A Clearer Vision for 2020
By Chris Grebisz
COO

In 2020, the internet will have reached most of the globe, developing communities that unite people across language, cultural and national boundaries in a way never before possible. Similar to the open-source movement, these communities will encourage participation and contribution towards a greater outcome, one that has been unattainable by separate entities. Customers will expect to be part of the dialogue and process, which in turn will help meet their own unique needs. Governments, corporations and organizations will quickly adopt these new concepts, introducing a new approach to business, and a new approach to globalization. Globalization will incorporate the concept of communities united to a common objective: creating a process centered on the customer while providing value and collaboration throughout a unified supply chain.

Every organization will have a local end-customer whose role is to deliver, deploy or release the final localized product within that target market. Up until now, this end-customer has been the farthest removed from the localization process, which has not fully addressed their needs. These customers are faced with accepting the output of a process in which they have little role or input. A localization management system designed by and for the intermediaries of the process—and not the true customer­­—produces bare-bones translated content devoid of the nuances and adaptation required to reach deep into international markets.

In the second decade of the 21st century, two key concepts will emerge with a profound impact on the concept of globalization.

The first concept: All content is not equal in its value or importance. Some content requires a high level of localization and adaptation, while other content only needs basic translation to convey simple information. Local markets and end-customers will demand the segregation of content, and language providers will adjust and develop a methodology to accommodate each type. On one end of the spectrum, high-value content and subsequent translation will require the most qualified translators, editors and reviewers to ensure that the source message is retained and culturally adapted per the requirements of the target market. Customers will be willing to pay for this premium content.

Other content considered more industrial or “commodity” level will follow a different approach. More language firms will begin to employ machine translation as a basis for a high-volume need, developing a network of MT providers and editing teams that vendors will resell as a packaged service. This movement will produce a large assortment of buyers and resellers of language translation and post-editing services, customized to meet the high-volume, non-critical needs of global information, at commodity prices.

The second concept: Creation of a complete supply chain founded on an interactive technology platform that engages all players within an open community and incorporates the ideals of Marketization. Marketization will emerge as the process by which end-customers, content authors and language providers collaborate interactively in a unified ecosystem to create content carefully adapted to meet the needs of the target market. Platforms created by language vendors will host community environments capturing larger parts of the supply chain and enable a process where each piece of content can be authored, translated and adapted. In-country end-customers, partners and language vendors will all contribute by editing content before it goes to market, focusing their efforts on critical content areas and ensuring that the changes are captured for future re-use. Built using open standards, these platforms will pull together vendors, tools, customers and localization providers into a single network designed to meet the needs of marketing managers. With these platforms, end-customers will be able to monitor the process, while measuring ROI at each step.

In the next decade, marketing will move beyond a country-by-country language approach and include regional linguistic differences, adapted for age, economic background and cultural preferences. Marketing teams will use these new platforms to manage, target and measure the delivery of content to these narrowly defined global customer segments. The concept of globalization will expand to define an architecture that is created for content that can support multiple instances and is specifically designed to support translation and marketization. Content authors will be trained on the globalization process, and localization will become a step in the creation process equal in value to information design, graphic layout and usability.

The introduction of content value and marketization platforms will have a profound effect on the marketing process, helping companies reach new customers in ways never before possible. We are only beginning to see the possibilities.

Back to Home Page