This CIMdata Brief takes a look at some of the main issues that typically impede an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively localize product-related content. The Brief describes why companies need to produce and handle product-related documentation in a synchronized manner aligned with the product’s and the organization’s product development process. It also describes why companies need to begin their localization early in the development process and why organizations must seek to implement solutions that manage the componentization of product content so that it can be decomposed and subsequently re-structured in an efficient manner. By doing so, an organization can ensure that its new products are introduced to multiple markets at the right time, at the lowest cost possible, and as quickly as possible.
In today’s global market, product documentation can take on many forms—the most common are user manuals, assembly instructions, labels, user interface menus, and online help. The localization of this product-related content (e.g., the translation of product documentation into one or more languages) is an activity that many companies manage in a disconnected manner and execute rather late in the product development process. For companies that sell to the global market, this seemingly simple task of localization is actually quite complex and requires a significant investment of time, money, and overall effort. The primary reason for this complexity is that too many companies do not produce and/or handle product-related documentation, and all the forms it must take (e.g., language variants), in a synchronized manner aligned with the product’s requirements (e.g., what documentation is needed to enter what markets) and the organization’s product development process. Rather, they handle localization as an activity that takes place separately and often only after the product design is finalized and all the documentation in the company’s primary design language is complete. This disconnect often delays the product’s introduction to the market, as both customer usability issues and country and industry regulations can prevent products from being sold without the associated localized documentation.
For multi-national companies, localization requirements may mean supporting more than 20 different languages; for a select few, this number can be more than 100. For each language supported, an inefficient process results in added product development costs. Companies must continually try to streamline their localization process so that they can effectively compete in multiple regional markets. CIMdata’s research and client experience indicate that many of the challenges to quick and efficient localization of product documentation revolve around a company’s ability to integrate the tools and processes of its design environment with the tools and processes of both the technical publishing department and the third-party translation Language Service Providers (LPS).
In theory, this disconnect between product design and content development is greatly reduced for those companies that embrace the full potential that a comprehensive Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) approach offers. This requires the implementation of this strategic business approach that takes into consideration the entire lifecycle of products and their associated information (including all the various forms that product-related content can take). Ultimately, companies who capture, understand, and design to product localization requirements from the beginning are those that are better able to deliver the right product to the right market, at the right time. This success can be accomplished by managing localized documentation as an integral part of the product’s definition information, which in turn defines all the product’s sellable variants. This of course, requires the company to view the product as more than just its physical parts, but also its other designed and delivered items (e.g., localized product-related documentation).
Once an organization realizes that its content creation and localization processes must function as integral parts of their product development process—no different than any other development activity—it must manage the translation of manuals, assembly instructions, online help, and even user interface (UI) in the same manner as other product development process deliverables. In the world of concurrent or collaborative product development, localization must begin early in the development process and be completed at the same time that the other physical components of the product are ready to be released to production and to the field. To accomplish this, companies need to divide the localization tasks into smaller tasks, or a set of work packages that can be managed and evolved in an efficient manner as the product evolves. This is a difficult process for many companies to follow because they often don’t have a document management environment that is flexible enough to manage multiple types of data (e.g., documents and parts records) and to manage the overall content of the documents as configurations of smaller components (e.g., phrases, paragraphs, sections, etc.).
Fortunately, best-in-class document management solutions, which are based on advanced data standards, allow companies to create and manage localization work packages and to optimize their localization processes. For years, the information publishing community, which represents those responsible for the localization of product documentation, has sought to define and use common data standards (e.g., portable data representations) that describe and manage the configurations of complex documentation. These standards, also called markup languages, allow structure, layout, and formatting to be associated with sections of text. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is one such standard. With the advent of the Web, most people have heard of another markup language, namely HTML (HyperText Markup Language). This language is used to describe the structure of text-based information in a document by defining a “style” for sections of text (links, headings, paragraphs, etc.), and to supplement that text with interactive forms, images, and other defined objects. Another familiar markup language is XML (Extensible Markup Language). XML, which owes its heritage to SGML, started as a simplified subset meant to be readable by people via defined and understandable constraints. XML is considered an extensible language, because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements. IBM took advantage of this definition ability when it defined the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).
DITA, which was released as a public XML standard in 2001, holds significant promise for the product-related information publishing industry. Fundamentally, it is an XML-based, end-to-end data architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. Today, this standard plays an important role in the localization of product documentation. DITA allows content to be divided into smaller standalone segments, or topics. Product-related content that is managed on a topic level can be associated with product data, allowing documentation to be created in parallel with product development. This in turn, can shorten the time needed to create product-related documentation, as it can be started much earlier in the product lifecycle. Topic-level content also allows data to be reused. For example, if a specific part is used in multiple products, the associated product-related content topics would be common across those products as well. Topic-based content also supports the creation of translation packages, which play an important role in the localization of product documentation. Translation packages are groupings of content that are provided to the individual or organization (e.g., a LSP) responsible to perform the translation service. This is not necessarily the entire manual or assembly instruction document, but rather just the set of content that must be translated. Good translation management solutions provide the capability to store and manage these groupings.
These concepts have the possibility of revolutionizing the way in which companies localize their product-related content. No longer do they have to wait until the end of the development process to translate everything. They can componentize not only their products (e.g., break their product designs into configurable modules) but also the product-related content needed for localization. The benefits of such an approach are significant. Besides not having to wait for the entire manual to be ready before translation begins, content can be more easily managed as reusable objects. This reduces translation costs as well as the content creation effort, and means that the decomposition and re-structuring of content doesn’t have to be a time consuming manual process. Topic-based content also means that the effect of a data change is limited to the associated topic, and the overall cycle time to update localized content when a change to master data occurs can be greatly reduced. Without the ability to componentize (i.e., define and store content as a set of objects, such as reusable phrases, paragraphs, sections, etc.) and manage the decomposition and the subsequent re-structuring of content components, localization would continue to be costly and time consuming.
It is important to mention that product-related information publishing solutions are applicable to multiple industries, including high-tech, automotive, aerospace, CPG, and others where manuals and other customer delivered content is common, as well as pharmaceutical, food & beverage, and others that need to generate labels, packaging artwork, and other localized content along with their product.
Ultimately, companies will have to find new and innovative ways to introduce their products to multiple markets at the right time, at the lowest cost possible, and as quickly as possible in order to stay competitive in today’s global market. No longer can localization be seen as an afterthought. It must be fully integrated into a company’s product development process and all those that are involved in the process must be able collaborate in the most efficient and effective manner possible. By doing so, a company can ensure that its product localization process is a competitive advantage.
