Management Fever John Freivalds JFA, Inc. In an update to his article last year on "Language Fever", John Freivalds describes the new emphasis placed by vendors in the industry on the "process" of document creation, as opposed to a narrow focus on the "event" of the translation or localization segment of a project. Earlier this year, I flew back from Washington DC after a series of business meetings with companies involved in one aspect or another of the language business. On the flight back to Minneapolis I was surrounded by a "team" of young Andersen Consulting consultants (out of college no more than a year) who were on their way tackle a project involving documentation at a major Fortune 500 firm based in the Twin Cities. They wouldn't divulge the exact nature of the project, but did tell me that all of the members of the team were single and had no pets, which allowed them to spend long periods of time away from the office. They worked out of a Reston, Virginia, office near Dulles airport and were constantly on the road doing documentation projects for clients. I asked the fellow next to me what background he had for documentation projects, and he told me mechanical engineering. I then asked, "Don't clients get upset that you are all so young and inexperienced?" He said "No!", adding "'They like us because we're 'analytical'." Andersen Consulting has grown to a multi- billion dollar global business by being analytical, and in doing so is giving a valuable lesson to a number of translation technology and localization firms that grew out of the "language fever" of the past couple of years. Tom Lück of Logos might exemplify this trend which one can also see at Berlitz, LionBridge, The Corporate Word and other firms. Lück, while multilingual, is not a traditional linguist, but rather a professional manager running a translation technology firm. But like many of the new professionals involved in the language business, he is looking at offering a little bit more than the standard fare with which the company originally started. In Logos' case this was automated translation software, but has expanded into full service translation and documentation consulting. Early on, Logos and other hi-tech firms noticed that they could make their technology work better if they got fully involved in the customer's process of using it. Logos' motto had long been that translation is not an "event" but a "process". And what I see among the increasing numbers of professional managers running language businesses is that they want to get their companies more involved in the process that produces translation and localization work. But to do that you have to have someone at the helm to give that comfort level to clients, i.e. that you can do something more than translation. By deduction, if the Andersen people are perceived as analytical, those in translation must be considered empirical. Yeah, that wouldn't sell. The chairman of a company wouldn't hire a bunch of "empiricists" from AAA translation to review the documentation process. More than once in my career in this business I have been in a conference room when someone has brought in a bunch of reports, manuals and other materials, handed them to me, and said "Translate these. Don't charge too much and have it back here (presumably in the same box) in two weeks." I knew all the documentation and planning and personnel and technology problems that they had had in producing what was in the box, but I was perceived as a translator, not a manager. Like I said, being present when the box was brought in was really an "event." A lot of what the translation and localization business is today was set up to deal with what was handed over in the box or to buy into companies that would give you more boxes. And the industry developed technologies and methods to deal with the boxes as best it could: glossaries, over 800 types of multilingual software, translation memory and translation software. We developed techniques and tools to handle what was in the box as quickly as possible. Andersen Consulting, however, started out being process consultants and as such were able to look and evaluate to see how something is done, even if they did use consultants straight out of school. Several years ago, Andersen got a plum million-dollar consulting assignment to do a global evaluation of how ABB, the Swedish engineering conglomerate, should be doing its translations. I got a call and attended a couple of meetings with the Chicago-based consultant managing the process who wanted to know about the translation technology that was available. At that point, I wondered why more language firms weren't hurrying back up the food chain to convince clients that they too could improve their documentation and not just translate what was in the box. The project manager I dealt with not only had no language skills whatever, he did not seem apologetic for not having them. I think that the translation and localization industry has now gotten to the point, not only in developing the internal skill sets to handle the business, but the management leadership and technology to make a broader case to clients. It is now faced with the task of not only developing the process, but also managing language technologies. In winning business, vendors no longer have to state "we have the best linguists": "we have the best process and technologies" is enough. And to do the best job possible, they have to go as far back in the documentation process as possible. In winning business, vendors no longer have to state "we have the best linguists": "we have the best process and technologies" is enough. And to do the best job possible, they have to go as far back in the documentation process as possible. This is what is going on now at Lucent Technologies, where its translation arm, ILT Solutions, is looking at the means to get training to the upwards of 400 technical documentation writers in the company. The goal is that they "author" by thinking internationally from the first moment sitting at a keyboard. And the person that is driving the processes is not a linguist, but a professional manager. A little known fact is that ILT Solutions was probably the first US translation firm to get ISO 9000 certification, because the process was always at the forefront of the operation. To be sure, Logos, LionBridge and Berlitz-type companies will be out selling at every possible language venue, but you are just as likely to find them at "outsourcing" conferences as at linguistic seminars. Even five years ago there were few people in the localization and translation business who would feel comfortable at these types of venues, but that is no longer the case. Translation and localization firms had to confine themselves to a couple of trade shows to be credible: the Society for Technical Communications and the ATA. A decade ago most of the railroads in the United States collapsed, because they thought they were in the railroad and not the transportation business. Airfreight and deregulated trucking took their business away. Today you have strategic alliances between railroads and trucking businesses, which help both. The railroad can deliver goods more quickly via piggyback cars, and the railroad saves labor headaches for the trucking company, which can no longer find long-haul truck drivers. I sense more of a push among these new management professionals to convince the market that they are in the multilingual dissemination and process development business (including English or whatever the authoring language is). Translation and localization, while still important, is only a crucial starting point to doing work further up the food chain. At a major telecommunications firm, the documentation budget is $100 million, while the translation budget is $20 million, so it's not hard to figure out where you can head. One management consultant was able to leverage his understanding of analyzing how the translation process was handled at this firm as opposed to others in the industry, then was asked to look at the entire documentation process. At a major telecoms firm, the documentation budget is $100 million, while the translation budget is $20 million, so it's not hard to figure out where you can head. When you look at how Andersen and the other big six accounting firms built up their management consulting businesses, it was through the mundane process of handling companies' accounting. The accountants saw the tail end of good or bad management and process decisions, then developed a professional competence (and managers to direct it) to go out and address their problems - for a nice fee. We didn't see the accountants doing this work, because they weren't trained for it and wouldn't have had the same credibility. This development among vendors of translation and localization services fits with what is going on at companies. The stories of how people ended up handling translations at multi-million dollar companies are legendary. At Marriott Corporation, which translates large volumes of training manuals, the original manager came from "Loss Control." He put up signs in Spanish telling people they would be fired if they stole. The word got out that he knew translation, and all kinds of things ended up in his lap. At Toro, the lawn mower and snow blower firm, the first translation manager came from the parts department, where she filled (and had translated) orders from overseas distributors. While these people did their jobs adequately, the nature of their background and how they were perceived in the company meant that no vendors could use them to reform the process by which documents were authored. With the need for more translation and localization work, the people running departments have great budgets and more rank; they want their partners to help them globalize. Xerox and other companies now have "globalization" managers. As if to match the market, LionBridge is happy to point out that it can help a firm "globalize", not just translate. Jim Lewis, Berlitz' new worldwide Vice President of Translations, promises to use the name recognition that Berlitz has as a bully pulpit to bring about a wider appreciation of what translation is and what a modern company can do. According to the new managers, vendors are getting a whole new set of questions from clients. These are more likely to be "What sort of return do I get from doing business with you" than "How much do you charge for FIGS?" I am also seeing more contracts now in which in addition to a fee for x number of words and x lines of code translated, another amount is set aside for monthly consulting. Companies are encouraging vendors to help improve the process by which they author documents. If one of the multis manages to effectively harness the power of IT and to implement systems featuring the reliable management of projects executed simultaneously at multiple sites, it will have a serious leg up. I always get asked the sort of scorecard question "Which one of these newly capitalized entrants will win out?" Henri Broekmate of Trados gave me a good insight: "I think the battle between the big multilingual vendors will be largely fought and won on the field of information technology." If one of the multis manages to effectively harness the power of IT and to implement systems featuring the reliable management of projects executed simultaneously at multiple sites, it will have a serious leg up on the competition. I do not find it surprising that Logos has placed Scott Bennett, who is a computational linguist by training and a Ph.D., as its Director of Marketing, and that Berlitz now has a VP of Technology for the first time. The "Language Fever" of which I wrote last year covered the new capital coming into the translation and localization industries. The new capital, whatever the source, also brought in a totally different mindset than that of the industry in the past. And this is the real legacy of the change, and the future of the industry in the coming year, not just better capitalized firms. Translation and localization is what these firms do, but it is no longer all that they are. John Freivalds JFA 5160 Colonial Drive Minneapolis Minnesota 55416, USA Tel +1-612-525-0731 Fax +1-612-525-0659 E-mail JFA@worldnet.att.net