TRANSLATING A MOVING TARGET

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TRANSLATING A

MOVING TARGET

17 Transformative Trends to Watch

New Revenue Opportunities from Intelligent Innovation

A New Business Model for the Era of Convergence

Changing times, changing content

3

17 top trends to watch

4

New opportunities for revenue

6

The era of convergence

9

Best practices and strategies

10

CONTENTS

The days when translation was a

cottage industry run by people who

basically worked in isolation are over.

Technology is propelling translation

services

— and the language industry

itself — to the forefront of global

communication.

Hans Fenstermacher

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CHANGING TIMES,

CHANGING CONTENT

The most difficult part of tracking the trends that are transforming

the translation industry is that they are constantly evolving. Close

your eyes and something has changed.

Take the content explosion:

Of course, none of this content stands still — it is posted, updated and

commented on with growing frequency. This is driving a need for faster

translation at the same time a confluence of global economic trends creates new

markets for multilingual communications.

How can the translation and localization sector deal with this need for speed

and high volume without compromising high standards for accuracy?

This report examines the emergence of Intelligent Innovation in translation

technology and examines how the industry can use these innovations to turn

tough challenges into new streams of revenue. I hope the information is helpful

as you create a strategic plan for the era of convergence.

Scott Gaskill

President, Sovee

Last night while

you were sleeping,

almost

a million

blogs

were

published.

Meanwhile,

100

hours of video

was uploaded

to YouTube

every minute.

There are

3.87

billion indexed

pages

on the

Internet.

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TOP TRENDS

These global developments are transforming the translation services

sector. Which ones are having the greatest impact on your business?

TREND KEY:

MACRO EMERGING RAPID GROWTH SLOW GROWTH

Rise in

Machine

Translation

usage

New

developments

in “Intelligent”

Innovation

Increased

need for

real-time,

translation

Multidirectional

MT reduces

reliance on

language pairs

Huge growth

in Internet,

income + mobile

in AAA

markets

Downward

pricing

pressures

Crowd

Sourcing

(limited use)

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Customer

demands for

speed

Online

customers

prefer chat

text

Cisco predicts

3-fold rise in

Internet traffic

by 2017

Mobile data

traffic up 70%

in 2012

Economic

growth in MIKT

countries

Market growth

in BRICS

economies

51 million

new websites

created

per year

2,200,000

new books

published

in 2013

Global

Content

Explosion

Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa & newly affluent China

Global

translation

market up 18%

by 2016

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THE POWER OF

INTELLIGENT INNOVATION

Many of the same trends that challenge the translation industry

today can open doors to new revenue and present opportunities

for expanding your client base.

While Machine Translation is at the heart of these solutions, that’s not a reason for despair. The “Intelligent Innovation” offered by today’s leading-edge technology has come light years in development, especially when administered by industry professionals.

This innovation equips today’s translation business to:

• Work with unprecedented speed and accuracy • Translate “moving targets” of web-based text

• Maintain a competitive pricing edge in a cost-driven market

• Leverage the flexibility of the cloud to accommodate large projects • Translate multi directionally, not tied to traditional language pairs • Quickly access new language engines as global economies evolve

When translation professionals align with the right provider of intelligent innovation, the synergetic results create a new business model of convergence that will be the key to success in a rapidly changing industry.

Machine translation (MT) is a topic that arouses

a variety of passions, not only technical but also

political and personal.

Laurel Wagers, Multilingual Computing NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR REVENUE

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WEB AND ONLINE VIDEO TOOLS

Website

• Dynamic translation of rapidly changing content • Choice of real-time updates

or ongoing updates with pre-verification and localization

• Newest technology easily replicates the design, formatting and branding of the original language site

• Platform allows upload of client corpus, dictionary and prior translations for better accuracy

• Post-editing interface makes verification fast and simple for translation professionals • Ongoing content management system Video

• Automated translation • Verification options

• Cutting edge voice recognition generates transcripts.

• The most advanced systems can deliver audio translation in very human-like synthetic voice • Can use video subtitles and/or Closed

Caption files Podcast / Audio

• Automated translation • Verification options

• Cutting-edge voice recognition generates transcripts

• Advanced systems can deliver audio

translation in very human-like synthetic voice • Best providers can sync audio closely to

spoken video segment, accounting for language length differences

Software and apps • Automated translation • Verification options

• Cutting edge technology to replicate applications in multiple languages • Ability to simultaneously release these

applications to a global market

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR REVENUE

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POPULAR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Live chat text

• Provide real-time translation for live chat text

• Common applications:

– Customer service

– eLearning

– Internal employee communications

– Visitor interface kiosks

– Product kiosks

• Technology works with existing chat platforms or creates a custom system • Designed for upload of client corpus,

dictionary and prior translations

• Easy to pre-load translations for commonly used responses and questions

• Advanced platforms allow multi directional chat among many users

• Works on any device, including mobile Direct design template

• Translation of text directly in the design template used to develop business flyers, brochures, etc.

• New technology interface eliminates need to cut, paste and reassemble documents • Simple online set-up and implementation • Post-edit directly in design template • Entire books can be translated with a single

upload and no reassembly Voice to voice

• Suited for clients with unpredictable and “need it now” scheduling, making it difficult for an agency to schedule live interpreters

• This breaking technology translates spoken content in real-time using cutting edge voice recognition and human-like synthetic voice • Works best for one-on-one or one-to-group

interactions when a single voice is heard at one time

• Technology also supports voice-to-email NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR REVENUE

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THE ERA OF

CONVERGENCE

The convergence of technologies — mobile phones, voice recognition and voice-to email for example — has been progressing with rapid speed and adoption. The convergent translation business model, however, is moving at a far more cautious pace, in part due to the initial challenges and failings of early machine translation.

This is slowly changing as the industry discovers the opportunities to integrate intelligent innovation into the traditional business model, offering clients the best of both worlds: speed and online adaptability, guided and corrected by the wisdom only a linguistic or localization professional can offer.

Reshaping the industry

One of the early adopters of this convergence model is AVB Translations in Amsterdam. Director Joël Sigling explains why a strategic partnership between his traditional agency and a provider of intelligent innovation has been beneficial:

“We are reshaping the industry. Buyers of translation now have one environment for all of customers’ materials, whether they are documents, videos or websites, in one integrated solution. It is fast, but we still deliver high quality — and at a good value to our customers. This convergence model meets the dynamic challenges we are experiencing in our business every day.”

The translation industry has undergone a

paradigm shift every decade since 1980,

but none is as big as the Convergence era.

Jaap van der Meer, Director of TAUS

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Strategic partnerships with topline providers of Intelligent Innovation

are essential to compete in today’s marketplace. Consider these best

practices when evaluating partnership agreements:

Insist on “teachable” technology – The most important innovation in the translation sector is the advent of computers able to “learn” by ingesting a client’s company

dictionary, existing translations, industry terminology and brand preferences. Over time, this increases the accuracy and reduces post-editing time.

Shop around for a cross-application partner – If you are going to invest time in loading your client’s corpus, it should be applicable across all media, from web to document to podcast translation and everything in between.

Only pay for what you need – Look for an affordable set-up fee followed by a “pay as you go” purchase system, to keep costs in check.

Look for a cloud-based provider – The cloud offers the incredible speed and flexibility that many translation clients now demand. Be sure to inquire about security: the best cloud systems now offer security up to the highest government standards.

Avoid static pricing models – Traditional by-the-word pricing does not work for the latest technology-based projects, such as website or video translation. Find a partner offering custom quotes for complex or unusual jobs.

Find a cultural match for your clientele – Clients in the legal, financial services or government sectors will likely balk at a provider that uses crowd-sourcing. Be sure the provider aligns with your customers’ expectations for professionalism.

Look for economies of scale – A cloud-based Intelligent Innovation partner can help improve productivity on even a staple business, such as document translation, by doing the heavy lifting, reducing post-editing time and eliminating document reassembly.

THE POWER OF

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

THE FINAL FRONTIER

It is possible that Intelligent Innovation will eliminate the

language barriers during our lifetime, creating a

multi-directionally multilingual society.

Although this may mean great changes in the way translation

professionals work, it will by no means signal the end of

their value.

As the moving target grows ever larger and more complex,

the world will always have a need for learned experts to

preserve linguistic integrity.

The world will always have a

need for learned experts to

preserve linguistic integrity.

Scott Gaskill President, Sovee

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Sources for this publication are available by request. Please email request to [email protected].

© Sovee 2013. All rights reserved.

Would you like strategic assistance to position your business

for success in the new era of convergence? Call Sovee for a

free consultation at 855-997-6833, or visit us at

sovee.com

The "Era of Convergence" is an industry term identified by Jaap van der Meer, director of TAUS. For more information, see the TAUS Translation Technology Landscape Report, April 2013.