Translation process without a Translation Management System:
Here’s what my translation process would looks like without a Translation Management System:
- I would Copy and paste content in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet
- I then send the required content for translation via email (and try not to forget the attachment)
- I get that content translated, either using internal team members, an automatic translation engine like Google Translate, an external agency or a mixture of all three
- I then follow up with linguists for project status and delivery updates, as I have no idea if things are still on track
- I receive the translated content via email
- I download it to my desktop
- I again copy and paste this new content to manually create new pages, newsletters, articles, etc. in all target languages
- I usually then have to Adjust design (such as buttons) as some languages are naturally longer than others (In German text can be over 30% longer than the equivalent English).
- I review all finalized assets to make sure none of the translations got mixed up or missed when creating the new content
- I then Publish the translated content
This example shows what the process looks like if everything goes well without any problems, and doesn’t even cover what would happen if the original content needed to be updated—I’d have to start the process all over again. This may seem like “the norm” if you don’t have any other way of doing it, but it shouldn’t be. This process is not only fully manual and therefore time-consuming and prone to errors, but it is also unnecessarily stressful as you have no way to monitor whether or not you will meet your deadline.
If you don’t have a TMS, imagine having to do this with 100 projects per week. You would have to juggle a lot of items and proactively monitor projects, which could take up to 80% of your time according to the data gathered by our XTM Xperts. You’ll have to check that the file was sent for translation, that it has been received, and that a team is working on it. You’ll have to look for your files if they don’t get delivered on time, without any way to know how close the translation is to being ready, adding unnecessary stress. What if the linguist misses your email? What if you can’t get a hold of them?
With a TMS, the software does all of this for you. Instead of spending your time monitoring, following up, and assigning tasks, you get to spend that time on more meaningful and valuable tasks. It enables you to shift from a proactive way of working to a reactive one: you’ll only have to get involved in the process when strictly necessary. For instance, for the language service provider Acolad, it took 15 minutes to create, prepare, and assign a project using their offline workflow. When they implemented a TMS, 15 minutes became 3 minutes. Knowing they receive 50 to 100 projects a day, it saves their team at least 10 hours a day.
Let’s explore how automation can revolutionize your process, relieve you of some unnecessary tasks and stress, and foster global growth for your business.
By not investing in technology and limiting scaling to resources that are responsible for executing established processes, it is inevitable that overall output will be subject to diminishing returns, and by extension, make it impossible to cope with growing operational demand.”
Alex Zekakis
Director of Support Services
Step 1: Remove manual tasks
With a TMS, there is no need to send emails, instant messages, or anything else. Simply create a project with a deadline, upload the file that needs to be translated, and assign it to someone. That’s it. How does it all work? With a cloud-based TMS, everyone involved in the project will have access to the file.
Let’s say you want to translate a sales presentation. The PowerPoint file you’ve uploaded will be automatically analyzed by the system. It will find out how many segments have already been translated and don’t need to be worked on (and paid for), how many are partial matches coming from previously translated content, and how many are completely new. Once the analysis is complete, which takes a few seconds, the linguist will be notified automatically.
As soon as they get notified, they simply have to open the TMS, where they will find the file that needs to be localized. While they are working on the file, you can keep track of their progress: how many segments have been completed? Are we on track to meet our deadline? Once they are done, you’ll get notified automatically. The translated file is available in the same format that you uploaded it. All you’ll have to do is download your newly localized slides, and you’re ready to go.
If you realize halfway through the project that your file needs to be updated because you’d forgotten to add a slide, that’s not going to be an issue. Simply upload the most up-to-date version into the TMS, and your linguist will be notified that the project has been updated. They won’t have to re-translate anything from scratch or check that they are indeed working off the right version —it is all done automatically.
Once you’ve experienced what it’s like to be able to create projects in seconds and have notifications sent automatically, you’ll never be able to go back to a manual process. But the benefits do not stop there.
Key Insight:
Having a TMS can reduce the time spent creating, preparing, and assigning a project from 15 minutes to 3 minutes, saving your team 10 hours a day if you receive 50 projects daily.
Step 2: Unify localization processes
This first example was pretty straightforward: upload, translate, and download. But your needs may be slightly different, or a bit more complex. You may want to add a review step, for example. Or, you may need to use a pivot language before you start your localization process. Plus, different departments within the same organization will have different requirements. Your legal documents may need to be reviewed many times, as opposed to your release notes, which may only require one cycle of reviews.
The issue when teams have different needs is that they may all have their own ways of working. They may be using different linguists, have a completely different way of sharing information, and have different timelines. Without a TMS, there is no way to implement any kind of consistency, or leverage content that has already been translated by your HR team for your marketing collateral. A TMS will enable you to have that flexibility, but it will also add control and clarity to these processes.
Using a TMS, you can create your own workflows and as many as you need. That way, you can still use a single system for all your localization needs, which will let you leverage translations from various departments, but you’ll still be able to have different steps in place depending on the type of content that needs to be localized. Because everything is stored on a single platform, you can track all projects. This provides traceability and accountability, ensuring that processes are clear to everyone and followed properly.
Plus, using a unified platform gives you an overview of everything: who does what and when? It ensures that you can keep track of where your money is going and which vendor is being used. At what cost? Did they deliver on time? Where can I streamline the process? A TMS will let you create groups of linguists based on their performance. That way, you don’t even have to assign each step to a specific person: you can let the system assign tasks on a first-come, first-served basis, for instance, or indicate a preference order. The system will allocate the task to your preferred linguists first, and move on to the second one if they cannot take on the task due to workload or a holiday.
Having full control and clarity in real time, on top of automation, will ensure you can deliver high-quality assets, while keeping track of costs and performance.
Key Insight:
Using workflows will not only add automation to your processes; it will also unify them, giving you additional control and providing traceability and accountability while saving you time.
Step 3: Reduce time to market
A key aspect of successful market entry is time to market. How are you going to successfully sell your products and services internally if they’re not available in the right language? The faster you can get all your assets localized, the faster you can enter new markets and grow your revenue—before your competitors do.
A TMS will enable you to speed up your localization process and be launch-ready in a fraction of the time it would take you without it. First, projects are created faster. Then, the right processes are followed. Another key consideration is what happens between each step. How does the reviewer know that the translation is ready for proofreading, for instance? Unless your linguists can read minds, you’re incurring a delay. It’d be a lot easier to rely on a TMS to take care of that.
As soon as the linguist is done with their translation and hits the ‘Complete’ button, the person assigned to the proofreading steps gets notified. No one needs to move the workflow forward manually; no human input is even required. Everything happens automatically, avoiding communication delays, especially if your team is working in different time zones.
Being able to complete projects faster as the process progresses automatically can give you a serious advantage over your competitors.
By freeing your team from operational activities, using the extended automation capabilities offered by a TMS, they can shift their focus onto tactical and strategic initiatives that continually improve the localization program. Focusing on what truly matters is what makes the difference that will ultimately help you achieve your goals.”
Alex Zekakis
Director of Support Services
Key Insight:
Letting your TMS handle project management using workflows will avoid delays and remove the need to have any external input for your project to move forward: everything happens automatically.
Bonus: Create your own personalized steps with XTM Cloud
Any TMS will provide automation, in one form or another, as it’s the core of what the system should do. As one of the TMS providers, at XTM, we want to take this concept one step further and make sure you can be fully empowered to create workflows that work for you. Although we do offer a number of standard steps and workflows to get you started, they can be fully customized to suit your needs. And I do mean fully.
The possibilities are endless: you could create workflows for projects where the source is constantly updated, add any pre- and post-processing steps, and even create your own customer-defined steps. These steps can be fully tailored and placed in any order you need, without any limitation. Plus, workflows can even be updated on the fly: you can add or remove steps, and the relevant team members will be notified in real time without needing to recreate a new project.
On the one hand, some of our life-science customers have workflows of up to 25 steps because they need to be absolutely certain that the final product is perfect. The tiniest mistake could have really serious consequences. Their files get reviewed by internal users, external users, and, of course, doctors. They spend a lot of time on post-processing steps. All of that is managed through the system, speeding up the process and removing the need to send files manually while keeping data safe.
On the other hand, our software users spend more time on pre-processing steps. Normally, they would have to go through something called “pseudo translation,” which is a dummy translation that is used to see if an application will work properly in another language. It’s a process used during the testing phase before the real translation begins to ensure that all the characters will fit. In this case, the whole process is done in seconds: the file is translated automatically using machine translation, and made available for download. This file enables the user to know if anything needs to be adjusted, and then the real localization begins, again using workflows.
To take this one step further, workflows can also be applied to our connectors. For instance, you could connect HubSpot to our TMS and have the two platforms communicate with each other. That way, your emails, landing pages, and blog posts can be automatically sent for translation in just a few clicks and then pushed back to HubSpot as soon as they are available.
In short, the more flexible and scalable your workflows are, the quicker you will be able to enter new markets and grow with you and your needs. Being able to create projects in seconds with the right steps and linguists, streamlining the entire localization process, will change how you see and leverage localization forever, and we’d love to tell you more about it.
Key Insight:
Using workflows will not only add automation to your processes; it will also unify them, giving you additional control and providing traceability and accountability while saving you time.
