Really this has been a year of change, both in my own life and in the companies. When I look back this time last year it was a very different landscape. Many people were worried about Cloud technology and new translation tools. People were confused about the benefits of Cloud translation tools and whether they will actually take off in a big way. Well I can say that it looks like they will, at least we can see from our own business that many more people are interested and ready to see what is possible with new web based translation tools.
With XTM Cloud we launched a very powerful translation tool that anyone can use, from the freelancer to large global organizations.

It gives me and the whole XTM team such great satisfaction to see and know that XTM is making our customers lives easier, to see it in action in huge multi-million word projects with many translators working together on many, many files.

I am delighted to hear when a project manager says “Wow, I can manage my large projects this easily!” when they see XTM Workflow and realize that the old way of working was so tiresome.
I am proud when a translator tells me they have won more business because of the InDesign file support of .IDML and that they can manage more translators.
I am proud when an LSP customer of mine tells me that they have completed a million word project in the fastest time ever working with 30 concurrent translators, all sharing TM, Terminology. Eureka!
When I hear that real life progress, real life improvement is happening it makes all of us in the XTM family extremely glad to be working to build this company, in this industry at this time.
2011 is an exciting year for XTM International and I look forward to what the future brings for our customers, us and the whole industry.
We see the game changers and we are looking forward to walking into the future with our minds and hearts open to positive change through powerful and cutting edge technology.

Wishing everyone the very best for 2011. With a wish that many solve their problems, find hope and most importantly enjoy the company of those close to them; grow new friendships and develop knowledge for the enrichment of all.

Let’s make 2011 a year to remember!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This is an exciting time for us and to make it even better we are changing the company name and launching our new website. XML-INTL Ltd is now called XTM International. Everything else about us remains the same, i.e our hardworking and expert developers are still with us and making advanced translation solutions, so that has not changed.

Why change the name?

Well, although we have been called XML-INTL Ltd for several years, we felt that our company name should reflect our product name more closely. Our core product is XTM Suite so it makes sense to us to have our best asset in our company name. There is another reason as well: XTM International is easier to pronounce than XML-INTL Ltd and sounds nicer as well!

Over the past few months we have been busy developing our new logo and company website. The site has a new fresh look and includes lots of new material including several XTM demonstration videos.

These changes  marks a big step forward for us and is a precursor to the launch of our exciting new product XTM Cloud. It is XTM, but built for the freelancers and small business users. XTM Cloud is due for launch in early September.

To sum up, our new company name is XTM International and we have a new website www.xtm-intl.com . Come and check it out and let us know your thoughts on the new look and feel.

Thanks for reading! More information on XTM Cloud coming soon.

All the best,

Elliot Nedas

enedas@xtm-intl.com

prog·ress (prgrs, -rs, prgrs)
n.
1. Movement, as toward a goal; advance.
2. Development or growth: students who show progress.
3. Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization: a believer in human progress. See Synonyms at development.
4. A ceremonial journey made by a sovereign through his or her realm.

Each of these definitions warrants further commentary, but on this occasion I want to focus on the effects of progress on humanity. Both the positive and negative. Progress seems to be all pervasive in our modern dialectic, its importance always ever-present in the business, technical, sociological publications of our kind. But is progress always a good thing and does the race to this seeming perfection have any negative side effects. Lets choose a case study that we are all familiar with and see how the idea of progress can be corrupted and misused by those who would profit from selling a false ideology based on corrupt morals.

Charles Darwin was a big thinker, he managed to crystallise and focus the ideologies of many a scientist, philosopher and critical thinker into a tangible and readily understandable set of rules about life. He came up for a reason about why life progresses forward, why we change. Adaptation! We will see that adaptation is a critical faculty in progressive systems. Driving progress is the need for change and making systems flexible is fundamental to allowing change to happen. Darwin understood this, he saw the world around him and interpreted the subtle variances in species and attributed these variations to the inherent flexibility in life to adapt. Now, certain variables will always remain the same, but some will change. The strength of a successful system lies in the flexibility to change but also in its rigidity to extraneous variables. Take the strength of DNA against the damaging factors in the environment. Flexible yet rigid.

Think now to the misuse of grand ideas for those who would profit from distorting the truth of real progress and misusing the knowledge to create regression in humanity. Think Eugenics. It fits very neatly into the Darwinian ideology space and offered those with a preference for bigotry, arrogance and racism to generate realities which are wholly negative to true progress. This type of progress hijacking is an example of when a good idea is misused. Therefore we must be mindful of what we class as progress. Thankfully Eugenics is only practiced by those on the margins of humanity.

What can we class as positive progress?

I think the answer to this is easy and I will hazard a sentence at this ‘When the change in system of reality directly benefits most, if not all people in the system and leads directly to growth of humanity and the principles of life which connect us to each other’ your comments on this are welcome and I am certain better definitions can be created. Directing our energy to creating life affirming progressive scenarios would seem to be the thrust of positive progress. History is strewn with elegant and romantic statements such as the American Constitution, that eschew the very best of what we can imagine a society to be. Human Rights bills, successful vaccinations, the discovery of penicillin…all these things and many more are examples of positive progress. But take a close look and one can see that behind each is a veiled appetite for misuse.

The biological side of us is a highly advanced biological information unit, unimaginable biotechnology combined with the proclivity for self awareness is what we are. Here’s the big difference, our biology is more advanced than our current selected ideologies!

I have to leave this topic for today but I will continue to explore the ideas in subsequent posts.

Translating DITA can be challenging and advising your service providers and translators what to do is often harder than it should be. The good news is that translating DITA need not be a nightmare. Technical writers need to understand how translators think
and translators need to understand how technical writers write. In the middle of this is DITA.

Starting with an introduction on the difficulties faced and leading into
a case study on how DITA translation is managed successfully; by using
the power of DITA, in combination with a CMS and translation memory
system. In brief, you will see that effective DITA translation allows
you to do more translation in less time and with more consistent
results.

http://www.cm-strategies.com/2010/index.htm

As you can gather the theme was DITA, how it’s used, how best to use it, how not to use it. With a plethora of intriguing presentations from experts in the field I didn’t find myself at a loss at all. I must congratulate JoAnn Hackos on putting on a fantastic event and being an impeccable host to all of us. Possibly one of the best conferences I have attended this year.

On a personal note, I gave a presentation on DITA EDEN (thought up by Andy Zydron, CTO of XML-INTL) which is a simplified version of DITA. DITA EDEN in theory will reduce the costs and implementation times associated with a DITA implementation, which should ideally increase the uptake of DITA in the community. For more info on DITA EDEN please contact me enedas@xml-intl.com . There was a positive response overall and the questions from the attendees addressed the concerns of how best to simplify DITA, without reducing its effectiveness.

I must also make a special thanks to two particular delegates who provided me with some much sought after guidance and advice during the event. Thank you, you know who you are.

I will be following up this post with a more detailed account of DITA EDEN.

Thanks for reading.

Elliot

The XTM Suite delivers a complete range of tools for the translator, reviewer and project manager via the web. In AMD’s case, the XTM Suite will be tightly integrated with their existing Content Management System, the DITA CMS Framework from IXIASOFT. XML Int’l is working on integrating the XTM Suite tools with this CMS to provide its users access to powerful translation memory tools directly within the system. As a result, AMD will be able to maximize their reuse strategy and continue to drive down localization costs.

Global product releases depend on consistent, localized product documentation that is produced on-time and on-budget. XTM is XML-based, fundamentally using industry-led Open Standards instead of the proprietary file formats common to other translation systems. Combined with AMD’s CMS system, the XTM Suite will facilitate much greater leverage of the company’s existing Translation Memory assets, and its workflow will reduce the amount of time AMD QA staff spends administrating work with Localization Service Providers – all potentially resulting in direct cost savings for AMD.

“We chose XTM to integrate with our CMS because it is an XML based solution, non-proprietary and that they are willing and excited to work with our CMS vendor,” said Keith Schengili-Roberts, the Manager for Documentation & Localization at AMD.
“XTM’s cutting-edge, standards based translation management technology is designed to allow us to streamline our localization process. We spent the better part of a year assessing potential vendors, and we found XTM Suite to be the most cost effective solution for our needs.”

“We are extremely proud to be supplying AMD with our translation tool, XTM. It is a positive endorsement of our technology that they selected it for the critical job of product and engineering documentation localization. Managing localized content directly from within the DITA CMS Framework makes perfect sense as it improves content reuse and ensures an efficient delivery of translated content” said Elliot Nedas, Business Development Manager, at XML-INTL.

This is the one I hinted to a few days ago All of us in the XTM team are extremely proud that the fruit of our labours has been selected. Thanks.

More info to follow.

Global product release is a delicate process, requiring responsive teams armed with stable technology to smoothly facilitate localization. However, traditional tools sometimes don’t do the trick, especially when the content is XML! The situation was unbearable. Files were being sent out of the system needlessly and precious time was slipping between the sleek facade of zero & ones. A new system was needed, a new way to translate the critical information held deep within the CMS and to enable translation from within the CMS. The client didn’t want to manually extract the information, change format and send out for translation. They wanted to have the content translated in vitro. Content management systems are most useful and save an enormous amount of time. But what if you have a need to translate your content? What are the options open to you? They are in fact pretty good and XTM Suite, with a modular architecture, built on Industry Standards is easily integrated into CMS.

The documentation team has product information that is constantly changing, which they need to translate into over 30 languages on a regular basis. Global product releases depend on consistent, localized product documentation that is produced on-time and on-budget. The existing desktop/manual process based localization model just was not cutting the mustard, so they had to look elsewhere. A web browser-based tool made sense, native XML, native JAVA. Based on Industry Standards and conforming to them. Always updated and user focused. We were selected over our competitors for a few good reasons. The choice was clear, and XTM won. In this case.

1) XTM utilises XML natively.

2) Fundamentally using industry-led Open Standards instead of the proprietary file formats common to other translation systems.

3)  Easily combined with a CMS’s system, the XTM Suite  facilitates much greater leverage of existing Translation Memory assets.

And happy to work with CMS vendors to combine solutions.

4) Workflow tool will reduce the amount of time QA people spend on administrating work  – all resulting in direct cost savings for the end client.

5) The XTM solution is affordable!

The XTM Suite is the ideal accompaniment to a content management system if your organization has localization requirements and certainly so for DITA & XML based ones. If you are looking for a way to leverage your translatable content and cut costs and save more time to umm perhaps write more content then get in touch with us. We want to hear from you!

More details about this particular customer to follow. A white paper is on the cards.

Contact me for more info on how we are helping our customers to translate their content more intelligently and creatively. The power is in your hands!

info@xml-intl.com

www.xml-intl.com

XTM

But

Remember this rhyme and things should be fine, just make sure you choose the right battles for the right time.

In management you need to make sure that you keep things in perspective and learn when to step back. Knowing what battles to fight and the best methods to use is a critical skill, which if used correctly will lead to improved morale and greater belief from the team.

Just a quick one for today.

To sum up, XTM is a tool based on a idealised framework, drawing on the Open Standards, Open API, web based technology which modern translation agencies seem to want, need and demand. The fact that translators can use the XTM Editor for free is a big bonus and this highlights the fact that many translators don’t want to buy tools, they just want to translate. The overall response to XTM was very positive and I had the privilege of giving several demonstrations on the day. The future is very exciting and I am glad that XTM will be a part of that translation technology future.

For more information on XTM please contact me enedas@xml-intl.com or go to www.xml-intl.com