Industry White Papers

Global authoring is a hot topic in today’s global businesses. Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need to provide consistency of style, terminology and language in content that is being created for global audiences. This article examines a recent survey conducted by SDL on global authoring. Read on for some insights into interesting trends in the past two years around technical documentation departments.

Language plays a pivotal role in today’s global market. Increasing customer expectations require companies to support more content in more languages across more regions. But constraints on resources and budgets can limit coverage and have a negative effect on global market share.

This case study describes how enterprise content globalization processes and information technology enable HP to communicate with customers in a single, consistent voice but in their own languages. HP’s approach to content globalization reduces costs, improves customer satisfaction, increases revenues, and creates financial value for the company.

The On Demand Internet Generation is here. What are the new trends in global marketing which reflect this? What role does terminology play? SDL and the Localization Industry Standards Association partnered to conduct a study  of global enterprises to identify these trends.

SDL Translation Management System manages the process of translating original language content into one or more target languages and delivers the translated content to the required location. Web Content Management and Enterprise Content Management platforms support the creation of content, but they do not generally provide the functionality required to manage the translation process itself.

SDL AuthorAssistant is a key component of SDL Global Authoring Management System and SDL’s suite of translation products that comprise technology, business strategy, and services. One of the biggest challenges for organisations translating content into multiple languages is achieving brand consistency across all languages, particularly when multiple authors are involved in the process.

SDL MultiTerm provides a central repository of approved terminology, which can be shared and used throughout the organisation, and by external supply chain vendors. It is a component of the SDL Global Information Management (GIM) solution and can be used as a stand-alone product or as part of a modular solution. Ensuring brand consistency in content produced across multiple geographies and in different languages can be a difficult and time-consuming task.

Global Information Management (GIM) as provided by SDL, is a combination of technology, business strategy, and services that help organisations translate content into multiple languages. A major problem for organisations with a Web presence that wish to trade globally, is providing content in a wide variety of languages enabling potential customers to view content in their local language.

There is greater pressure than ever before on firms to manage brand image and consistency. Why? Intense competition, a growing number of channels changing customer behavior, and commoditized products make brand management and the process of creating a differentiated brand experience particularly important and complex.

On June 20th, SDL, the world’s third-largest globalization software and services firm, announced its plans to acquire TRADOS, the maker of the world’s most popular translation memory software, for US$60 million.

Given enough time or money or both, anything can be translated from one language to another. In the business world, however, the decisions about what and when to translate are almost always made in an economic context.

This case study profiles Sun Microsystems and its commitment to achieving excellence in this arena. The company has achieved extraordinary results by viewing globalization as an enterprise-wide business practice and unifying content and translation business processes and technologies.

 Causing a missed product launch because of incomplete product documentation is the nightmare of every documentation manager. But the harsh reality is that documentation departments are expected to do more work in much less time as cycles become compressed.