Company name:

Terra Pacific, Inc., an LFI Company

Address:

230 SW 3rd Street Third Floor

Corvallis, OR 97333

Phone number:

541-766-1111

Fax number:

541-766-1112

Website:

n/a

Contact person (for reference use):

Mike McPherson

Profile of contact person:

Vice President, Client Services

E-mail of contact person:

Company's main business activities:

Localization, translation, technical writing, information design

Company's main expertise:

Performing all of the above activities for IT companies

Business segment (US SIC):

Number of employees:

25

Number of offices:

2

Headquarters:

Corvallis, Oregon, USA

Subsidiaries:

Terra Pacific is part of the LFI Group, which is based in Boston. LFI is a global network of companies with more than 750 linguists in 42 countries.

Annual Sales:

$3.2 million

Percentage of business from international sales:

n/a

Do you track translation as a separate budget item?

n/a

Is translation the main business or a business sector?

Localization is our primary business

What is the motivation to translate?

n/a

Market demand?

n/a

Competitive advantage?

n/a

Regulatory requirements?

n/a

Else?

n/a

Total number of languages that are translated:

19

Which are these languages?

French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Czech, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai

Is translation performed in-house or outsourced?

Combination

Number of in-house translators:

10

Number of outside translators:

250 for Terra Pacific (750 for LFI as a whole)

Number of outside agencies:

n/a

What type is the translated material of?

IT-related: software, firmware, help, web content (HTML), manuals, marketing material

Which are the file formats?

Varied: All industry standard (Word docs, Frame, Quark, PageMaker, SGML, HTML, RTF, etc.)

Is the source material generated in-house?

Generally not. On some projects, Terra Pacific also develops the source text.

How many updates of translation material do you usually have within one project cycle?

Varies greatly

Which steps are involved in the translation workflow?

Number of words/pages annually:

400,000 words

Which software packages do you use?

The better question is: “what don’t we use” ;-). We use all industry standard applications plus whatever our clients request (Word, Frame, Quark, PageMaker, Author Editor (SGML), Illustrator, Photoshop, PowerPoint, CorelDRAW, Help QA, HTML QA, Visual Studio, Multilizer, Install Shield East/West, RoboHelp, etc.

We are high-level MSDN subscribers and test/QA localized software in various native Windows (95/98/NT) and Mac (7.6x—8.1) operating systems

(Euro and Asian)

Which time frames are necessary?

Clients always want it yesterday!

Do you have a backlog of untranslated material?

No

What is the internal cost of translation?

n/a

Which was your impetus to consider translation memory technology?

Overall goal: improve client service, consistency, and efficiency,

Subgoals: improve term consistency, shorten schedules, and reduce costs.

Translation consistency (between versions)?

Yes.

Consistency of terminology?

Yes.

Recycling control?

Trados offered a fast, sophisticated interface for leveraging translations.

Budget considerations?

Somewhat of a factor, but only on large, repetitive documentation projects. However any reduction to a client can offer competitive advantage

How did you first get to know about translation tools?

Through contact with Mark Berry several years ago at an industry trade show; more recently through project managers who had previously worked as translators and had used the WorkBench

Which was the biggest "pain" that made you consider using tools?

Trying to use Word to leverage repetitive text and the lack of fuzzy matching capabilities and other sophisticated features.

Did you evaluate other translation tools on the market before purchasing TRADOS tools?

Yes. We evaluated Transit and IBM TM2.

How did you evaluate TRADOS tools?

With our project managers who had previously worked with Trados tools. They analyzed our workload, work flow, and leverage opportunities.

Selection methodology?

It seemed to work well so we bought it! 

Benchmarking?

None required. Benefits were immediately obvious.

Which was the functionality / property of Trados tools that had highest priority when comparing to other tools on the market?

Concordance, fuzzy matching capabilities, the fact that the Trados was likely to become the industry standard

Is the integration of Trados tools in MS Word important for you?

Yes, extremely important

Number of words/pages annually:

700,000 words annually (two years after implementation)

Did you see any changes to the necessary time frames?

Yes. Schedules are now more compressed.

Do you have any backlog of untranslated materials?

No, but we do have a backlog of translations not in memory. We are remedying this with WinAlign.

Did you see changes to the internal cost of translation?

Yes.

Which TRADOS tools do you use?

WorkBench, MultiTerm, ITP Filter Pack, WinAlign, S-Tagger

Which are the steps performed with TRADOS Tools?

Analysis, translation, review (Workbench), glossary management (Multiterm), pre-processing (ITP Filter Pack, S-Tagger), and leveraging from old translations (WinAlign)

Of what format are the documents translated with TRADOS tools?

60 percent Word, 30 percent Frame, 10 percent Quark, SGML, others

Did you have legacy materials?

Yes

Volume:

500,000 words

File format:

Various: mostly Word and Frame

Are you able to recycle between different file formats (e.g. RTF Help – FrameMaker, or HTML and Word files etc)?

Yes. However we are still working through tag (internal) issues. I believe we will be using Tag Editor to facilitate this.

Which is the percentage of translators using the tools interactively compared to those using pre-translated files?

All in-house translators use interactively; 90 percent of our contract translators use interactively.

Interactive use:

Use of pre-translated files:

Does anyone outside of the translation department use TRADOS tools?

One of our clients uses Trados for controlling English development

If yes, which tools?

WorkBench, MultiTerm

If yes, for what purpose?

see above

Do your technical writers use any of the TRADOS tools?

Not in-house

Did you receive training?

Yes.

How many people?

6

Which products?

WorkBench, MultiTerm

How useful was the training to you?

8 on a scale of 1-10.

Did it meet your expectations?

Yes.

Learning curve?

Moderately steep to fully exploit it’s features

Do you think the training saved you time? If so, how much?

40 person hours

How long did full implementation cycle take?

six months

How long did it take until the investment in TRADOS tools was recovered?

six months (we bought several site licenses)

What was considered in the calculation of the ROI?

Not formally determined

Can you quantify the impact of TRADOS tools on the following?

Terminology:

Much improved consistency.

Throughput:

Yes.

Time to market:

n/a

Did you see any changes to

Pricing policy?

Yes. Price reductions to clients for leveraged material.

Marketing strategy?

Savvy clients usually assume a localization firm has the linguistic skills; they want to know your tools knowledge and experience. Trados is an important part of our sales presentations to key clients.

Quoting?

As needed, the benefits of Trados are noted in our proposals.

Did you see any changes to your translation workflow due to the implementation of TRADOS tools?

Shorter overall cycles, easier to “synch” translations from different translators on large projects; easier to handle simple updates internally, instead of sending out to contract translators.

Which ones?

Which one is the most important specific feature of the tools in your workflow?

File analysis has had the most significant effect on our internal workflow

Did you get any remarkable feedback from customers on the use of tools?

They are most happy about the cost savings.

Do you experience a competitive advantage after implementing the tools?

Yes.

Which would you consider the major benefit of the implementation of TRADOS tools in your company?

Increased level of service/innovations for clients.