DigitalPersona partnered with Lingotek to translate their Human Metrics software to be delivered to a large client for use with a hardware product and needed to localize for 24 languages.

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DigitalPersona – Cost Savings, Complexity, Adaptability

Company Overview

DigitalPersona, Inc. is a global provider of authentication and endpoint-protection solutions that make security simple, practical and affordable for businesses of all sizes. The company helps enterprises, government agencies, custom application developers, and independent software vendors to efficiently address growing security, compliance and fraud-prevention demands. DigitalPersona’s award-winning technology is offered by market-leading computer manufacturers and solution providers around the world. For more information visit www.digitalpersona.com.

Challenge

DigitalPersona was working on advanced Human Metrics Verification software to be delivered to a large client for use with a hardware product and needed to localize it for 24 languages. Despite the complexity and size of the project, DigitalPersona was hoping to keep costs low and get the translation done for less than the industry’s going rate of 23 cents per word.

Not only was the sheer size and diversity of languages in the project a challenge, there were also technical issues. Specifically, DigitalPersona would be supplying some of the content in non-traditional formats. Part of the content would be provided in the form of software strings such as .RC/.MC files and some in the form of HTML files. While Lingotek software is capable of parsing and separating the content from the code in HTML files, as the project progressed, DigitalPersona decided that some of the HTML tags and attributes should also be localized.

Solution

DigitalPersona received bids for the project from

Lingotek and Lionbridge, a Language Service Provider they had used on previous projects. Lingotek came in with a bid 30% lower than the competitor for the HTML portion of the project and 10% lower for the software portion for a cumulative cost savings of 23%. As part of the bid, Lingotek offered to dedicate development resources to create the functionality to handle the unique .RC and .MC files.

The project took 5 weeks to complete and had a final cost of 17.6 cents per word, well below the industry’s going rate of 23 cents per word, representing a final savings of 23%.

Implementation

To handle the .RC/.MC files, Lingotek developed the ability to extract key-value pairs, translate them, and insert them back into the .RC/.MC files. Lingotek has native filters designed to parse HTML files and filter out text content for translation. However, part way through the translation process, DigitalPersona indicated that some of the HTML tags and attributes themselves needed to be translated in addition to the content of the HTML files. Lingotek responded quickly and added the ability for its software to handle the translation of the HTML tags and attributes.

The translation itself was managed using Lingotek Collaborative Translation Platform™ and utilized translators who were recruited from the extensive Lingotek network of translators. Once the content was uploaded, it was segmented into sentences and files were assigned to the translators. A Machine Translation (MT) was completed automatically and translators began the post-edit process to refine the initial machine translation. As the translation progressed, the Lingotek CTP grew smarter by using Translation Memories (TMs) – previously translated words and segments that are stored in a database as the content is translated and then suggested in real time as the translation progresses.

Using the Lingotek CTP Workbench, DigitalPersona and the project managers could see the progress of the project in real time. Reviewers could review translations in real time with sentence-level granularity as the project progressed rather than waiting until all the content was translated.

The translated content was returned to DigitalPersona in .RC/.MC files for the software portion and HTML files for the HTML portion.

Results / Metrics

The project took 5 weeks at the cost 17.6 cents per word, well below the industry’s going rate of 23 cents per word.

DigitalPersona was very pleased with the quality of the translation and with the responsiveness of the Lingotek development team in adapting to their unique needs.

Project Data

Languages: 24

Time to completion: 5 weeks

Cost: $46,455

Word Count: 263,453

Cost per word: $0.176

Industry Going Rate Per Word: $0.23

Cost Saving of 23% over industry going rate.

Source Content Format: .RC/.MC files, HTML files.

Platform: Collaborative Translation Platform (CTP)

About Lingotek

Lingotek is the industry-leading provider of Collaborative Translation Technology. By harnessing the power of communities, products and services can now be distributed around the world in the native language of each market, while simultaneously increasing product loyalty among users. The Lingotek Collaborative Translation Platform brings Machine Translation, Translation Memories and terminology management together with a social network to enable the social production of localized content. Lingotek puts you in business everywhere. More information is available at www.Lingotek.com.