qui - Tekom

THE LOCALISATION INDUSTRY
By Bert Esselink 62
This is my third contribution in a series of four articles about software
localisation. The first article discussed the differences between translation
and localisation, and the second provided an overview of translation
technology. In this article, I will focus on the localisation industry and
introduce the history, major players and industry organisations.
History
Starting in the early 1980s, many software publishers realised they had
to localise their products, mainly as a requirement to sell them overseas.
Before that time, software was mainly published in the language the
developers happened to speak. At that time most large software publishers
would either use individual freelance translators, single-language vendors,
or in- house translation departments to perform the translation work.
Smaller software publishers often requested translations from distributors
or local sales people with no translation experience.
Software publishers saw their in-house translation departments grow
quickly through large volumes of translatable text in software applications
and documentation. Most of them started looking for outsourcing
possibilities in order to focus on their core business and keep headcounts
down. Not only was the workload for internal translation departments very
unpredictable, also multi-language project management was causing them
headaches, especially in projects involving dozens of languages.
The demand for outsourcing of translation activities combined with
the large volumes and high complexity of jobs automatically resulted in the
start-up of the first multi-language vendors (MLVs), who mainly focused
62 Bert Esselink, “The Localisation Industy”, Tranfree, n.12, 2000.
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