Evolution from Translation

The translation industry has undergone great transformation since the 1980's. Most of these changes can be traced back to the emergence of the Internet, specifically the Internet's profound impact on how we communicate and how we do business.

The Internet allows us to communicate with others anywhere in the world nearly instantly. To achieve this communication we must employ many standards, including text encoding, common languages, file formats, data transmission protocols. We have learned that people live and work in different time zones, use different money, and speak different languages.

In business we broadened the scope of our clients from our local community to the entire global market. This trend became more sophisticated as some businesses moved their products to the Internet - for example software publishers, Internet retail channels emerged and media embraced the Internet. Gradually all businesses realized that e-business was just going to be business as usual, and now we suddenly find ourselves working with people all over the world.

Emergence of Localization

As communication became more enmeshed with technology, those that survived the jump to Internet technology from the traditional translation industry quickly learned that they must integrate technology into all aspects of their work. Localization which had been an extra value-added service by the rare international and technology savvy translation houses developed into a mature industry. Core to commerce and communications, localization emerges as a key success metric for international goods and services.

Professionals in the localization industry are performing a broader range of tasks, including software engineering, quality control of software, lexicon and translation memory management, file format processing, database management and data translation, multilingual project management, multi-locale communications consulting and support. Successfully managed projects require complex process coordination among language and domain specialists with lexical, interface and programming engineers.