CEO at EICOM, Robert Etches has been in the translation business since the mid-1980s, working with everything from translation, revision and copywriting through developing online proofing tools and terminology portals to connecting know-how. Among much else Robert also took the initiative to form the Nordic CAT Group in 2010 and served on the planning committee for the March 2011 GALA conference in Lisbon. One of his areas of responsibility in TextMinded is to monitor new trends and ensure that our clients are geared to meet tomorrow’s world. View from the Edge is a collection of some of Robert’s speeches and writings.
In bed with the enemy
A speech held at the SDL LSP Partner conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, on 2 November, 2010.
Robert Etches is founder and CEO of EICOM, a 20-man strong LSP with its headquarters in Denmark.
EICOM in turn is part of TextMinded: a European Economic Interest Grouping that translates a million words a week.
We operate mainly as a multi-language vendor, servicing Danish-based companies with translation from English into anything from 1 to 35 languages. We also operate with a modest in-house Danish SLV capability again, mainly for the same clients who use English as their concern language and Danish as an important target language.
Our other main services are copywriting, terminology management and graphic production.
Making money as an LSP in northern Europe has always been easier said than done, and to make ends meet we have, as so many others, established ties with a Chinese-based graphic production company. In a similar move to cut costs and increase the number of hours in an operational day, we have four project managers located in and working from Chile.
We also do a spot of software development, which has so far led to three products:
• FLINK 5
• Word Bank III
• eiPROOF
FLINK 5 and eiBOOK piggy-back on other systems – FLINK 5 on Microsoft’s Navision. I have always been opposed to having a Project Management system that wasn’t completely integrated in our finance system, so we have created a PM interface to Navision.
This is no doubt a classic mistake by a small business: trying to re-invent the wheel and creating a unique tool for our own use. But I bet several of you here today have made similar moves, which is my first hint at why working with competitors is a good idea. Just think if I had gone together with four other LSPs to develop a PM interface to Navision. I would have no doubt have got a better system at a fifth of the cost.
Word Bank is our web-based portal for terminology, translation memories, and product texts. A sort of grand central station for our data, from where we send it out to other systems: ERPs, image databases, CMS-based product viewers, etc. SDL is in the process of severely undermining my platform as the memory technology in Studio races away from what my own developers can produce, which means Word Bank might be heading to the Open Exchange portal next year as a Studio plug-in rather than a more CAT independent platform.
But again – cooperation with others developing Word Banks or playing with the APIs on other platforms might have been less painful and more remunerative, if less fun!
Finally, there’s our latest tool, eiPROOF, which is ‘kinda cool’. Based on TTX files, eiPROOF was originally made to allow anyone to proof CAT-produced texts without having to have a CAT tool or know-how, i.e. a bit like the new SDLXLIFF converter. Used mainly for website proofers, it means they can log in via a browser, make their corrections and then preview the target versions in the web layout. The approved texts are then sent back to the CMS and published automatically.
The advantages are obvious: we keep linguists out of the backend of the CMS where they get up to no good and we keep the memories in sync with the website when updates come further down the line.
What we’re good at? Well, that’s always a difficult question to ask oneself as I’m sure most of us here today think that our companies are better than everyone else’s, but, if I were to choose one thing, I’d say connecting know-how. By that I mean the ability to take what is commonly seen as translation data, move it out of the translation silo and make it available to other stakeholders, for example – linking terminology to company intranets, or product texts back to ERP systems, or to media databases or product viewers embedded in CMS systems. Or making translation memories available online to others than ‘just’ translators.
Re CAT tools: EICOM has been a Trados user since the early 90s, though only very recently have become an LSP partner. While being tempted and teased by the many other options that have come along since those early pioneer days, we have basically stuck with Trados, and then SDL, through thick and thin, quite simply because, in our eyes, it remains the best option. The increased competition has made it even better, of course – there’s nothing like healthy competition to keep us all on our toes – a point that is central to much of what I want to talk about today.
So – before you all go into Twitter mode or start checking your email, let’s get in bed with the enemy!
… which tells the story of how vendor collaboration is not just a new trend, but a real fact of life in the current localization industry.
You might wonder why I didn’t choose Sleeping with the enemy! Well, steering clear of the sexual innuendos, at least for the time being, none of us in the new group dares to close an eye as we might miss what the others are getting up to!
So, why work and share know-how with your closest competitors?
Our industry is one of the most fragmented in the world. There are 4-5,000 translation companies worldwide, most with fewer than five employees. Even the top 25 companies don’t cover 25% of the market.
In fact the SDL LSP Partner Programme mirrors this quite well, containing as it does, everything from two-man to 3,000-man companies.
And what about those purchasing our wares? Well, most buyers think and talk about quality of service rather than the quality of the language provided, so trying to sell quality translations is, well … you may as well save your breath.
Translation continues to be understood by most clients as a cost centre. For example, we love to talk about the value of our terminology bases and translation memories, but you don’t say one dictionary is worth more than another because it contains more words; and similarly, translation memories have no accounting value: you don’t depreciate translation memories as you do buildings, servers, etc.
As in many other industries, it’s often the medium-sized companies that are sat with the most problems: we’re too big to go low-tech and too small to have the necessary administrative staff necessary to run ‘real’ companies. We want so desperately to be taken seriously, to follow ISO standards and EN 15038, use the best tools, have various choices of CAT platform, use only the very best translators after carefully vetting their expertise … basically we want our cake – and we definitely want to eat it as well.
But how big does a translation agency based in western Europe have to be before you can finance a CEO, a sales manager, an office manager, a Human Resource manager, a vendor manager, an R&D manager, etc., etc.?
Most of us run around wearing a lot of different ‘hats’. Personally, I’m responsible for finances, R&D and vendors, and also involved in copywriting, reviewing, translation and, of course – almost forgot: running the company! A good friend and colleague who runs one of the world’s largest French SLVs still personally translates a thousand words a day …
Add to this that the average word price has remained unchanged for the last 15 years (and in fact is now beginning to fall), and that machine translation is no longer science fiction but part of the real world, Charlie Brown, and it makes you wonder why we bother at all.
But the funny thing is that we really do care; we do keep trying to deliver quality and a high level of service, despite all the odds.
So, what do you do when SDL, the provider of your main CAT tool, announces that Workbench is history and the future is called Studio?
Step 1: Ignore it and hope it goes away!
There were plenty of excuses in 2009, what with a global financial crisis in full swing:
• Translators are traditionally conservative
• You feel a bit ‘daft’ anyway installing anything pre-service pack 2
• … and all your workflows are linked to Workbench: your folder structure, macros, PM system, PIM system – everything!
• And what about the migration process? Are translators ready? Are clients ready? Does your organisation have time/resources?
• And who benefits? Do we have to operate in parallel universes with Workbench, Studio and TMX 1.4b formats to cover every eventuality? Stephen Hawking go home! I certainly felt that my little micro-universe was imploding …
It’s a mountain to climb – or to use another metaphor: the situation is akin to a period of drought on the African savannah. Traditional enemies are forced to live in ever-closer proximity as the watering holes shrink.
Actually, the image here is a bit like out industry: rocky and barren on the outside, and all the good guys and bad guys trying to ‘drink’ the last of the water …
This was the situation in which a group of Nordic LSPs found themselves in May this year when Jane Chaffer, SDL’s Business Development Manager in the Nordic region, ‘bullied’ us into participating in a little seminar in Copenhagen.
Here was the ‘watering hole’ then, filled with crocs – or perhaps more like the meeting of all the Families in a mafia movie. I certainly felt that, should I gun them down there and then I’d have the market almost to myself!
The main business of the day started with Paul Filken, SDL’s Client Services Director, breezing through about 3,000 slides in 45 minutes. I know Paul is here today, but you must forgive me Paul if I say that, after five minutes, even the nerds amongst us were struggling – not to mention the sales and marketing people, who were lost after Slide 3 and the first couple of acronyms.
In your defence, Paul, I think Jane had asked you to keep it short and no doubt you are as intimidated by her as the rest of us, so …
Next up was a translator demo’ing Studio. Da-da! Finally: the program itself!
And here’s a scary fact: half of those present already owned Studio licenses but hadn’t yet found the time and/or a reason for installing them. This included moi.
In her own inimitable manner our sweet translator began to make it clear that Studio kicks serious butt; that SDL had listened to if not all, then a lot of the flak coming their way, and really raised the bar.
When she said she was 40% more effective with Studio, you could almost hear the vendor managers renegotiating rates right there and then!
The third presenter was a colleague from another LSP who had been asked to extol the benefits of the SDL LSP Partner Programme. It was all undertaken très professionally, but then, right at the end, something untoward happened. She basically threw up her arms and asked, with a good deal of desperation in her voice: “What are we to do? How are we to migrate to Studio?”
There was a deathly silence and naively I butted in and suggested that we could perhaps help each other with this process.
Jane was there like a sharp stick, making sure everyone had my email details, and much to my surprise, within a week nine companies had contacted me, and it was game on.
So, why suggest working with my direct competitors? Had I lost my marbles?
In my defence, I would argue that this was not as naive as it may sound. Back in the early 1990s I had been involved in a similar initiative where a Swedish LSP and 12 Nordic-based freelancers formed something we called the Word Management Group. We ran workshops, shared know-how and wrote our own Trados Foundation Course – all 80 pages of it! Over the next 17 years, all 13 companies went on to benefit greatly from that know-how sharing. We have often worked for each other, but just as often if not more, for other players on the market.
A famous Danish journalist, Tor Nørretranders, well at least famous in Denmark … has written a book called The Generous Man. Starting with the theory of evolution he sets out to track our moral and altruistic behavioural patterns.
One of his examples is the Peacock.
Why oh why does a male peacock go to all that trouble to grow those long, cumbersome feathers? It must literally be a pain in the ass walking around all day dragging those along.
But the benefits, obviously, nevertheless outweigh the negative aspects. The more trouble he goes to attract the ladies, well … the more baby peacocks are produced to further his gene bank, i.e. he wins by making an extraordinary effort.
As one of those freelancers that formed the Word Management Group I now run a company with 20 employees, a company whose CAT know-how is founded on and can be linked directly back to those WMG workshops. This is worth remembering when I think back on the time it was my turn to run a workshop and I had to install Workbench and MultiTerm 5 on 12 different workstations. I think the programs were still on diskettes back then so installing was a tiresome process, to say the least. So, all-in-all I reckon I strutted my feathers more than enough and often seemingly in a futile effort to please the others – but the project did bear fruit and my company harvested ample reward for what looked at the time like purely altruistic behaviour.
Apropos titles for presentations: Nørretranders calls his speech on this topic Share your shit, so I reckon my In bed with the enemy is quite modest by comparison!
OK, here, 17 years further down the line, I want to raise the stakes a bit: take the same concept and do it with LSPs rather than freelancers. By working with direct competitors I can hopefully create a forum in which my own organization will learn and get better at what we do; and by catalysing the necessity of new know-how, force all those involved to prioritize this work.
And thus began the Nordic CAT Group.
So, that was the first step: a need to solve a real, hands-on challenge and the thirst for knowledge brought some interesting bed partners to the watering hole, people who are willing to share their shit and help each other.
The group comprises everything from a four-man company to one of the largest players, not just in Scandinavia but also on the global market. This is in itself interesting, inasmuch as it shows there is a very real need to acquire this new knowledge.
And the members of this little experiment in the far north can’t be the only ones looking for somewhere to go.
We held a preliminary meeting in May where the basic ideas were discussed and we discovered that, as a group, we got on well and could discuss all sorts of things openly and frankly. The tone of voice was friendly and there was room for everyone. By the end we had decided that our first workshop proper should take place on 30 September to 1 October.
I can only speak for my own company, but these first two meetings have already generated a completely new dynamics in EICOM’s approach to introducing Studio.
How did this happen?
One key aspect is that SDL has been incredibly supportive. Over the years, SDL Trados has been, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, hung, drawn and quartered by the localization industry.
In an earlier life I worked as an instructor and hotline support consultant for Uniplex, a Unix-based office solution back when shared calendars and email were still a gimmick. People basically only contacted me when they were angry, and in the end I quit and started a translation company instead. Yeah – that’s how bad it was!
And I must admit I am heartily sick of some of the knee-jerk criticism of SDL.
But why do we have to be so nasty and calculating in our dealings with business partners?
Like many others, I’m tired of all the spin. For God sake, give us an honest answer to an honest question and we might, just might, start believing in you. The same applies to the business world. Bad vibes are not conducive to good working relationships; and what’s wrong with giving credit where credit’s due? I have a feeling that the people at SDL have been relieved to meet a group of customers who have come and asked for help in a constructive, friendly manner, rather than trying to bash, bully and bitch our way to ‘a good deal’.
So, let’s cut the spin and speak openly and nicely with people.
You don’t have to fake it every time …
One way in which SDL provided assistance was by setting up a good deal for our freelancers. We needed to know just where our freelance translators stood as regards the migration to Studio. Armed with a special link to an SDL site, we could approach all our regular freelance colleagues and explain that, if they worked for one or more of the Nordic CAT Group, they were eligible for a special discount.
This in itself was a simple, effective exercise:
1. Group members managed to get an overview of where the freelance market was at re Studio
2. SDL sold more licenses
3. The Group could lobby to get as many freelancers on the same platform as possible so we don’t have to operate with Workbench and Studio
4. It made these freelancers think: “Wow! A major chunk of my turnover is moving to Studio – might be a good idea to move too.”
5. Or – “Finally, the agencies are catching up. Had the program for ages and haven’t been able to use it!”