Interpreting
  • Conference interpreting
  • Liaison interpreting
  • On-site plant interpreting
  • Court interpreting
    • Workflow systems

    Localisation and globalisation

    Experience and innovation are the strengths of Glossa Group in the extremely technology-intensive field of localisation and globalisation. As one of the first partners and supporters of LISA (Localisation Industry Standards Association) and a pioneer in the field of software localisation and localisability testing, Glossa Group was able to gain the trust of leading software manufacturers worldwide. In collaboration with the industry, technologies, methods and processes have been developed in order to globalise the most important software products and make them suitable for sale in major markets by localising the language.

    Many areas of the software are affected by localisation, such as the user application, the installation and online help, the operating system, the error messages and much more. The most important tasks are always establishing the distinction between the text and the source text to be localised, the revision of embedded graphics and menu items as well as final linguistic, functionality-related and cosmetic testing.

    Using the latest tools and methods as well as machine translation systems, Glossa Group automates the processes and production of localised content as far as possible. This allows in particular short shelf-life information services (web-based news, financial or weather services providing information that is subject to continuous updating) to reach their audience at low cost and with optimised time management.

    Localisation

    Localisation in translation can be considered both as a partial aspect and as a superordinate process. In the broadest sense, localisation involves adapting a product to a specific country.

    In terms of car production, this may mean that the steering wheel and the dashboard are already installed on the right and the speedometer indicates the speed in miles per hour in order to comply with UK market requirements.

    In terms of written texts, adaptation to the target country enables interaction to take place in the respective language in compliance with its cultural requirements. Compliance with conventions relating to form as well as technical, social and legal standards within the target country is also ensured.

    In current jargon, however, the term »localisation« refers to the translation of all the texts for a software product to the specific culture of a different language.

    Software localisation

    For every software company wanting to sell its products successfully on the international market, product localisation is essential.

    Software localisation is a highly complex process that requires a sophisticated methodological concept, language specialists and suitable software in order to be successful.

    Software engineers need to be involved to develop clear specifications relating to the use of the software. Especially in the case of difficult or ambiguous sections, software errors and bugs, their job is to recognise and fix this and specify translation requirements. This only takes place after the text to be translated has been separated from the source text.

    The texts to be localised include the accompanying manual, the online help and the software itself along with its user interface incorporating the windows, options, menus, dialogue boxes, list boxes, input fields and system messages.

    Appropriate test runs enable a preliminary analysis of the localisability of the software (test for localisability) as well as an analysis of the applicability of the localisation (localisation test) to be performed.

    Website localisation

    With the growing proliferation and use of the Internet, customer expectations of company websites as a source of information have also increased. The content must be properly structured and adapted to local conditions; website internationalisation is essential.

    A far more dynamic process is the localisation of short shelf-life content, such as online news updates, financial reports or weather forecasts, where interfaces to machine translation systems ensure that the information can be made available to readers worldwide as soon as possible.

    Before the start of localisation, Glossa Group will examine the technology used to generate and publish the online information, including the web content management system and the coding in the front-end and back-end.

    The localisation method prepared in this manner will make it possible to generate long-term and dynamic global content for the website with cost and time savings.

    Localisation of multimedia and voice-over

    The visualisation of information and the advantage it offers of transferring contents at a very high rate is nowadays replacing much of the usual text-based distribution of information. As a result, the demands on localisation are much more complex because the interaction of several components, such as software, audio and text, make the overall product.

    The tasks can be divided in detail as follows:

    Multimedia localisation requires careful planning to ensure the objectives can be met, even if adaptations are necessary, for example, the length of the video and audio text. Glossa Group works with experienced multimedia and localisation engineers and has its own recording studio so that the best results are guaranteed.

    Some of the companies that rely on the services of Glossa Group:

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