Our Analysts' Insights

In his short story “Library of Babel,” Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges describes a building of seemingly limitless extent that contains, in no particular order, every possible 410-page book that can be written using Roman letters. Stephen L. Peck’s novella A Short Stay in Hell is the narrative of an individual who has been condemned to wander a literal version of the library in search of the single book that best describes his life: When he finds it, he will be liberated from hell and allo...

Offering a website, mobile app, or enterprise application in another language can require a laborious and costly development project with specialized translation technology, workflows, and personnel. Some major brands have taken a simpler approach, instead relying on a translation proxy server that works alongside their websites or apps. In this model, the proxy intercepts requests to the application, determines the language, and then turns to a database of stored translations or to machine t...

Five or 10 years ago, most enterprises produced support documents, manuals, marketing, websites, videos, and other types of materials they then pushed out to the world for consumption by their audience. Although they might hear back from people who called in to support lines, this content usually disappeared into the ether where it either served its purpose or did not. CSA Research’s data points to a new trend: Content is becoming conversational. It is moving away from a publish-and-forget mode...

For many years now, localization managers at enterprises have known how they should create content tailored for particular markets, even if they haven't actually done it. Instead, the model that evolved in the 1990s invested in optimizing existing content for translation.

Turning something that's perceived as cheap or ugly into a more valuable or beautiful object has been the goal of alchemists through the centuries. Many languages have expressions that echo their quest to turn lead into gold. An English proverb maintains that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The French take a different animal to task, "On ne saurait faire d'une buse un épervier" – you can't turn a buzzard into a sparrow hawk. And a Russian might say ...