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Chrisrian Faust form FaustTranslations at BLU2017
- 1. The future is now: using collaborative workflows to reach every market asap Christian Faust FaustTranslations.com
- 2. The Dark Ages of the Translation Industry Output: 200 words per hour Delivery within few weeks
- 3. Starting my business The competitive edge?
- 5. Now… Output: 400-500 words per hour Delivery within days or hours.
- 9. The future
- 10. The future is NOW!
- 11. It doesn’t end here
- 12. Thank you! HAVE FUN! Christian Faust FaustTranslations.com
Editor's Notes
- Hello! Nice to meet you here in Berlin. My name is Christian Faust. I’m the owner and general manager of FaustTranslations.com. We are based in Luxembourg and specialized in translation management. I want to give you a short presentation about the future of our industry.
- To do so I‘ll give you a short summary of my technological journey since I started my business in the eighties. Personally, I call it the Dark Ages of the translation industry. Keywords here: electronic typewriters, postmans: these nice guys who always rang twice and delivered a letter within three to four days (within Germany), and of course our beloved printed dictionaries, some of them only a couple of years old #show old dictionary# I still love them, but don‘t use them anymore. The output, then, was approximately about 200 words per hour.
- When I started my business the question was: How to establish myself as a translator? I decided to heavily invest into technology.
- The solution was a fax machine. Interestingly, at this time, I was the first italian translator in Munich to have one. Immediately I had a technological advantage and got orders from an big italian car manufacturer. I was on track. And I learned my lesson: Technology is the key for success in our business. But the technological development is constantly progressing. Today, a fax machine represents no technological advantage anymore.
- Because I have only 5 minutes, let us fast-forward into the present. We have personal computers, CAT-tools, email, memories, termbases. We can transmit files to every place in the world within seconds. The translators‘ output increased to 400-500 words per hour. The delivery time is now about some days or sometimes even just a few hours.
- But... We at FaustTranslations experience a complex situation: The customer sends us his files. Our PM analyses these files, sends the offer to the customer who confirms his order. The PM sends the files to the translator along with the PO. The translator confirms the job and starts his work. Afterwards he sends back the files to the PM who forwards them to the editor, forth to the proofreader, to the in-country-reviewer, back to the project manager, eventually the files are delivered to the customer. The same for the memories, for the termbases, for the queries, for references and so on. You know this scenario? Sometimes, we have bigger jobs that we must split between several translators. The editor, then, has to guarantee the terminology and the style, tone of voice. Sometimes, we have translation projects into more languages, lately we had a project to translate into 40 languages. And, as a topping, we have customers who request changes in the source text during the process. Sometimes shortly before the delivery. Nice. That‘s not efficient. That‘s not collaborative. It‘s insane.
- Today we have a lot of CAT tools at hand: SDL Trados, memoQ, Across, memsource, Star Transit, wordfast ... you name it. But... Anybody here who believes that one of these tools represents a competitive advantage vis-a-vis the others or for your own business? I don‘t think so.
- Now, let‘s have a look into the future. My crystal ball, please. What do I see?
- I see: A relaxed project manager. The customer uploaded his files into the cloud, got an automated offer and confirmation. The PM has selected the predefined workflow and sent out the POs to translators, editors, proofreaders... These collegues start their work immediately, without any need to download files, select memories or termbases and so on. Even more, they work within the same invironment, with excactly the same memory and termbase that are updated in real-time! The communication between project manager, translators, edtors, proofreaders, in-country-reviewers, terminologists takes place within the same environment. No need to send files, emails, pick up the phone. Even more: integrated into the environment we find sophisticated QA-tools, translation engines and TMS functionalities. In conclusion: A dream for everybody in our industry! Ok, you‘ll say, Christian, sounds good, but, please, be realistic.
- I met Ivan at LocWorld Dublin last year and I listened to his vision. And I decided to go for it. Since then, we worked on creating a collaborative, integrated translation environment. Now, we have integrated into SmartCAT a sophisticated QA tool, lexiQA, an easy to handle TMS, Protemos, and the best translation engine, Lilt, that, in my opinion, represents a paradigm change in our industry. I admit, our project is still work in progress. But we are progressing fast. Our translators‘ output is approximately 800 words per hour and thanks to the collaborative workflow we reduce delivery times up to 50%. I would like to the see the future integration of easyling, pipedrive and slack, too. But this is still a dream (really). Another funny thing: I have my whole office, my whole company in the bag #show iPad# Everthing: all translations project, all requests, all customer data, litereally everything.
- Do you think it‘s all about doing more work faster, at higher quality and lower prices? Is this what we are living for? We, at FaustTranslations, do not. We believe, that we have to use technology to create a better world. To change and improve our lifes. At FaustTranslations, since January, we reduced our working hours from 8 to five hours a day. We do our project management from 9 to 12, have a lunch break, then work from 1 to 3 on urgent or unpredictible requests. We leave the office at 3 pm, walk the dog, do sports, go shopping, prepare dinner for our wifes or husbands, relax. The next day, we arrive in the office motivated, fully charged, happy and optimistic.
- Thanks a lot to our technology partners SmartCAT, lexiQA, Protemos, Lilt and our consultant, Anne-Marie. Thank you for listening. And good luck in re-inventing yourselfs! Have fun!