|
A Multilingual Localization Project
for a Testing Equipment Manufacturer
Project Background
As a leading manufacturer of advanced materials testing equipment
and systems for the international market, our Client began
the development of its flagship software nearly a decade ago.
Their software is a fully-integrated modular software package
providing the most powerful and flexible materials testing
package available. Keeping with its long standing commitment
to the international market, our Client planned the simultaneous
release of their software into 8 languages.
The Challenge
Our customer's software solution is a large and complex software
product consisting of many different components including:
a Web Console, C++ applications, RC, DLL, MDB, Online Help,
user manuals, and many custom file formats defined by the
Client's development team. Furthermore, there were many different
translation rules governing what should be translated within
these files. (Some requiring the translation of text within
quotation marks and others after equal signs, and still others
using different standards) Our Client's software solution
represented the single largest software upgrade for our Client
and it took the company nearly ten years to develop. The challenge
was that the company had a limited time for localization and
testing in eight languages for simultaneous worldwide release.
Furthermore, part of the software localization had to take
place concurrently with the final phase of development ongoing
for the English application. CSOFT was selected to complete
the entire localization due to our quality, technical expertise
and competitive pricing.
Project Planning
CSOFT assembled an expert team consisting of L10N engineers,
professional translators/technical writers (based in seven
countries), multilingual publishers, L10N testing engineers
and QA professionals led by our experienced project management/client
service team. At the Client's request, our L10N engineering
team compiled the various UI components and set up the application
at CSOFT's HQ for UI dialog box resizing and testing. Because
the software was quite complex and consisted of many different
DLLs, header files and custom data files, our initial builds
were unsuccessful due to missing components (DLLs and header
files) that the client had failed to send us. Our engineers
were able to study the build logs and determine the exact
missing pieces which helped our Client's engineering team
save valuable time and focus on the English software development.
Our Client's engineering team was quite impressed by the speed
CSOFT was able to learn the product and set up a formal testing
environment. As previously mentioned, there are many different
file formats used in the software application. Our engineering
team had to utilize several different tools to extract text
for localization. In some instances, we had to write our own
code to complement existing tools to process the various file
formats. In this project, CSOFT handled the localization of
GUI resource files, Online Help and printed Manuals, including
RC, DLL, ENG, HTML, CHM, and many custom files defined by
our Client's development teams. Additionally, some files needed
to combine the source and target text, others stayed separate
and some used the Unicode format. In the end, CSOFT's engineering
team was able to create a single project file for translation
which allowed our translation teams to view only translatable
contents; it allowed shared TM within the project so that
translation consistency was guaranteed.
Complex cosmetic and linguistic
testing
When initial translation of the GUI was completed, we moved
quickly to UI dialog box resizing and testing. Our L10N testing
covered both cosmetic and linguistic issues. Because our Client's
team did not have time to build installers into target language
versions, CSOFT's engineering/testing team located the various
resource files and replaced them with the corresponding localized
versions to setup a localized software runtime environment.
We also wrote custom scripts to replace program files automatically
to minimize errors caused by manually copying/replacing files.
Many internationalization (I18N) problems were found during
the testing phase. CSOFT provided suggestions to the Client's
development team to resolve issues such as double-byte character
display problems. We also generated detailed test reports
complete with issue tracking numbers, detailed descriptions,
corresponding screenshots, actions, and issue status.
These reports greatly enhanced the communication between the
Client and our own engineering teams so all software bugs
could be resolved efficiently. Another challenge occurred
during L10N testing when the client often updated the English
source files. The updates created a good deal of additional
work; sometimes the entire software resource component had
to go through a new translation cycle to capture all changes.
Using the best technology, our language teams were able to
provide the translations of updated content and keep consistency
with earlier versions. Both the Client and CSOFT's engineering
teams worked together to locate the components that were changed
so that efforts could be focused on those components for retesting.
This process went through several iterations and the entire
testing project was carried out very smoothly. Because of
our intimate knowledge of the entire L10N testing cycle, we
were able to complete the project without pushing back the
project deadline which enabled an on-time release of the software
in eight languages.
Professional In-Country Translation
Materials science is a highly specialized field for translation
requiring a strong engineering background in physics, chemistry
and mechanical engineering. Although all CSOFT translators/technical
writers are professionally trained native translators, we
had to make sure the best teams were selected to work on this
project. We initially selected two separate in-country teams
with a strong engineering/material science background to translate
a sample document that our project management team had prepared.
This was done without the aid of a translation glossary and
style guide. The results were then reviewed by a third in-country
team for technical accuracy and linguistic style. The best
team was then selected for the entire project. One reason
we selected professional translators/technical writers instead
of field experts was that field experts might be excellent
with terminology and industry jargon, but they often do poorly
with translation and technical writing. Good translation requires
much more then knowledge of technical terms, it requires devotion
and dedication to produce good quality translations. Aided
by a good terminology glossary and translation style guide,
our technical translators did an outstanding job for the project
in all seven languages. Since all of our translators use the
same TM for the entire translation, we were able to keep consistency
between all components: UI, Online Help and documentation.
Multilingual DTP
Our Client's software documentation consisted of both online
help and PDF user manuals. The online help was developed using
compiled HTML (.chm) with RoboHelp. CSOFT was required to
localize the Online Help into 7 languages and also output
to PDF using conditional tags (also referred to as Single
Source Publishing). A big challenge with the latest version
of RoboHelp is that it did not readily support double-byte
languages. To overcome this technical hurdle, CSOFT's publishing
team compiled the Help for double-byte languages using single-byte
construction and then manually changed the internal encoding
with additional formatting/adjustment to create localized
help for Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Our
team also performed extensive QA on the localized help files
to assure they matched the original (ie. number of topics,
links and jumps.) CSOFT uses both software tools (HelpQA and
HTMLQA) and human testing (by qualified engineers) to compare
the localized files against the original English help files.
Human testers are great for catching cosmetic and layout issues
such as missing translations and formatting issues and the
software tools were able to compare source and target files
for consistency. (ie. underlying links, jumps and number of
topics.)
Project management
CSOFT takes great pride in the quality and technical ability
of our project managers. Compared to other vendors, CSOFT
provides one of the most proactive and responsive project
management teams in the industry. All of our project managers
have at least five years of experience and are professionally
trained to manage L10N projects from beginning-to-end. We
are willing to take all steps necessary to ensure our clients
are fully satisfied with each and every step of a project's
execution. For this assignment, CSOFT's project management
team provided crucial support for the successful execution
of the project.
o CSOFT helped our Client's demanding schedule stay on track
by providing effective management solutions to enable around
the clock testing, translation, engineering and DTP.
o CSOFT helped our Client streamline the translation process
and workflow so that future product updates can be localized
efficiently and inexpensively.
Throughout the localization project, our project management
team kept in close communication with our Client. We conducted
weekly meetings to discuss project related issues and specific
steps needed to solve the numerous challenges faced with such
a complex software product. Using a set of pre-developed checklists
(based on our years of experience in the localization industry)
we were able to achieve a continuous workflow improvement.
Weekly project status reports gave a detailed summary about
the current week's progress, any pending issues and potential
resolutions. Because the Client's software program is highly
technical and complex it required our project managers to
be intimately familiar with the product in order to manage
the project efficiently. Because of our project management
team's technical proficiency, they quickly mastered the product
and all its localization requirements.
Conclusion
As a connoisseur of quality, technical excellence and efficiency,
our Client found a match in CSOFT for its own exacting high
standards. Our Client was especially impressed by the high
quality translations, technical know-how and the fast response
that CSOFT was able to offer.
Appendix-Customer feedback:
The following are selected comments about CSOFT from
three separate managers.
"The benefits of consolidating translation are not necessarily
offered by CSOFT alone of course; any good translation vendor
will do the job. However, I have undertaken translation management
for many years now using several different vendors and CSOFT
is by far the best vendor I have found. Their project management
is excellent and they will work extremely hard to assure that
the customer is satisfied."
--Manager, Information Development and Software Quality
"I was particularly impressed by the way your team handled
my instructions for compiling the different help files, both
in Robohelp and in Microsoft Help Workshop. I was expecting
there to be some problems when you did this work for the first
time, but there were none."
--Technical Documentation Manager
"We were all impressed by the way your team quickly learned
about our software and helped our developers with some of
the problems that they were having with the Asian language
fonts."
--Lead Engineering Manager
For more information about CSOFT's de-coupled L10N model and how we can help your organization save on L10N cost, please click here.
|
