My first project with memoQ 2014 Release 2

When I got my first look at the test version of the upcoming memoQ release, memoQ 2014 R2, I argued with  Kilgray that it ought to be called memoQ 2015 instead, not only because the year 2014 is almost over, but because this software represents a major break with the old interface design. Kilgray likes to point out that there are not so many new features being introduced here - perhaps a mere "dozen" give or take a bit - but just one of these - the new ribbon interface - has its own 50 page manual. Meu deus.

On the whole I am coming to view the rapid pace of development for some CAT tools in a rather negative light. I rather like the current memoQ 2014 release, but I am not even close to coming to grips with the 70+ new features introduced earlier this year (which has probably grown to 100+, depending on how you want to count them). I think back to my experiences as a corporate systems consultant in the archiving and document management sector and those working with a state department of transportation before that, where many thousands of networked workstations and other systems had to be managed for maximum productivity and minimum disruption. It took me a while back then to understand why, after many months of thorough testing at enormous cost, an upgrade for  something like Internet Explorer was permitted for the version two whole numbers below the current one. I eventually learned that these big organizations were not so dumb after all: being on the "leading edge" is too often the same as the "bleeding edge", which can have considerable, unanticipated costs.

This is the reason why for years I have advised my clients and colleagues not to consider new versions of any tool for routine production use until several months at least past its release date, and to use "roundtrip testing" in every instance to ensure that a technically usable result can be obtained from every project. Ultimately, Kilgray and others are going to have to determine whether constantly stirring the feature pot in a way that too often makes established workflows obsolete is in the best interests of their clientele and market future. Despite all the trendy talk of the benefits of disruption and "creative destruction" I am unconvinced that this is the case.

However, I do see very good reasons for the major changes to the interface in memoQ 21014 Release 2, and I think that new features like the limited sharing of online translation memories and termbases (with an open API in the future to allow access by other tools I'm told) are an excellent intermediate stage for those who aren't quite ready to move up to a team server solution like memoQ Cloud or the greater access capacity of the full memoQ Server license but who still need realtime data sharing for projects with a partner from time to time.

Kilgray's blog has a good post describing the basic shift in the logic of the environment from cataloging commands as one might in a library or inventory system to organization by the normal sequence of work. This makes a lot of sense, and this is also the way I teach new users to use the software, with small sets of features organized according to the sequence of typical work.

After spending about a week just staring at the new ribbons, I decided to do my first small, low-risk commercial project with the test version. Everything went quite well, but I had to fight a sense of disorientation as I kept looking for commands in the lower area of the screen, which is now free for viewing more files and file information in a project. In some cases, I had to get used to clicking on the little arrows under icons rather than the icons themselves. Nothing I needed was difficult to locate, but as a longtime user of memoQ with many ingrained habits, I will take some time getting used to this, after which my work will probably proceed even more smoothly. In any case, it is clear to me that new users will find their way more quickly with this new, workflow-based interface.

This impression of greater ease for new users was reinforced by remarks from a colleague in my office a few days ago. Her professional background prior to her activities in translation was as an educational psychologist and adult education teacher, and when I began to complain about how awful the new ribbons were and how uncomfortable I felt with them, she patiently explained how I had it all wrong and why the new design was much more logical and easier to use. Years ago I teased SDL Trados users who bitched at first about the change from the nasty old over/under TWB interface to the tabular working environment of SDL Trados Studio only to become enthusiasts later when they realized how much their workflows had improved; I fear that I will also become a just target for such teasing.

I don't want to admit it, really, but I am already beginning to like those awful ribbons, which are perhaps rather useful after all. And if I really don't want to look at them, they can be hidden with just a click, leaving me with even more working space on my screen. So all right, I'll say it. Reluctantly. Good job, Kilgray.

Now who is going to re-do all the screenshots and videos for my tutorials?

Practical terminology management with Mark Childress - October 2014

Here is an opportunity to spend the day learning from one of the world's leading industrial terminologists and the current president of the German Association for Terminology (Deutscher Terminologie-Tag) in the next of Stridonium's scheduled professional education events in the Netherlands. I made Mark's acquaintance some 14 years ago as a systems consultant, software developer and sometime translator for an electronic archiving solutions provider and SAP integrator. We needed to get the SAP terminology in the translations of our software manuals right, and I soon learned that he was the man. He also very unbureaucratically made the French, German and English terminology available to me in formats I could use with Trados and Déjà Vu in the days before the current online terminology portal for SAP, when the only game in town seemed to  be a CD that was never up to date. This gave me an edge in certain areas of technical and business translation for years, for which I was very grateful. It was, alas, another ten years before I could made that acquaintance a face-to-face one at the Warsaw conference for Translation Management Europe, where I also discovered that he was a gifted speaker and a patient teacher with a wealth of inspiring examples.

On October 29, 2014 at the Restaurant Hotel Savelberg in Voorburg (NL), just a few minutes by car or train from The Hague, Mr. Childress will be conducting a  full-day workshop with an overview of practical terminology management:

• The basics of terminology theory and practice in an organization
• Deciding between process-based or project-based approaches to terminology issues
• Simple pro-terminology arguments you can use to convince your managers, your colleagues, your clients – or yourself!
• Get started climbing the terminology mountain, one step at a time

The cost for the workshop is €375 per person (€325 for Stridonium members). Register by August 25th to receive the Early Bird rate of €325. Further information on the schedule and registration are now available on the Stridonium events page.

In Mark’s own words,

"This one-day seminar gives an overview of topics related to practical terminology work. No academic theorizing, no technobabble, no sales pitch – just good solid tips you can use to make your work run more smoothly."

*******

Mark Childress has a B.A. from Humboldt State University in California and an M.A. from Heidelberg University in Germany. He joined SAP AG in Walldorf, Germany in 1995 as a translator and has been responsible for the company’s terminology management since 1998. He is the current president of the German Association for Terminology (Deutscher Terminologie-Tag / DTT). Mark gives frequent lectures and training on terminology management to technical writers, translators, and universities and has written articles on terminology work for publications including MultiLingual and eDITion, the journal of the DTT.

Translation project management in Wiesbaden... no bull

Many corporate translation projects today are very complex. Fewer texts are based on paper documents, but all the more derive from web sites, software, databases, multimedia, engineering drawing files or publishing layouts, and they may often involve coordinated efforts for many languages for many formats. Project managers must work with specialists in a variety of fields such as translation, localization, software development and web design, advertising and commercial graphics. A roadmap is critical to cope with such challenges. Reliable roadmaps are based on grounded, practical knowledge of project management in general as well as the specifics relevant to localization.

Project management not only helps organize and define strategies, but also provides flexibility: the flexibility to refine something which works to work even better, and the flexibility to respond when things don’t go as expected. Good project management increases the probability of success and offers peace of mind, which increase customer satisfaction and provide opportunities for growth.

The workshop (in English) on November 4th and 5th in Wiesbaden, Germany will enhance your practical project management skills for translation and localization. It is designed for language service experts, corporate executives, project managers, heads of translation departments and translators interested in project management.

The workshop will be taught by Loctimize partners Angelika Zerfass and Martin Beuster. Ms. Zerfass is an independent trainer and consultant for translation technologies with more than a decade of experience in the field, a frequent speaker at localization conferences and university lecturer. Mr. Beuster is the managing director at Context (Ireland) and has over 25 years of success in the language services industry. As a training consultant, he offers services to corporate clients, professionals in multi-lingual environments and language service providers.

Further details and registration information are available here.

Selectable metadata for memoQ 2013 projects

One of the things I have missed very much since switching from Déjà Vu to memoQ years ago is the ability to create and maintain selectable lists of metadata for classifying my data. One of the strengths of DVX was that this data could even be used to prioritize TM and terminology relevance during translation. But even for simple things like sorting and filtering data for an export, it can be very helpful.

Let me give an example. I have an old client I'll call National Translators. Well, sometimes that's the name I use when filling in the Client field for the memoQ project. Sometimes I write Nat'l Transl, sometimes it's NatTrans or even NT. And then when my fingers get rebellious I might have the occasional NtaTarns or worse.

Despite the messy appearance of screenshots of the TM and termbase lists in my various tutorials, for the most part I follow the "Big Mama and Papa" approach to data management with a large master TM and termbase with over a decade of archived reference material. But I do occasionally like to filter those data and produce a more focused termbase or TM for a projects, such as all the NatTrans material from projects involving Poultry. That was easy with Déjà Vu. Each client had a unique, selectable code. Subjects were number coded with a sophisticated classification scheme that I adapted for my own use. With memoQ it's been a real pain in the ass.

Well, it seems that times are a'changin. A little bit at least in this respect. One change that sort of slippe under my radar in memoQ 2013 was the addition of selectable data to projects through the use of the free Kilgray Language Terminal. I almost missed it completely, because I was looking at some of the latest "innovations" there from the wrong perspective. Wrong for me at least.

Clients list on my demo profile on the Kilgray Language Terminal. Click to enlarge.

Kilgray recently introduced the ability to do basic project "management" on Language Terminal. Price lists. Clients lists. And more. I was appalled, or at least quite uninterested in that, though I rather like other aspects of Language Terminal. I have a good tool for quoting jobs and maintaining my client records, and I really don't think I'll be replacing that with the rather simple start that has been made by Kilgray in this area. And having lived in Germany for years, I have almost adopted the knee-jerk aversion to storing my client data online which is so common there.

But... there's another way. Better for me. I don't have to enter my clients' details. I can enter just the names. Or better yet - my preferred codes (which can protect their identities but let me sort my data better). Click on the screenshot above to see an example of this in the last two entries. You need not be as cryptic as I was in that example.

On the "Professional" page of my Language Terminal profile (the link to the left of "Clients"), I can enter my subjects. Kilgray intended this for their find-a-translator search function that they are adding to Language Terminal, but I'm probably not going to be interested in being found and approached by the sort of prospect that might use their database. My philosophy is that looking for a translator based on tool use is fundamentally backward, and I really don't want to support bad practices like that. Translators should be engaged based on subject and linguistic expertise; the translation technology involved is like a shirt, tie and a pair of shoes - you just put on what is appropriate for the occasion. But without the subject and linguistic competence, you really ought not to be part of the game at all.

So once again, I would enter my subject data on Language Terminal, not with the idea of being "found" by some Indian or Mongoloid agency to be offered the opportunity of a lifetime at 2 cents per word, but rather with an eye toward sensible data classification for use in filtering later. Here's an example of what these metadata entered on Language Terminal look like when you start a new memoQ project and mark it to be "entered" on Language Terminal.

I still like the local DVX approach better for such metadata, but this is actually an improvement, and it will help me clean up my data organization. And using these features for my purposes, rather than the purposes for which they seem to have been created, will also maintain confidentiality as I want to. In fact, the profile seen here is not even viewable by other Language Terminal users.

There are many other very useful features of Language Terminal, which make it worthwhile to get a free account, even if you don't use memoQ. The blockbuster is still the free InDesign processing service, which enables one to handle native INDD files, get PDF previews at any time and convert InDesign files to XLIFF for convenient translation in most modern CAT tools. As a memoQ user, I find the backup feature useful as well; the Resources page is starting to get a few useful things, and rumors of future plans make me think this is really something to watch closely.

But this recent "revelation" of the possibility of selectable metadata for my memoQ projects is a small but very welcome addition to my toolbox in memoQ 2013, and finding this in an area of the site that I had already written off as uninteresting to me was perhaps the most pleasant surprise. It's nice to be wrong like that.

Update on the OTM integration with SDL Trados Studio

Since I learned earlier this year about plans to integrate LSP.net's Online Translation Manager (OTM) - the workflow solution I use for secure data transmission in my projects - and SDL Trados Studio I have kept track of the progress of this effort with some interest and satisfaction. Although it is unlikely to be of immediate benefit to me, an occasional user of SDL Trados desktop applications, I have followed the combinations of business process tools with their translation implementation counterparts for many years, and this seems to be one of the few efforts that really deserves the label "integration". Too often that word is used to describe reading a text file with an analysis of files and applying a scoping grid to ensure that one's profits remain suitably modest or non-existent.

When I contacted OTM's architect this week to get the latest news before heading to Warsaw for the translation management conference, he described the development and testing over the past month and the probable completion of the middleware component next week. By the end of October, the OTM workflow system should have a new range of features to complement the Trados workflows for analyzing and testing the viability of files for translation processes, applying customer-specific weighting tables to matches and more.

The release of the new version of OTM and the SDL Trados integration features is expected in November after testing with a pilot group is completed. Given the good record of LSP.net for releasing stable versions of its software over the past three years, I expect a well-tuned, useful advance of functionality. The integration will be available for testing and use free of charge for some months in its rollout phase to ensure that potential users have every opportunity to master its application to their business processes. Several licensing models are being considered afterward to allow users flexibility.

Contact LSP.net for further details on this product. When the test phase is completed, I hope to interview some of the current group of companies working with this solution and find out the best and the worst of its implementation.

TM-Europe 2012: managing translation, not memories

Last year I attended the annual international translation management conference in Warsaw (TM-Europe) for the first time. Other than a guest post on the XLIFF symposium, this event wasn't mentioned on the blog, because shortly after the event my dog nearly died of babesiosis from a tick bite, and I had other things to think about for a long while, so many other tidbits, such as My Dinner with Andrä (well, lunch, actually) never made it to publication at the end of 2011.

Despite the silence, there was much worth telling about the event in Poland. I went on a lark because I had never been there before and wanted to see a few of the attendees I knew, and I was greatly surprised by what was possibly one of the most personally interesting conferences for translation I have ever attended. Despite the word "management" in its title, the presentations and discussions were very relevant to my freelance business as well as to agency and corporate attendees.

One of the highlights of the conference for me wasn't a presentation, but a conversation with one of the great creative developers for translation tools, Daniel Benito of Atril, whose insights and ideas on terminology mining still have my mind spinning with fascinated speculation on their feasibility and potential. Yves Champillon, the creator of WordFast - a product I don't like much at all - gave a presentation so fascinating that I actually found myself testing that suite of products again and developing interoperability solutions for agencies in my consulting clientele. The quantitative research on MT post-editing presented by Indra Samite was excellent, though I thought the conclusions overly optimistic and unsupported by the data, which rather spoke for itself. Paul Filkin's presentation on SDL Trados Studio 2011 was absolutely superb and helped me to understand an environment with ergonomics that often leave me baffled. The networking opportunities were superb, with leading experts, developers, professional organization heads, corporate language specialists, translation agency personnel, freelancers, consultants and others from around the world mingling and sharing ideas in a personal atmosphere.

The 2012 conference has the future of translation and localization as its theme. But don't expect the future vision of dark, Satanic post-editing mills propagated by the Common Nonsense Advisory and TAUS acolytes. Like last year, machine translation is part of the program, but here there will be an open discussion about whether its role is not being oversold just a wee bit, with MT advocates trading polite, professional blows with skeptics such as Miguel Llorens who see the future as having more of a human component. Freelance transcreator and consultant Chris Durban will speak on the mass market versus the premium one and why you should care about the difference for your future.

Mark Childress of SAP will speak on the future of terminology management. Given his deep expertise in that field, I would go to Warsaw on a bicycle to hear him. Fortunately, my carpool arrangements in a colleague's van newly converted to LPG promise to be more fun and comfortable. And my dog hates riding piggyback on the bike.

Have a look at the event program for 2012 (with information still being added). It has a good balance of presenters from all sides of translation and localization and promises once again to be an excellent forum for exchanging ideas to do our business better.

Early bird conference registration closes tomorrow (September 7th - not the 5th as stated on the web page... the organizers do an excellent program, but the written pre-conference communication this year has been a little confusing sometimes). However, registration is possible until the event itself as far as I know.

The conference will be held from October 4th to 5th; on October 3rd there will be a pre-conference workshop on project management and an evening welcome reception sponsored by Kilgray.

memoQuickie: Adding terms to multiple memoQ termbases

By default, memoQ always writes new terms to the primary termbase; other termbases selected are for reference only. However, as of version 5, it is possible to change where terms are written and to write to more than one termbase simultaneously.

Select a term to record and choose Operations > Add Term... or use the toolbar or keyboard shortcut to open the dialog for creating a termbase entry.

The upper right of the dialog shows the termbase(s) to which terms will be written. Clicking the small, black arrow opens the dropdown menu where all termbases in the project can be selected and deselected for adding terms.

In the example above, the term will be written to two termbases.

The selections remain the default for all new term entries in the project until changed again. If the primary termbase is not selected, no terms will be written to it.

Creating translation projects in memoQ 6

As with most other translation environment tools, memoQ translations are performed in "projects" which bring together all the necessary support resources for reference, quality assurance, etc.

New projects are started on the Dashboard when you open memoQ or in that and any other context by choosing Project > New Project...  

This opens the Project Wizard.

 Name the project, choose the source language and a target language and add any relevant meta data (for inclusion in translation memory and term data). Recording the version history is a good idea if new versions of source documents may come or if you want to track changes in a translation.
The next wizard screen lets you select the documents to translate.

These can also be added later if you do not have them or are creating a template project for later use. Import adds the selected documents to the project using default filters; Import with options... allows other filters to be specified or special filter settings to be chosen.

The translation memories page of the wizard shows all the registered TM resources; memoQ uses a primary TM into which translated segments are written and as many reference TMs as you like. Here the ISO 9001 memory is chosen as a reference for matching and concordance search.

Termbases also have a "primary" termbase and any number of reference termbases, but unlike TMs, new information can be written to more than one termbase simultaneously if the settings are adjusted later.

After the project wizard setup is finished, the project is ready to be used for translating. Double-clicking an item in the translation documents list will open it for work.

OTM: starting and completing projects from e-mail

There are a number of instructional videos put together by LSP.net which show the broad range of features in the Online Project Manager (OTM). These are great if you want an overview of the environment's many features from the perspectives of a project manager, end client and service provider (such as a translator), but with all the possibilities presented, it's easy to get overwhelmed, and the basic simplicity of a typical project can be overlooked. I made the video tutorial below to show the workflow I usually go through for simple projects.

An e-mail arrives from a customer with an attached file to translate and a request for a delivery date. I produce a quotation, send it, wait for the order (or not if it's already given in the initial e-mail), then translate and deliver the job, invoice it and close the project. When I'm not making a video of the steps, they typically take me less than five minutes, but here you can see it all in "slow motion". More details on this process are found in my other posts on this blog about OTM.



  

This tutorial was recorded with the Google Chrome browser and the Open Source recording tool CamStudio. Try it in full-screen mode using the icon at the lower right of the playing window.

memoQuickie: customizing project, file and view lists

Many are not aware of this, but three of the important working lists in memoQ - the project list on the Dashboard and the Documents and Views lists on a project's Translation page - are customizable.

Right-clicking the header bar of the list opens a context menu where columns to be displayed are selected:

Project list context menu on the memoQ Dashboard
 

Documents list context menu in a project

Views list context menu in a project

Customizing the column display is particularly helpful in the Documents list when using memoQ versioning. If Document Version is marked in the columns choices, the major and minor version will be shown for each document. (The major or source version is the number before the decimal, the minor version - the target version for that source version - the number after it.) If versioning is not active for a document, the column displays "n/a".

memoQuickie: locations for data & avoiding name length trouble

Most memoQ users never change the program defaults for where projects, TMs, termbases and corpora are stored. Usually this is not a problem, but some want to put things elsewhere, and if you have crazy clients (like lawyers) who are fond of file names that push the allowed limits for Windows, you may encounter frequent errors because of file path length (in many tools, not just memoQ - OmegaT appears most robust in this sense). To choose custom locations for your data and possibly reduce the chance of trouble with long file names, go to select the menu and dialog option Tools > Options... > Locations

and set the paths you want. At the bottom of the dialog is the possibility to shorten the temporary folder path length and avoid some trouble.

Heads in the Cloud? Or somewhere else?

As noted in my last post, concerns are growing over the trend toward "Cloud-based" translation management solutions and the potential negative impact on interoperability between TEnT systems with the wrong approach. As Jost Zetsche noted, there is a need to push solution providers such as SDL, Kilgray, Atril, Wordfast et alia to develop working, open interfaces so various clients can be used with a given server solution in online projects.

From a somewhat different perspective, Hungarian translator Csaba Bán noted that bits and dribbles of text translated via project management tools in the Cloud, while perhaps offering some efficiencies for an LSP or other company, too often unnecessarily fragment and waste the translator's time for inadequate compensation under most current schemes. I've heard a number of my clients talk about developing web-based "instant interfaces" for quickie translation service, and I know of a number of companies who have had something like this for years, but it all seems a bit like a sleazy back alley encounter on the fringes of a Red Light district with too great a chance of the translator's business suffering ill health from such indulgence. Cloud solutions which do not cleanly integrate with a translator's working environment tools but which require copying and pasting in various fields and windows are simply inefficient (despite some tools offering Clipboard integrations) and not very attractive. And appropriate minimum charges and premiums to offset the disruptions caused by too many dribbles during the day are called for. This requires some thought, and I can't pretend to offer any brilliant solutions to the dilemma, as I think each situation will have to be considered individually until a good set of general principles for best practice emerge. I have one such case I'm puzzling over myself right now: how to charge for "tweet translation" for a long-term client who runs a PR agency. So far I haven't, because the volume has been modest and fits well enough into the ordinary flow of our business discussions, but the case has me thinking.

As readers of this blog probably know, I am also involved in other types of Cloud-based project management for translation. When I began to encounter the first web-based administration interfaces with my agency clientele a decade ago, I hated them. In fact, I have dumped several otherwise rather good clients, some paying rates on par with decent direct clients, because I found their systems too cumbersome and prone to fault. One of the worst was a custom mess from an international LSP whose Swiss branch was a frequent customer; half the time, secure deliveries via their portal were simply impossible and I had to resort to insecure e-mail attachments. (Yes, these can be passworded, but that involves additional trouble.)

Gradually, decent standard solutions emerged. A number of my clients are happy with the German Plunet solution; I favor LSP.net's OTM, not because I localize the English interface but because it's comprehensive, legally secure, provides robust processes and archiving, is software as a service (SaaS) at modest cost, and I don't have to screw around with the infrastructure at my dilapidated country estate with its lousy bandwidth availability; and there are other acceptable alternatives beside the rather nightmarish mess of the Open Source solution I once tortured myself with for several months (Project ]open[ Translation). A good online administrative solution like this has many advantages over desktop or LAN solutions, and I have discussed many of these benefits in previous posts about OTM. Even the best solutions I have seen, however, have one glaring weakness: login management!!!

This is a big problem with many online applications. We all have too many damned passwords to juggle. When suddenly I have another dozen or two dozen logins to translation project administration systems for my agency and big corporate clients, things begin to get dicey if cookies, utilities like KePass or other methods are not applied. Personally, I would like to see options for OpenID and other integrations as one is beginning to see with some of the social media. Despite the hassles sometimes involved here, I think Cloud-based tools of this kind are among the most useful for managing translation-related processes and making them secure. I use my OTM for encrypted deliveries of confidential files and for providing clients with full access to their project backup archives. This is a blessing if I'm off somewhere taking a break and someone desperately needs a copy of a translation I did last year which has gone missing.

Twenty months of OTM

It's been a while since I've written about the translation business workflow solution I use and localize. Its pace of change has slowed in the past half year as the major improvements planned were all implemented, and I'm rather pleased with where it is now. When the pilot program for the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net began twenty months ago, the software was very specifically tailored to the workflows and working habits of a small group of companies. While the better parts of this early imprinting and a few interesting quirks remain, the working environment and communication platforms for customers and resources have been made quite adaptable to individual preferences, while still maintaining the provider's strong focus on good commercial practice, legal security of contracts and data privacy.

Problems that I have had after the last round of major upgrades in 2011 (and well before that, really) have largely been when I am so distracted by the pace of my working day that I "save" time by skipping simple administrative procedures that will cost me a few precious minutes. As with nearly any system, this often means more time spent sorting things out later, not a fault of the system, which at least provides me with options for catching up on what I should have done in the first place.

I have had quite a number of problems with my e-mail server in Florida this year. The reasons for the trouble are still not clear. Yet when I have used the secure OTM file areas for customers or the delivery e-mails with secure URLs, everything has worked even when my regular e-mail is hopelessly messed up. I have even found the system with its securely encrypted access for customers and subcontractors to be useful for passing sensitive information to colleagues appointed for review.

Let there be no mistake about it: this is a full-featured workflow tool for running a small to mid-sized agency (or larger operation perhaps). For the low SaaS subscription rates, one cannot expect the CAT and other integration options available in some alternatives, but I need those even less than I need many of OTM's sophisticated agency features.

I'm just a single translator, working alone or with an agency as an administrative backup partner, but with fairly defined, limited workflow needs. Yet I have found that this solution let's me 'punch above my weight' in many situations, especially when I offer a client a simple, safe way to receive or send highly confidential files and can guarantee subcontractors the same on those very rare occasions when I outsource and manage a project.

A number of my partners and colleagues have looked at the solution. Some rather liked it, others found particular "deal breakers", like the lack of support for HTML mail that can carry viruses (the developers are adamant about the security issues on this point). I've also had specific little "nice to haves" in mind that I still have not. But what I do have is an infrastructure that is far more powerful and robust than anything else I could afford and which takes very little of my time while giving a lot of time back. Not bad, really.

Productivity for tossers or tossing productivity

For more than a week now since a respected colleague shared the link, I have kept an essay in a tab of my browser and referred back to it time and again, reading and reflecting on its content. Time to share and anchor it here so my tired old eyes can find it later and to make space in my tab menu now.

Zen Habits is a blog to which I am referred on occasion, and which I read with interest, but which I never get around to bookmarking due to a personal aversion for labeling anything Zen. A word which means so many things to many people is often useless for effective communication.

One of the reading experience of my high school days which impressed me most was a short story by Heinrich Böll, in which an office manager ran about in a frantic manner exclaiming "Es muß was geschehen!" ("Something must happen!") or words to that effect. Now I do not recall the title, and, as I have learned time and again, my memory can betray me as to the exact words or circumstances, but what is important here is not the accuracy of the citation, but the abiding effect of the text 35 years later, so I'm uninterested in sorting out the actual details with the help of Google. As I remember, the little man falls dead at the end of the story. Something happened.

Productivity is spoken of widely, often by me. However, it is a much more complicated matter than we usually acknowledge. Sometimes metrics fail or are simply irrelevant, no matter how well they are construed. I can sing the praises of Dragon Naturally Speaking for taking dictation to a new level or show you marvelous tricks with memoQ for handling complex content, but I cannot make the more important judgment of whether that activity or that text is really a productive, enriching use of your time.

"Toss Productivity Out" is a nice reflection on various truisms to which many of us hold dear. Read, enjoy and dispute its points.

Real life and productivity are about qualities, less about quantities. And as one sober colleague has noted, one should observe attempts to redefine quality with a very critical eye.

Safe deliveries

The process of creative writing has occasionally been compared to that of giving birth, though for most of us writing, the result is less miraculous as a rule. The same is true of translation. Yet an undeniable common element is the importance of a safe delivery, and indeed with some translations, such as urgent medical instructions or nuclear safety training materials, the consequences of a failed delivery have greater potential for harm than childbirth complications. In some cases, even minor delays can have longer term effects on the health of one's business.

A typical translation assignment for a typical translator typically does not contain life-critical instructions on follow-up medication and treatment or a plan for preventing a meltdown, but it usually is important to the translation buyer and it is often important that the work be received according to some sort of agreed schedule. It should be self-evident that some reliable system of tracking these delivery schedules is useful to reduce the chances of forgotten deadlines; this system should reflect the realities of one's working life and environment. For some, sticky yellow notes on the edge of a monitor work fine. A few others still use paper notebook schedulers, and increasing numbers of professionals rely on software tools such as the Outlook Calendar, AIT's Translation Office 3000, Plunet or the Online Translation Manager (OTM) to keep an overview of their job schedule.

Once a job is completed, however, there remains the challenge of getting it to the customer. At this stage a number of things can go wrong.

First of all, e-mail is by no means fail-safe. Just because a message was transferred to the Sent folder of your e-mail client does not mean that it made it to the client's Inbox. The messaging connection from your computer to mine is not direct, and along the way many things can go wrong with host servers, spam filter algorithms, virus or DoS attacks that shut down the relay stations temporarily and more. Lately I have even seen headers from one message grafted onto the bodies of others so that a mailed inquiry with confidential documents from one agency appeared with the name an e-mail address of a competing agency. Thank God I noticed that one before responding. By now most of us have probably seen e-mail messages that arrive hours after they are sent. Or days. Or months sometimes. Or never. I have mail accounts on four or five servers, and I have experienced intermittent problems with every one of these over the years. No e-mail system is foolproof when it comes to delivery on time all the time.

What can be done? In urgent cases when I think of it, I make a personal call to the client to ensure that the mail has been received, though often the person I want to reach is out of the office, in a meeting or using the office's sanitary facilities, so the important question of the delivery's arrival remains frustratingly unanswered. I'm not fond of this approach for other reasons as well. While I do enjoy talking with my clients, often one or both of us don't really have the time for the contact, and when I call ten times in a row and all is well each time I begin to feel a bit like Chicken Little and stop at some point. Then the next delivery e-mail doesn't make it. And of course I find this out when I'm far away from my office up to my knees in mud with a rifle in my hands looking for boars or trying to keep the dog under control. Not the best time to take a panicked client call.

My personal solution for this recurring problem was to adopt a bit of agency infrastructure for my freelance business and use translation business portal accounts from LSP.net, a platform for which I also now do the English localization. I've written about this online translation management system on my blog rather often, and I find that the 30 euros a month or so the company asks for a project manager account is cheap insurance among other things. The delivery e-mails from that system so far appear to be more reliable than with my various other hosting providers (Hosting Matters in Florida, ProZ in God-knows-where and some German company), but being somewhat paranoid I do not rely on this. Like many translation business portals, the SaaS solution OTM allows me to create free login access for my customers where they can check on their own to see if a delivery is ready, then download it without my intervention. This has proved useful a number of times in the past year when clients did not receive the files and called me as I was racing down the Autobahn at 160+ kph. With just a short reminder to log into their secure private area they got what they needed in just a few minutes.

Security is another important difference with portal solutions of this kind. OTM and others offer encrypted HTTPS access, far better than the common frightening practice of attaching confidential client files to insecure e-mail. Some of my clients are well aware of the problems inherent in ordinary e-mail attachment of unencrypted files and have in the past demanded various encryption schemes, some public key variations of which have caused havoc with my Windows operating system to everyone's confusion and consternation. Another occasional client has a system of passwords for zip files that I often find confusing when I am in a hurry, and when I substitute the wrong special character as a separator for the password elements the poor fellow tears his hair out trying to crack the file. A secure connection to an encrypted online portal solves this problem. It also provides a more convenient way to transfer large files, far less confusing that dealing with FTP servers, each of which has its own unique operating quirks. Clients can also upload large jobs to such a portal, avoiding the problems sometimes associated with large e-mail attachments.

Given the many vulnerabilities of an online business, it makes good sense to take the extra step in technology and use a secure online platform for business communication and data exchange. There are a number of solutions available, and the implementation expenses and effort fall in a range where any viable business can find a cost-effective option.

The future, tense

This morning as I gulped my mocha I was greeted by a tweet announcing the demise of the New York Times column On Language, begun more than three decades ago by the late William Safire. The last article of the column ended on a positive note as author Ben Zimmer contemplated the lively linguistic future of his four-year-old son, who will grow up in an environment of beneficent grace with the wonders of Google, iPads and All The Wonderful Things To Come.

Elsewhere in the NYT the prospects of the future looked a bit less bright. Bob Herbert's meditation on the commentary of Justice Powell on the power of organization elaborated clearly one of the great difficulties facing those in the social trenches today. This is a dilemma not unfamiliar to the freelance language service provider, though individual experiences vary widely. There is widespread talk of "the erosion of rates", though where I have examined the statistical data available, this appears to be as much myth as reality if one tries not to think too much about inflation. At least the magnitude of the problem is usually a few orders smaller than the perception of it.

Responses to this have varied and include quite a few from translators who are perhaps to young to realize that L'Internationale was translated long ago and singing its various language instances got workers mostly nowhere. Petitions to a portal like ProZ, which despite its great popularity with Indian and Chinese LSPs is largely irrelevant to purchasing departments in the formerly civilized world are an amusing diversion, but largely a waste of time. While a translator in Stuttgart might get hot and bothered by what King Henry plans to do with Turncoat Translations, she ought to be giving greater thought to matters like the impact of recent changes in the law governing reporting of business activity within the EU, the so-called zusammenfassende Meldung, which she probably failed to comply with in 2010. Or perhaps with the requirements for qualification as a court-sworn translator and the lack of uniformity in these among the German federal states. Translators in every country probably face similar issues.

Translators who look toward the future with trepidation are right to do so, but not because of the blown-hard "threat" of machine translation and the presumed future status as post-editing galley slaves. The real threats have little to do with translation per se but rather with the stepwise dismantling of social safety nets and necessary controls for the protection of people and the environment. As voting citizens they can accomplish more in the long run than as whining "professionals".

Professionals? Ah, there's part of the problem as well. Translation is an unregulated profession, and rightly so. I strongly oppose the notion that the practice of the profession should be restricted to protect rates and the security of those now in possession of the "prize", simply because doing so is ludicrously impractical. Years ago when I sat across a table from a person authorized to search my home and generally make my life difficult while i attempted to sort out a problem with tax arrears. I was sternly informed that I could be forbidden to practice my profession. Ven an achent off ze German state tells you zat, you must be afraid. I laughed. I asked how he planned to tell my clients in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands and a number of other countries not to contact me by e-mail and make payments via any one of the many online international options or to a foreign bank account. He admitted sheepishly that this was not possible, and the conversation returned to reality and realistic options and the problem was soon resolved.

It's really not practical to tell an international corporation that it cannot get its translations from some stoned hippy in Goa if it really wants to, and with a bit of searching on the Internet, your neighbor can have that same hazy Proz-certified Pro translate the CV that he hopes will land him the Dream Job in New York. Except that if he's smart enough to get that job and keep it, he won't.

There are means of organization which can prove effective and paths of professional development which can protect one's rates and perhaps improve them, but very few people choose these options. Too lazy perhaps. Whining is easier, and its costs are not as apparent as the warm glow of self-righteous, if unproductive, indignation. We don't want no peanuts, after all, we want respect, fame and fortune! At a local and national level, many countries have professional organizations offering continuing education, networking opportunities and excellent referrals. My own experience with the German BDÜ in this regard is overwhelmingly positive. "Ah, but that's a closed shop, I don't qualify," you might say, and you might be wrong. Recent changes in the BDÜ's qualification policies open membership to experienced professionals who can document a certain amount of activity and provide a few recommendations, similar to the ITI in the UK. I believe that local and national professional organizations, properly supported and encouraged by their members, are probably the most effective ways of achieving the stated goals of movements like NP to achieve stable, sustainable rates and professional respect. Those active in such movements might do well to set aside the Molotov cocktails for a bit so their hands will be free to fill out an application to the ATA, NAATI, ITI, IoL, BDÜ, AdÜ, etc. and once in, make life Hell for the governing board until they shape up and defend the members interests in a socially appropriate and sensible way.

Organization at a lower level is also effective: formal or ad hoc teams can work together for more effective marketing and project handling. You are free to chose the route taken here, and if you can't think of any that might work, your mind may not be fit for creative activity. Or you may be a hermit, like me. Still, readily available collaboration technologies, project management tools and even online translation management technology provide a host of intriguing, possibly attractive possibilities.

At a personal level there is much that one can do with organization as a business person to present a better image and attract better clients, be these agencies or end customers. Lots of hints in this regard here and elsewhere; some of the books reviewed here are great places to start, but don't ignore other resources like your local chamber of commerce. I got a great outline for a business plan from one of these online years ago, and variations of that plan have served me well over the years.

I think two key words summarize the steps that can be taken to secure one's future: responsibility and action. When one is tense from the heavy-caliber, rapid-fire bad news of daily reports, the future can indeed seem forbidding. But when I read in those reports of a double amputee hurrying in his wheelchair to protest in Tahrir Square to secure his future and that of his country, confident of his power to make a difference, I think some of us in quieter, safer parts of the world can also move on and secure a future less tense.

Why I moved on from a great tool like Translation Office 3000

I have to smile when I hear colleagues, even some who run agencies, tell me about how they run their entire business with Excel spreadsheets. Or how they had the perfect custom solution whipped together by a genius Access programmer. I used to do that shit. As part of my plan to give up medical device consulting, sell my farm and move to the urban horror of NRW, Germany I did a stint learning to develop database-backed web applications using Active Server Pages, Cold Fusion and other tools popular at the time. I was pretty good at it and used to annoy the Hell out of the developers at a transitional employer by scripting working solutions in hours that they had told management and customers would take many man-months of effort. Never believe what developers tell you; I don't think they are liars, they just don't have a clue, and I don't think all the recent fads of "lean" and "agile" development and whatnot have changed that much. There are organizations with plausible roadmaps that underpromise and over-deliver (Kilgray and LSP.net come to mind), but your average software cowboys, however skilled, aren't real strong in the project management and planning department. Thus these custom solutions are nearly all unsustainable or far too expensive in the long run.

A direct client of mine in the nutrition industry is a case in point. They have their labels, product literature, contracts, etc. translated into at least 20 languages. All this is done with Excel spreadsheets (where they keep trying to shove more text into the cells than certain versions can hold, so content is forever being truncated and lost). Projects used to be managed by the company's purchasing agent in his copious free time. I'm sure he used to be a PM at a major translation agency, but maybe not. Anyway, he's no dummy: he talked his bosses into hiring someone to coordinate those projects full time. And a full time job it is when you do everything with scratch pads and Excel sheets. After I spent several years advising them on the benefits of TM technology, they considered Déjà Vu and other solutions, but finally opted to have the head of their IT department write their own solution. Last time I asked (a year ago) the costs were in excess of 30,000 euros and all the system could do was import and export Excel spreadsheets. Conversion of the data to various layout formats still proceeds by copy and paste. They want and need the control offered by off-the-shelf solutions like Ontram, the memoQ Server, SDL Teamworks, OTM from LSP.net, etc. but somehow they are convinced that they save money and gain control by growing, rolling and smoking their own.

They're smoking something, alright. Take it from an IT fool with his foot in that swamp for nearly 40 years now: if you are doing more than minor custom integrations of off-the-shelf, well-supported solutions, you are probably driving blindfolded down a dead-end alley. Early in my career I saw Avery waste a fortune developing its own LIMS to handle data from the corporate analytical laboratory, only to dump it for a standard commercial tool that offered standard data migration options. The wealth of old data was probably never rescued - last I heard the custom database format could not be cracked. Things have gotten better since the 1980s, but not as much as some believe.

Which brings me to AIT's Translation Office 3000 and its proprietary database. At least the developers created some reasonable data export options; it's hard to imagine any viable application without that today. TO3000 is a popular solution for individual translators who do not outsource. I like it, and I used it for three years after my original tool (the agency version of LTC Organiser) was discontinued, and the disturbing lack of internal coordination at LTC in 2006/2007 caused me to pull back from adopting their new Worx solution. Customer support from the AIT team in the Ukraine is also prompt and cheerful, if not always informed on matters like local legal requirements for invoices. If you are a freelancer who never outsources or run a language services office that does everything in-house, TO3000 is a viable, affordable solution that is easy to learn and implement. I like the company and think they do great budget products for translators. That's why I have links to AIT on my blog, to help colleagues find respectable solutions for managing language service projects. Their support is also very good; I recently needed help to load my old database on a new system to handle a legal matter, and the AIT told me exactly what I needed to know and provided me with all the resources to accomplish it. I give them top marks.

Translation Office 3000 is a single-user desktop system. It includes a customer database, project quotation, scheduling and invoicing, some e-mail features and other basics needed to keep track of your business. The RTF templates are easy to customize to meet your personal or local statutory requirements. There is no database for suppliers (subcontractors), which is why I don't recommend it as a solution if you outsource. That requires a second tool, and the more places related data must be maintained, the more effort you have to maintain it and the greater the likelihood of some sort of organizational meltdown eventually.

It's a great system, but... I have learned, sometimes the hard way, that a healthy business really requires more to avoid wasting time and possibly losing clients and projects.

I'm a lone freelancer. I hardly ever outsource. Once in a while I'll work in a team on something, well, maybe rather often if you count those who edit my work, which you really should. Right there the issues with TO3000 begin.

But as I've mentioned elsewhere, there were certain specific issues that led me to look further:

• I needed a second person to access the records to enter customer and project data and issue invoices
• I needed to avoid the time and expense to maintain a local server, and I needed regular backups that could not be forgotten
• I needed to check the status of projects and correspondence while traveling 
• I needed to reduce the number of programs I juggled to manage my business
• Most of all, I needed reliable deliveries to my customers. With secure encryption. Deliveries kept getting swallowed in e-mail systems, and delivering huge projects was a major nuisance. If my partner at the time needed to make a big delivery, I had to do it, because she had no idea how to upload to the FTP or web server. All this was a huge drag on my time and created uncertainty. And clients were not happy to learn that the delivery had occurred hours or days before but never arrived.
• I needed to handle transactions in a legally compliant manner that meets international auditing standards. This includes a requirement for time-saving templates that are correct and do not require legal research on my part.

Although TO3000 is a great program backed by a great team, it fails on every one of these points. Its real advantage is price: for under 200 euros you can get a license and get started. But you're on your own for security, backups, legal compliance, etc.

So even for a "little" freelancer, a more comprehensive solution makes sense. And there are plenty of these. The Translation Office Manager (TOM) is one solution that I've looked at repeatedly as it has improved over the years, and one agency I work with in Düsseldorf has apparently made it the backbone of business there. AIT offers Projetex for agencies, though I never managed to get the database scripts to work, and feedback I've heard from others using it is not good. AFAIK both of these require local server maintenance: once again security, backups, legal compliance, etc. at your own risk.

The current Worx, Plunet and others provide a more professional approach with options closer to my needs and some that I would hope to see eventually in the solution I do use. However, the costs for these are hardly transparent upon casual inquiry, and they are inevitably higher than the system I adopted. I've done way too much IT support over the years; I am good at it, but I hate it. So I wanted a hosted solution that requires a minimal time investment on my part. And I need absolute reliability for my deliveries, easy, accurate record keeping and full legal compliance for an international business. (I may be small-time, but I have clients scattered around the world.) Most of the time TO3000 largely covers my project organization needs, but more and more I find myself in team situations for larger projects that require agency organization functions. And I am on a strict budget: paying full college support costs for a kid isn't cheap even in a country without tuition charges.

The Online Translation Manager from LSP.net offers me all the flexibility, scalability and access I need for a monthly cost that is half my rate for a single hour of work. I adopted this solution 14 months ago, and I have used it in 5 different configurations for various businesses and test systems. After half a year I began to support its localization, because I believe in the value of what the system offers and I see rapid progress in its development for the diverse needs of an international market. Right now I'm working on dialogs and instructions for the version 4.1 release scheduled for next Monday, a minor one, but one which contains more real improvements than I experienced with my other business management solutions in several years. This is not a perfect system. No system is, because requirements of users vary widely. But it is the best general system I have seen so far, and is likely the one with the most potential as evidenced by its support policies and development roadmap. Time and again I see parallels with Kilgray, a company with a product (memoQ) not ready for prime time when I first saw it a few years ago, now beating the pants off the industry "leader" SDL for functionality, user-friendliness, support and cost and charging ahead with useful new innovation at a rate that shows no signs of slowing. Which horse will you bet on? The charging thoroughbred leaving its competitors in a cloud of dust and gravel? Or the lame mare who plods along remembering former victories and daydreaming about a quiet pasture? (I have a nice one here at Vehlefanz Manor where she can retire.) I'll bet my small stack of cash on LSP.net, because OTM keeps me winning, gives me security and leaves me time for life.

Smartphone interfaces for the Online Translation Manager

In recent years it seems that quite a few of my colleagues and customers have made smartphones part of their business. I'm not part of that crowd; years of being an early adapter of PDA technology (Palm devices, Sharp Wizards and a host of other long-forgotten gadgets) and other computer-related junk has made me a bit allergic to the technology, and the trauma of short-circuiting a 500 euro mobile phone by dropping it in a toilet and having another phone of the same class fall from my pocket as I ran to catch a train has made me a stubborn minimalist when it comes to phones and other electronics. Add to that the fact that I've found myself up to my hips in swamp water a few times in recent years while hunting boars, I tell myself that the last thing I need is an iPhone in my back pocket (where I once sat on and broke two Sharp Wizards).

And yet... after a friend recently showed me how to go offline with my phone the other day so I could avoid interrupted naps and sleeptalking with puzzled clients and friends, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, there could be a place in my routine for a little more gadgetry if indeed I can switch it off at those times when the 24/7 world does not interest me. Over the past year I have come to rely on the security and efficiency of the Online Translation Manager from LSP.net, which offers greater scope and scalability than any other business management tool for translation that I have seen and can fit in my budget and temperament. Now my #2 business tool (after my main squeeze, memoQ) has a rather functional interface for smartphones, and I'm very, very tempted. What the heck: I need a new digital camera, and my iPod died a horrible death a few years ago as I was backing up my translation archives onto it (how would you like to choke on a folder full of German patents?), so maybe I need to make a quick trip to the UK and get an unlocked iPhone. AFAIK the German market is still rather monopolistic. (Update: Perhaps that's not the case after all. FONIC sells the iPhone 3GS 8 MB without a contract for just under €500, which usually means it's not SIM- or net-locked. Combined with Skype for iPhone, the iPhone's WLAN capabilities and my Skype flatrates, this is starting to look very good. I've also been reminded that Apple's exclusive contract with a certain mobile service provider in Germany has expired, so the German Apple Stores sells devices with no lock. Nonetheless, I'll find an excuse to visit the UK. It's been too long.)

The iPhone screen shot here was made while the developers were showing me the new interface last week. It tells me as a project manager that there is a new quotation request (don't let the date fool you - this is on a test system where the wildest things happen), unread incoming on another project, and unread incoming e-mail and a delivery from a subcontractor on another. I can now assign tasks, respond to the mails and carry out other necessary project management activities. If this interface had been available in recent months (and I had a device to use it), a number of urgent requests from cherished clients during the busy holiday season wouldn't have gone to the dogs. (Other dogs, not mine.) For reasons I have not yet fathomed, a number of clients who used to pick up the phone to communicate an urgent request now assume that I'll be sitting in front of my screen to respond ASAP. Come to think of it, most of these send me e-mail where the footer indicates that the message was sent from a CrackBerry. OK, OK - I surrender.

Seriously, though: this is an extremely useful feature that I hope to see expanded soon to include the customer and supplier ("resource") interfaces. It makes a good business management environment even more useful and relevant.

Release update (compatibility): This feature was developed with and tested on Apple iPhones for the most part. A Blackberry interface was developed as well using a simulator from RIM, due to the wide variety of devices and the unavailability of many for testing. It seems that the display does in fact function differently between different models, so the optimized smartphone interface may not be ready for many Blackberry models; these will have to rely on browser access that is unoptimized. Other smartphones may be able to use this feature by changing the value of the user agent (in Firefox there is a plug-in for this), which usually involves some seriously nerdy settings tweaks in the browser. In summary: iPhone? Not a problem. Anything else? Maybe, but expect to work at it. I'm betting that there will eventually be a generic small device interface parallel to an optimized one for popular devices such as the iPhone. It would make sense. Even with one, however, I'll eventually join The Cult again and visit the Apple Store.

Price and project templates!

One of the things I look forward to the most in the version 4.0 release of the Online Translation Manager from LSP.net is a new feature for price and project templates. It has been discussed for quite a while, and the lack of a price list feature up to now has put off some of those who tested this project management environment, but in the end the implementation is better than I had hoped for. I saw a live demo of the feature for the first time last Tuesday while I was visiting the company's offices to discuss localization and training issues.

It has been possible to keep price information for customers in OTM in the past, though not quite in the way to which one is accustomed to seeing in similar software solutions. Notes features in the customer master data as well as the ability to store documents and contracts for particular customers does provide a useful way of keeping track of rate agreements and terms. But what has been "missing" up to now is the ability to plug in volume information for a service and have quotation amounts calculated automatically. Such features are probably found in most language service project management software, from TO3000 and TOM to Worx, Plunet, Project ]open[ translation et alia.

There are, however, some problems with data maintenance in the other applications that I have used. I have worked most extensively with LTC Organiser (the predecessor to Worx) and AIT's Translation Office 3000 and used them to run my business since 2003. (Before that I used Excel templates. Yuck. Don't ask and I promise not to tell.) In both environments I maintained customer-specific price lists, reflecting individual terms, subject areas, rush job policies and more. After a while I found that the data were not very easy to keep current (my TO3000 master price list was rarely useful for anything, as it was always hopelessly outdated or irrelevant to the individual terms), and so many types of projects required special quoting that the price lists were often useless anyway. When my partner tried to use the software for quotation, she could rarely remember the various surcharge policies negotiated with customers, which occasionally led to confusion. I think that is pretty typical of current solutions. You have to work hard to stay on top of things, and that's not always easy when things are hopping or your day is filled with interruptions.

The OTM 4.0 solution I saw appears to solve that problem nicely from several directions. There are no price lists as one usually sees them, no Excel-like grid of rates and services to be maintained. There is something which I believe is much better: general templates for project structures including prices as well as the ability to use any project from the customer's history as a template for a new project. In fact, several templates can be applied to a new project if it uses the combination of services from those individual templates or past projects. A simple interface for sorting project histories also makes it easy to find the right similar project to use as a template.

All this saves a lot of time and is closer to the reality of our workflows! And if I increase rates, then I can simply use the date-sorted project history to choose "templates" reflecting the new rates. Any completed project can also be used as a template. Template access can also be governed by rights in the system, so project managers at an LSP can have their own personal templates and choose to share these or not.

There are some rather interesting discussions about building on this feature for CAT analysis integration, but in its first released form I think this is a powerful, unique tool that will save me a lot of time personally. I appreciate the fact that the system architects didn't just pull a "me too" and implement pricing tools the same way most others do it; they were aware of the problems of data maintenance and had left the feature out for that reason. Only after careful consideration of possible solutions and testing was a decision made to introduce something that is more powerful and sustainable than anything I had available before. Thumbs up!

Scalability

In one way or another, issues of scalability have been with me for a long time. In one dramatic lesson in the thermodynamic considerations of scaling a picric acid synthesis during Easter vacation in my sophomore year of high school, I leaned that the consequences of getting it wrong could be rather corrosive. In later research efforts, the scalability of formulations and processes was just as critical; what looked good in a small flask on the lab bench didn't necessarily translate to success in pilot-scale or commercial formulation equipment. To make things work on a large scale, different models of thinking were often called for.

Scalability isn't just an issue for chemistry and engineering; businesses face these challenges in many ways. The business of language services is no exception. If we intend to allow our business to grow in volume (as opposed to focusing on other kinds of development and growth), it is imperative that the processes used in running the business be scalable. "Good enough" for today could mean hopelessly over your head with a modest increase or interference from other factors like health problems. In addition to being scalable, processes must also be robust - well designed and well documented - so that they can withstand setbacks and/or be delegated to trusted others in an emergency or when the growth of the business makes this a necessity. Or when you simply need a holiday.

If you never feel the urge to write a business plan, you should at least be clear about the basic goals of your translation business and think carefully about the implications of growth, demand cycles, illness or family troubles and other major factors we inevitable encounter time and again in our careers.

Think of processes and issues like

• receiving and responding to requests for quotation
• safely transferring and archiving information to meet client needs and the legal requirements of the relevant jurisdictions
• scheduling
• outsourcing
• invoicing and collections
• efficient retrieval of information even after long intervals
• limited retention periods required by some clients

and others that may affect you now or in the future. Are you ready to deal with the events and changes ahead? Growth? Or shrinkage?

Where is the most time "lost" in your current processes? Most of us probably don't even know. Time and again I read surprised comments by fellow translators or others who actually begin to track the use of their time, only to discover that it really gets spent in ways they did not realize.

I'm not proposing solutions this time around. There are many good approaches to these issues, but the best ones will generally depend on the goals you define. I make a lot of suggestions in my other posts, but these are often filtered by my personal goals or the particular characteristics of the country I live in or the markets I serve. Some or all of what works for me might be irrelevant or actively detrimental for you.

I can't say that I'm entirely in agreement that those who fail to plan plan to fail. A random walk through life can take us to some interesting places, but the experience is generally enhanced by some sensible guidelines and good support processes.