Localization: Engineering Software for a Global Market
Here is a PDF that I printed from a Powerpoint presentation. This PPT was part of a presentation I did during my CS350 class (Introduction to Software Engineering). I have also added it to the company intranet as a quick reference for new developers - apparently, localization is rarely touched in CS classes.
If you work in software localization, have a look at it and let me know what you think. Is there something I should add?
Localization: Engineering Software for a Global Market
If you like to use this for anything, it would be nice to mention me as the creator. I have spent a lot of time creating this and you wouldn’t want to be credited for someone else’s work, would you?
Feeling the economy
Today is one of those days, where it is uncomfortable to be an in-house translator.
From friends I have heard, that they have been approached by clients who asked them to lower (or not raise) prices because of the bad economy. I am pretty sure a lot of people just do that to increase revenue, but it is a simple fact that US companies are struggling - a lot. Here in Michigan, there are a lot of companies in the news. Of course there is the automotive industry - we all know how they are doing, but there are also a lot of small and midsized companies who are struggling. I am not a business major, and generally business/finance bores me - unfortunately, this time it affects me.
My company has announced lay-offs today - no secret, the press release is on our web site. It was actually there before they even told us about it. They had an immediate meeting at 8.30am - tough noogies for me since I usually start at 9am because I am not a morning person. Anyway, I am part of Engineering and we had a department meeting afterward, where we were told that Engineering/R&D is not affected. While it was nice to hear that, it is still unsettling. It don’t like the feeling of not being on control of my fate. There are so many more things hanging on this than just my income. We would lose health insurance - right now, my company covers the both of us. My 401k would stop - and since I only started to work here 10 years ago, I don’t have a lot of retirement savings to show for. I would have to pay back the tuition reimbursement for the last 12 months which would probably eat up any possible severance package so there goes that.
I like X-Rite. Working here is so tightly connected to living in the US, since I came here in February 1999, and started to work in June the same year. I didn’t get here on a work visa - they actually searched for a German translator right after I arrived. Big coincidence! I basically had the job before I even had a work permit but having a job offer helped to speed up the process at the INS a lot. For me, living in the US means working at X-Rite.
I also think we have great products. I work with them when I translate the software or hardware and it really confuses me why we are not doing better. I don’t know if it is our products or business and financial decisions, and I would love to know. But then, hopefully there are smarter (or better, more business-savvy) people solving this issue.
I know that a lot of freelancers deal with that uncertainty every day even if they have a little cushion to rest on - but to be honest, that is one of the reasons why I prefer employment. I am just a little chicken.
Now, the news are on to us, starting with the the local NBC station WoodTV and our local paper the Grand Rapids Press - actually, my “Google Alert” for X-Rite was longer than I have ever seen it before. I remember, after the last lay-offs in April, I left the building only to see the news crew outside. Let’s see if that happens again - in about an hour. I am almost sick to my stomach.
Oh well, before I start to sound like a teenager who got dumped, I better sign off. Thanks for listening!
Merry Christmas
Believe it or not, I am sitting at work - Heiligabend (Christmas Eve). This has to be a first for me.
It is so quiet, someone is playing holiday music but to be honest, I’d rather be home. Unfortunately, I had wasted away my generous ration of 15 vacation days by September and since then I am trying to get by. Fortunately, I have the best boss ever (and no, he doesn’t read this) and I will take my laptop home and work from home between the years. I have collected some chores that I can easily do from home but I can still get emails and generally “be available”.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanza, Diwali or whatever makes this time of the year special to you. All the best from me to you!
Create new folders in Windows
While I am not as much of a keyboard purist as some, I still find that some tasks can be done much faster while staying on the keyboard. Windows offers many shortcut keys (aka hot keys or accelerator keys), I think almost everyone uses Ctrl-C to copy, Ctrl-F to search (optimistically named after find) or Ctrl-S. The good thing about those is that many of them are universal, so with Ctrl-F you can search on your hard drive, in a text document, in your browser etc. Unfortunately, there is one shortcut that I am missing since forever and Microsoft never had the decency to add it. I want a shortcut to create a folder. I don’t want to use the mouse context menu (Right click - New/Folder) and I don’t want to use the menu bar (File/New/Folder). I know for the menu you could use the keyboard with Alt f w f but that is not only extremely unintuitive but also very cumbersome because of the location of the keys alt, f and w keys (or am I just clumsy?).
Surprisingly, in the Windows Explorer, Ctrl-N has no function at all. In most programs it opens/creates a new instance of whatever you have, for example in Word you open a a new blank document, in Firefox and IE you open a new browser window, Outlook opens a new blank email, Nero opens the New Compilation window - everyone does something. A Windows Explorer window on the other hand just stares at you and does nothing - it’s like asking a cat to Fetch or Sit (although, I have seen cats fetch). There are shortcut keys for rarely used actions like Ctrl-Windows Logo-F to find computers on the network (probably useful to some, but everyone creates folder). After searching a little, it seems that this missing shortcut irks other people too. Does anyone know of a way to create shortcuts on Windows WITHOUT the help of a program that has to run in the background? I couldn’t find anything to solve this issue. I know there are a lot of programs that allow you to create custom shortcuts for just about anything, but my work computer is slow enough as it is and I don’t want to have yet another program running in the background.
Now…how did I get here…ah, yes. Today, I was just facing the task of creating an abundance of folders. I have a slow week so I am trying to find useful things to do, and I always meant to clean up the documentation network location which has a wild folder structure that defeats logic or reason and literature for one product can be in up to 4 different locations. Some products have language subfolders, some don’t. Some have the language subfolders named with the common ISO abbreviations, some have full names and I even see the occasional GR as an abbreviation for German. I am trying to find a system that is easy to maintain for everyone and not too confusing. I’ll probably break a lot of bookmarks and am expecting angry emails already. Ah well, such is life.
SDL Synergy follow-up
A short while back, I explained how I started to use SDL Synergy to manage my multilingual projects. Back then I realized that I need to use the “packages” function in order to really utilize the functions. I was a little uncomfortable with this because I don’t really like to impose a new process on my freelancers, so I actually asked them what they think and how comfortable they are working with those files. Well, they said it is no big deal and one actually replied “Don’t worry, most of the projects I work on are more painful!” - I take that as a compliment. I have only used the packages with my two main translators though, but that is simply because nothing has come up for my “rare” languages.
Now it’s almost 3 weeks later, and I still like it. It really is a lot faster for me to process the files for translation and receiving back the return packages is also very easy. I am so happy that I don’t have to switch back and forth between the different translation memories anymore.
Does anyone else receive packages from clients? How do you like working with them?