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This title might be a bit harsh to describe the long road from the announcement
of a product in the early summer of 2008 to its release in 2010 next week --
after all, Odysseus' journey lasted 10 years, and Atril, with its promised new
version of Déjà Vu, still has a good chance of ACTUALLY beating Odysseus.
Recently I had a chance to talk to the folks in charge of the new
product at Lionbridge and play with the tool myself.
But first, let me comment on Roar E. Lion.
Jeromobot graciously recognizes that not only has SDL followed his lead by courting
a bevy of squishy, colorful new friends, but also that Lionbridge has adopted its own appealing
little cheerleader (very cleverly named after Lionbridge's CEO Rory Cowan). Once
again, it seems, Jeromobot has played the role of trendsetter. However, both Jeromobot
and I want to make very clear that Jeromobot is not simply a cheerleader -- he
is, of course, the one and only patron saint of the modern translator. But
of course, you knew that.
On to the product at hand.
Here are some of the marketing highlights that Lionbridge focuses on: Translation Workspace is based on Logoport, the product that Lionbridge
purchased from a German company and has used for about four years for most of its
own translation projects, so it's presumably quite mature, even though it's new
in its present form.
Also, it's a SaaS -- Software as a Service -- offering that tracks your
actual usage and makes you pay accordingly (with a price that is determined by
a mixture of users and words), and is therefore more flexible and fairly priced
than other software offerings.
Lastly, it's an online system: The translation memories, glossaries, and
"review packages" as well as all the controls that determine how the
program interacts with you are accessible only through an online interface. According
to Lionbridge, this is the way of the future and, because of a newly developed method
of protecting and sharing the online assets ("AssetAliasing"), the
most advanced process available to work with these.
All right, now that we've got that out of the way, let's take a look at what
the tool actually does. Unlike the tools that we discussed last week (Wordbee
and Crowdin.net), this is not a tool that is completely web-based. The
documents that you translate are actually sitting on your local machine, and
only the supporting data (TM, glossary -- it really is not a full-fledged
termbase -- and all administrative controls) are based on Lionbridge's servers
(which, as I was told, are actually run by a third party). The interface in
which you translate is either within Word (including Word 2007)
or an independent tool somewhat reminiscent of Trados TagEditor, called XLIFF
Editor (at this point I know at least three tools that are called exactly
that . . .). Consequently, it's a surprisingly familiar (but, maybe equally
surprising, slightly outdated) selection of interfaces from the old Trados
days.
The XLIFF Editor is able to translate Office 2007 files (Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint), Trados TTX files (converted to
XLIFF), FrameMaker MIF files, and XML- and HTML-based formats. The Word
interface can access any Word or RTF-based file. Either of these is available
as a small download from GeoWorkz's website: The Word plug-in will become
a menu in Word 2003 and below or its own ribbon in Word 2007 and
the XLIFF Editor is its own stand-alone program. Once you install the Word
plug-in, a third application will also be installed, Translation Workspace
Tools, which gives you access to TM management, conversion utilities (to
tag RTF-based files with internal and external styles or convert Trados TTX
files to RTF files), as well as some other batch-processing tasks (analyze,
pre-translate, clean, or perform QA). All of these are also available through
the Word interface but not in batch mode.
To start your translation, you'll need to open your document (or prepare
it as necessary and then open it) and enter your user name and password to
connect to a "tenant," which is essentially a space on the server
that can hold translation memories, glossaries, and review packages and that
can be shared with others (or not). Once you are connected, you can start the
translation process by either using the provided menu commands/icons or using
keyboard shortcuts to open, save, and close individual segments. If matches in
the TM are found, they are displayed right above the opened segment --
similarly to the way that Wordfast Classic does it.
(As mentioned above, it is possible to use keyboard shortcuts to move
about in the document. Note that they overlap with the Trados 2007
shortcuts, so if you still have that installed in MS Word, you will have
to disable it. From then on out, however, you can let your fingers do their
thing.)
I found the interface of the XLIFF TagEditor surprisingly
rudimentary: If you did not like TagEditor's interface, you really will
not like this one. You can't control how tags are displayed (though they are,
of course, write-protected), and I think it's a strange decision to use an open
editor interface rather than a table-based interface when most other tools have
been trying to get away from it. Also, in my few tests, the XLIFF Editor
did a very poor job of segmenting HTML files -- essentially every hyperlink
caused a line break -- but let's assume that this is just an early birthing pain.
As far as the user interface to the translation memory and the
terminology database: It's OK, but it's just a little bit convoluted. It needs
to shed some of Lionbridge's own needs und usage history. Case in point: The primary
choice for a glossary is Microsoft's LocStudio files, which may be
important when Lionbridge works on MS's projects, but is useless for most of us.
One feature that I really like and that solves one of the most tedious
problems of working with TEnTs is the review process that takes place in a
separate, completely web-based, tabular interface with error-tracking, version
control, and everything else you might want. Though you will have to expend
some extra effort to create the review packages (upload the translated,
bilingual files), you'll have the benefit that the very last version of your
translated and edited files ends up in the translation memory.
So, there's the tool. But what about the licensing and accompanying
issues?
As many of you know, there has been a bit of frustration in the
freelance community about Lionbridge's decision to charge for the tool even if
you use it only while you work for Lionbridge (no matter how many words you translated
for Lionbridge, you would have to pay $14/month). Many folks feel this is
unwarranted, especially considering the fact that so far Lionbridge has been
giving its tool (Logoport) away for
free. Do I think that the frustration on the side of the freelance translators
is justified? Absolutely. I think it's rather petty to charge for the tool if
it's used only for Lionbridge's own benefit. If it's used for other projects, then
of course there should be a charge.
I talked to the Lionbridge reps about this for some time, and their reasoning
was that they felt this was the best way for them to communicate
professionalism and the actual value of the tool. If all the Lionbridge vendors
did not have to pay for it, they might not even try to use it for their own
projects. And since Lionbridge believes this is the solution of the
future, that's supposedly an essential step.
We'll see about that. How will folks respond in the meantime? Some have
responded in the form of petitions to Lionbridge (like this one from the Liberi professionisti traduttori); some will accept the new conditions and
continue to work with Lionbridge; and others will simply choose not to. The silver
lining for the industry as a whole is that there will be a lot of experienced
translators on the market for other agencies and end-clients to pick up.
Of course, this TEnT is not only for translators. It is intended to
cover the whole process from the end client to the LSP to the freelancer. (By the
way, the tools that are available within Workspace are identical for all
users, including the administrative tools.) As I said, there will be a usage
meter kind of charge. Here are some examples: The most basic package (5,000
words and one user) costs $14/month, two licenses and 10,000 words are
$71/month, three licenses and 250,000 words are $363/month, and everything in between
and above. I don't have a problem with the actual pricing, but I foresee a huge
problem once Lionbridge starts talking to other LSPs, who are of course direct
competitors. I imagine a response something like this: "They want me to
give them a month-by-month rundown of how much I translate?"
When SDL tried to offer a similar business model with an early version
of SDL TeamWorks it sort of blew up in their face, and I would be
surprised to see anything different happen here.
I can imagine that we'll see LSPs buying into the tool for specific
customers who themselves already use Workspace (because they might be
Lionbridge clients). But even then it's a strange concept that Lionbridge would
still have to be informed how much they translate for client XYZ when they
directly compete for that business (unless the client "pays" for the
words -- see below). Well, I guess it's that kind of mess you get yourself into
when you provide both tools and services. . . .
Let's also briefly touch on the ownership of the language assets stored
by Lionbridge (or the afore-mentioned third party). They appear to have found a
much cleaner solution here. One of the features of Workspace is the
"AssetAliasing" with which a data or project owner can give rights to
a tenant (space) on the server with the necessary access rights. Only those who
hold one of those aliases can access the data or, on the basis of that alias,
can generate yet another alias for someone else to work on it (if they have the
right to do that). This would happen in a situation where an end client gives
access to a project to an LSP, which in turn asks freelancers to work on it.
The end client would not see who these freelancers are, and neither the
freelancers nor the LSP would have to use their word credit, since those would
all be charged to the client.
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