What does a localization engineer do and why it’s important to have one on your project? I started my localization career as an engineer in Moravia, you’ll hear my experience and what it was like “back in the old days”. Listen NOW at 05:06.
More topics:
- The benefits of multilingual chatbots
- A new dubbing community app Produb
- The difference between hiring freelance translators and translation agencies
- How to localize your translations.
This is episode #8 of my speaking practice, also known as the Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization and #translation news across social media delivered to you by the power of my voice.
Timestamps:
05:06 – The life of a localization engineer, my baby steps in the localization
38:55 – Why are chatbots good for your business and when to localize them
51:35 – Produb – a new app for the dubbing community
1:02:21 – Who should you hire – freelancers or translation agencies?
1:16:22 – The Translation Company introduces the concept of localizing translations…?!
Andrej Zito
Hi everyone, this is Andrej with episode number eight of the localization podcast. This one actually took me a little while for me to press the recording, because I’m in a very special environment. It’s Tuesday, it’s 10:45pm. And I’m actually staying with my mom’s Airbnb, and she’s sleeping right next door. So for me, starting this recording, actually took a lot of time, you know, I was delaying things I was trying to do other things I was trying to prepare myself, I did like couple of tests. But here I am. And it’s usually as you probably know, from your own experience, once you take the first step, the fear usually goes away. So now I’m feeling more confident and comfortable just talking. While I know that she’s in the room next door. And she’s probably trying to sleep. But I got the permission to do this recording.
Andrej Zito
So here I am. It’s Tuesday. And as I mentioned in Episode Seven, which I just released, earlier today, at 10am. I had a couple of more articles left from the preparation that I did for the previous week. Because for Episode Seven, I only included two articles. And it already took me one hour to cover them all. So I just decided to release that. And here I am going to going back to the articles that I had left. And I’m very actually happy that I took this action right after releasing the podcast. Because also Well, first of all, I want to do more content. Without overthinking things too much like jump right in into it. As I finished my work duties and and the second thing is that as I’ll be going to Philippines, maybe I will need some time to adjust which is probably just an excuse right now. But this will kind of give me like a backup option.
Andrej Zito
And I can actually do the editing on the flight to Philippines. So we’re three minutes in and I forgot to mentioned two disclaimers. One of them is if you are new to the podcast, consider this as my speaking practice. And that was one of the reasons why I decided to start this podcast. And basically what I do here is that I go over the news on slater.com. And also on posts across different social media. In my recent episode, it’s been mainly Twitter and LinkedIn that’s a very productive on new content that different companies share. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m kind of like a scavenger from Star Wars. What was the name? The the the new chick? I forgot her name. Yeah, whatever. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m scrapping the, the the internet for relevant and interesting content that also teaches me something and I’m here to share that with you.
Andrej Zito
And hopefully, you’ll get something out of it as well. And always I try to provide my commentary. Either I agree with it, or I disagree with it, and I try to add something on top of it, especially if I have a certain experience in that area, so that I don’t just reread someone else’s comment. So I guess that’s it for the intro. Let me look at my list of articles that I have. And I have 12345 articles left. And I’ll start with the one which is posted by a new company that we haven’t had in the podcast yet and it’s called phrase.com and this is from their blog, and the blog post is about a day in the life of a software localization engineer. So for me, for for those of you that haven’t checked my profile on LinkedIn or that haven’t worked with me, I actually started my career as a localization engineer in Moravia. That was a long, long time ago.
Andrej Zito
I think it was 20, or maybe 21. I think it was in the second year of my university studies in Brno. And I just ended up, I was just basically looking for any entry level job. And at the time, I was studying computer science. So I wanted to do something, maybe like programming, like a software engineer, something like that. But then I somehow ended up in the basement of this Czech company called Moravia. And because they had like a peak period, there were just two candidates for a job and they hired two of them. I don’t think they even paid much attention to the tests. So I got my job. And I started working as I think the first thing that I was doing, I was faking some screenshots for some Chinese company or something like that.
Andrej Zito
And then I was moved into a Microsoft group where I was working on was I working on, I was working on definitely on Windows Vista, then I was working on Windows Server, I think 2008, and then another Windows Server. And that was basically three years of my life in Moravia. And after that, I quit the company. So for me, this blog post will be pretty much kind of like the memory of my own first experience with localization, and I’m trying to think if we had any significant engineers at lionbridge. So in language, no, I don’t actually remember because like the whole team that was working on the count that I was transitioning was full of PMS. But in Autodesk engineers were heavily heavily involved, because we were doing full software localization of all their main products. So that role was quite critical. But anyway, let’s try to read the article.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so what exactly does a software localization engineer do? In a nutshell, software localization engineer takes apart all the elements of software that are to be localized, and puts them back together once a localization is done. I think that’s a pretty accurate description, simplified, but that’s about it. So this was the introduction, now they’re going into the actual tasks that they do. So preparing for localization, the first step you would take in a localization project assigned to you is to check if the software has been sufficiently internationalized to enable the localization, the source code of the software should be separate separated from all localized elements so that you can extract them easily.
Andrej Zito
So from what I remember, the experience in Autodesk was that the internationalization part would usually be done by the localization engineers at Autodesk because they were more experienced. And they had better. I mean, closer collaboration with the dev team. And I think like, maybe I’m wrong here. But to me, internationalization, internationalization is mostly important, like at the beginning, where the dev teams are like, kind of like trying to work towards their first localization. So you need to be there, too. Set up the rules and basically educate them on what needs to be done so that the software is easier to localize. Then hopefully, once these rules are in place, they will be able to follow them and you will have less trouble so you will have less effort in the inter nationalization. department.
Andrej Zito
So the next step is extraction. So you pull out all files with translatable text, and any other elements, for example, images that need to be localized. These are then compiled into localization toolkit for translate translators, together with instructions for translation. So this is a tricky part. Because that need to be localized. So when it comes to toolkit and instructions for toolkit for for translation, um, I don’t actually have that experience where localization engineers would be actually compiling the instructions for translate translation translators is usually the project manager. I mean, I’m pretty sure like that the engineer can provide some valuable information. But he usually just passes the information to the PM, who should be the last person to compile the final instructions for translation.
Andrej Zito
And also extraction. I’m just thinking of saying that this is something that happens usually automatically using the the CAD tools, or if you have, like, some API’s in place. So are maybe some script. So this is more of a, I think this is actually kind of like related to the internet, international nationalization that we talked about, right before that, because if you have that set correctly, and you know what to expect and from where to grab the, the strings for translation, then the extraction would be pretty much automated. Okay. toolkit is, so once the toolkit is handed over, it’s time to sit back and relax. No, not really, your translators might need some support in the process. And this is, this is actually, this reminds me of how the role distribution worked in morava.
Andrej Zito
Because in morava, the localization needs and even the engineers were actually sending the handoffs to translators or two translation vendors on their own. And I think I have never seen such a model in any other company, it’s usually the pm who dispatches the the handoffs and everything, but in Moravia, it was the engineering team actually. So when I was working there as an engineer, and you know, I was, as soon as I can, like, felt for the first time, like confident like about my skills, and what I can do, I started to, to, to, to get more cocky. And I was like, asking myself, you know, like, what actually do the freaking PMS Do you know, like, because like, we got the files from, from the clan, which at the time was Microsoft, we prepared everything we analyzed the source files, then we just pass the word count to the PMS.
Andrej Zito
And they said, Okay, please split it this way, and send it to these and these people, and then give them give them these deadlines. And then we would prepare everything, and we would send it to for translation for all the languages. And then once the translations were complete, we would put it back into the, into the into the build, or will deliver the translations and then it would go to testing and then we would fix the defect, you know, so like, I felt like, like the engineering team in morava was like, pulling gold, the weight. And like the teams, I felt were like, kind of like administrators, although they were probably getting a lot more money for the job than we were. But anyway, I would actually be interested if there any other companies that have this role distribution. I’m not even sure if Moravia still has this thing. maybe if it was just at the time.
Andrej Zito
Anyway, so going back Article I get sidetracked once again. The next thing that you do is you support a translation. So that’s kind of like what I was sharing from my own experience is that you likely need to answer a few query queries from translators. Maybe they need clarification on a particular element, or there’s a problem with their localization tool that needs immediate attention. So when you get a bit of room in your schedule, it is the right time to update and optimize the translation memory, the database that stores previous translations for later use, and translators rely heavily on to increase speed and consistency. So two things supporting Yes, definitely. Although I know that, like, again, going back to Moravia, I know that we were supporting the translators, like a lot with the queries.
Andrej Zito
And if I’m not mistaken, maybe even the engineers were again, the ones managing the the the queries. And we were like, if we couldn’t answer them on our own or the PMS couldn’t then we would ask or like escalate back to the client or the dev team to see if they can answer it. Again, this is something that I don’t think it’s happening in our companies, I don’t think that actually engineers would be involved in query management. Unless, of course, the pm is the first point of contact for the queries. And maybe, if the pm feels that the query is like quite technical, and the owl, he could answer it, then they will be contacted. But I think more albia, the engineers were the first point of contact, especially since as an engineer.
Andrej Zito
And if we’re strictly speaking about software, you probably know a lot more about the software and the individual strings, and you have more know how to do some research about like, where the stream would appear in software and stuff like that. Compared to a pm. Anyway, I need some drink. And I’m actually drinking Stella that was left here in this Airbnb. So it’s a free drink. I can’t resist. And so the second part of the of the supporting the supporting growth, according to the article was updating and optimizing translation memory. So this, this seems kind of like it’s like something that was happening, like in the 20th century, where we didn’t have all these pmss and all these cloud solutions. So I’m not even sure like if Ellie’s would manually have to update themes in this age, and what the hell is even optimizing the translation memory mean, I have no idea Do you just press like some button and something happens, I don’t know.
Andrej Zito
But this really seems like a filler thing, just to put something in this paragraph. It’s definitely not something critical, I would say. Okay, moving on. Next is building and testing the localized product. So this is where you put everything together, you integrate the translated files into the software to create a new localized version of it. When done correctly, the software should speak a new language. Now comes somewhat tedious, but critical task of the job testing, the new version of the software will enter into code and the software can look broken. or wrong translation of a call to action button, and the user is put off immediately. If you enjoy finding and fixing bugs, then you’re at the great advantage here. So I’m not sure which company actually the Lee does testing as well.
Andrej Zito
Because in my experience again, you probably want to separate the people who are testing things from the people who are fixing things. Testing, usually you want to look at it from the end user perspective. While the people who are fixing stuff they want to have deep knowledge of what’s inside a box. So I don’t actually see alleys as testers of localized product. But maybe if the product is like small maybe. But still, I would say that it should be done by someone else. And then the last part here is, this is, this is the last part about what exactly as a software localization engineer do. So the last part is standardizing the process. And so this is just like a general blah, blah, about streamlining localization by standardizing the process and establishing consistency through terminology management, glossaries, and style guide.
Andrej Zito
So blah, blah, blah. So I think standardizing the processes. Everyone’s duty. So of course, isn’t engineer you do it for the engineering processes. But this is not like the core of your task. And my throat is drawing again, oh, new. So the next question still within this article, what are the daily challenges of a software localization engineer, fixing bugs and errors? files get corrupted small errors sneak into the code. And suddenly, nothing is working anymore. Having a knack for experimenting, troubleshooting and persistent problem solving definitely come in handy here. So yeah. Again, from my morava experience, I think, when we were doing Windows Vista, I think into, I think it was more than 10 languages, maybe 12 languages, I don’t remember right now. And at some point, you get, I think we had like, I don’t know, maybe even up to 1000 defects.
Andrej Zito
And we were really, it was actually kind of like, I think I hate probably hated it at that point. Because like, it was too much like I was working serious over time when I was doing the lead engineering lead part on Windows Vista. And we had to deal with all these bunch of languages, but we eventually, like optimize the process pretty well. And then what I remember is that the team that was working on, I don’t remember what was their product, it was the auto Microsoft team. And they had these really great idea which they called I think it was called targeting. So we were working working in bi weekly cycles, I think during we started so that was that was quite hardcore. So you would get new build, you would prepare the, I think was called locks to do packages, you would send them for translation, you separate the linguistic defects, and you would send them all to the translation teams.
Andrej Zito
So they will have to translate and also fix the linguistic defects. And because at that time, there was no cloud solution or anything. So it means the ownership of the EDB that was the file format back then for lock studio, the ownership was with with the translators, so we couldn’t fix the technical issues, but what this team came up with was that you could still do the investigation of where you will need to fix the defects and you would just know down the resource ID and the string. And so once you get the files back from the translators, you would you wouldn’t have to do the investigation from that point you would already be prepared and you would know where to fix it. So fixing would go much much faster. At the end when it comes to fixing I also remember the funny part was I remember this very well.
Andrej Zito
We were actually fixing like a defect on a Windows Media Player. And I think we just like saw like some screenshots and you would like need to work work out of magic and like identify like what exactly you need to change in in locks to do. And I remember that in locks to do as like a source string. We only had a couple of numbers. And I so this is me bragging bragging about my boxing seals. I was the one who kind of like Farther leg, the members in the string actually represent like a position or something like that, or a certain string where it starts. So we would actually had to fix the the back by actually changing the value of the coordinates. So typically, like when you have like a number, you usually don’t localize it. But this time, we had to sort of localize it to basically move the, the target string. And he had a source Windows Media Player.
Andrej Zito
So I was kind of happy that I was working on something that I’m actually using, although everybody says that Windows Vista was not the good one, that Microsoft does a good OS every second release. But I’m still very happy that they worked on that project. Going back to the article. So that was fixing books and errors, balancing the technical and non technical side. So this is you’ll find yourself in between developers and translators with the challenge to learn the workflow smoothly from one to the other, and back. translators typically want to understand code, so you might have to explain technical terms and issues to non technical people. Yep, I agree with this. And this is actually where it helps if you want to use the word empathy, because Gary Vee uses the word empathy a lot.
Andrej Zito
And if you have empathy for people who don’t understand tech too much, and you can explain it to them in a very dummy way, so that they understand. And I have to admit that sometimes I lose patience with people who don’t understand tech too much. The last thing here is working with remote teams. Is there anything interesting here, you work with people in different time zones, that’s normal, your communication and coordination skills might be stretched? Blah, blah, blah, okay, nothing important. And here we go. Next part, what skills should a software localization engineer have? You should understand the coat? Kinda, but I don’t think it’s mandatory think. But yeah, it definitely helps. Okay, so let’s, let’s, let’s keep it there. Understand the code know the right tools.
Andrej Zito
So it’s a big plus, when you’re already comfortable using TMS get tools, CMS systems, translation memories and quality assurance tools. That is probably true, Alice should be the masters of the tools. Pay attention to the detail. The devil is in the details when it comes to software localization. A bug in the code or wrong translation can make the company look unprofessional. And I guess it’s your duty to discover this. But I already talked about it. I think it’s more for the QA people. Next thing solve problems. Everybody has to solve problems. So I guess that’s normal, communicate and work in team again, this is I think, what everybody needs to do anyway, these days. localization is laudable in collaboration. Yes, thank you. We know that. wrapping it up. So finally, we’re at the end.
Andrej Zito
I’m just going to read this because this is like the final paragraph of this article. Software localization engineer is an exciting, highly sought after role. If you love to solve problems, are not intimidated by new technology, and can handle a technical as well as the non technical side, then you likely thrive in this role. You can learn a lot about different languages, cultures and how software is shaping the world. Yep, that’s, that’s nice. So before we go away from this company, because it’s their first time, it’s their beaut debut debut. On the podcast, I’m going to have a quick look at their website. So the website is phrase.com. So very easy. And I had no idea what they do. They have actually very nice icon on the page. I think it’s like a parrot or something. But anyway, let’s look at their value proposition what these guys actually do.
Andrej Zito
So they say they’re making localization work. To say goodbye to huge translation spreadsheets, lengthy email, communication, broken language files, too little context. In transparent process, held back releases and everything else that can make localization a pain. Okay? And I’m going to scroll down because right now I’m confused about what it actually is. So it’s everything you need to boost your localization phrase is the place where localization teams come together to release translations faster and easier than ever before. Okay, so it’s kind of like a, like, a, like a TMS? You probably know, but I’m kind of like that end to end localization and cloud. So what I do is API integrations, translation editor, and quality checks. They offer a better localization experience for everyone. Okay, here it is phrases a translation management solution.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so I was actually right. Build with the whole team in mind developer manager translator. Okay, so I don’t know like what actually makes them different, but I do like their website. Let me look at the features. Oh, actually, no. Oh, maybe yes. Okay. Features, the features built to relieve your localization pain. discover why localization no longer needs to be an issue by experiencing phrase, the most cutting edge localization solution on the market. Okay. big words, big words. So phrase is developer centric. phrase has a strong focus on addressing developer needs. For us. This means a fast and reliable import and export of language files, versatile API and dedicated ci tool support for over 40 plus file formats, branching functionalities in phrase and a whole lot more. Getting Things Done, organize all your software translation projects in the form of jobs directly in phrase.
Andrej Zito
Okay, I like that. That’s more for managers. We speak your formats. They support tons of localization file formats across platforms and programming languages. Foster translation workflow, rapidly built production ready integrations with modern tools from react components, real time web hooks. And looking at their screenshot, and it looks pretty nice actually looks kind of like as the sales language cloud. I know that actually, surprisingly, one of our lease was showing me that today. But this one looks more visual, like the progress bars. So yeah, and they also have more than 1000 customers. I’m just quickly going to look at pricing. pricing. Okay. Oh, here we go. So they have three plans like plan is 160 bucks a month. Pro plan is for modern software development teams, locations in teams and global brands. And it’s 462 a month.
Andrej Zito
And exclusive one is with several risks service level agreement, and it’s 1020 a month. I’m not sure if Okay, okay, so it’s for 15 users. I know that I discovered one similar like continuous localization solution before on the podcast, but I already forgot their name. Anyway, I’m going to mark this article as complete. So that was the first article. And as I mentioned in the previous episode, I think it is my goal to actually start the first topic with like the most interesting one. And actually also just to share with you today, I kind of like did a new version of thumbnails. So instead of the thumbnail just showing, mostly me and then the localization podcast and which episode it is. This time I want to focus I want to make the like the main topic, standout the most. So the biggest title in the thumbnail will be the main topic of the podcast and then I made the The name of the podcast. So the localization podcast bit smaller.
Andrej Zito
So this one will be definitely about engineering because we are getting into 40 minutes when I was still talking about that, but I really enjoy this because I I started as a localization engineer, and to this day, I think, like all that technical experience that I had, and even my programming experience that I had during the first three years at university, and then I left because like I said, like, okay, I don’t want to be a developer, I want to be more like a manager. It all kind of like pays off. In future, you know, so I guess my advice would be not advice, just like observation would be that. Don’t ever regret if you learn something new. Because you don’t know when you’re going to need it. Okay, moving on. To the second article, I have four articles left. I should try to be more faster. But once I start talking, it’s difficult for me to stop. Okay, so the second article is from a company, it’s gaining newcomer. They’re called dynamic language.com.
Andrej Zito
This article is about chatbot, and localization. So I know we already had one. I think it was a Slater article. It was in one of the earlier episodes of the localization podcast. And it was about chatbots. And an older I also remember there was like, I think it was Indonesian startup, or something like that, that had has this virtual assistant in English and Bahasa, and it’s doing pretty, pretty well. So I think this article is more more generic, like, what are chatbots and how they can help you save costs and get better ROI. So let’s get into it. There are there are like a couple of statistics here from different researches. So I really like this one. That’s why I picked it. So I think most of the time, I will be just quoting what the article said. So the first thing, the important question is building a multilingual chatbot worth it.
Andrej Zito
As an HBr I guess that’s Harvard Business Review article notes. deployments are most likely to pay off in companies, fielding 1000s of customer chats or calls via contact centers with hundreds of agents. Multi leg, multilingual chat, what works best in this environment for two reasons. Number one, such contact centers have masses have transcripts and therefore masses of data to train a multilingual chatbot that makes it easier for the chatbot to solve customer needs. Number two, developing a multilingual chatbot and then deploying, it takes months it pays off best for companies with large scale operations, and they can reap the benefits more quickly. So this is again, this is again, a good good point, which which we covered several times while talking about nmt, which was I think, most of the episodes because almost every week, there was at least one article on Slater, about mmt.
Andrej Zito
And so empty gets better with the data. And the more data you feed it, the smarter it gets. I guess that’s my amateur observation of this. And, so, sow sow, sow, sow, sow, sow, sow, sow, sow, sow, sow Yeah, I actually hadn’t thought of this before. With all these like, you know, like you have to have a lot of data to train the machine. I’m thinking like, What if you were like a smaller player that doesn’t have like all these data like will there be like some companies that will like develop Like some generic solution that would still that could still be usable for majority of the smaller or medium sized businesses that don’t have like, a lot of data to train the chatbot. I mean, like, like wood, the, like wood, the wood, I don’t know anything about like machine learning. So this is me just asking stupid questions, but like, what is the difference?
Andrej Zito
Like if I’m like a customer, and I’m asking about like, hey, like, is this available in this decent decent store? And like, in what sizes? Is this available? and stuff like that? Like, does it actually matter? Like what the product is about? Like, could there be a place for like, general or like, generic chatbot that could handle like different types of products? Like what are you selling? I don’t know, cosmetics? Are you selling clothes? That’s the nature of the questions that customers ask. They felt like, they would be asking like about payment options, like I want a refund or something like that. Yeah, so that’s, that’s my idea. Okay, and so what can multi lingual chatbots automate for your business and this is we’re going back to the article.
Andrej Zito
Each year, companies spent 1.3 trillion on 265 billion customer service calls, according to IBM. That’s fucking huge. What’s even more incredible is that IBM estimates chatbots can reduce customer service costs by 30%. They can achieve that by one answering up to 80% routine questions and issues, to firing up customer service agents for more complex tasks. Three, improving to deal with more and more issues. Or what? Okay, um, so analyze this firm Juniper research predicts between 75 to 90% of customer queries will be handled by chatbots by early to mid 2020. So, yeah, I mean, this is like the whole idea of automation, right? Like, if you have like routine questions, and I’m pretty sure like most of the support centers, I had never worked in anyone on those things. Maybe? Or maybe not, because I would have like extra experience.
Andrej Zito
But I guess it’s pretty scripted, like, and even if it’s not scripted, then you’re probably doing it wrong. Because like, if you will, you you’re probably not dealing with the same with sorry, you’re probably not dealing with new issues all the time. So you can kind of like fine tune your answers. Every time. You get a very similar request. It’s the same as like, approaching girls, like in public places. First time, you may get like, totally rejected, but then maybe you change the way you approach them. Like from where you come, do you smile, do you not smile, how you dress What you say? And then what she says then when you respond, and blah, blah, blah, and stuff like that. Not that I’m an expert at this topic, but I rent a couple of things. So I assume that customer support works in a very similar way.
Andrej Zito
Because there’s not that many different scenarios that the customers can come up with. Especially there’s probably like some bell curve, is it called milk curve? where most of the let’s say, yeah, let’s use the part part part or Pareto rule, the 8020 rule. And let’s say that 80% Oh, which by the way, matches the number in the article. Let’s say that 80% of the customer questions are the same. No, no, oh no. It would be 80% of your customers ask 20 percent of the questions. Wait, what? No. Doesn’t make sense. Okay, I can fit it in. But I hope you know what I mean. Like majority of the questions won’t be probably the same or very similar. And then there will be a couple of outliers where you actually need like that agent who can do like some extra digging and thinking and hopefully they have some brain.
Andrej Zito
So, coming back to the article, for instance, if you have a healthcare facility, having a chatbot for booking appointments, and relaying basic information could reduce administrative burden. Absolutely. Or if you run an online fashion store, a multilingual chatbot could provide a personalized way to get a customer info. And so questions about colting? Yep, definitely. Okay, let’s get to the end getting started with chatbots and localizations. localization services like multilingual chat, but localization can be an invaluable asset for your company. If localizing your website pages is not capturing all potential leads, you will need more multilingual customer service help and or your English only chat. While it’s not giving enough customer support, it’s probably time to learn how to localize your chatbot.
Andrej Zito
Before building a chatbot, consider the kinds of questions your customers typically have to have an idea of how to localize your chatbot segment those questions by language and market. This way you can address unique needs in each country. When building the chatbot begin with routine queries, this is a very good point. Your multilingual chat bot will deliver value more quickly by automating standard issues. Nice. Once the system proves it can handle a routine customer needs trained for more complex interactions. Yes, great. This is again, the same approach as we covered in Episode Seven, which is to be more lean experiment. And don’t just blow all your money to localize everything at once. Ultimately, a multilingual chatbot can be an integral integral integral part of any localization strategy.
Andrej Zito
And you can benefit in the long run from increased ability to handle customer needs, across all sorts of languages. So this was an article from dynamic language.com. Are we likely to I will not inspect their website because or am I 53 minutes? Okay. So that was article number two. article number three is I found this on a site called I found this on Twitter, but it was linking to this page, which is emoney daily. And the site is Misa Allianz, and I think it’s media and entertainment. And so this is an article by Scott rose. He’s the CTO for SDI media. So this is kind of like a this is kind of like a sponsored content, I would say, because it’s basically about their new app, which is about growing the localization, talent pool. And I’m just quickly going to try to skim through this one.
Andrej Zito
Okay, I’m here because I had to, I couldn’t just skim the article, because I was trying to find something that I could share. And I was thinking like, maybe this is too long, we should skip it. But here I am. And I’ll try to do my best. So further introduce a problem saying that the original content in the marketplace, which is driven by platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime iTunes and who has put a strain or on dubbing resources. This is true not only in major markets such as fix, but also in emerging markets such as Poland, Hungary and Thailand. This train is not limited to just voice actors in impacts, script actors, directors, lyricists and engineers who work in local production or are fresh out of university. Have not really figured out a career path that involves entertainment localization.
Andrej Zito
How do you find a next generation of talent? And how do you make it easy for them to choose that path? So, as the media and two people from that company, Alberto, or beach saw an online cup belching, ska, probably polish, decided to try something new to solve the talent gap, and launch a project aimed at creating a transparent and self enabled global dubbing community. What emerged from this effort is an app called pro dap. So what I want to do is they want to create a community. And they say that by creating an online community where actors, singers, directors, lyricists, translators, and engineers can upload their resumes and voice samples. See what projects are upcoming and applicable. share feedback on opportunities and forward information to colleagues.
Andrej Zito
We move away from old school processes managed in Cielo silos, and enter a world of collaboration, transparency and efficient engagement. productive subscribers can receive notifications when new projects become available, review scheduled auditions or per use breaking industry news to further increase transparency product also offers sparklines and visibility to the talent recruitment process that they can follow so that they can follow the progress of a new project. The production app is geo filtered and created in local languages to allow for variations in a workflow and demand across each language territory. It was first launched in Poland and the uptake has been remarkable, quickly growing the 1000s of subscribers. A rollout to further territories is scheduled with Germany next, closely followed by the Nordic countries.
Andrej Zito
The increase in original content and shrinking deadlines has resulted in competent translators having more choices in what they work on and how they work. All things being equal. a translator who has five jobs to choose from a simply take one from the localization company that offers the most seamless and user friendly experience. The incentive is ease of engagement, instantaneous Access to Work materials and immediate delivery of translations from anywhere in the world. Cloud based connected workspaces have become the norm for subtitling creation as they provide efficiency not only for engaging resources and providing work materials, but also for evolving the essence of translations from files to data.
Andrej Zito
A data centric approach in the centralized platform not only gives full control over the status and output of the task, but also allows vendors to more efficiently recruit, test and train your resources while simultaneously onboarding them into the system. Okay, okay. Um, okay, so I’m not very happy about this content that I just provided, because like I was just reading. I’m not very good at reading, especially now. And what I what I notice right now is that I don’t know how to breathe during reading. Anyway, going back to this, thinking that this one has maybe this one is more specialized, because right now I’m looking at the website of the of the actual app, and that is pro dub, dot A PP pin, and their value proposition is joined a dubbing community so there seem to be very focused on the voice actors.
Andrej Zito
So enter the world of movies and TV series. work with us on big productions. You decide what project you become a part of from now on. So first of all, their website is absolutely beautiful. To put it simply, they they have like few colors, they have orange as the one that’s like, standing out otherwise, it’s kind of like blackish, gray, and white, but it looks super clean. Like it really it’s just great. So who is this for? So Pratap is an application for film production professionals. This is for vocalists. actors, editors, directors, translators, sound engineers, dialogue writers, and lyricists. It’s funny that they’re valuable proposition started by saying join the dubbing community, but then there are more people involved. But I didn’t know much about dubbing because the only time that we did dubbing was that you just create the script, and then you send it to the studio, which may might have been actually SDI media.
Andrej Zito
When I was working on autos project, who knows? Anyway, do it your way. So you can create your profile, you get offers, and you tell us your location. Okay, so where you want to do the recordings, there are more screenshots from the app. And I really like the app as well. Stay up to date, be the first No, but auditions in your area, you get notifications. And there are also new, there’s a new section, you’ll never miss an under development in the world of movies and TV series. Create a community, that’s another feature or more like a benefit. tight knit team. Thanks for your application, you decide who you want to work with. So I guess this is the usual like, kind of like, review system like from Airbnb. I guess we’re like for most of these, like Uber, stuff like that, you can always rate the kind of person that you work with.
Andrej Zito
And there’s also some networking, blah, blah, blah. And then there’s a video, and it’s team of the landing page. So I really like it. Okay, um, but anyway, I couldn’t provide a lot of extra information for this one. So, but I think I’ll be able to do that for the last two articles that I have. And actually, it’s only the first thing that’s an actual article. The last thing is kind of like a surprise. So let’s first start with the article. This is again, another new company. And it’s clear words, translations. And they made this article about freelance translators or translation agency, which is better for your business. So let’s get into it. Unfortunately, there’s no universal answer to this question. Mostly, it depends on the scope of your translation project, and how quickly you need things done. True. There aren’t only these aren’t.
Andrej Zito
These aren’t the only elements to consider, however, your budget, the type of translation services needed, and the industry in which you operate will influence your decision as well. So here we go. Let’s look at the advantages of working with a freelance translator. So number one, you have direct communication with a translator. So when hiring a freelance translator, you will be able to communicate directly with a person who does the translation, he or she is the project manager, the virtual assistant and expert that chooses the best terms to describe each concept with a direct line miscommunication is less likely to occur, reducing the risk for translation errors. So I mean, okay, if you have a small, very small project, and you want to or like very few languages, maybe then it’s okay to have this as the first benefit of working with translators directly.
Andrej Zito
But if you’re managing bigger things, then you definitely don’t want to be dealing with all the translators directly. To the freelancer is usually cheaper than agency working with an individual instead of a company because less, cost less and you don’t necessarily need to sacrifice quality. That’s true. But then, of course, if you’re dealing with an agency that hopefully does more languages at the same time, do that also means that you’re going to probably save some money on Having your own internal project manager. Of course, that depends on where you actually would hire that person, because like having a project manager in us would cost a lot more than having someone somewhere else. And you get to choose your expert with freelancers, you have control over the hiring process.
Andrej Zito
You get to select whom you work with based on references, job interviews, or any other method you consider relevant. Of course, that means you work harder to find the right match compared to an agency where they choose the experts for you, and you rarely have the chance to choose your team. So I don’t think this is actually true, because like, and this and this depends on how, how active you want to be, if you are like a buyer, and you’ll work with LSP. I’m sure like, if they want your business, and you tell them to Hey, I want to actually pick the people that we work on our projects, then then they won’t reject. And there are actually many cases where the buyer, usually typically a bigger company would start consolidating and minimizing their localization team. And if in the past, they have like their favorite translators, then they would go to the LSP Intel Hey, tell them hey, you guys need to use these translators. Please do that.
Andrej Zito
And then it’s done. So it means you if you want to, you can still choose your own experts. So I don’t agree with this. And the benefits of working with a translation agencies. So that’s the second part. Okay, let’s look at it you get fast turnarounds. The larger the language service provided the bigger its team of translators. If you have large projects to handle and are already running out of time, but translation agency can find right people that’s true. They have an updated database with translators, linguists and language experts who can step in immediately and help you meet your deadlines. That is probably true. Although if they have this big pool, and for some reason, you require something very fast. It means they might have to reach out to people in their pool who have absolutely no previous experience with your projects.
Andrej Zito
And so by requesting superfast or not, usual turnaround times, you might actually end up getting worse quality. Of course you shouldn’t be. If you are as a client, if you are comfortable with that, then by all means, go ahead. But ideally, you want to stick to the same pool of people. Okay, next one, you receive more than simple translations. agencies provide a wide range of services within the industry. From localization and transcreation, international SEO, and other technical services you can benefit from their experience in more ways than one. They have the experience and infrastructure in place to help you overcome language and cultural barrier barriers. Absolutely. If you have anything More complex, you either need the like your own engineer, or again, you would go to LSP that can do everything.
Andrej Zito
If you want more technical stuff, like I don’t know, SEO, and then probably you would again need to go to an LSP. And if you want to do something that we, that we discussed in Episode Seven, which is like very lean approach to localization, measuring the ROI doing experiments, then that’s something that you would not get from most of the translators, I would say. Next one, agencies have trained project managers for increased efficiency. Most of the time agencies will assign your project manager who will go above and beyond to make sure you get the best value for your money. Oh, this is such a cheesy line. Oh, it’s making me want to cut my self. Yeah. Yeah, like everybody has project managers. And but, man, I’m telling you guys, the difference between project managers that I have met is huge, is huge.
Andrej Zito
And I will definitely be doing some more videos on the topic of project management. And and you’ll see, you can start right away. That’s another benefit of the agency. And this is what I say, freelance translators, especially the good ones often have their services and booked for months in advance. So you might have to wait before getting your translations. True. On the other hand, agencies are available right when you need them, thanks to their large number of collaborators. Not true, because even agencies could be booked if they have limited pools of translators, and maybe if they don’t have limited pools of translations, maybe they have Sheedy, translator, translators and your boss, who knows, ages, agencies implement rigorous quality checks. It has nothing to do with translator skills, but with workflows and protocol inside a translation agency.
Andrej Zito
Even the most good translator can make mistakes, but agencies have a proofreading system in place that can detect errors in real time. Yeah, okay. So, he. Okay, so here here, final two chapters. Roughly speaking, you should work with a freelance translator when you’re a small company that needs some language related consultancy, for contexts or short translations. In this case, the skills of a highly specialized legal translator could fit much better than any agency. I think I agree. You only need to translate your documents or website into one or two languages, in which case, putting together a small team of freelancers could be cheaper than hiring an agency and army of experts. I’m not convinced about this one, because it means you will need to prepare everything. And you will need to run the project on your own.
Andrej Zito
Especially if you’re, if you’re doing documents that may be if you’re doing website, you will need to figure out like how to get the strings translated. And that might not be that easy. Although probably like with all these continuous localization tools that we are discovering on this podcast, maybe they could set it up for you. And then you can just use their TMS and you could just, I don’t know, sit down and relax and look at the dashboard. Number three, you have to stretch every dollar. In this case working with freelancers may be better than hiring agencies. Again, not convinced about this because like if you’re an us and somebody needs to run the localization, and then they’re spending their time and that is basically the indirect cost of localization for you. While you might want to consider finding someone cheaper, somewhere that could hopefully do good Job and manage the whole process for you.
Andrej Zito
Final thoughts from the article. Some projects are simply too big to be handled by a freelancer or a team of individuals who have no previous experience working together true. When you need multi language support, and have set rigorous deadlines and agents can help you meet your business goals. They’re reliable and work well. reliable. Okay. Maybe some of them. And work fast. Thanks for experience and significant resources. Some of them don’t work fast, trust me. And when it comes to innovation, the big guys are fucking slow. Depending on the size of your projects, you may even choose to work both with agency and freelancers. Interesting. There is no one size fits all model. So see which way works better for your company and stick with it. Okey dokey. So that was the last article.
Andrej Zito
And it’s one hour, 20 minutes. I think this might actually be the longest podcast that I’ve ever done. Because we’re getting to the final part. And I think I think it was episode six that I talked about entertainment localization. So this last thing will be a little bit entertaining. It was definitely entertaining for me. So as I was going through all the hashtag localization tweets on Twitter, I found this interesting thing. It’s a tweet that says this following localizing your translation can make the biggest difference when approaching international clients localizing your translation. This is the first time ever in my life, in my whole career, that I see someone saying something like this, to localize a translation. That’s so weird. And what is even more weird is that the company that put this out, is simply called the translation company.
Andrej Zito
So yes, this is just so weird. I don’t know why they’re called that way. And why they’re simply saying that you need to localize your translations. I mean, like, What the fuck, like, why would you get someone to translate something and only then you would localize it, like hello. And this is actually in their image. This is the text or the quote or whatever. to localize your translation means to adapt your translation to fit the local language, culture and conditions. I mean, that’s localization. Right? But where that thing, source, not translation, I mean, what the fuck. And so I’m going to dig a little bit deeper, because these guys are something unique. So I’m looking right now I’m looking at their Twitter account. So their description is the translation company Group LLC, provides professional translation services with quality you can trust. Right?
Andrej Zito
And so, the first thing when I’m looking at their tweets, is that their branding and that they’re How do you guys? Is it is it just reading? Basically, like their visual style of the images they put on Twitter is like so inconsistent, like they’re different. They’re different fonts. I think the colors are off. Like the thumbnails are like, totally, totally inconsistent. Oh my god, okay. Okay, so now, I’m going to their website, which is to translation company.com. So, they have a carousel. Is that the right term? I know it is. But I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it the right way. So that’s basically like the cold above default thing. You know, the first thing that you see on the website, under the menu So that one is about what they do. They do Life Sciences. They do technical translations, they do legal services and stuff like that.
Andrej Zito
I mean, I guess, okay. What I wanted to say was like, this is like, like, just like the list of industries. So it’s not like screaming, like, Hey, this is the benefit that you’ll get when you work with us. This is more like, Hey, we also vocalize, we can translate legal, we can translate technical and blah, blah, blah. The next part is they have actually, they put their claims below the ISO compliant What is it image or something? Then they’re also like, accredited business and they’re a member of American translators Association. So they put all of these things above their clients, which I think is I don’t know, maybe, um, maybe it’s just me because like, all these ISO things, and a member of this and this and that to me, like, I don’t give a crap. But if you have, like, interesting customers, I think that’s more valuable. For me as a potential customer, okay, let’s scroll down.
Andrej Zito
The provide quality human translation. Watch out for that. And so they have these images of their management team. And, yeah, I’m not going to comment on them. It’s like a typical, you know, like, corporate. Yeah, but the CEO looks nice. She looks like Filipino. Um, I guess I lost all the credit now, because I’m basically looking at how people look like, but you know, like, this is like, my, I always fucking hate, like, all these corporate profiles, you know, like people in nice suits with their fucking fake Hollywood smiles, you know, it’s like, it’s just like polish. You know, it’s so fake. It’s like, people are not like that, like in reality. That’s why I always like, like profiles, like, about us pages, like for startups, you know, because the people are, like, dressed like normal people, or like, they do funny faces and stuff like that.
Andrej Zito
These people are just like, yeah, we are so serious, blah, blah, blah. And then what you provide is that you localized translations, Oh, my God. So the next part of the website is reviews from Yelp, from Google and from Facebook. which, the one because this one only has two reviews? Yeah, it looks like I found one. And this one only has two reviews. So it’s not very valid. wonderful people and ownership. The CEO is smart. Con, consensus, and caring individual. Cons the company is still growing and some patience required as they expand. Okay, I guess that’s it. Well, so this is the first time ladies and gentlemen that we need a company that offers localization of translation. So if by any chance any of you are doing just translation, you know where to go? Go to the translation company, the translation company.com and ask them if they could localize your translation.
Andrej Zito
If you actually need to do this, you probably suck and you shouldn’t be listening to this podcast anyway. Okay, and I think I covered everything I need it. It’s 18 minutes past midnight. Oh my god. I think I slept only six hours two days ago and like, five hours last night. So it’s time for me to stop this. And I really enjoyed this one. I still didn’t finish my beer. And, okay, I don’t want to prolong this. Anyway, so this was episode eight.
Andrej Zito
With a bunch of articles from the previous week. He may release this one over the weekend, just to see or maybe I’ll save it for the next Tuesday in case I mess up in Philippines. And I overbooked my dates. Yay. Okay, anyway, thank you for listening. If you got to this point, shout out to you. I mean good. Job respect, I appreciate it a lot. I actually don’t think that anyone survives listening to me for one hour and 30 minutes. But if you got to this point, please just send me a message wherever Find me on social YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Anyway, if he got this and you’re reading this, I’m sorry, if you’re listening to this respect, respect. Let me know. You are my hardcore fan. And with that said, I’m going to turn this recording off. Enjoy your life. Don’t be stupid and talk to you next week.
