Guest blog entry by Uwe Muegge, Chief Terminologist and Co-Director of MedL10N at CSOFT

Imagine a place where total newbies to localization and internationalization can just walk up and introduce themselves to the folks who got this whole industry started, a place that brims with the energy of today’s movers and shakers in the L10Nverse, a place that’s truly open, welcoming and, of course, international. The International Multilingual User Group (IMUG) is just that place: Founded in 1987 and holding regular monthly meetings since 1991, IMUG has been a driving force in the localization community that reaches far beyond its base in Silicon Valley.

What better crowd to introduce CSOFT’s latest tool developments than this? And what better venue than the ultra high-tech conference facilities (think webcasting with not one, not two, but three remote-controlled HD video cameras!) at Adobe’s headquarters in San Jose? We had a total audience of about 50 industry experts, half of whom were physically present, the other half participating via Adobe Connect from locations in the U.S., Belgium, Canada, and Japan. I18n Guy, Tex Texin, won the prize for hailing from the greatest distance: He logged on from Shanghai. I really got a kick out of being part of this truly global environment.

Web-enabled terminology management with TermWiki

The live demos of TermWiki and ReviewIT went well and were well received. Based on questions from the audience, both terminology management and translation review are areas where many organizations that are active in global markets still have unmet needs.

Some highlights from the TermWiki presentation:

• Terminology management enables organizations to speak with one voice.

• Featuring the familiar wiki user interface and controls, TermWiki is an intuitive tool that allows even first-time users to add terms within minutes.

• A simple data model that uses pre-populated pick lists speeds up term entry by non-terminologists .

• As a web-based tool, TermWiki not only permits but fosters collaboration among the terminology stakeholders in an organization.

• Compliance with industry standards such as TBX allows users to upload existing terminology and integrate TermWiki in translation memory and content management systems.

We were also pleased to announce that the free community version of TermWiki, available at www.TermWiki.com, currently grows at a rate of more than 10,000 new terms per day, breaking the 550,000-term barrier earlier this week.

ReviewIT takes the headache out of translation review

Matt Arney introduced himself to the audience as someone who has “fielded 2,340 e-mails relating to translation review,” which definitely makes him an expert on the subject. He also got quite a few laughs from sharing a review-related e-mail one of his clients had recently sent him, which ended with “Have I told you I hate your industry?”

Here are the main points from Matt’s ReviewIT presentation:

• Translation review should focus on the needs of the reviewer, not the translation project manager.

• ReviewIT is a web-based tool that doesn’t require any software installation.

• Online review in ReviewIT enables users to collaborate in real-time without any file transfers.

• Reviewers can add comments to text, images, screenshots, and web pages.

• ReviewIT supports the Microsoft Office and OpenOffice suites as well as Adobe PDF files.

The demos highlighted the fact that both ReviewIT and TermWiki are highly intuitive tools that require no training prior to use.

IMUG fosters a sense of community

After the demos, we received a number of excellent suggestions for new future product enhancements from members of the audience. Oh, and did I mention that this was a really special crowd where translation buyers rubbed shoulders with vendors and seasoned industry professionals, as well as with students just entering the field?

One of the best parts of the event was that I had a chance to re-connect with a long-lost colleague from my days at J.D. Edwards who is now a member of the localization team at eBay. To Joe Katz (IMUG), Roger Sherman (IMUG) and Ken Lunde (Adobe), thanks for doing a great job organizing and facilitating this event! To everyone else out there, you should seriously consider a membership at IMUG. If you’re interested in joining this multilingual computing community, you can find more information here.

If you’re interested in learning more about translation, localization, or multilingual terminology management, feel free to contact Uwe Muegge via e-mail (uwe.muegge@csoftintl.com) or have CSOFT give you a call.