An Argument for Business Process Management in Localisation · corresponding pool-crossing flow. IS...

Localisation Focus Vol.10 Issue 1The International Journal of Localisation

An Argument for Business Process Management in LocalisationDr. David Filip, Dr. Eoin Ó Conchúir

Centre for Next Generation Localisation,Localisation Research Centre,

CSIS Department,University of Limerick,

Irelandwww.cngl.ie

[email protected], [email protected]

AbstractEnterprise-level translation management systems cater well for their well-defined use cases. With the rise of user-generated content, the world of localisation is extending to include what we term as 'self-service' localisation. Thelocalisation needs of this emerging environment may differ from more traditional enterprise-level scenarios. In thispaper, we present an argument for using business process management (BPM) to help us better understand anddefine this emerging aspect of localisation, and we explore the implications of this for the localisation industry.Modelling a business process allows for that process to be managed and re-engineered, and the changes inefficiency quantified. It also helps to ensure that automated process aids and electronic systems are put in place tosupport the underlying business process, matching the real needs of its stakeholders. In this paper, we specificallylook at emerging self-service localisation scenarios in the context both of the evolution of the traditional industryprocess as well as in the context of not-for-profit localisation.

Keywords: : business process management, BPM, modelling, user-generated content, self-service localisation

4

1. Acronyms Used and Basic Definitions1

BI - Business Intelligence. The process andtechnology of organising and presenting businessprocess data and meta data to human analysts anddecision makers to facilitate critical businessinformation retrieval.

Bitext - a structured (usually mark up languagebased) artefact that contains aligned source (naturallanguage) and target (natural language) sentences.We consider Bitext to be ordered by default (such asin an XLIFF file - defined below, an "unclean" richtext format (RTF) file, or a proprietary databaserepresentation). Nevertheless, unordered Bitextartefacts like translation memories (TMs) orterminology bases (TBs) can be considered specialcases of Bitext or Bitext aggregates, since the onlypurpose of a TM as an unordered Bitext is to enrichordered Bitext, either directly or through training aMachine Translation engine.

Bitext Management - a group of processes thatconsist of high level manipulation of ordered and/orunordered Bitext artefacts. Usually the end purposeof Bitext Management is to create target (naturallanguage) content from source (natural language)content, typically via other enriching BitextTransforms, so that Bitext Management Processesare usually enclosed within a bracket of sourcecontent extraction and target content re-importation.

Bitext Transformation - Similar to BitextManagement, but the Bitext is enriched with newlycreated or manually modified target content. Theagents in Bitext Transformation may be both man andmachine, or any combination of the two.

BOM* - Bill of Materials

BPM - Business Process Management

CAT* - Computer Aided Translation

1For standard localisation industry acronyms see MultiLingual 2011 Resource Directory (MultilLingual 2011). Such standard industry terms aremarked with an asterisk (*). We also give short definitions for terms that may be considered commonplace to prevent misunderstanding.


ESB - Enterprise Service Bus, an open standards,message-based, distributed integration infrastructurethat provides routing, invocation and mediationservices to facilitate the interactions of disparatedistributed applications and services in a secure andreliable manner (Menge 2007).

HB - Hand Back. This is being used systematically intwo related meanings, either as the message/materialconformant to a related HO BOM, leaving anorganisation/swimlane as response to the HO, or thelast process/subprocess that happens before thecorresponding pool-crossing flow.

HO - Hand Off. This is being used systematically intwo related meanings, either as the message/materialleaving an organisation/swimlane to solicit aresponse conformant with its BOM, or the lastprocess/sub-process that happens before thecorresponding pool-crossing flow.

IS - Information System

LSP* - Language Service Provider

Man - used as synonymous with human, not male,such as for 'man-hours'.

Message - the token in an ESB facilitated workflowor generally any SOA driven workflow. Messages arebeing enriched as they travel through workflows.

MLV* - Multilanguage Vendor, a type of LSP.

NFP - Not-for-profit

Process - procedure consisting of logically connectedsteps with predefined inputs and outputs.

SLV* - Single Language Vendor, a type of LSP.

SMB* - small and medium-sized businesses

SOA - Service Oriented Architecture, an architectureconcept which defines that applications provide theirbusiness functionality in the form of reusableservices (Menge 2007).

Swimlane - Pool and Lane as used in BPMN not insports.

TM* - Translation Memory

TMS* - Translation Management System

Token - whatever travels through a defined processor workflow. Each token instantiates the process orworkflow. In this sense, multiple instances of aworkflow are created not only as different tokensentering the predefined processing but also at anypre-defined point in the workflow or process wheretokens are split according to business rules.

Workflow - an automated process. This is not acommonplace distinction, but we coin it for practicalconvenience.

XLIFF* - OASIS XLIFF, i.e. XML LocalizationInterchange File Format. We mention XLIFF in itscapacity as a token in localisation processes and as amessage being enriched in an ESB or SOA basedworkflow.

XOR - exclusive OR, logical connective. Used hereto characterise the exclusive gate in modelling, asused in BPMN (2011).

2. Introduction

In its essence, localisation is driven by users'preferences to access information in their nativelanguage, and this is no different for informationbeing presented online (Yunker 2003). In thecorporate context, this has lead to companiesproviding localised versions of their websites, forexample (Jiménez-Crespo 2010).

Meanwhile, with the widespread availability of 'Web2.0' platforms, it is not only corporations themselvesthat are producing localisable and localised content(O'Hagan 2009). For example, fans of certainpublications (in this case, comics) have producedunsolicited user-generated translations in acollaborative manner (O'Hagan 2009). Indeed, user-generated content (be it opinions or otherwise) isnothing new, although the possibility to workcollaboratively online is relatively new. Theinvolvement of online communities in translation hasevolved to become solicited user-generatedtranslations. This general concept of leveraging thelatent talent of the crowd, particularly online, wascoined as crowdsourcing (Howe 2006).

The shift in how content is being transformed in thelocalisation and translation world has been termedthe "technological turn" (Cronin 2010). With respectto content distribution, Cronin argues that the mostnotable change has come in the form of electronicwork station PCs being gradually replaced by the use

5


of distributed mobile computing. This transition isleading to Internet-capable devices becomingubiquitous. Rather than localisation being driven bythe need to produce static centrally-created content,the emergence of user-generated content is leading tothe localisation of user-generated content intopersonalised, user-driven content. Internet-connectedplatforms present the potential of collaborative,community translations. This is in contrast to thecommercial option of translation through employedtranslators, freelance translators, or the use of alocalisation vendor to act as an intermediary.

While enterprise-based localisation of content andsoftware, being produced in-house, is a matureprocess with quality assurance certificationsavailable (Cronin 2010), the involvement of onlinecommunities (or the "crowd") in localisation is arelatively newer field. Similar to the concept of "opensourcing", the crowdsourcing of localisation isoutsourcing the tasks involved to an "unknownworkforce" (Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald 2008). Weassume that in such a context, contractual agreementsmay not be in place with members of the community.Rather than being able to agree binding deadlineswith paid translators, community members may offerto work on translation tasks on a whim (depending onthe process put in place).

In this paper we argue that the evolved state oflocalisation is yet to be fully understood. Indeed,there is a constant evolution of how the concept ofuser-driven translation can be applied in real-worldsituations.

In the following sections, we argue that the activity ofbusiness process management (BPM) is a valuabletool for allowing us to understand the newrequirements of information systems involving user-generated content and user-provided translations. Inlater sections, we present three case studies toillustrate how BPM may be applied, and what mayhappen if the underlying business processes are notcorrectly incorporated into a new informationsystem. Finally, we conclude that given theadvancement of self-service localisation, even in thecorporate context, such emergent business processescan be better addressed through BPM.

3. New Business Processes, and Business ProcessManagement

On the subject of newly-emerging business processesin localisation, we must define how a certain block of

content to be localised will be ultimately used. Toillustrate this point, let us compare the difference inexpectations between the localised version of acorporate brochure when contrasted with that samecorporation's desire to localise its ongoing socialmedia stream for different locales. With the formerexample, we may expect very formal and accuratelanguage, whereas the latter may allow for a moreinformal approach. A further distinction may be madebetween relatively informal content being producedby a corporation and useful customer-generatedcontent that may benefit other customers of differentnative languages. An example of this would be adescriptive forum message, posted online by acustomer, providing a solution to an issue with acompany's product. Indeed, translation quality is amultidimensional concept that can be approached indifferent ways including process-orientedinternational standards, or more community-basedlocalisation (Jiménez-Crespo 2010).

To illustrate that point, we present Table 1. The tableshows how content coming from different sourcesmay be localised using different approaches. Theupper-left quadrant may be seen as the traditionalroute taken in localisation. Such business processesare the main focus of translation managementsystems. The upper-right quadrant may be too costlycompared to the value it produces, since a constantstream of user-generated content may overwhelmtraditional localisation processes. Indeed, companiesare presented with the emerging choice of facilitatingtheir online community in localising content that hasbeen produced by their peers. The lower twoquadrants are of particular interest, as it is here that acommunity of translators (the "unknown workforce")may be asked to help with the localisation of content.It should be noted that volunteer translators are notnecessarily individuals donating their free time, butalso representatives of external organisations whowould benefit from having the content made

6

Traditionally-generated content

User-generatedcontent

Traditional contentlocalisation

Localisation ofcorporate-controlledcontent by a paidcontracted entity(such as alocalisation serviceprovider).

Localisation of user-generated content bya paid contractedentity (such as alocalisation serviceprovider).

User-driven contentlocalisation

Localisation ofcorporate-controlledcontent by volunteercommunitymembers.

Localisation of user-generated content byvolunteercommunitymembers.

Table 1: Both in-house and community-generated content may be localised byeither commercial localisation vendors or by the community itself.


available in their primary language.

Focusing on any of these four quadrants in Table 1presents us with different business processes beingrepresented. For example, a system allowing for ad-hoc volunteer translations of short social mediamessages may have quite different requirements to asystem involving tightly-controlled contractedfreelance translators. In the following sub-section,we argue that it is critical that the underlying businessprocesses be closely matched by the functionality ofelectronic systems designed to support them. Weexplain how a mismatch in information technology(IT) strategy with information systems (IS) strategyalong with business strategy may lead to practicalfailure of the system being produced.

3.1 Information Systems PerspectiveIn the localisation context, a "system" may be thesocio-technical entity that supports traditionalenterprise-based localisation, or a user-drivenlocalisation scenario. To discuss how systems may bedesigned to cater for any particular permutation ofthe localisation process, we must first address thenature of a system itself. In information systemstheory, the "system" does not merely refer to acomputing machine such as a personal computer(PC). Neither does it refer simply to a softwareapplication (large or small, TMS, ESB etc.) designedto facilitate certain operations. Rather, we view aninformation system as a socio-technical entity,similar to Galliers (2004).

An information system is comprised of theinformation being processed and produced, alongwith the organisational context of its users and otherstakeholders. An information system designed toencompass a socio-technical environment wouldcombine information and knowledge sharing servicesthat would facilitate both the exploration andexploitation of knowledge (Galliers 2006).

A long-standing view of information systems is thatthe activities falling under informationcommunications technology (ICT) developmentmust be closely aligned to the information system asa whole, which in turn must be aligned to theorganisation's business strategy (Galliers 2006). Amisalignment between these concepts or activitiesmay lead to a failed system. A failure does notnecessarily imply that the system itself does notfunction (Laudon and Laudon 1996). For example, asystem may be perceived as failed if it has not beensuccessfully adopted by its intended user base, even

if the system itself runs "as designed". In this paper,technology underlying localisation including CATtools and Translation Management Systems (TMS) isdiscussed from this broader IS perspective. As such,they need to be aligned with business objectives.

3.2 Business Process Management (BPM)A business process is a ''set of partially orderedactivities intended to reach a goal'' (Hammer andChampy 1993). Relating this to localisation, a high-level business process may be taking a mono-lingualtechnical manual and all the steps required toadapting it to various target locales. Similarly, abusiness process may describe the activities requiredto produce a community-based localisation project.In localisation specifically, Lenker et al (2010) arguethat by abstracting a localisation business process asa workflow, the process can be potentially automatedand its efficiency improved. Business processes maybe quite low-level, with a large organisation beingcomprised of thousands of such processes (Turban etal 1993).

Formally, a process is seeded with inputs, and itproduces outputs. Thus, the output of a process canbe measured. This is an advantageous approach,since measurements of process efficiency allow us totweak the process and measure the consequences.BPM thus provides a structured framework forunderstanding the business process itself, and thenoptimising that process.

3.3 Modelling Business ProcessesAn information system may be developed to improvethe current workings of an organisational unit, or itmay be conceived to support an entirely new set ofbusiness activities. In either case, we may analyse theunderlying business activities, producing conceptualmodels of the activities.

Modelling a business process is the act of formallydescribing the business processes at hand. Manybusinesses have process models of their systems(Cox et al 2005). Once contextual information hasbeen elicited about the socio-technical system, andexplicitly described through business processmodelling, an understanding of what problems needto be solved should emerge (Cox et al 2005).

Business processes can be captured in a standardlanguage, that being Business Process Model andNotation (BPMN, formerly also known as BusinessProcess Modeling Notation). It is maintained by theObject Management Group (OMG). It offers an

7


extensive standard modelling framework, readilyunderstandable by business people, includinganalysts and technical developers (BPMN 2011).Models recorded in this manner allow for thebusiness processes to be modelled while abstractingfrom actual implementation details. This provides astandardised way of communicating processinformation to other business users, processimplementers, customers, and suppliers.Requirements engineering approaches can be appliedto BPM, such as employing role activity diagrams(Bleistein et al 2005).

By taking a set of models produced in a standardmodelling language, BPM can let us carry outbusiness process improvement through businessprocess re-engineering. Software tools allow theanalyst to work on the business process models inorder to produce an optimised set of processes,ultimately improving the workings of theorganisation.

4. Case studies

In this section, we present a number of case studies todemonstrate the concepts behind BPM, and how theymay be applied to localisation. These case studies arethen compared and contrasted in the followinganalysis and discussion section.

BPM, in essence, deals with understanding thebusiness processes of an organisation. The concept ofan organisation here is a socio-technical grouping ofpeople and systems. In order to manage any businessprocess, it is necessary to understand the participantsin the system, the activities taking place in thesystem, and the message flow of informationthroughout the system (BPMN 2011). For example,Lewis et al (2009) analyse the set of activities andcommunication mechanisms involved in a traditionallocalisation workflow, and use this to understandnewer community-based approaches to localisation.First, though, we present a simple example of a

system that supports the business logic of contentcreation.

4.1 Case Study 1: Content authoring businesslogic encapsulated by WordPressWith the advent of the World Wide Web in the early1990s, content publishers (both individuals andorganisations) were presented with a new opportunityto publish their content. At its most basic, text contentcan be published online as a hypertext mark-uplanguage (HTML) document by uploading it to a webserver. The document can contain static content, andso is limited in how it can encapsulate the businesslogic of a more complex content system. Aninformation system may be represented somewhat byinterlinking static HTML documents. More likely,however, is the need to support the business logicthrough dynamic server-side scripting which wouldoutput HTML documents generated on the fly.

By the late 1990s, a trend in personal web pages wasto publish a 'log' of web sites found by the web pageowner, in chronological order. Yet, by that stage,most web loggers (who became known as 'bloggers')hand-coded their web sites. No tools were publiclyavailable that would support the requirement ofdynamically publishing a series of links to a webpage (Blood 2004).

In 1999, a free web logging system called Blogger(http://www.blogger.com) was launched with the tag"Push-button publishing for the people". Thesimplicity of the system made it very popular, withnon-technical users beginning to use the web loggingplatform simply as a way to publish their thoughtsand opinions online, without necessarily any links inthe published post (Blood 2004). This was the birthof the blog post format.

At the time of writing this paper, WordPress(http://www.wordpress.org) is one of several popularopen-source blogging systems, having first beenreleased in 2003. Perhaps due to the platform's ease

8

Figure 1: Single-user content authoring and publishing as supported by WordPress.


of use, but moreover its direct addressing of thebusiness logic required by bloggers, the platform hasgained a wide user base. WordPress has been adoptedby individual bloggers and large organisations alike,such as the popular technology blog TechCrunch(http://www.techcrunch.com) and Forbes' blognetwork (http://blogs.forbes.com/) (WordPress2011a).

Figure 1 illustrates the simplest content publishingworkflow offered by WordPress. Note that we makeuse of Business Process Modelling and Notation(BPMN) for the illustrations in this paper. Thisallows for an abstracted understanding of theunderlying business process.

WordPress is a dynamic server-side platform thatencapsulates the business process of publishing andmanaging content online as an individual or as a teamof content authors. It does so by supporting theactivities of content creation, reviewing, editing, andpublishing. WordPress supports the user roles ofSuper Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author,Contributor and Subscriber (WordPress.org 2011b).A team of content authors may assign these differentroles to different people to manage the publishingprocess. For example, the Contributor role allowsthat person to author and edit their own content, butnot publish it to the blog. An Author user has thesame abilities, in addition to being able to publishtheir own content. Notably, the Editor role can createcontent, manage their content and others' content,and choose to publish others' content (it is beyond thescope of this article to further describe in detail theroles and capabilities offered by WordPress).

Figure 2: The business process of a Contributor submitting a post,and an Editor publishing that post, as supported by WordPress.

In summary, the system encapsulates the roles andactivities required for publishing content online. Thebusiness process (the set of activities involved inauthoring, editing and publishing online content) isclosely matched by the action-centric functionality ofthe WordPress system. In this case, business processmanagement may be used to understand theunderlying business process, to model it, and totweak it. By illustrating this specific case study of acontent management system, we argue moregenerally that BPM is a worthy approach forunderstanding the underlying business process, andthus making it more likely that the system beingdeveloped will align more closely with actualrequirements.

4.2 Case Study 2: The traditional industrylocalisation process in the industry, enterprise andSMB contextFigure 3 illustrates a high level model of theenterprise localisation process. Each of the high levelprocesses represented by blocks in the figure wouldneed to be defined in further levels of granularity inorder to be relevant for real implementations. Themodel is nevertheless useful as a high-levelrepresentation. It is helpful for showing the mostimportant process differences at the relevant level ofcomplexity. In this paper we only include models thatcan be quickly understood at first glance, for severalreasons:

1) To illustrate points made about processdifferences occurring in different localisationsettings.

2) To illustrate how the BPMN standard can be usedto create pictorial representations facilitatingprocess discussion in a highly intuitive way.

9


The model in Figure 3 anchors the localisationprocess in the broader context of multilingual contentmanagement and publishing. Content is being createdspecifically in one language, in the sense that a singlepiece of information can only be conveyedpractically in one language at a time. The publisher,however, needs to publish its information in manylanguages. As the transitions from the creation in onelanguage to multiple languages in publishing alwaysinclude transformations specific to the language pair,we have labelled the intermediate steps as "BitextManagement". Bitext Management is the centralpiece of any localisation process. In fact, BitextManagement forms the fundamental distinctionbetween localisation processes in different contextsin terms of whom, where, and how it is executed.

In contrast, Small and Medium Businesses usuallylack the resources needed to take control of theirtranslation memory leveraging. They are usuallyunable to manage their Bitext on their own.Therefore, although localisation customers legallyretain rights to their bilingual corpora, in practicetheir Bitext Management is a black box for themwhich is managed by a long term LSP partner.

In summary, BPMN has allowed us to visuallyrepresent the high-level business processes of BitextManagement for enterprises (Figure 3) and SMBs(Figure 4). It helps to demonstrate that the primarydistinction between both cases is whether the"Manage Bitext" activity happens in-house, or is theresponsibility of an LSP.

10

Figure 3: The localisation process in the enterprise context covering content management and publishing.

Figure 4: The management of Bitext is usually performed by an LSP partner for an SMB.

4.3 Case Study 3: The localisation process in theNot-For-Profit contextFurther to enterprise and SMB localisation, we wouldlike to investigate whether not-for-profit (NFP)localisation is any different. At a first glance it mayseem so. Again, we make use of BPMN to helpanswer this question.

Figure 5 illustrates a typical localisation process for a

not-for-profit customer. It makes use of a low techSLV, freelance or volunteer translators. While thesource content is produced in-house by the NFPorganisation, the translation process is performedexternally (represented by the "Low tech translate"activity in the figure). "Low tech" is used here in thesense that this scenario does not make any explicituse of Bitext properties, due to an apparent, or real,lack of CAT tools in the process. In particular, thelow tech SLV may be an over-the-street agency thatonly accepts content by fax, sends the content by fax

to the translator who types a new document withoutusing translation tools, and the hard copy of thetranslated document can be rubber-stamped (at a fee)as being translated correctly and accurately by acourt-approved interpreter.

More generally, this is the low tech scenario of thelocalisation process typical for low LocalizationMaturity Levels (DePalma 2006; DePalma 2011;

Paulk et al 1993). The business process is not specificto not-for-profit organisations. This has importantimplications for those building localisation solutionsfor not-for-profits that may have fewer resources inplace to support the localisation process. Suchservice and technology solutions would need toaddress a certain level of effectiveness, and hencesophistication. As a result, the solutions would needto take responsibility for Bitext Management, as thetypical NFP customer will not be able to manage theirBitext on their own. Organisations that are aiming to


11

2CSA gave a preview of the 2011 TMS report on 8th September, 2011. However, the full report was still pending publication at time of writing.

Figure 5: Modelling the localisation process in a not-for-profit scenario.

Figure 6: The localisation process in the not-for-profit context features Bitext Management outside of the organisation.


support not-for-profit localisation may - in effect -emulate the SMB localisation model, at least at thishigh structural level. Figure 6 illustrates this finding.

One may therefore come to the conclusion that thereis no difference between the traditional localisationprocess (Figure 4) and the not-for-profit model(Figure 6). However, in section 5.3 we describe whythis is actually not the case.

5. Case Study Analyses

In the previous sections, we presented three casestudies by modelling the relevant business processes.Some comparisons were made between the casestudies. In this section, we discuss how the existinglocalisation solutions address the above describedscenarios and present further conclusions arisingfrom the analysis of these case studies.

Localisation platforms, such as CAT tools andTranslation Management Systems (TMS), docurrently exist and primarily address the traditionalenterprise localisation process. We wish tounderstand the level and nature of impact of nextgeneration localisation factors that we see arisingwith the inclusion of crowd sourcing concepts. To doso, we need to discuss the role of CAT tools andTMSs in the localisation-enabling InformationSystems (IS).

5.1 The role of current platforms in addressinglocalisation business needsSince 2006, Common Sense Advisory (CSA) hasbeen publishing an authoritative comparison oftranslation management systems (TMSs) (Sargentand DePalma 2007 and 2008). As there has not beena comprehensive report since 2008 (only individualTMS scorecard additions have been published)2, the2008 report still serves to define classifications andgroupings. Our classification in this paper drawsloosely from the CSA classification.

The most prestigious category according to CSA isthe Enterprise TMS (ETMS) or "cradle to grave"systems. These systems are expected to be enterprise-class information and automation systems. Manyplayers have been trying their luck in this category.The initiator and long time leader of this category hadbeen Idiom WorldServer (now SDL WorldServer),which, even today, remains unparalleled in theexpressivity of its workflow engine within the classof ETMSs. However, this class of TMSs is beingrendered largely obsolete due to the present-day

development of general enterprise architecture, interms of business need and development.

It has been noted (Sargent and DePalma 2008;Morera et al 2011) that localisation automationsystems have been successful in narrowingpermissible workflow complexity in building aparticular production workflow. Complexity hererefers, roughly, to the number of the classicalworkflow patterns (van der Aalst et al 2003; Moreraet al 2011).

TMSs can be considered as highly specificautomation systems, and different categories ofTMSs may be distinguished by their level ofspecificity for localisation workflow support. Part oftheir success is in simplification relative to traditionalindustry patterns.

For instance, most of the existing systems are hardwired for a single source language per project. Thismeans that they will be challenged by multiple sourcelanguages scenarios that play an increasinglyimportant role. The reason that current solutions havebeen built to cater exclusively for a single sourcelanguage scenario is that most of the currententerprise-class localisation processes actuallynormalise to a single source language, very oftenEnglish, especially in multinationals. Even Asian andGerman-based multinationals, that would often try touse their local languages as the source languages, areforced to use English due to outside forces. Suchforces would include the present state of the marketand procurement necessities such as economies ofscale. If English is not used as a source language, itstill tends to be used as a pivot language, throughwhich all content is translated. In the following,however, we leave aside the complexities ofmanaging multiple source languages.

The least capable, in terms of building complexautomation workflows, would be the category of TMServers. The capabilities of TM Servers in the area ofautomation can range from a simple automatedsegment pair lifecycle through to a predefined set ofstates that each pair can retain throughout its life, allthe way from 'new', through to 'revised' and to'deprecated'. Every product in this category managesto automatically search and retrieve relevantterminology, both for full and fuzzy matches.

However, this capability has been commonplace inour industry for so long that it is not even considered"automation". It is, indeed, a level of automation that

12


can be taken for granted thanks to the nativefunctionality of computer aided translation (CAT)technology and is usually not enhanced to a greatdegree by server-level products (apart from theapparent advantages of committing to a regularlybacked up well-resourced database, compared to alocally installed database or a local proprietarydatabase file).

In fact, many tools that had been working withoutissue locally or through local area networks (LAN)had maturity challenges when introducing orperfecting their server-based product. The leader inthis capability has, so far, been the LionbridgeTranslation Workspace that is offered through theGeoWorkz.com portal (originally known asLogoport).

We see a tension between the interests of large LSPsin attempting to control the technology space, whilecustomers seek to avoid technology lock-in. Thereare repercussions of this tension for the LSP world.An LSP may have a significant number ofstakeholders. Various types of LSPs exist rangingfrom mutually-coordinated freelancers, to bricks-andmortar SLVs, through to large multimillion so-calledMLVs competing for a place on the CSA beautycontest ladder (Kelly and Stewart 2011).

The standardisation driven by enterprises will beexploited downwards and we expect that this willlead to the language industry becoming even morestrategic, yet even more commoditised. We predictthat there will be no differentiator for SLVs except

for resource management. MLV competition willbecome even fiercer as the standardised SOA andESB based architecture will drive the cost of entryeven lower. Cyclically, the MLVs will need to dealwith large enterprises taking Bitext Management andother value added high margin services in house,forming specialised service units such as Oracle'sIreland based WPTG (Worldwide ProductTranslation Group).

5.2 Adoption of Crowdsourcing in LocalisationThe democratisation of the Web has emerged throughthe power of the "crowd". This trend has also beenincreasingly applied to the localisation process wherethe concept of crowdsourcing has seen members ofthe crowd performing localisation tasks, such astranslation and reviewing. There are two settings inwhich the stakeholders are ahead in embracing thisrelatively new trend:

1) Enterprises

2) Not-for-profit (NFP)

The crowd is important for both of these because ofsimilar, yet distinct, reasons. In the not-for-profit(and potentially charitable) setting, accessing acrowd of volunteers would be attractive. Crowd-sourced translation may also be attractive forenterprise, but there are significant levels ofinvestment required for supporting that throughtechnology, oversight and management. In otherwords, the return on investment (ROI) must still beproperly calculated even if engaging with an unpaidcrowd.

13

Figure 7: The chunking and reassembling activities in a typical localisation process.


We speculate that the motivation of the unpaid crowdmay be a distinguishing factor in next generationlocalisation. This may not be such an issue in a moretraditional paid translation context.

More specifically, volunteers may have little time tocontribute to a localisation project. The implicationof this is profound: the chunks of content presented tothem as tasks need to be much smaller than thoserequired in the traditional localisation workflow. Wediscuss this topic further in the next sub-section.

5.3 New Requirements for Bitext ChunkingFigure 7 shows the lower level models of chunkingand reassembling that we have been using in previousmodels when referring to Bitext Management.

The chunking process multiplies the tokens that aretravelling through the process in two steps. First, itcreates a token per target language. Second, it createsa token per one-man-chunk.

A process that uses chunking must also containreassembling further down the road to ensure thattokens are properly merged back (i.e. well handled).One may notice that the re-merging of target versionsinto one deliverable token is optional and more likelyto occur in an industry setting than in a not-for-profitsetting.

Using XLIFF as the message container providesbenefits as XLIFF is capable of carrying a token inthe size of thousands of files, or as small as a singletranslation unit (OASIS XLIFF 2008).

Figure 8 applies equally to the industry setting andthe not-for-profit setting. There is, however, a veryimportant parameter that governs the behaviour ofthe XOR gateway diagram. From a technicalperspective, the decision is simply based on a singleparameter.

Figure 8 represents the process of abstracting thesteps that are needed to be taken to get a certain

output, given an input. The figure does not itselfspecify whether or not the workflow process needs tobe automated in real life. The parameter is the size ofa one-man-chunk. In the paid industry setting theone-man-chunk may easily comprise effort of up tofive man-days (in case of relaxed schedules even tenman-days may count as one-man-chunks, and in theliterary translations world one person routinely dealswith effort in terms of man-months).

However not-for-profit organisations may have todeal with real life emergencies as they arise (such astsunamis, earthquakes, famines, and many other lessdramatic, yet time sensitive, issues). Therefore, theymay have very tight schedules as in the translationindustry, but seldom have the budgets to buy full-time resources.

Therefore, the one-man-chunk in the volunteeringsetting is better defined in terms of man-hours. Thefive-man-day chunk is not extraordinary forenterprise settings, but could take months for avolunteer to complete. As such, the content requires amuch higher level granularity of chunking for fastturnaround of each chunk.

Assuming that a not-for-profit project needs topublish multilingual information within a week of thecreation of the source text, and assuming that thecrowd of highly-motivated volunteers have onaverage 20% of normal full-time employment todedicate to the project, we conclude that a projectshould be chunked accordingly to blocks of fourman-hours.

In the case of more stringent deadlines, or where thecrowd is less disciplined, chunking may need to beset at two man-hours, or smaller.

Chunks smaller than one man-hour may not beeffective in practice, unless the tasks are specialised,such as for user interface translation projects.Following this discussion, we can see the typicalmodel for NFP localisation should be as illustrated in

14

3See classic discussion of workflow expressivity by Aalst et al. 2003.

Figure 8: Industry chunking is not for volunteers


The process illustrated in Figure 10 is structurallysimilar to traditional models. Yet, there are differentbusiness needs for the supporting technologybetween the two different scenarios. There are radicaldifferences, for example, in the availability ofresources. In the self-service scenarios that leveragecrowd-sourced translation, whether in an enterprisesupport or a charitable NFP scenario, automatedchunking, pull-driven automated assignments, andautomated reassembling are a must due to thedemand for much finer granularity of chunking. Incontrast, in the traditional bulk localisation scenariothese are only tentative activities that are oftensimply performed manually.

6. Conclusion

What is the token and/or the message in thelocalisation process? We have hinted that ideally thelocalisation ESB message should have the form of aflexibly chunkable and reassemblable Bitext. WithOASIS XLIFF, the industry has such a standard, yetevolving, format to capture industry wisdom andaddress new business needs. It is capable of carryingpayload and metadata with a wide range ofgranularities and process requirements. Through thebusiness process management practices applied inthis paper, we have found that the commondenominator of all localisation processes may be asfollows:

15

Figure 9: Automated chunking in terms of man-hours is essential for volunteering settings

Figure 10: a model of not-for-profit localisation, with further detail provided for content chunking.


Parsing of source text -> routing Bitext -> enrichingBitext -> quality assuring Bitext -> exporting targettext.

For performing the localisation processes in anyorganisational setting it is critical to be able to extractglobal business intelligence from most of theworkflows and processes involved.

For an enterprise, managing Bitext has alsotraditionally meant enforcing process andtechnology. We argue that this is not a priori aconsequence of including Bitext Management in theenterprise process. Rather, in the past, the enterprisemay have had to take stringent control due to the lackof standardisation in the areas of both Bitext andBitext Transformation processes.

Today many enterprise-level practitioners have seenthat enforcing process and methodology is notsustainable and/or indeed very expensive. We can seetwo complementary trends:

1) Standardisation of Bitext message, both payloadand metadata.

2) Reuse of available SOA architectures and extra-Localisation workflow solutions, namely theunderlying ESBs.

What can be used as the ESB in this case? Whilemost readily-available ESB specialised middlewarecomes to mind, it can, theoretically, be anysufficiently expressive3 workflow engine.'Theoretically' must be emphasised here, as clearlyany Turing-complete engine can do what is needed,which is, however, far from claiming that the level ofeffort needed would be practically achievable orotherwise relevant. In real life situations, manyfactors play important roles in making this decision,including but not limited to:

1) Legacy investment into and the present state ofthe overall IS in the organisation

2) Level of fitness of the current IS for the businessneeds of the organisation

3) Legacy investment into and the present state ofspecialised localisation technology

4) Importance of unified BI on localisation withinthe organisation

5) Licensing models of legacy solutions6) Long term vendor relationships

Enterprise users want to prevent lock-in and managequality on an 'as needed' basis, which very oftenapplies to string level. In fact, we see, from our casestudy analysis, the community workflow and theenterprise workflow converging.

The 21st century has seen an onslaught of service-oriented architectures, not only in the IT mainstreambut also in the localisation and translation industry.Many an industry player has realised that they nolonger wish to be locked in to a particular languagetechnology stack, and some have found theirEnterprise Service Buses relevant as potentialbackbones for what they need to achieve in the areaof localisation and translation.

It seems clear that the challenge in the localisationand translation industry is not just of processmodelling. It is rather a complex ChangeManagement issue that cannot be properly addressedwithout applying mature Business ProcessManagement techniques.

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Science FoundationIreland (Grant 07/CE/I1142) as part of the Centre forNext Generation Localisation (www.cngl.ie) in theLocalisation Research Centre at the University ofLimerick.

All BPMN models used in this paper were createdusing the free Bizagi Modeler Software, v2.0.0.2,which is BPMN 2 compliant.

References

Aalst, Van der, W.M.P., Hofstede, ter, A.H.M.,Kiepuszewski, B., Barros, A.P. (2003) 'Workflow Patterns',Distributed and Parallel Databases, 14, 5-51.

Aalst, Van der, W.M.P. (2004) 'Pi calculus versus Petri nets:Let us eat "humble pie" rather than further inflate the "Pihype"', unpublished.

Ågerfalk, P. J. and Fitzgerald, B. (2008) 'Outsourcing to anUnknown Workforce: Exploring Opensourcing as a GlobalSourcing Strategy', MIS Quarterly, 32(2), 385-409.

Bleistein, S., Cox, K., Verner, J. and Phalp, K. (2006)'Requirements engineering for e-business advantage',Requirements Engineering, 11(1), 4-16.

16


Blood, R. (2004) 'How Blogging Software Reshapes theOnline Community', Communications of the ACM, 47(12),53-55.

Brabham, D. C. (2008) 'Moving the crowd at iStockphoto:The composition of the crowd and motivations forparticipation in a crowdsourcing application', First Monday,13(6).

Business Process Model and Notation v2.0 (BPMN) (2011)Needham, Massachusetts: Object Management Group, Inc(OMG).

Cronin, M. (2010) 'The Translation Crowd', Tradumatica:traduccio i tecnologies de la informacio i la comunicacio, 8,December 2010.

Cox, K., Phalpc, K. T., Bleisteina, S. J. and Vernerb, J. M.(2005) 'Deriving requirements from process models via theproblem frames approach', Information and SoftwareTechnology, 47(5), 319-337.

DePalma, D.A. (2006) Localization Maturity Model,Lowell: Common Sense Advisory, 16 August.

DePalma, D.A. (2011) Localization Maturity Model 2.0,Lowell: Common Sense Advisory, 28 March.

Galliers, R. D. (2004) 'Reflections on Information SystemsStrategizing', in Avgerou, C., Ciborra, C. and Land, F., eds.,The Social Study of Information and CommunicationTechnology: Innovation, Actors, and Contexts, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 231-262.

Galliers, R. D. (2006) 'On confronting some of the commonmyths of Information Systems strategy discourse', inMansell, R., Quah, D. and Silverstone, R., eds., The(Oxford) Handbook of Information and CommunicationTechnology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hammer, M. and Champy, J. (1993) Reengineering thecorporation: a manifesto for business revolution, New York:HarperBusiness.

Howe, J. (2006) 'The rise of crowdsourcing', Wired, 14(6),available: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html [accessed 4 July 2011].

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2010) 'Web Internationlisationstrategies and translation quality: researching the case of"international" Spanish', Localisation Focus, 9(1), 13-25.

Kelly, N., Stewart, R.G. (2011) The Top 50 LanguageService Providers, Lowell: Common Sense Advisory, 31May.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P. (1996) ManagementInformation Systems: Organization and Technology,Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Lenker, M., Anastasiou, D. and Buckley, J. (2010)'Workflow Specification for Enterprise Localisation',Localisation Focus, 9(1), 26-35.

Lewis, D., Curran, S., Doherty, G., Feeney, K., Karamanis,N., Luz, S. and McAuley, J. (2009) 'Supporting Flexibilityand Awareness in Localisation Workflow', LocalisationFocus, 8(1), 29-38.

Menge, F. (2007) 'Enterprise Service Bus', Free and OpenSource Software Conference 2007 (FOSS4G), Victoria,Canada, 24-27 September.

Morera, A., Aouad, L, Collins, J.J. (2011) 'AssessingSupport for Community Workflows in Localisation',accepted for 4th Workshop on Business ProcessManagement and Social Software (BPMS2'11), August.

MultiLingual (2011) MultiLingual 2011 ResourceDirectory, Sandpoint: MultiLingual, available:https://www.multilingual.com/downloads/2011RDPrint.pdf[accessed 1 August 2011].

OASIS XLIFF 1.2 (2008) Oasis, available:http://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/v1.2/os/xliff-core.html[accessed 2 August 2011].

O'Hagan, M. (2009) 'Evolution of User-generatedTranslation: Fansubs, Translation Hacking andCrowdsourcing', The Journal of Internationalisation andLocalisation, 1, 94-121.

Paulk, M.C., Curtis, W., Chrissis, M.B., Weber, C.V. (1993)Capability Maturity Model for Software, Version 1.1,Technical Report CMU/SEI-93-TR-024 ESC-TR-93-177,Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Software Engineering Institute,available: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/93tr024.pdf[accessed 2 August 2011].

Sargent, B.B., DePalma, D.A. (2008) TranslationManagement Systems, Lowell: Common Sense Advisory,16 September.

Sargent, B.B., DePalma, D.A. (2007) TranslationManagement System Scorecards, Lowell: Common SenseAdvisory, 26 February.

Turban, E., Leidner, D., McLean, E. and Wetherbe, J. (2007)Information Technology for Management: TransformingOrganizations in the Digital Economy, ed. 6, Wiley.

WordPress.org (2011a) Showcase [online], available:https://wordpress.org/showcase/ [accessed 13 July 2011].

WordPress.org (2011b) Roles and Capabilities [online],available: https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Cap-abilities [accessed 5 July 2011].

Yunker, J. (2003) Beyond Borders: Web GlobalizationStrategies. Indianapolis: New Riders.

17

Date post:	24-Aug-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

An Argument for Business Process Management in Localisation · corresponding pool-crossing flow. IS...

Documents