setups and so on. So this is the biggest thing and biggest takeaway from 2020.
Andrej Zito
What are the things that you change your mind about during your life journey?
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, I’m kind of flexible person. So I’m always start the executive activities. That makes me kind of inconsistent. But my biggest change in my life is to learn the importance of communication. I mean, it is not about doing your job, good. It’s not about you can be genius, and you can be the best person in the room. But as long as you don’t communicate, I mean, you cannot sell your ideas, you cannot persuade other people, or you can disturb other people. So my biggest change, especially within a few years, and either the importance of communication, and I learned importance of empathy. That’s my biggest transformation in my life.
Andrej Zito
So on the other hand, is there something absurd or stupid that you still do?
Hüseyin Mergan
Of course, there are some teas I do. One of these Yeah, for example, while vertigo I take on my headset, but I don’t I always forget to play the music. This is absurd thing. I mean, another thing about my work, I am very conservative about my computer setup. And obsessed about the speed of my competition. At the end of the day, this is just a competent and at the end of the day, you will finish the job if you while you are worried about computer speed. I think like that, then I think a lot but is Lt. I don’t follow that. Whenever it gets stuck. I turn crazy. And I start talking to it. And it’s nonsense. It’s not changing, or it doesn’t think that Oh, okay. I just disturbed to say I offend him. So I should work faster. It doesn’t say like that. This is the most absurd thing I do.
Andrej Zito
Okay, what is your computer right now?
Hüseyin Mergan
My computers? My personal PC is Asus? And my work PC is HP.
Andrej Zito
Okay, is there anything I should have asked you, but I didn’t?
Hüseyin Mergan
No I think we discussed lots of details very much. Thank you for your time and for giving this opportunity to me.
Andrej Zito
So okay, we’re not going to wrap up. So your final words first. This is my usually my final question. So this is your opportunity to speak to everyone in the industry, what would you tell them?
Hüseyin Mergan
They should be more open to share our opinions and to share our experiences. And people should always share the knowledge. That’s my only work to the cup, otherwise, we cannot improve?
Andrej Zito
Yeah. Are you going to start a YouTube channel with me? Where we can share our experience?
Hüseyin Mergan
Why not, of course
Andrej Zito
One of the reasons why I actually started doing like YouTube and the podcast and my website, everything. I just really wanted to like dump all my knowledge before I forget about it, you know, just to the rest of the world and you guys deal with it.
Hüseyin Mergan
Actually, it’s a good idea. I do it to my students, I am always sharing with them. Actually, I don’t have time to write. I want to write more articles. But I’m not able to write because of the toolkits. I have to keep this data strictly and but I am just trying to share my knowledge with my students. And I always ask them to challenge me. And they challenge me to brainstorm eganville learn both sides learn. This is how I do it. I should find more effective way of doing that.
Andrej Zito
Yeah. This is one way I think through podcasts. It’s one to many people, like people can always pull that knowledge that you just share with us. So thank you again, Hüseyin for the interview.
Hüseyin Mergan
Thank you very much for your time.
Andrej Zito
All right.
Hüseyin Mergan
It’s a pleasure for me as well.
Andrej Zito
See you next time Hüseyin, bye bye.
Hüseyin Mergan
See you. Bye!
