Welcome

Why do we need a TMS?

A Translation Management System (TMS) can do the basic and repetitious works that may be tedious for human workers. Generally, TMS has its own automation system to facilitate a project. Project Managers can apply the workflows that are provided by TMS, so that they do not need to spend time on making new workflows, and hence boosts the working efficiency. TMS can also reduce human errors since many tasks, such as sending notification, can be done by its automation system.

TMS Recommendation:

I would recommend Lingotek as a wonderful model of Translation Management System. Firstly, Lingotek has a very user-friendly interface. The interface is clean and straightforward, with the tool bars located on the left side of the screen. The system is high automated since most of the resources can be synchronized with the projects. Lingotek has a very useful search panel as well; it will not take so much time for project managers to search for their resources.

Secondly, Lingotek gives the users much freedom to manage projects. It allows the users to customize the workflows themselves. Users can customize, add, or delete phases in a project workflow based on their needs. In addition to it, they can also make adjustments for each of the phase, so the entire process is flexible and highly automated. Lingotek also allows users to do translation on its embedded workbench. Translators can have real time editions on the workbench, which is very convenient.

In addition to what I mentioned above, users can also create and manage linguistic tools on Lingotek. For example, users can create Translation memories and Term base in the browser, can these data set can also be downloaded and further imported to CAT tools, such as SDL Trados.

Finally, Lingotek is cloud based. It is an online system, thus the users do not have to install a new application on their desktops. The entire system is easy to access, while people may have to pay for buying license if they want to use some other TMSs.

Our Project is to localize a real website by using transifex, a proxy translation platform. To avoid any copy rights issues, we decided to choose the website of a non-profit organization, and the final translated website will not be published. In this project, we use Plant with purpose as our source website. Transifex requires the users to choose the type of the projects, the files-based project is for localizers who have the website pages on files, and the Live Project option is for those who want to localize the website in real time through JavaScript. Transifex allows a team to administrate a project, which is convenient for a team to collaborate.

After adding the website URL to transifex, the system automatically generated a report, however, the word count report was incomplete because we had not yet make scans. Transifex counts detected strings only, and the word count report will be updated every time when the system detects new words or strings; moreover, the words showed on the report will be counted as using the “quota”, thus the users do not have to worry about wasting money on translating the words that they do not want to translate. This is different from Easyling (Easyling will count every word found in the first scan, so it is very hard to not exceed the word limit).

Translation memories can be imported and exported. This function will be particularly important if the translators need to convert the source language to tens of target languages. Each language will possess a unique report.

The most fascinating function in transifex is the live translation, allowing the user to apply a live preview of the translated website. When going into the live translation mode, the system will automatically run a scan through the current page, determining the strings to be translated. After the scan, users can approve the detected strings or exclude some of the strings, while approved strings will be ready for translation. All the translation jobs can be done in the editor. In this case, we used Google translation to machine translate all the approved strings. Marking the translated strings as “Reviewed” is all a user needs to do to finish the translation tasks. The live translation editor can be regarded as a small CAT tools, since we are doing the same thing as we will do in SDL Trados. No coding is needed, thus, even a translator without any relevant knowledge in programming can finish this on his own.

As mentioned before, transifex only run scans on current page, which means that following every link in the whole website and translating it separately is necessary. Links cannot be directly followed like what we do in a real website. Users need to click the button “follow the link” because a single click on the link is to edit the text, not to follow it. All of the translated pages can be chosen and reviewed by following the commands in the right tools bar.

The final job needed to be done is to publish the translated website. Transifex provides the project administrators with the JavaScript codes to show the translation. The project admins need to copy the codes and paste them onto every page that needed to be localized. Then, transifex also provide a staging server, which is staging.transifex.com. By using the staging server, localizers are able to test the project without publishing to the public.

Overall, transifex is a powerful and user-friendly proxy translation tools. It is easy to use, and the whole system is highly automated. It is definitely a very good choice for localization companies. However, its drawbacks are also apparent. The first one is the price. Transifex is much more expensive than its rivals, as its cheapest subscription is 179 dollar/month, with only 50K hosted words available. If a company does not have lots of website localization business, transifex is likely to be a bad choice. Second, although more than one user can localize the website at the same time, transifex sometimes crashes if two workers doing the jobs at the same time, especially if they are working on the translation for different pages, the auto detection may produce some bugs.

Crowdsourcing translation is an effective way to tap into the expertise of users. The advantages of crowdsourcing translation are very visible: It can be an expeditious way to work on a translation project, since the number of workers can be indefinitely large, and they are always available. It can also build a bridge between the company and users, enhancing the brand loyalty. However, despite that crowdsourcing seems constructive and beneficial, a difficult question may arise —— How can I find so many volunteers? Even if I find them, how can I keep them motivated to do the translation for us? Crowdsourcing usually targets large numbers of people. It is true that if project managers fail to have enough volunteers, the word “crowd” will not be suitable for crowdsourcing translation. Thus, in this blog post, I will focus on how to maintain quantity.

1. One of the most effective ways to make people happy and willing to work is to give them presents and rewards. For example, giving them memorial T-shirts which can never be bought elsewhere is practical. Volunteers who want to be recognized as one of the contributors, or someone who simply just want to have a nice limited-edition T-shirt, are likely to be motivated. However, understanding what rewarding system is suitable for the case is important. Volunteers may have different preferences or expectations for their rewards. According to Jeff Beatty, who is the Head of Localization at Mozilla, he said volunteers in Western Europe tend to seek for self-satisfaction, the sense of being needed, and the contribution behaviors themselves are quite enough for them to keep motivation; while American volunteers will prefer T-shirts, caps, things that can be used to let others know they participated. Asian volunteers like food; free snacks or pizza will likely be ideal for motivating them. Therefore, project managers should consider using various kinds of rewards for people with different culture background.
2. Keeping in touch with your volunteers also plays a vital role in maintaining motivation. People do not like to be left alone with no further feedback. Companies and organizations need to constantly give them feedback, such as telling them that their translation have helped the project to go smoothly, asking them to keep an eye on what will come in the near future. Emails and calls are necessary.
3. Machine translation can also be used to motivate volunteers. Many people have the experience that starting is the most difficult part for doing things, but after the starts, things go much more smoothly. Machine translation is like priming the pump; it helps to start projects and volunteers will not be intimidated to start and do not have to worry about where to begin.
4. Encouraging people joining the programs usually requires good marketing. The four Ps of marketing is a widely used model. It consists of Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. For the products, project managers need to tell the potential volunteers that what they can get. It can be wonderful experience, good feelings, or helping them to build constructive social connections. For the price in this case, the opportunity costs may not be too high for the volunteers, since it will deter people’s interest. The organizers need to cooperate so that volunteers will be easy to join. Some typical practices are: having a flexible schedule, providing guidance to the tools; and if organizers are holding a meeting event, then they should think about offering children care. All of these efforts are aiming to reduce the costs for the volunteers. Placement should not be neglected as well. Project managers and organizers need to find a place that is easy to commute. As for promotion, advertisements can be posted on social media, like Facebook groups, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Local newspaper is also a good choice if targeting elder volunteers.

Quantity is essential: time spans, quality, and consistency are all heavily affected by quantity. Lacking enough users and volunteers will expectedly defer the project’s accomplishment. The practices elaborated above are some typical ways, more practices are also needed based on the actual situations. People may argue that even if we have many volunteers, how can we ensure that the translations are high-quality enough to meet the requirements? Here is my personal opinions regarding quality control for Crowdsourcing Translation.