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Recent Entries
How’s your Anglophone reception?
Hollywood raises the bar on ethnic authenticity
Culture is a minefield. Tread carefully.
Five words that should be imported into English
The blogosphere across different hemispheres
What’s the meaning of green in Greenland?
Lost in Translation: Strange signs from abroad
When your translator is truly checked out…
Beware of Slippy: For Shanghai, Chinglish is no laughing matter
Lost in Translation: Verizon Wireless
How well do you know your target market?
Is Twitter ready to go global?
In India, Microsoft and Google go local in a big way
It’s Miller Time in North Korea
Global road warriors: learn to fit it all in one bag
In China: All atwitter about microblogging
Does Crowdsourcing have a Place in the Translation Industry?
The Era of Open Standards is here
Translation Tools Without Borders
Content Convergence: Come Together Write Now
Beijing’s Olympic Task: Serving Up Gold-Medal English
The Era of Open Standards is here
Everyone is done talking about it and is now doing it. The era of open standards has arrived. A range of open standard formats for several data types exists: .tmx, .tbx, .srx, xml:tm, .XLIFF, DITA, and the list goes on.
Open standards are software that produces outputs that are interchangeable across all applications of its type. For example, terminology software outputs a file type that is interchangeable with any other open standard terminology software or application with a terminology component.
SDL has just launched Trados Studio 2009, an open platform for a translation management system. LISA has its open standards for file formats .tmx, .tbx, .srx, xml:tm among others.
The carrot is consistent word counts, interchangeability, and same treatment of translatable text. The word counts are the same across different vendors and software programs when software developers use the same rules. Users are no longer locked into one vendor or software program when the output can be taken to another company or used in a different application. Leveraging is maximized when translatable text is recognized by any open standard tool.
The only thing left to do is use the open standards and reap the benefits.
Translation Tools Without Borders
The localization/translation tool industry is undergoing a revolution. With the very real possibility of WorldServer being phased out as we know it, content owners are currently perched at the edge of the cliff of proprietary translation memory tools, ready to fly free of vendor software that locks their assets into a single translation vendor.
But content owners are first looking for which direction in the new field of open standards before making the leap.
Already major localization tool vendors are rolling out their new platforms based on open standards, ready to catch those that make the leap. SDL is promoting its new open architecture called Trados Studio 2009. LISA has released an arsenal of open standards (TBX, TMX, GMX, TMS, xml:tm, SRX) designed to serve as a base for the new breed of open architecture to come.
We’re all waiting to see what the new portability of content will bring with localization software as the enabler rather than the barrier.