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ROI—The J.D. Edwards Data from 2001

August 16, 2010 by Barbara Inge Karsch

Even after nine years, the terminology ROI data from J.D. Edwards is still being quoted in the industry. The data made a splash, because it was the only data available at the time. It isn’t always quoted accurately, though, and since it just came up at TKE in Dublin, let’s revisit what the J.D. Edwards team did back then.

J.D. Edwards VP of content publishing, Ben Martin, was invited to present at the TAMA conference in Antwerp in February 2001. His main focus was on single-source publishing. Ben invited yours truly to talk more about the details of the terminology management system as part of his presentation, and he also encouraged a little study that a small project team conducted.

Ben’s argument for single-sourcing was and is simple: Write it once, reuse it multiple times; translate it once, reuse the translated chunk multiple times.

At that time, the J.D. Edwards’ terminology team and project was in its infancy. In fact, the TMS was just about to go live, as the timeline presented in Antwerp shows.

For the ROI (return on investment) study, my colleagues compared the following data:

  • What does it cost to change one term throughout the J.D. Edwards software and documentation?
  • What does it cost to manage one concept/term?

27 different terms were changed in various languages, and the time it took was measured. Then, the average change time was multiplied by the average hourly translation cost, including overhead. In the J.D. Edwards setting, the average cost to change one term in one language turned out to be $1900.

The average time that it took to create one entry in the terminology database had already been measured. At that early time in the project, it cost $150 per terminological entry.

The cost to manage one entry seems high. Therefore, it is important to note that

  • There were three quality assurance steps in the flow of one entry for the source language English, and up to two steps in the flow of one entry for the target languages. So, the resulting entry was highly reliable, and change management was minimal.
  • The cost came down dramatically over the months, as terminologists and other terminology stakeholders became more proficient in the process, standards and tool.

Both figures are highly system/environment-dependent. In other words, if it is easy to find and replace a term in the documents, it will cost less. While these figures were first published years ago, they served as the benchmark in the industry and established an ROI model that has since been used and further developed and elaborated on. If you have any opinion, thoughts or can share other information, feel free to add a comment or send me an e-mail.

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Terminological Scatterlings*

June 10, 2010 by Barbara Inge Karsch

While it is hard to avoid soccer these days—not that I, who enjoyed the Sommermärchen (the fabulous atmosphere) in Germany four years ago, would want to—, it is not hard to link South Africa, soccer and terminology. So, let me leave corporate terminology management behind for this posting and talk a bit about South Africa from a language and terminology point-of-view.

Let’s start with South African English. If you visit this beautiful country, you will very likely notice that ’just now’ “denotes varying levels of urgency. Phoning someone ‘now now’ is sooner than ‘now’ or ‘just now’ but not as soon as ‘right now’” according to this short glossary of South Africanisms.

In their latest blog, ‘South African World Cup Draws Multilingual Audiences’, Common Sense Advisory talks about the language industry benefitting from the World Cup, which is not a surprise: Large international events always are. I fondly remember my time at the Atlanta Olympics with hundreds of other interpreters. I worked for overtired German journalists, who would normally get away without an interpreter, but long hours and the Southern accent incapacitated them. Back then, I had put together my own glossary of sports terminology. For the World Cup, we don’t need to: CLS Communication just released a multilingual World Cup dictionary in five European languages. I never knew that “Goal” is used in Swiss German. I am sure you’ll find other little surprises in the CLS Football Dictionary. Speaking of football, former Microsoft colleague and good friend, Licia Corbolante, points out cultural differences with regard to soccer in her Italian blog.

But the World Cup is just an event that lets us focus on South Africa. The country has had a rich multilingual history. With the end of apartheid came the recognition of eleven official languages: Afrikaans and English as well as the following nine indigenous languages: seSotho sa Lebowa, seSotho, seTswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. We, in Europe and America, are used to other multilingual countries, like Canada, Switzerland or Belgium, leading multilingual topics. But the general level of understanding of terminology issues in South Africa makes the US look like a developing nation.

There are many governmental bodies who do terminology work. The organization charged with promoting language issues is the Pan South African Language Board:

“…PanSALB is a statutory body established to create conditions to develop and promote the equal use and enjoyment of all the official South African languages. It actively promotes an awareness of multilingualism as a national resource.” (http://www.pansalb.org.za/index.html).

The establishment of terminology is merely one of PanSALB’s many tasks and services. PanSALB members have also been actively involved in the creation of Microsoft terminology accessible on the Microsoft Language Portal in the following South African languages: Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, seSotho sa Lebowa, and seTswana.

A look at the website for the TAMA (Terminology in Advanced Management Applications) conference in 2003 shows the multitude of terminology projects under way in South Africa: From the establishment of legal terminology in South African languages by organizations, such as the Centre for Legal Terminology in African Languages, to the work of the Terminology Subdirectorate of the National Language Service. And in time for the World Cup, the Department of Arts and Culture sponsored the publication of a Multilingual Soccer Terminology List.

Let me finish with a personal story: When I was in South Africa for TAMA in 2003, I had an exchange with a cab driver that really made me a terminologist. Ok, I had had the title “terminologist” since 1998, but I never told anyone. It was often too much trouble to explain what terminologists do. So, when the cab driver asked me what I had come to South Africa for, I told him that I was in Pretoria for a conference. “What subject area?” he kept prying. When I said terminology management, he responded, “oh, I have always been interested in semiotics.” Goooooooaal! Never after this conversation have I dumbed down what I really do.

*Borrowed from “Scatterlings of Africa” by Johnny Clegg

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