Laura Casanellas Luri presentation Localizing for Travel: Diverse Solutions for Diverse Needs, from the highly editorial to the automatically translated from GALA 2015 in Sevilla, Spain. Laura discusses the various content formats and types related to the travel industry. Speed is key! Content is short-lived in travel, often user-generated. Language tools and automation play a role in getting content to market in various languages. Welocalize specializes in language services for the travel industry.

1. Localizing for Travel:
Diverse Solutions for Diverse Needs
Laura Casanellas Luri
From the highly editorial to the automatically translated

2. Travel as a commodity
Literally at our fingertips
All the main steps related to travel can be done
online from virtually any point on the planet
providing there is an internet connection.
• Browsing through tourism sites to get
information about travel destinations
• Booking transportation (flights, trains,
cars, etc.)
• Booking accommodation (hotels,
B&Bs, hostels, apartments…)
• Finding information about/booking,
local amenities and activities
(museums, theme parks, leisure
attractions)

3. Benefits for the Localization industry
The move to digital platforms creates many great possibilities
The localization industry is already
benefiting from the move to digital
platforms
 Demand for more content
 In more languages
There is room for different localization
models within and across the Travel
industry.
Translation
Full Post-Editing
Transcreation
Light Post-Editing
Raw MT
Crowdsourcing
MT + Crowd

4. All types, all formats
A variety of content types that require different approaches
Highly polished, dedicated sites containing inviting photographs and tantalising
written content
User Generated Content
Websites with practical interfaces containing drop down menus and clickable options
to book destination, time, day, luggage, dietary requirements…
Marketing
User Interface
Support, instructional pages
Online reviews from fellow travellers accounting their experiences in different places.
Technical Documentation

5. The need for Speed
Things happen very fast in the Travel industry
The lifespan of content in large Travel sites is short.
 E.g. “Crisis Translation” – an airport has been closed due to adverse weather
conditions.
 24 hours service
Website Content is constantly changing.
 E.g. Influx of constant new offers published on the
sites.
 + all related content needs to be localized
(marketing pieces, new UI options, support
documentation)
 Within a week the campaign might need to be
dropped (globally or locally) because goals are
not met
 Content needs to be changed and localized again

6. The need for Flexibility
The requirements are multiplying thereby expanding the skillset exponentially
Mobile set of requests that require flexible linguistic
resources:
 SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
 Content creation
 Localization of local entities (names of places)
Skills required: research, creation of content, use of advance Search Tools
Challenge: Is the current Supply Chain willing to take on this type of jobs?
Can local Language Providers recruit resources with different mind-sets and skills?

7. Different scenarios
Many companies still have quite basic manual processes
Scenario 1
• Requirement to translate Travel deals on a
daily basis
• Deals can be published in 7 different
languages including English (any variation to
and from)
• Internal team of translators cannot keep up
with the demand
• The desire is to reduce time to market
• Work is done on a proprietary CMS, where
every translation is overwritten: no leverage
kept.
Ideal solution: move to bilingual format, creation of TMs, implementation
of Machine Translation program for all language combinations.

8. Different scenarios
Most companies have certain levels of automation
Scenario 2
• Large Travel Site
• Internal TMS
• One workflow
• Different scenarios:
• B to C (Business to Customers)
• B to B (Business to Business)
• Challenge1: different voice depending on the
content type, sometimes difficult to distinguish as
there is only one workflow
• Challenge2: Some tasks require crowd, but crowd
with certain knowledge of CAT Tools
• Difficult to resource

9. Different scenarios
Full automation: Localization Maturity Model (LMM)
Scenario 3
• Large Travel Site
• Internal TMS
• Connector between TMS and Welocalize’s
open source GlobalSight system
• Different workflows for different possible
scenarios covered
• E.g. with/without client review
• Client saves 70% PM and 1,300 engineer
hours per year
• Welocalize saves 35% on PM time
• Focus on quality

10. UGC, a very lucrative type of content
Large Travel companies have made User Generated Content the core of their business model
 One of the newest and most disruptive content types within the Travel sector
 Format: online reviews
 Addressing the need of ultimate feedback: sentiment and opinion
information from other travellers
 In the target languages
 Localization solution: raw Machine Translation, MT + Light PE, MT + crowd
 Volumes: hundreds of millions of words

11. UGC and the localization industry
Pre-processing steps, MT management, lighter forms of Post-Editing
Normalization steps prior to Machine Translation
 Authored by ordinary users: informal style, frequent
spelling and grammar errors, non standard input
(emoticons)
 Research is focusing on normalization and pre-processing
steps: the better the source, the better the MT output
 Examples of normalization steps:
 Correct localization of proper names
 Inclusion of frequent misspellings
 Inclusion of frequent date patterns

12. UGC
Classification of non-standard input
 Short forms (nite (night), sayin (saying), gr8 (great)),
 Acronyms (lol (laugh out loud), iirc (if I remember correctly)),
 Typing errors/misspellings (wouls (would), rediculous (ridiculous)),
 Punctuation omissions/errors (im (I’m), dont (don’t)),
 Non-dictionary slang (that was well mint (that was very good)),
 Wordplay (that was soooooo great (that was so great)),
 Censor avoidance (sh1t, f***),
 Emoticons (:) (smileys), <3 (heart))
 Foreign words used intentionally (al dente, bon voyage)
(Jiang et al, 2012) (Clark & Araki, 2011)

13. UGC
Normalization script

14. Light Post-Editing
Comprehensible, accurate but not stylistically compelling
Situation:
 High volumes & perishability; however, a mistranslated review can have negative
impact on business
 Extra Light PE (sanity check only). Post-editors fix:
o severe misrepresentations, dropped/added negations
o offensive statements
o un-translated words / omissions when critical
Question to ask: Is the target language review a balanced representation of the
original review?
 weImpact Low (40 to 70% discounts of the new word rate)

15. China, an unstoppable phenomenon
Travellers from China are becoming more prevalent
Potential:
 Population of over 1.36 billion
 Around 5% have passports
Hotels.com™ Chinese International Travel
Monitor (CITM) 2014 Report
2012
14M tourists
2013
97M tourists
2014
~<100M
When?
Chinese
NY
Labour
Day
Research
through…
Travel
guide
books
friends (social
media)
online
travel
sites
Where?
Hong Kong,
Thailand,
Japan
US, France,
UK, Italy

16. Conclusions
The need to catch up
o The Travel industry is growing fast
o With progress in technology and increasing numbers of people using it, the needs of the Travel
industry are changing and evolving
o The Localization industry needs to adapt to this increase in growth and the emergence of new
tasks
o Automation is key
o Machine Translation, with or without Post-Editing, has become a must to translate large
volumes of User Generated Content
o Some countries are becoming more exposed to the Travel industry and therefore, to the
localization industry. China.
o There is a need for a flexible, multitasking, specialized translation-post-editing force.

17. About Welocalize
Welocalize, Inc., founded in 1997, offers innovative translation and localization solutions helping
global brands to grow and reach audiences around the world in more than 157 languages. Our
solutions include global localization management, translation, supply chain management, people
sourcing, language services and automation tools including MT, testing and staffing solutions and
enterprise translation management technologies. With over 600 employees worldwide, Welocalize
maintains offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan and China.
www.welocalize.com