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ClientSide News Magazine
I
f a $22 million transactioncan shake up a $10 billionindustry even a little bit, youwonder what state this industry must be in. The acquisi-tion of Idiom by SDL stirred up discussions of awe anddespair. Many people loved Idiom for what it was: inde-pendent, neutral, the Switzerland of the translation in-dustry. WorldServer was the technology that would maketranslation easy and attractive for every user. But let’sface it, the company was performing poorly, and had losttoo much money over the years. The investors had losttheir appetites. Even though WorldServer could automate,let’s say, 20 of the 40 steps in the process, it was not thesort of magic solution that excited a global executive.End of story....
p
aradox
In this age of globalization you would expect the
translation industry to be ten times bigger. The ow of
information that requires translation is immense and isgrowing everyday. The economic wisdom of demand andsupply, however, does not seem to apply to this indus-try. Translation is one of the most cumbersome processesfor business to manage. It is slow and costly. Professionaltranslation resources remain scarce. Technology - usuallythe answer to such dilemmas - has been of little help inthe translation industry. The size of the translation tech-nology sector is miniscule. Add up the revenue numbersof the translation technology companies - including Idiom
- and you possibly get to a gure of around $100 million.
There can only be one conclusion: translation is too com-plex and the technology is not good enough.
o
ld
school
Thinking
In this context SDL’s acquisition of Idiom makes per-fect sense. By monopolizing the little technology that isout there, SDL buys time and market share. If you ownthe technology you potentially own the services. Sincetranslation technology automates only a fraction of theprocess, the ratio between technology and services isvery favorable for companies like SDL. Every Euro in tech-nology comes along with perhaps ten Euros in services.It is a good example of old school thinking: locking thecustomer into your services. Everyone does it. And theweapons used in this battle for customers are not alwaysproprietary tools. They may be assets such as ownershipof data, or translation memories, or the kind of knowl-edge and experience that make customers nervous aboutswitching. Many translation companies have convincedtheir customers that they have a monopoly on linguisticquality. It is only natural.
w
rong
cusTomer
Old school thinking can easily turn into complacencyand self-righteousness. The translation industry has lostsight of its bigger mission in the global economy. Newtechnologies, rules and regulations, medication, politics,and entertainment must all be made accessible for con-sumers, citizens, taxpayers, and patients speaking differ-ent languages around the world. The industry is failingmiserably in this mission. It is only scratching the surface,squeezing out only a fraction of the words that are wait-ing to be translated. The real customer is not the buyer atMicrosoft, Philips or the government. Old school thinkingtends to undermine values and become destructive, es-pecially if it is focused on the wrong customer.
Page 14Page 14
ind ustry focus
The end of old school localization thinking
Reprinted from TAUS Newsletter, February 2008
– SDL, Idiom and the state we are in
byJaap van der MeerTAUS
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