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About Me
I have a passion for interactive entertainment and technology, and am interested in creating and curating content for the modern world.
Exceptional language, writing, proofing, editing and speaking ability; eager to learn and apply new and varied skills. Extroverted and unafraid to create new connections, and has a proven ability to maintain and nurture professional networks.
TMS Recommendation to Management
In a previous post I discussed briefly the needs you must consider when picking a Translation Management System for crowdsourcing, as well as the best practices to put into place when using that TMS. Today, I’d like to compare a handful of TMSs to see if we can find the best choice for your own projects.
I chose Lokalise, Smartling, Transifex, and PhraseApp as my candidates based on word-of-mouth around campus and my own research online, and compared them using tools on Capterra and FinancesOnline. Where I could, I took advantage of free trials to try them out myself.
Removing obvious things like Translation Memory support, I made the above graph based on features I thought were the most important based on my personal experience and education — granted, I am a poor grad student, so my needs might differ some from yours.
When put like that, the two standouts are easy to see: Lokalise and Smartling. Both Lokalise and Smartling have very easy to use interfaces, and it’s a snap to get started with either without reading lengthy documentation or tutorials. Both offer robust TM and termbase support, and well as options for online collaboration. More importantly, both offer options for collaboration and web-based translation, eliminating the need to install programs and juggle spreadsheets.
However, though both would be great for certain projects, there are a few areas where Smartling comes out on top. Smartling seems much more geared toward large projects and companies, offering live training and a variety of review methods, not the least of which is allowing translators to see their translations in the finished product as they work. It also offers support for talent management, as well as options for marketers. Though both Lokalise and Smartling could get the job done, comparing all the bells and whistles side-by-side, Smartling wins out handily.
That all being said, it would be remiss of me not to mention a huge, often deciding factor: the price. Smartling is more expensive than Lokalise by a large margin. Putting aside Lokalise’s limited free account option, it starts at $40/month. Smartling starts at a whopping $200/month. However (and it’s a big however), both Smartling and Lokalise offer an Enterprise version with custom pricing. As Lokalise’s next highest option is $400/month and Smartling’s is $800/month, this could be a case where the larger the operation (and the budget) is, the more it’s worth going with Goliath over David.
Bottom line
If you’re looking for a product and service that promises to deliver everything you could dream of in a TMS — and if your budget can stand it — I recommend looking into Smartling.
If you’re just looking to do small-scale translations, or just don’t need all the features of Smartling, you should look into Lokalise’s free version and see if it fits your needs, and then go from there.
The real bottom line, though? There are almost as many different TMSs as there are businesses that need one. If you have the luxury of being able to shop around, your absolute best bet would be to try a few of the top contenders and see which fits your project best. Hopefully my posts have helped you get a head start!
A Quick Look at the Needs of a Translation Management System for Crowdsourcing
In my last post, I discussed some best practices for ensuring quality and quantity in your translation crowdsourcing (community localization, social localization, etc) efforts, which I hope you found helpful in getting a broad view of the subject!
This semester at MIIS, I’d like to go into a bit more detail with my next few posts as part of our Translation Management Systems course, starting with a quick look at what makes a good TMS for translation crowdsourcing. Again, click for higher resolution, and feel free to use it on your own sites so long as the credits at the bottom remain intact.
Next time, I’d like to dive into the specifics of a few common TMSs, and further narrow down the needs of an excellent Translation Management System.
Social Localization and Translation Crowdsourcing Best Practices
This January I had the pleasure of enrolling in a weekend workshop at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey called “Social Localization/Translation Crowdsourcing”, taught by Adam Wooten. During class, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing, some common misconceptions, and best practices for implementing it. We also had the chance to speak with some guest speakers, including Head of Localization at Mozilla Jeff Beatty.
To bring all of this knowledge from the workshop together, our final project consisted of three professional presentations: two infographs made by ourselves, and one mock presentation given to a company of our choice as a group project.
For my infographs, I used the presentation program Visme, and drew inspiration for the color scheme from the Nintendo Switch gaming console because of its simple, eye-catching design that I thought would work well for this pair. I hope the information I’ve included in them can help you in researching crowdsourcing best practices! Click for higher resolution, and feel free to use them so long as the credits at the bottom remain intact.
It was my first time creating an infograph like this, and I’m pleased with the result! I wanted something that would look good hanging beside each other, or at least with a consistent theme that could be used for future presentations.
Bringing Translation Crowdsourcing to the Human Rights Watch
For the group portion of this project, I worked with Daniel Rairigh and Kayla Muñoz in creating a mock community translation campaign (we called ourselves “KD&T Enterprises”, which I think sounds catchy) for the Human Rights Watch, a non-profit organization with a large reach that we feel could benefit from the crowd. Here is an excerpt from the description on their website:
“Human Rights Watch is a nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization made up of roughly 400 staff members around the globe. Its staff consists of human rights professionals including country experts, lawyers, journalists, and academics of diverse backgrounds and nationalities. Established in 1978, Human Rights Watch is known for its accurate fact-finding, impartial reporting, effective use of media, and targeted advocacy, often in partnership with local human rights groups.”
The Human Rights Watch offers articles in many languages on their website; however, many of these articles are only available in one language.
Our proposal for them included reaching out to universities to help create a platform to use for translation, and also the implementation of a progress bar/rewards system. Community leaders assigned to different regions would suggest various needs that their locale could use, and by translating content the community would get chances to vote on which need they feel is the most pressing. In this way, Human Rights Watch can get a better picture of where and how assistance is needed, and the translators can see a real, immediate, and potentially life-saving result from their work.
This project required us to record ourselves giving a presentation as if we were actually giving it to staff at Human Rights Watch — a copy of which I’ve included below. In it, we give a brief overview of our community translation proposal (I’m the third person to talk!).
You can also read a more in-depth proposal on the plan here, with supporting documents on maintaining quality and quantity that were included in our theoretical “packet” to Human Rights Watch. They’re similar to the two infographs above, but customized for Human Rights Watch specifically.
Conclusion
Translation Crowdsourcing (Community Translation, Social Localization, etc.) is an exciting tool that when wielded correctly can make monumental tasks manageable — even trivial. It’s also a fascinating and challenging tool, because while there are certain best practices that have been developed, an effective crowdsourcing campaign needs to be customized from the ground up to match whatever project for which it’s being used. It requires a certain amount of client education, too, because there are a lot of misconceptions floating around out there — not the least of which is that it’s free (it is not). It’s also not without risk. But the results that come about from a well-executed crowdsourcing effort can accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible, making it well worth your consideration.
Is XTRF good for customers and vendors?
For the past three weeks I have been working with XTRF – a Translations Projects Management and Automation tool – as part of a Localization Projects Management course at MIIS. Before this I used Basecamp, a similar Projects Management tool, and I have to say that on nearly all counts I prefer XTRF.
Not to say it’s the perfect tool and that I didn’t have my share of frustrations while learning it, but it’s clear that XTRF puts a lot of resources in the user’s hands.
However, the thing that I look for most in a management tool isn’t what I see. I can deal with some troubleshooting or any weird UI that I need to. But if my clients, customers, or vendors have a bad experience, then there’s an issue – and I think that on this front XTRF is very useful indeed.
The Portals
One thing that XTRF does exceptionally well is in how it divides the roles in a project into functionally different webpages, or portals. In the above screenshot, note the green sidebar and the options available. Anyone that the Project Manager has assigned as a vendor for a project sees this green-themed portal. Compare that with the below screenshot:
Note now the red theme and the different options listed on the side. This is the Project Manager’s portal, from where they can get a view of the entire project and those involved. Compare that one more time with the below screenshot:
This is the Customer Portal. Looks very different, right? The two buttons most important to a client appear right on the top: “Request a Quote” and “Launch a Project.”
The design differences on each of these portals make it a snap to organize. The fact that they are customized to each role is remarkable – something you admittedly wouldn’t notice if you were a customer or vendor who had never seen the Project Manager hub, but an attractive idea nonetheless.
The Customer Portal
So, it looks nice, but is it actually easy for a customer to use? While the Project Manager portal offers an overwhelming amount of options that can sometimes be frustrating, the customer portal cuts down on everything unnecessary to make way for a step-by-step wizard.
Even someone relatively tech-illiterate should have no trouble getting a project started once the Project Manager sends them their Customer Portal. In addition, the portal can be customized with a variety of widgets to make things even more intuitive.
Of course, you can’t finish the customer’s project without the backbone of any project: your vendors. Or, if you want to split hairs, every vendor apart from the Project Manager.
The Vendor Portal
When you assign roles to your team, it’s not helpful for anyone if they can see all the irrelevant minutia of the Project Manager portal. This is especially true if you work with someone outside of your normal team, like a third-party proofreader your client wants, or a translator you don’t normally work with.
The pleasantly green-themed vendor portal allows the Project Manager to control exactly what their translators, proofreaders, quality checkers, and anyone else sees. Moreover, it lets the Project Manager control when everyone sees it. Let’s take a quick look at the Project Manager portal again.
We’re back to the Project Manager’s red theme. In this Workflow, the Project Manager has a lot of control over when exactly each step is revealed to the relevant party. Incidentally, this is also where the Project Manager can assign people to each step, cancel a step, add or remove steps, or even add jobs within each step. You’ll note that with these settings, it is possible for a Project Manager to start a project and not touch it at all from then on, if they so choose.
I shouldn’t even have to say it now, right? Green theme, we’re back to the Vendor Portal. Note in the above screenshot that the project file goes straight from vendor to vendor, allowing each to note the nature of any files they add to each. In this example, you can see that the Job Type in the overview on the right…
… is listed as Editing. So, this vendor is designated as an Editor, and can download the file, edit it, and upload it before sending it onto the next person.
The Project Manager Portal (in brief)
The question I posed at the beginning of the post was whether XTRF is good for the customer and vendor – my reasoning being that it’s OK for me as a Project Manager to have some complicated UI and the occasional bug to work through, but if my customer is thrown off by a bug, or if my team’s work is interrupted by an unclear process, it could be a costly mistake.
As such, I am not going into the Project Manager portal much in this post beyond the following. The portal is a little dense, and isn’t something that you can pick up immediately and start using, unfortunately. However, if you give yourself some time to experiment before using it for a project, it is forgiving with mistakes.
Red, Project Manager portal – you get it. When a Project Manger is starting a project, this handy tooltip comes up on the right side. See the grayed-out “Start 0 Job(s)” button? XTRF will not even let you start a job until all the required settings are filled, and I liked the clear list it gives quite a lot. This gives a safety net when working with XTRF if you are unsure of how to use it yet.
The Verdict
I have not used XTRF for an assignment with an unfamiliar client yet, and so I hesitate to make a definitive judgement on it; however, from this experimenting, I can feel comfortable showing a client their XTRF portal and organizing a project around it. The fact that there’s no way for the client or vendors to stumble upon some weird settings makes me feel safe, and yet everything being in one tool makes for great organization. Especially if you care about ease-of-use for your clients and vendors, I heartily recommend giving XTRF a try.