As we mentioned before, the IT industry is the second largest market for language services globally. This underscores the IT world’s need for professional localization and translation providers.

For global IT organizations, translating and managing their contents (presales, legal, and project delivery documentation) can become a real administrative burden. Keeping up with the complexities of document versioning and proliferation is no easy task. Intellectual property evolves continuously; updated information may not always be available in the target language.

Project resources (consultants, project managers, services executives), though often multilingual, are seldom experienced linguists. Having these team members translate and globalize content keeps them away from more appropriate solution development or business tasks. Some IT organizations maintain in-house translation departments. In some cases this can be a costly solution since translation services are typically a per-project, rather than a constant, requirement. When not required, idling translation resources may turn into a financial liability.

Communication between IT organizations and their customers and partners needs to be clear, fast, and concise.
Software developers' work goes to waste and applications can be rendered unusable due to a poor localization effort.
Translations done on the fly by improvised translators can actually hurt an organization's clout in the marketplace.
Content generated and translated by different agents makes it hard to maintain language standards.

Current IT translation practices

IT organizations today face different hurdles when translating their organizational contents:

Rework: The same source content is translated over and over by different areas and projects. Several drafts of a single document are sent for translation.

Inconsistency: Having different stakeholders involved in the process hurts terminological uniformity. Translating documentation also keeps IT resources away from project tasks.

In-house translation departments: Translation services are often a per-project requirement. Idling translation resources may turn into a financial liability.

Machine translation: Online or desktop translation solutions provide quick turnaround times, but subpar quality.

Large/urgent requirements: Translation is regularly confined at the tail end of the documentation process. When it isn’t an integral part of projects, bottlenecks arise.

Concurrent translation requirements: Translation requests from different people and projects can easily overburden local translation resources. The resulting FIFO (First-In-First-Out) service model can slow down the delivery of translations.

Unskilled resources translating documents: Multilingual staff may save the day, but they will hardly provide the skills required to translate content accurately and to ensure its quality.

Your organization can talk to the world and reach new markets with the help of a Language Services Provider.

The solutions of a specialized Language Services Provider (LSP) offer IT services organizations a unique competitive advantage.

LSPs offer specialized services that reduce the hassle associated with translating, proofreading and managing multilingual contents.

Accurately translated and globalized content helps IT organizations to reach new customers in different geographies. Clarity in information provides transparency and mitigates the risks inherent to business and regulatory compliance.

By hiring the services of a specialized LSP, project leaders, consultants, documenters and other project resources invest time in drafting proposals and deliverables, leveraging translated contents. This helps IT organizations to reduce overhead costs and to streamline their processes.

Benefits

The flow of information between onshore teams and offshore development centers can be greatly enhanced by the use of professional translation services. Working with an LSP optimizes and streamlines the translation process, reducing costs and speeding up deliveries.

The LSP processes swiftly all project documentation that flows between the onshore and offshore teams.

Information required by work teams, in the language required, is available at all times.
The LSP translates all proposal and project documentation, ramping up or down its resources in terms of urgency levels and information volumes.
By leveraging its IT translation assets (glossaries, translation memories, etc.), the LSP speeds up the translation process and provides terminological uniformity so that all project information and people are in tune.
The IT organization’s technical resources thus focus on development tasks while the LSP deals with the translation work.

More benefits

Ramp-up capabilities: Your LSP can allocate resources as needed to tackle urgent and large requirements.

Rework reduced to a minimum: Your LSP streamlines and leverages all translation work through the use of Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Repeat translations are done cheaper and faster.
Leave it to the experts and lower your overhead: By having top-tier talent work for your organization, within your budget.
Pay as you go: No monthly fees, no salaries or benefits. Just pay for what you use.
ROI: Translation costs can be an integral part of your services proposals.
No FIFO: Several areas can request translations at the same time; your LSP will serve each as needed.
Specialized skill sets: Your LSP takes care of your content translation and globalization needs. Your team members devote their time to what they do best.
Language Quality Assurance: Your LSP adheres to corporate glossaries and style guides to proofread translations.
Transcreation: Linguists translate information creatively, maximizing the cultural relevance of translated content by adapting it to local markets.
Project Management: Your LSP speaks your language and leads your organization through the entire translation process.

By leveraging its IT assets (glossaries, translation memories, etc.), the LSP speeds up the translation process and provides terminological uniformity so that all project information and people are in tune.

In a later issue, we will explain the steps that an IT organization needs to follow to work with a Language Services Provider.