Min Tan / 谭旻

Be the Localization Go-to person

May 28, 2017 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

Working with NGOs with little localization knowledge: Localization Maturity Model (LMM)

According to Common Sense Advisory, there are 5 LMM stages: Reactive, Repeatable, Managed, Optimized, Transparent. Based on the experience of working with Naked Heart Foundation, their LMM is on stage 1 – reactive. They used to work with a translation agency who helped them translated several articles from Russian to English and from English to Chinese. However, everything is ad hoc – they will only translate the articles when they need to. There is not a dedicated localization project manager helping them managing the localization process. There are no internal linguist who can help them fulfill the needs of localization tasks. All the files are sent via email and they are not using any tools to help them manage their projects.

Evangelizing localization to the client: What is it and how we do it?

Quote the service with 100% discount

Evangelizing the localization best practices to our client is our main goal of this project. In order to give our client a clear idea of how much a localization project would cost, we gave sent them quotes of each projects with 100% discount. Quotes are created using the excel templates with our “LocSpire” group logo. We provide service of both TEP and linguistic review for all projects. The quote made things very clear for the clients that the services that we provided. Even if we are doing a voluntary work, we still want they to be received the most professional localization service they deserve.

Coordinating with the client about the potential issues

Because our client has little knowledge about localization, we need to communicate with them a lot before start working on the projects.

For example, in our PPT translation project, we asked our clients for the PPT template, font assets and communicated with them about the un-editable texts in the PPT file. In our Chinese translation project, we asked them to provide us previous Chinese translations to us it as a Translation Memory (TM) for our new project.

Educating the best practices of localization

Tools picking:

We deliberately picked the free online translation tools such as SmartCAT, Memsource, Amara for our localization projects. We understand that as NGOs, they may not have enough budget to purchase the license of an expensive Translation Management System (TMS). In the future, if they have a lot of localization needs and they decide to work with a language service provider (LSP), our client can have a clear idea of which TMS to use.

Dos and don’ts:

In our video localization project, we used Amara. First, we exported the .srt file and then upload it in our Translation Management System (TMS). Our linguist can translate subtitles directly in the TMS an use the video as a reference when translating. After translation, we exported the translated .srt file from TMS. We translated the subtitles and them inputted the subtitles to the video after translation. We also educated our client that it is easier to localize video projects using online free tools like Amara and not burn the subtitles in the video.

What’s next: Exit Plan?

We handed off all the linguist assets and the translation deliveries to our client. However, it is up to them to decide whether to move up to the next level of the LMM. In order to move up to the next level, it is very important for them to have the time and budget to invest in localization. At present, they do not see a lot of needs of localization so that they may not need a dedicated localization manager in their side. However, after this 5 months cooperation between us, we believe they have a clear idea of what they need to do next.

LocSpire for Naked Heart Foundation – Localization Practicum

March 19, 2017 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

Our Client:

Our client is a Russia based Non-profit organization called Naked Heart Foundation (http://www.nakedheart.org/en/) whose aim is to ensure that every child in Russia has a loving family and a safe and stimulating place to play. It does this through creating safe and inspiring play facilities in impoverished areas, supporting foster families and families raising children with disabilities, funding NGOs that work with such families, preventing the abandonment of children in Russia and changing attitudes towards disability.

Who are we?

We are LocSpire. We are a group of 5 MIIS second year TLM students who speaks 5 different languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

Program Management:

1. We use excel sheets to track the progress of everything

During the group meeting, we were talking about which tool we should use for project management. There are so many tools in the market such as Asana, Basecamp, Slack and so on. However, we decided to use Google Sheet at the end because it is easy to use and we can just put this sheet into our group folder to keep track of everything.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ll1x8aJxPm6v2H7zrZJNnsZzEFDvNqKY79F9LYm64dQ/edit?usp=sharing

Advantages: It is clear and easy to ready. Also, it is free of charge.
Disadvantages: It has less functions than other project management tools, so that everything should be created by ourselves manually.

2. Work division

Our team has 5 members and we speak 5 languages. Based on our own expertises, we decided that the role of each person should be:

Amelia – project manager/Russian linguist
Julie – localization consultant/Korean linguist
Alex – account manager/Russian linguist
Min – vendor manager/Chinese linguist
Naomi – localization consultant /Korean linguist

3. Creating Quotes for the Client

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B29-uAGoRqpIdmlORVoxNC1HbWM?usp=sharing

The quotes are created using the excel templates with our “LocSpire” group logo. We provide service of both TEP and linguistic review for all projects. Also, we created our quotes with 100% discount for our client. The quote made things very clear for the clients that the services that we provided. Even if we are doing a voluntary work, we still want they to be received the most professional localization service they deserve.

The Projects that I am working on:

Chinese Press Release Project 1

Project Manager: Min (Me)
Translator 1, who is also Reviewer 1
Translator 2(Me), who is also Reviewer 2

Chinese Press Release Project 2

Project Manager: Min (Me)
Translator 1, who is also Reviewer 1, who is also the zh-CN Lead Linguist
Translator 2, who is also Reviewer 2
Translator 3, who is also Reviewer 3
Translator 4, who is also Reviewer 4

Challenges that we had:

1. Find out the perfect translation tools – Memsource

We chose to use MemSource, which is an online based translation software. The reason why we chose is are as follow:

Cloud based
Cheaper for small and medium size companies
Clear user interface

Here are two screenshots of the project that we are working on via Memsource:

Here is the translation user interface.

2. Determine the terminology

The first thing we have done is to coordinate with our client about the terminology. Questions like: do we need to translate our client’s’ name or not? We asked for the client for their confirmation. They sent us a previously translated Chinese article for reference so that we could see how the previous team handled the terminology translation. We created a simple style guide based on the previous translation and stick to the style guide for future translation.

3. Consistent Term Database (TB)

During our kick-off meeting, one of the most important things to mention to our translators is to stick to the term base.

4. Split up work among translators

The process that we are doing is: Translation → Editing + Review → In-context Review + DTP

The most important thing is to make sure that all the translations are reviewed by a different person and there will be a final person who will go through everything in-context and fix the inconsistencies.

Localize Google Feud

December 22, 2016 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

By a team of three (Gaya, Melissa and me), we localized the Game Google Feud. The game was found on GitHub. The game was originally in English. We localized it into FR, DE and ES.

At first, we were trying to localize it to Chinese, Russian. However, we found trouble localizing it into non-roman languages. This will be discussed in details in the following section.

Challenges and Solutions

1. “24” ways does not work

The traditional “24 Ways” of externalizing strings does not work for this project. This is because all the strings are in the variable. As you can see in the screenshot below:

Our solution is that we created separate HTML and JS files for different languages. And we add languages pickers to every site so that everytime somebody clicks one language, it will direct you to the page in that language.

2. No results for non-roman languages

At the beginning, we were thinking of localizing this game into Chinese and Russian. However, when we translated everything into RU and CN, there were no results. As shown in the screenshot below. This applies to all non-roman characters. Therefore, we decided to only localize into Roman languages.

Our team member contacted the original author of this game to find out the reason of this problem. We got the reply that the system automatically recognizes non-roman languages as “error symbol” and shows no result.

3. Add a language picker?

The language picker can help us locate the correct language files in the folder. However, how to create a folder path that applies to everyone’s computer? Add “..” (two dots) at the beginning of the overarching folder and details the folder path to find the correct language files.

4. Bad translation does not work! We need transcreation!

Because the translation we did goes directly to the google website and it pulls the results in real time, bad translation will not show us the ideal results. If we translate the strings poorly, we cannot fully localize this game into other locales.

Additionally, this game contains a lot of cultural rich contents. Questions such as “Power Rangers are …” may not apply to other countries such as Germany because Power Rangers is not very famous in there. Instead, we need to find the equivalent of the “Power Rangers” in Germany and replace it with that to reach the same effect.

You can find our final presentation HERE. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Please read my TAUS 2016 Annual Conference Report!

December 15, 2016 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

This October, I went to the TAUS 2016 Annual Conference in Portland, OR. I feel so honored to be one of the reporters of this awesome conference.

Now, you can read my reports and all the Portland annual conference report by downloading the TAUS 2016 Annual Conference Ebook via: https://www.taus.net/think-tank/reports/event-reports/keynotes-winter-2016

Desktop Publishing for Save the Children Positive Parenting Poster

May 23, 2016 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

Introduction

This is a demonstration of desktop publishing for an Adobe Illustrator poster. The target is to localize it from Chinese into English.

The aim of this localization project is to meet the needs of English speakers who lives in China so as to let them know about this program.

Original File

Localized Version 1

Localized Version 2

Prepare the file for translation

As we have said, this is an Adobe Illustrator file. Luckily, all the Chinese text are edible. In this engineering step, what we need to do is to create a picture list which is to copy all the text that needed to be translated into a word document and then send it to the translators along with the Translation Memory.

Above is the picture list I created for this project, which consists of a column of the original Chinese text and the blank column I left for the English translation.

2. Send the translation file to translator and send the translated file to reviewers

This step includes sending the prepared file you have created in the first step and the relevant Translation Memories to translators. And then send the translated documents to the reviewers to review.

3. Receive the reviewed files and then perform desktop publishing

After receiving the translated document, the DTP process starts.

Since our project is Adobe Illustrator file and every text is edible. I first deleted all the Chinese text on it and left the poster “blank” (without any text). And then I created a text layer which includes all the translated text.

The Text Layer and the Original Layer

Then, you need to create individual text boxes and then copy all the translated text into it. You can drag the box or resize the box depends on your translated text and the format. However, be careful to keep the style consistent with the original file.

Creating Text Boxes for Each Line of Translated Text

After you have created all the text boxes, there is another important step – try to find out the best font! Since this project is translated from Chinese into English, it is hard for us to find the exact same font which applies to both English and Chinese. For this specific project, the designer of the original file uses a font which can only be used in Chinese. Therefore, we have to find out what is the most similar one in English.

In the real life scenario, you have to talk to clients about which font they want to use or do they have specific requirements about the font. In this project, I have created two localized versions and the only difference between them is their fonts. I will let the client decide which font they are going to use.

Two Localized Versions

4. Linguistic QA and Mechanical QA

After the DTP process, you need to make sure that the translation is making sense in the context and everything is looking fine in this localized document. Therefore, you need to do Linguist QA and Mechanical QA to make sure that everything is right.

5. Things to Pay Attention to

The first thing is the company logo in this poster. The logo itself is bilingual, so I left it in that way. Because the aim of this project is to let the English speaker who lives in China to understand this program, keep the logo bilingual is not only good for keep consistency of the whole project but also let them know that this project is created in Chinese originally.

The Bilingual Company Logo

The second thing is about Terminology. Because Save the Children International is created in the UK, it is based on British locale. Taking into consideration that we do not specifically focus on the US, Canadian, Australia or British locale. I chose to use “Children” instead of “kids” in this project in order to keep the consistency with the company name.

In conclusion, this is only a demonstration of a small project about Desktop Publishing in Adobe Illustrator. Through the Multilingual Desktop Publishing course taught by Max Troyer at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, we have also learned Desktop Publishing in other Adobe software such as AfterEffects, InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat. We have also learned how to localize a Epub file and play with font by using FontDorge.

Please feel free to contact me via:

mint@miis.edu

831-238-8994

or connect with me via LinkedIn

XTRF — Translation management system: Excellent news for project managers?

December 15, 2015 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

Translation management system like XTRF can largely streamline the process of handling translation projects and increase the working efficiency of project managers so that they can mange more projects.

In this article, you will see how exactly XTRF is helping project mangers as well as vendors and clients in the whole process. And this article will also talk about the improvements and shortcomings of this website. Hope you could have a clearer understanding of what translation management system (or XTRF) is after you finish reading this article!

Here are several advantages and disadvantages of XTRF:

PM Portal, Client Portal and Vendor Portal

XTRF has three different portals: PM Portal, Client Portal and Vendor Portal.

[PM portal]

[Vendor portal]

[Client portal]

As you can see from the screen shots above, each portal has a different color and a different format so that people can easily find out which portal they are using.

Saving time of creating quotes and POs

XTRF can save PM time in creating quotes and POs. In the XTRF website, it can automatically generate the quotes and PO in a uniformed format, which you can see from the example screen shot below. XTRF can largely increase the efficiency for PMs when creating quotes and POs.

[Quote]

Checking vendor availability and assigning works to vendor more easily

[Vendor]

In the PM portal, you can see a list of vendors, their overall evaluation, languages combination and other contacting information. You can either assign a job to a specific person by searching his/her name in the “Text” box at the top left of the page, or you can assign the work to a range of vendors and set the rule that the person who accept the work first can get the job.

By doing this, you do not need to spend a lot of time checking your contact book and call each of your vendor and check their availability. XTRF will automatically send them an email announcing them this job, and they can accept it by clicking the link provided in the email.

Preparing and sending files

[Managing projects]

As you can see in the PM portal page, PM can manage different projects at the same time. Without the help of XTRF, it is very possible that they will miss a document or send the wrong document to the wrong person. However, by using XTRF, you can upload the file you want the vendor to translate on the platform. After the vendor translated the document, he/she can upload the translated document on the platform so that the proofreader can start his/her job as soon as the vendor upload the document.

Better transparency for clients

Using XTRF can help the client know the progress of the whole project and create a sense of transparency for them.

In case of emergency…

As a PM, there will be some time when you need to help your client or your vendor do their job. For example, your client told you he/she cannot access to the Internet or he/she knows nothing about XTRF. In order to save more time and help everything go smoothly, you can sign in the vendor portal and client portal and help them do their works.

However, it might be confusing and difficult for the PM to log in as a vendor or client because the “secret path” might be difficult to find.

[sign in as the vendor]

[sign in as the client]

Price and competitors

XTRF is very powerful, but it is also not cheap.

[XTRF price]

As you can see from the screen shot above, it costs $129 per user per month.

In the market, there are other similar translation project manager systems like SDL TMS and Smartling Translation Management System. The latter is free for translators and agencies.

[competitors]

So for smaller translation agencies, although XTRF can largely improve the working efficiency, spending so much money on platforms such as XTRF may be a tough choice.

Real time Machine Translation – the world’s future?

December 9, 2015 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

That is how you saw in the Google translation video: you went to a country where you cannot speak their language. You grab your phone and open the Google Translate. So now you can just be as anybody else. Language barrier is no longer there. You can use Google Translate to translate everything you see, hear for you.

Google translation is so powerful. You can get instant translation when you hold your camera to a source language text. You can speak to the microphone in your own language and get the translated words in a few second.

As we have learned in the Intro to Computer-Assisted-Translation class, Google Translate is a SMT (Statistical Machine Translation), which means translations are generated on the basis of statistical models. All the translations in Google are based on tons of millions of translated documents.

As a former linguistic major student, I have learned in my Semantics and Pragmatics class that one of the main differences between human beings and animals is that human beings have the complicated system of grammar. For many years, scientists have tested on many smart animals such as gorillas and dolphins to teach them build up the awareness of grammar but all of them have failed. Since human being is the only creature in the world that know how grammar works, would it be possible that machine could have the same brain as human beings? Can machine be as good as human brain?

Here are some major problems I found out in Google Translate:

Unable to translate/pronounce tones

For Google Translate, you can speak to the microphone and the machine will automatically transcript what you have said into words. After the words have been translated, it is then spoken by the machine again. This leads to two problems:

1) the tone in the source sentence cannot be captured;

2) the original tone cannot be integrated in the translated sentence and then cannot be heard by the listener.

In this example, the Chinese sentence “你真的可以吗” is a rhetorical question, which means “Do you think you can do this?”. However, the translation is totally wrong. First, it ignored the exclamation word “吗”, and then literally translated each word of “你真的可以” into “You can really do”, which does not make any sense in English. Also, when hearing the translation, it is a declarative sentence.

In this example, the Chinese input sentence “好玩吗” was a rhetorical question which means “Is it fun?”. Google translated into “Is it fun”. This may seem right at the first sight. However, when the machine speaks this sentence, it is pronounced into a declarative sentence and made the tone went down at the end of the sentence. This gives listeners a feeling that this sentence is a sarcastic sentence, which means: “Someone wants to make something fun. But actually it is very boring.”

However, in some cases, the machine can detect the exclamation word and make changes in the translation.

In the first example, Google Translate successfully detected the exclamation word “吗” so it translated into “Are you serious” which is a rhetorical question. And in the second one, it translated into a declarative sentence “You are serious”.

SMTs like Google Translate need to use more and more data to make the program itself perfect.

Ambiguity

In spoken Chinese, people sometimes say broken sentences that can make sense in a certain context but they are not necessarily grammatically correct. This may be difficult for machine translations to translate because it is very likely that the machine will translate it wrong.

In this example, “你说”
can mean “What do you think?” “What you said is…” “I will let you decide.” and so on. However, the machine translated it into “You said”, which may not be appropriate in that context.

When encountering this problem, translation machine can provide people with different translations so that the listener could select the one that is the most appropriate.

Conclusion:

Using a real time machine translation to communicate with a foreigner who speaks a totally different language may be possible, but sometimes it may cause problems because of the imperfection of machine translation. Unable to detect and pronounce the exclamation word and tone may cause the wrong translation.

Is basecamp everyone’s favorite project management app.?

September 16, 2015 / Min Tan / 0 Comments

Typing “basecamp” into Google, the first information popped up is a sentence “Basecamp is everyone’s favorite project management app.” and then followed by the official link of the website. For those who haven’t done project management work may not be familiar with this website, but this website has definitely changed many people’s ways of working.

In old days, most of the project management works rely heavily on the whiteboard, where team members write done things-to-do and things that have been done. For example, the project manager put on his to-do stuff on the whiteboard, check what has already accomplished and highlighted those need to be paid special attention to. Comparing with the old and traditional ways of project management, the new online project management seems to have brought us way more convenience.

Taking Basecamp for example. Basecamp’s job is putting everything people can do in the real life into the Internet. So that people arrange works and share documents anytime at anyplace as long as they have access to the Internet. Let’s go through some of the main points what cool stuff Basecamp has brought us:

1. Created a platform for team members to discuss their progress.

Do you like meetings? Or let me put it this way: Do you like tons of meetings? If your answer is “YES”, then… you are interesting, I want to be friend with you.

Basecamp is divided into four parts: latest project updates, discussions, to-do lists, and files. What Basecamp can do is to link the whole team by the Internet. For a whole project, the project members can have no meeting and the project manager can assign all the works online. If group members have a question about their work, they can use the discussion page and discuss their problems online.

2. Help the client keep track on the project.

It is not hard to imagine that some clients would be so desperate trying to track the project you are working on. While on Basecamp, you can actually invite your client in the team.

You may wonder, “What? So that clients will know everything we talk about?” While in Basecamp, the project manager is the person in charge. If the project manager wants to let the client see a post, he or she can make it “open to everyone”. But if the project manager does not want the client to see this information, he or she can just click the button of “The client can not see the file.” Therefore, the project manager controlled the information that can be seen by the client and that cannot be seen by the client.

3. Documents can be easily shared with each other.

Just as what I have mentioned in the first point, group members can upload their files online into the Basecamp, and their group members can download it easily.

Since we have talked about so many advantages of Basecamp, are there any expectations for further development?

1. Can the web page platform be linked to the cell phone?

Although many people check their emails few times a day, It would still be a good idea to get a text message once there is a piece of information posted on the project you are working with. By connecting the cell phone to the Basecamp platform, people can be more easily connected and get timely feedbacks.

2. How large documents can it be stored online?

Would it be difficult when uploading a very big file on the Basecamp? There are all kinds of information that need to be translated. For example, if the project is to localize a 5 hours video, and the group member is trying to upload the final localized version into the Basecamp, would it be really slow to upload or it will be recognized as “too big to upload”?

The fact is that there are more and more people using tools just like Basecamp. And these tools have saved people a lot of time and created better efficiency. In order to be the “favorite for everyone”, Basecamp do need to deal with more expectations.

Hello world!

September 2, 2015 / Min Tan / 1 Comment

Welcome to Sites @ MIIS. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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