FAQs

About Real Idea

Q. Where are Real Idea offices located?

A. Real Idea has offices in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States.

Q. In what languages does Real Idea specialize?

A. Real Idea provides translation services in the major Asian, European, and Middle Eastern languages through in-house specialists and longstanding partnerships with leading translation services around the globe.

Q. Who are Real Idea's major customers?

A. Our customers include leading companies such as Actuate, Adobe Systems, AutoDesk, Cognos, Corel, HP, Informix, Interwoven, Legato Systems, Lutris, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Novell, Samsung, Software.com, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, and WebMethods.

Q. What professional organizations does Real Idea belong to?

A. Real Idea is an active member of LISA (Localization Industrial Standard Association) and the Unicode consortium.

About localization and internationalization

Q. What is GILT?

A. Globalization, internationalization, localization and translation (GILT) are prominent areas in international business knowledge management. LISA (localization Industrial Standard Association) members represent the business professionals, customers, and global solution providers who play a leading role in this rapidly expanding area.

Q. How are globalization, internationalization, and localization defined?

A. Globalization (G11n) addresses the issues associated with making an enterprise truly global. For globalization of products and services, it means integrating internal and external business functions with marketing, sales, and customer support in the world market.

Internationalization (I18n) is the process of generalizing a product so that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the need for redesign. Internationalization takes place at the level of program design and document development.

Localization (L10n) is the process of making a product linguistically and culturally appropriate to the locale where it will be used.

Q. How does localization differ from translation?

A. The difference is primarily in scope. Localization involves the translation of manuals, help text, error messages, and other documentation, and as part of this effort, changes may be required to avoid unfortunate associations in the target language.

Localization also requires non-linguistic skills. On the software programming side, it may be necessary to change screen dialog boxes, field lengths, date, time and currency formats, delimiters for figures replaced, and icons and colors. Further, with bi-directional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew and double-byte character sets such as in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean it may be necessary to reprogram extensively to ensure that text and numerals display correctly.

On the content side, it is often necessary to change programs to conform to national and cultural norms. For example, in multimedia applications, the color, size, and shape of objects such as ambulance, buses, currency, mailboxes, taxis, and telephones vary from country to country. Dress codes may vary and symbols take on new significance. Similarly, mainstream business applications such as address databases and accounting packages require adaptation to the procedures and conventions of new environments.

Clearly, multi-language Web content and e-Business sites increase the complexity of enterprise globalization as well as the localization process.

Q. How does internationalization differ from localization?

A. Internationalization is the forerunner of localization. Internationalization is the process of designing and implementing a product to be as culturally and technically 'neutral' as possible-making it easy to localize for different cultures. Internationalization reduces the time and resources required for localization, saving producers money and improving their time-to-market. As with localization, language, technical, and content issues are involved. Project management and coordination also play a significant role. Internationalization has reached the state of refinement where software publishers can release 30 or more localized versions of a package within a month or two of the original version-a process known as 'sim-ship' (simultaneous shipment).

About Real Idea technologies and processes

Q. What operating system platforms does Real Idea support?

A. Real Idea supports Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, XP, Solaris, Linux, and Mac operating system platforms.

Q. Does Real Idea have secure Internet connectivity at all offices worldwide?

A. To protect the intellectual property of our customers, all our offices worldwide are equipped with secure broadband Internet connectivity. We use T1 to 512kbp leased lines with hardware and software network firewalls.

Q. Does Real Idea provide a secure FTP server for your customers?

A. Again, to protect the intellectual property of our customers, Real Idea provides a secure FTP server that transfers files at speeds greater than 512 kpgs.

Q. How do you manage localization projects?

A. At the beginning of a project, Real Idea assigns a General Project Manager (GPM) as a single point of contact. The GPM manages each localization Project Manager (PM), reporting project status and coordinating the master project.

Q. What techniques does Real Idea use to manage and control projects?

A. Real Idea has built a strong infrastructure and efficient workflow process to manage multi-lingual projects simultaneously while minimizing potential problems.

Real Idea has developed IBM Lotus Notes-based corporate groupware that reduces management costs and improves communication efficiency and accuracy through robust:

• Comprehensive project management workflow
• Version control
• File sharing
• Centralized glossary management
• Bug tracking and reporting
• Budget tracking

Q. How does Real Idea integrate staff into the project management process?

A. Real Ideas uses a proprietary training system to ensure all Real Idea linguists and software engineers follow our processes and quality control guidelines. New employees undergo a series of classes designed to help them master different localization tools and processes. In addition, Real Idea conducts ongoing training on technologies such as HTML, Man-Pages, XML, and SGML.

Q. What is Real Idea's approach to editing and proofreading translations?

A. Once a translation is complete, we edit and proofread in two phases. The first phase focuses on linguistic accuracy as well as consistency of terminology and style. The second phase focuses on technical accuracy and consistency of the user interface. During each phase, Real Idea staff uses a proprietary QA checklist to ensure high quality results.

Q. How does Real Idea leverage translations?

A. Real Idea uses standard translation memory tools such as Trados to analyze and manage repetitive strings, 100% matches, and fuzzy matches. These tools ensure translation consistency and achieve maximum productivity and cost savings for our customers.

Q. What software engineering, localization engineering, translation memory, terminology, leveraging, and localization QA tools does Real Idea use?

A. The following list contains some of the localization tools Real Idea uses:

• Translation -- Microsoft Office, Trados, Catalyst, UltraEdit, Passolo
• DTP -- MS Word, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, Acrobat
• Graphics -- Illustrator, Photoshop, CoreDraw
• Help Creation -- Microsoft Help Workshop, HelpQA, HTMLQA, RoboHelp, Webworks.

Q. How does Real Idea approach translation memory creation and management?

A. We normally use Trados to create, maintain, and manage translation memory. Once a Real Idea engineer sets up translation memory and new contents, all translators receive the correct files and begin the translation process on the Trados workbench. After the project is complete, we archive the translation memory into our version control system for a customer's next project release.

Q. How does Real Idea do localization (linguistic) testing?

A. Our test process includes the following steps:

Real Idea testing depends on our customers' build schedules and plans for the numbers of regression. Our test plan will present detailed testing milestones, if requested by a customer.

Q. How does Real Idea measure and report client and user satisfaction levels?

A. We measure customer satisfaction with a proprietary scorecard system, which collects feedback about our linguistic, engineering, DTP, and project management quality.

We ask our customers to grade us quarterly or at the end of a project on overall and detailed sub-categories. For example, we subdivide 'Linguistic quality' into 'Glossary consistency,' 'Translation accuracy', 'Translation style,' and 'Reviewing.' Real Idea upper management, project managers, and linguists review and discuss these scores with an eye to learning and improvement.

Q. What information does Real Idea need to prepare a project quote?

A. We need the following information:

• Do you plan to localize software resource user interface? If so, please provide the file types and word count for each file to be translated.
• Do you plan to localize online help? If so, please provide file types and word count for each file to be translated.
• Do you plan to localize printed documents? If so, please provide file type and word count of each file to be translated, page count of each book, and final delivery format you require.
• Do you need localized screens and graphics to be embedded into online help and printed documents? If so, please provide screen and graphic name and location in the online help and printed documents.
• Do you plan to use translation memory? If so, please provide your existing translation memory database.
• Do you need the vendor to perform functional and linguistic localization testing on the software? If so, please provide the platform and software running environment info, testing script and specification, and estimated testing hours.
• Please provide any other specific requirements from your software development and marketing team, such as tool usage, encodings, and data format.