IBM

Know Your IBM is an interactive, permission based offering for eligible Business Partners designed to heighten and
reward their competency to sell targeted IBM solutions and brands, and thereby increase their IBM sales.

CTC Goals

To provide cost-effective on-time translation services to a large client working with global network of offices.

Client requirement

KYI IBM required the translation of their content for a multilingual marketing web site for IBM resellers.

Content

The documentation consisted of a series of promotions launched on the web for IBM resellers. Rewards program is an exclusive loyalty program for IBM resellers on the IBM web intranet, introduces products and services provides more information about marketing tools and sales tools services and contains high quality e-learning modules. Completion of each module is rewarded with KYI points that can be exchanged for gifts from participating merchants IBM / Partner
world / Know Your IBM.

Product

CTC was involved in the translation and localisation and in-context reviews of the sales program and its web pages in
the following modules:

Introduction/Registration/Concierge service /Rewards gift program /Registration /other forms/e-learning programs.

CTC was closely involved with the product launch and production of the following languages: French, Italian, Polish, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Portuguese, Korean, two Chinese variants and Japanese.

Scope: over half a million words translation per annum 2008/2009

Software localisation and web in-context reviews

CTC tested web pages for structural issues (text overflows/font sizes), currency symbols and date reporting and
produced and bug/fault reports for different languages.

Specific Requirements

The translation and localisation requirements consisted of two components:

The program involved producing a series of promotions designed to attract IBM resellers to participate in an e-learning loyalty program. The translation content needed to be interesting and catchy and not remain a straightforward
translation exercise.

The second aspect was translation of the technical e-learning modules, and required the use of large database
memories of previously translated content and glossaries to maintain consistency of the translated material.

Work flow

The English Content was transmitted in MS Word annotated source documents that required revision version control and approval from various members of the IBM partner world team. The translated content was then sent to local country representatives of IBM partner world for adaptation and approval. Several updated versions were produced and
additional changes to English source content added before submitting the target language content to local country IBM representatives. The content was often significantly changed as a result of different local country requirements. CTC incorporated the changes into the documents, rechecking the syntax, spelling and style and then sent the final versions
to the web developers for publication.

While the sales content was kept in translation databases, the changes incurred during the process of adaptation meant that the quality of these memories was not sufficient enough to reuse. The sales content often changed from country to country and often was at variance to the English source copy. This is often the case in sales and advertising situations where the stored archives of a translation are simply a starting point from which a new sales copy is created. The memories did however prove useful in retaining consistency in the use of specific IBM terminology and brand names throughout the documentation process.

The technical translation content was kept in translation databases memories. The database CTC stored for IBM was
useful in reducing the time to translate updates and revisions to technical content. The IBM technical content, however,
was often significantly altered by the local IBM authorised representatives to suit the market conditions and variances to the products and services sold in the different countries globally. This made using memories more complex as these changes could not be stored in translation databases. For example, a whole host of features and services were either
not available or were locally adapted in the Japanese IBM market. These features were unique to Japan and therefore
the marketing and technical content reflected this. The translator memories were not able to incorporate these items as there was no source English content to attach the local Japanese content.

Goals and results

CTC was able to produce the translated content to client satisfaction and on time for the work requested.

Unresolved issues

CTC was unable to receive translation memories databases from the previous provider of the technical documentation
as there was an issue over ownership of intellectual property. This created difficulties with producing an IBM technical
glossary and standard brand style guides within the complex technical translation requirements.

This highlights the importance of clients requiring that all language service providers (LSP’s) acknowledge in their
contracts that the Client remains the owner and retains the rights to all databases and glossaries produced for
translation.