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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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