@kevinpotts #LavaCon

Going Global Without Going Insane

Kevin Potts

Today’s agenda

The challenges we face

Getting to better content

… and better process

Translation models

Technology that doesn’t suck

How Lexmark does its thing

ChallengesLanguage is hard.

Meaning is harder.

(challenge one)

Our world, today.

There are

languagesover 7,100

There are

of dialectsthousands

There are

of culturalmillions

nuances

There are

ways to poorlyinfinite

communicate

Expect complications预计并发症

Nothing is easy when going global

(challenge two)

Your language is not my

language.

English

French

2

French

German

Italian

Romansch

4

Zulu

Xhosa

Afrikaans

English

Northern

Sotho

11Tswana

Sotho

Tsonga

Swazi

Venda

Ndebele

?

Spanish ⧣ Spanish

French ⧣ French

Portuguese ⧣ Portuguese

English ⧣ English

Identify specific marketsIdentificar mercados específicos

It’s about country and language and

dialect and getting it wrong is not good

(challenge three)

Translation vs meaning

“The clothing was worn.”

“She wore her dress.”

“The pants had holes.”

“The uniforms were damaged.”

“He ended up wearing the suit.”

“The kids’ clothing was rags.”

“The Santa suit had seen better days.”

“Slacks and tractors don’t mix.”

Context iseverything

Focus on localization.דגש על לוקליזציה

Understanding is the only goal

Better contentClarity in translation starts with

sharp writing and smart content

Write tight

Simple clauses

Active verbs

Minimal hyperbole

Specificity

Brevity

Clarity*

Naughty list

Clichés

Colloquialisms

Idioms

Verbing

Newspeak

Seek claritydemande la clarté

Writing well helps every downstream

facet of communication

(side note)

Imagery

Art smart

“Unwritten” culture

Details matter

Seek opinions

Respect its influence

Edit like words

Better processStrong process provides

consistent results

Workflow mo'

~80% use cases

Document and share

Embrace complexity

Get better

Imperatives and gotchas

Common engagement path

Traffic cops

Budget transparency

Reviewers

1.5X time

Who translates?

You might dance well, but you’ll

never win without a great partner

Agency

4Freelancers

3

In-house

(part time)

2In-house

(full time)

1

In-house

(full time)1

+Dedicated

Build knowledge

Confidential

Consistency

-Expensive

Unscalable

Single point of failure

In-house

(part time)2

+Build knowledge

Confidential

Less expensive

-Competing priorities

Inconsistency

Driven by necessity

Freelancers3

+Cost-effective

Easy collaboration

Build relationships

-Inconsistent quality

Management juggle

Potential flakiness

Needs internal review

Little scale

Agency4

+Scalability

Consistent quality

Easy management

Professionalism

-Potentially costly

Needs internal review

Competing clients

Freelancers

In-house

(full time)

Freelancers

In-house

(full time)

In-house

(part time)

Agency

Free

lancers

Explore combinationsKhám phá sự kết hợp

Shape translation vendor organization to fit

your business and budget

Technology

Sometimes technology really can

help the situation. (Really!)

Things that are awesome

Structured content

Workflow automation

XLIFF

Google Translate

Web pages that won’t implode

(side note)

Accessibility

AccessibilityFlexibility

AccessibilityFlexibilityImagery

AccessibilityFlexibilityImageryTest

Bend, don’t breakBeygja, brjóta ekki

Build tools and templates

that scale seamlessly

How we do

Lexmark runs a global org and

that can be a pain in the ass

Our numbers

4 major “geos”

50+ countries

30+ languages

80+ web properties

50+ humans involved

1,000s products

What makes our life interesting

Product content and marketing content

Distributed authority at geo and country level

Two major divisions

Brand shifting

Our content

Our technology

Our partners

Our process

ROI

Vendor structure (time, $)

Automated publishing (1000s of hours)

Internal production (big $$$)

Consolidate budget (a lot)

Questions?