Presented by: Ryan Coleman CTO & Co-Founder Clay Tablet Technologies Overcoming the language barrier in a global economy

Introduction About Me Ryan Coleman CTO & Co-Founder, Clay Tablet Technologies [email_address] Blog: http://fitrans.blogspot.com About Clay Tablet Intelligent Middleware Connector For the Translation Industry. We connect content to translators.

Challenges For every ONE English speaker online today… … there are THREE non-English speakers 5 Fastest Growing Languages Online (2000-2005): < Number of languages the European Union will require official documentation be translated into as of 2007 . 23 BRIC Countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are expected to have accounted for 27% of online ad growth in 2006 > 27% languages

What is there to translate? Manuals Brochures Web Content Support Materials User Interface Training Materials Technical Documentation

45 Products in the last 12 months

Average of 30+ languages per product

Challenges Productivity loss Customer/Employee confusion Lower sales / Lost Revenue Increased support costs Regulatory Hurdles Can’t ingest. Can’t Digest.

Challenges You can’t afford to translate all of your content… … You can’t afford not to translate anything either.

Challenges Won’t work. Photo: Spatacus007 (Flickr)

Evaluate Context Nature Risk Perception

Evaluate Context Nature Risk Perception Manuals Intricate Intended to Educate Needs to ship with Product Likely technical Tech support load Damage to product if instructions correct Frustrated Consumers Lawsuits/Liability? Expected to be correct Extension of your corporate brand

Solution #1: Crowdsource Use your user-base PROS Free / Almost Free CONS Requires a Passionate User Base Unpredictable: User goals don’t always match business goals Questionable Quality/Consistency

Solution #2: Machine Translation Use Machine Translation PROS Can be Free/Low Cost (Professional systems are $$$) Wide variety of Language Pairs available CONS Low Quality Liability Risk Increased Professional Systems are very expensive & require extensive training Still need people to review

Solution #3: Internal Resources Use Your Internal Resources PROS Can be Free/Low Direct Cost Good chance your employees are SME’s CONS Hidden Soft Costs High Opportunity Cost Consistency and Quality may be questionable

Solution #4: Professionals Use Professional Translators PROS High Quality Consistent Translation Use Tools that can help reduce costs CONS Typically very expensive Time investment needed at startup

Challenge There is no “Black Box”.

No “One Size Fits All” Hybrid approaches based on context/content

Ideas and Solutions People + Process + Technology

Important Considerations Translator Content Repository How does content get here? How do they get there? or

Other Important Considerations Synchronization Workflow Permissions Proofing / Review Efficiency Tools Time Sensitivity Truly Multilingual?

Piecing it Together Take analysis of context/content and pair with Pros/Cons of translation options.

Piecing it Together Internal vs. External?

How it’s typically done Large companies Web Site LSP Custom apps CMS LSP Technology DB !!! Web Site CMS LSP Small companies !

Questions? [email_address] P: 416 363 0888 x.116 Blog: http://fitrans.blogspot.com Company: http://www.clay-tablet.com Google: I’m right after the Ryan Coleman, Pro Bass Fisherman Q & A