"Think more, write less!" -Andrea Ames,  STC's 55th Annual Conference.

Single Sourcing is In!

Technical communicators have influenced the localization industry for many years. The tools they adopt and the processes they follow impact what we do for localization. For instance, in the 1990's they adopted RoboHelp and FrameMaker for online help and manuals. Then in the early 2000's, some migrated to WebWorks Publisher in combination with FrameMaker in an attempt to use only a single source. Recently, they transitioned to using FrameMaker along with Flare, XMetaL, and AuthorIT in structured XML authoring mode. The localization industry has paid attention to their moves. We have to adopt the tools and processes they adopted in order to deliver files in all the languages and formats they required.

So this is why we sought an opportunity to participate in this year’s STC conference in Philadelphia on June 1st to the 4th: to meet them and, see things from their perspectives. To experience this fully and make good use of our time, we decided to take part in speaking and exhibiting as well.

The best way to get to know a large group well is through a survey and interviews. Our goal was to poll 50 or more technical communicators about their latest technology trends. We ended up talking with 72 attendees. To keep our analysis unbiased and avoid promoting specific tools or products, we kept the focus of our survey and discussion on more generic technologies.

One of the questions we asked concerned the impact that various technologies have had upon their field:

“Please rank the significance of these topics in technical authoring:
  •  Web 2.0 Technologies
  •  Online Collaboration
  •  Crowdsourcing
  •  Wikis
  •  Single Sourcing
  •  Controlled English
  •  Terminology Management.
If not familiar with the topic please mark N/A.”

Below are the results from our 72 respondents:

Single sourcing had the highest score: 68% ranked it "high" or "very high" with 42% as "very high" and none as "nil"! We can relate to this view. More and more projects we’ve been processing lately are implemented in structured XML outputted to help, web and documents. So this was not a surprise to us-- and it confirmed the ongoing trend in the industry.

A bit of a surprise was the high ranking of terminology management: 67% ranked it as "high" or "very high". Our experience has been that most technical communicators don’t have time to invest in managing their terminology. We’d love to see the sentiment present in the survey materialize into action, with more technical communicators taking a proactive approach to DVD (Discover, Validate, and Deploy) terminology.

It is no secret that consistent and well-defined terminology greatly simplifies and facilitates localization tasks. At GlobalVision, we have advocated the importance of terminology over the years and invested significant resources and energy into gvTerm, our terminology management portal.

It is also interesting to note that 50% of our surveyed audience marked crowdsourcing as "N/A" (not applicable). We attribute this to the likelihood that the concept of crowdsourcing is foreign to many. Those who were familiar with crowdsourcing deemed it as not applicable to their activities, despite the enormous success that Wikipedia enjoys!

So what can we draw from these results? Simply put, single sourcing is regarded as a technology that can cut down on cost without a significant shift in process. Our hope is that the savings in time and cost will be invested in terminology management and quality sourcing.

As Andrea Ames told the attendees at the conference’s opening panel: Think more, write less!

We also asked technical communicators to rank the significance of different technologies in localization (N/A if not applicable or unknown):
  •  Web 2.0 Technologies
  •  Online Collaboration
  •  Crowdsourcing
  •  Translation Memory
  •  Machine Translation
  •  Wikis
  •  Terminology Management
  •  Query Management

Below are the results from our 72 respondents:

Please note that the results are from the perspective of a technical communicator, and not a localizer. Terminology management was ranked as the highest, even higher than translation memory. Machine translation was ranked relatively high as well, which was a surprise to us, but not very many respondents gave it a "very high" ranking.

It was disappointing to see the confusion around query management as more than 40% of the respondents marked it is not applicable to their work. At GlobalVision, our experience has been that the queries that the translation and localization staff ask technical communicators are an essential part of getting the translation done correctly.

Automating the process will greatly improve both the efficiency of the localization project and the quality of the results.  To facilitate this exchange of data, GlobalVision has developed gvCollab. gvCollab routes queries automatically and securely to the appropriate personnel, who can in turn respond online in a web browser.

We then asked technical communicators to rank how technology can help in these areas:
  •  Saving time
  •  Improving consistency
  •  Reducing translation costs
  •  Facilitating collaboration
  •  Improving text reuse
  •  Simplifying the process

This is how they answered:

The benefits of technology were not underestimated by our survey participants: 50% or more of the respondents rated technology very highly in improving consistency and text reuse, as well as in saving time. Some were a bit concerned about the influence of technology on their work, stating that it complicates the process.

It is interesting to note however that improving consistency took the lead. This confirms our calculation that query management will be important to technical writers.

The best editors of any text are the translators. This is because they don't just read to edit, but to understand and translate. Their input and queries ultimately improve the quality of the source, its consistency, and its accuracy.

If you are interested in participating in a follow-up survey, or you would like to receive a copy of our STC conference presentation on the benefits of Translation Management Systems in localization, please contact us.