2009 May | The Global Connect

Global Strategies: Watch Your Language

You’ve just brought home a brand-new component to plug into your home theater. Once you get past all the plastic wrap, Styrofoam, and cardboard, you find a sleek, high-tech, high-touch design. Now it’s time to install it.

Ten years ago, you would have found an installation guide poorly translated from Japanese or Korean and a confusing display that wasn’t far removed from the original Asian offering. Today, you’ll probably find a glossy, nicely produced, readable owner’s manual and an electronic dashboard that may be usable without a degree in software engineering.

Welcome to the world of global brands. Companies that want to sell their products in other markets invest in “localizing” them to the language and user expectations of their target markets. If they do it right, you won’t even know that the product wasn’t designed for you and you alone. (If they don’t, you’ll be spending time calling customer support or trolling message boards for kindred souls with similar problems.)

Buyers want products they can understand

This need to localize isn’t unique to consumer products; it crosses a wide range of goods and services. At Common Sense Advisory, we have long tracked this product requirement. In 2006, we asked 2,430 consumers in eight non-English-speaking countries about their language and usage preferences for Web sites. The answer was unequivocal: they wanted information, user interfaces, and payment methods that they could read, use, and understand, not English.

More recently, we extended this inquiry to corporate software buyers, both the kind you use on your desktop at work and the heavy-duty enterprise solutions that power supply chains, financial institutions, and corporate operations. This time, we asked 351 buyers in eight non-Anglophone countries about their buying preferences.

We think this survey has broader implications for global sales and should be interesting even if you don’t buy or sell software. Think about the things you do buy or sell. They are marketed either online, in-person, or in the mass media, so the marketers have to attract the prospective buyers’ attention in selling propositions that make sense to them.

Think office equipment, machine tools, anything you might drive or fly, medical devices, and a bunch of other gear. Then consider what makes up these products. Each has an electronic user interface, comes with lots of documentation, and may require post-sales technical support. In many ways, from initial marketing to post-sales support, these products are similar to software.

To measure the localization requirements for business products, we selected a cross-section of countries around the world, aiming for a representative mix of markets for which companies frequently adapt their products (France, Germany, Japan, and Spain), attractive developing markets (China and Russia), and locales for which English is often thought to be sufficient for most offerings (Sweden).

Unlocalized products cost more to buy, maintain, and enhance

One of the most common refrains we hear from software vendors and enterprise planners is that their foreign buyers and developers can handle English. Some go so far as to say, “Our administrators and application developers can get along just fine with English, thank you.” How valid is this point of view?

At Common Sense Advisory, we have long held this position to be suspect. We talk a lot with companies around the world and find that many employ lots of English-speaking staff; English may even be the “official” corporate language. But when we probe deeper, we hear about the increased expense of running English-only products.

They tend to pay more for bilingual developers and to provide support and training for English-language products. Furthermore, the availability of fully trained, bilingual staff might be lower in a given country, raising the total cost of ownership for that product. We find that this English-only “tax” rises as you go further south or east in Europe or head off to Asia.

What’s the solution? We always argue for buying localized software; that is, products with interfaces and documentation that have been translated and features that have been adapted to the business, cultural, or logistical needs of its target markets. This capability lowers the cost of developing, deploying, and managing a multinational or local business.

Deploying the right tools to the right people in the right countries is the goal of other corporate initiatives like customer relationship management, personalization, and Web site globalization. Why shouldn’t internal employees benefit from the same intention to provide tailored information and interfaces?

The need for localization spans the entire buying cycle

We asked our respondents about eight factors in the buying cycle in which localization plays a role. The initial decision to purchase a given product over another begins with marketing literature and technical specifications. Usability enters the equation, with both user interface and product documentation. Technical support rounds out the buying cycle for when things don’t quite work the way the manual says they should.

We asked our survey respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, “Having printed marketing and other collateral material in my language makes my organization more likely to purchase a software product.” More than 80% of respondents told us they agree with that statement.

As we expected, the outlier was Sweden, with just 60% of respondents preferring marketing materials in their own language. That means when marketers accept the conventional wisdom that English is enough for Sweden, they still leave three out of five buyers on the outside looking in. That’s not good for long-term sales. The other seven countries all came in at 80% or higher.

We also asked about the desirability of adapting the product interfaces to the linguistic, business, logistical, and cultural nuances of the country in which it is sold. This process involves a range of system components: the end-user interface, server and Web-based software, and application development tools. Eighty percent or more of our eight-country sample prefer a localized user interface and documentation in their own language for these components.

Proficiency influences purchase decisions

Our survey respondents told us that having information in their languages, from first contact to post-sales support, made them more likely to purchase a product. We found that up to two-thirds of potential users lack the language skills required to use English-language software.

Then we combined the various components that make up a product offering (translated information, localized zsoftware, and in-language technical support) to create an index of purchasing “desirability” from a localization perspective. The numbers range from four out of five in Sweden to nearly everyone in Germany, Russia, and Spain to all buyers in Brazil, China, France, and Japan.

Once we did the math across our eight countries, user groups, and components, we had no doubt that localization matters. Without adapting products to local needs, manufacturers leave anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of their audience not able to take full advantage of the software they’re using and causing additional support burdens to their companies, thus increasing the total cost of ownership.

Our survey tells us that most business buyers will not give full consideration to a product unless it has been localized from top to bottom. That means that products without translated materials stand just a one-in-five chance of making it to the short list. Can you afford to ignore 80% of your potential market?

American Executive

Survey response coding: Human vs. Machine

Extracting pertinent data from open-ended responses can be time-consuming and costly for companies involved in market research. International research presents the extra layer of complexity associated with handling multi-lingual responses. One method of cutting costs and data processing time is to assign a code to frequently-recurring answers from a ‘code-frame’. The need for back-translation of the foreign verbatims to English is therefore completely eliminated as the output of the coding process facilitates easy data analysis.

The process of coding has typically been performed manually because verbatim responses can often be heavy with synonyms and colloquial language making any automated process prone to mis-interpretation errors. As recurring answers are identified the code-frame can be easily expanded upon. For multi-lingual verbatims, coders should only analyse responses written in their native tongues. If required to construct code-frames then they collaborate closely with the researchers conducting the study and end-users to ensure these frames are specifically tailored to the objectives of the research. Without close collaboration between coders, researchers and end-users, responses may be categorised too broadly, for instance, low price and value for money responses may be grouped together, but the client may see them as distinct issues and wish for them to be coded separately.

With very large data samples, manual coding can still be a time-consuming task. The coding can be split up between several coders to speed up the process but this introduces consistency problems. To control quality it’s necessary to have an independent linguist running secondary checks on the coded responses to identify inconsistencies. It is optimal for the independent linguist to be involved at the commencement of work and for them to be closely overseeing all coding activity to spot errors or deviations at an early stage. This method is shown to produce the most accurate data extraction results from studies assessing the conformity and precision of categorised responses.

In recent years, text analysis software has become available to make automated data extraction from large-scale survey responses feasible. Companies such as SPSS and SAS provide a suite of software solutions to partially automate aspects of the coding process and combine them with other functionalities used for market research analysis. Some products can also be integrated with machine translation products to analyse responses in certain foreign languages, although they still need to be closely scrutinised by linguists for quality. Other semi-automated products have been developed in-house by some large market-research companies as proprietary solutions.

However, software solutions are not without their disadvantages too. They typically involve high set-up costs both in terms of software and time spent training personnel in their use. For many small to medium-sized market research companies the initial investment alone is too great to warrant the purchase of a specific software product for survey coding. Many products also have on-going maintenance fees and limits on the total number of survey responses that can be coded.

Time spent preparing the software to analyse a project’s data can also be onerous. The researcher must specify a host of different parameters, such as how the system should construct codes and the rules/exceptions that need to be followed. A researcher must also take the time to place different permutations of each word or phrase into the system to counter inexact matching which can commonly occur. The researcher needs to have the training and technical expertise to operate the software effectively and be consistently using these skills in order to maintain familiarity with its correct operation.

Automated systems work best with simple data which is rarely found in Market Research questionnaires. Thus, problems arise as true open-ended responses which are fully coded through an automated system will usually contain ambiguous, incorrect and ill-formed data if the results are not evaluated by a human eye. Unfortunately, no automated coding system is able to judge the subtle nuances, slang, abbreviations, spelling errors and emotion icons which arise in research verbatim.

Coding survey responses is the fine line between the subjective and the literal. Computer automated systems can save time in the long-term for firms handling large samples of data. However, they require trained personnel to operate and ‘eyeball’ responses as they are not good at determining context. Manual coding, although more time-consuming for projects exceeding 10,000 responses, captures more accurate and consistent research results.

For press and media enquiries please contact:

Rachel Hoy

T: 0207 940 8108

E: rhoy@languageconnect.net

W: www.languageconnect.net

Health Care Consumers Go Global with Medical Tourism

This week, a 66-year-old British woman made international headlines for her role as the oldest mother-to-be on record. When her wish for a bundle of joy went unfulfilled in the United Kingdom due to her age, she turned to health care providers in Ukraine, where the message of her desire for a baby was received loud and clear.

Medical tourism is big business in an array of countries:

Thailand. As the top destination for medical tourism, Thailand treated 1.2 million patients who traveled from other countries for health care services in 2006.
Brazil. This nation has become a hotspot for medical treatment, especially cosmetic surgeries – its market for plastic surgery is one of the largest in the world.
Malaysia. Medical tourists seek a wide variety of medical procedures in Malaysia, including cardiac, dental and plastic surgeries. The Association of Private Hospitals in Malaysia reports US$59 million in revenue from foreigners seeking healthcare services in 2006.
India. Looking for lower-cost cardiac and orthopedic procedures, half a million foreign patients visited India in 2005 to obtain health care services. The country is predicted to rake in US$2.2 billion in annual revenue from medical tourism by 2012.
Panama. Per the National Center for Policy Analysis, costs of surgeries in Panama are 40 to 70 percent lower than in the United States.
Poland. The country is one of the world’s most popular destinations for “dental holidays,” especially for patients from the UK, since the cost of dental work there can be as little as 40 percent of the prices in Britain.

More and more nations are getting in on the medical tourism game, competing largely for British pounds and American dollars– these two nations produce the largest numbers of medical-procedure-seeking globetrotters. But what’s all this got to do with language?

Quite a lot, actually. Medical jargon in one’s native tongue can be confusing enough for the average person. Traveling to another country — one where both the culture and local language are unfamiliar — can present communication challenges for many patients. Here are some of the ways in which the booming medical tourism industry may affect the language services market:

Language testing. Patients will want assurance that providers can speak with them in their native languages. Facilities that can prove their staff are highly skilled in other languages — for example, holding a “superior” level rating on a language proficiency test — will have an edge over competitors.
Interpreting services. Health care staff that do not share a common language with patients may rely on interpreting services — in person, via video, and over the phone. Companies such as CallUma and Language Line already offer telephone interpreting services specifically for consumers. Meanwhile, video interpreting is becoming more common at health care facilities in places like Thailand.
Written translations. Patients and clinicians will need translated copies of medical records, results from diagnostic tests, lab results, discharge instructions, and other documents — both for purposes of preventing complications for the overseas procedures, and for relaying this critical information to primary care providers back home.

The only problem? Most language services providers are geared more toward the needs of corporate buyers than to the needs of individuals, so it’s doubtful that they will be clamoring to launch business-to-consumer marketing campaigns anytime soon.

Instead, we predict that savvy medical facilities across the globe will seek to differentiate themselves by boosting the diversity and quality of language services they make available to their prospective patients. After all, the potential for confusion even between monolingual medical terms — such as aphagia/aphasia, pleuritis/pruritus, and vesical/vesicle — is one that poses risk. An investment in language services may just be a welcome antidote.

The Global Watch Tower

Foreign nationals at higher risk of injury

FOREIGN NATIONALS have a much higher risk of sustaining a work-related injury than their Irish colleagues, newly-published research has found.

A study of people requiring plastic surgery treatment for occupational injuries at a major Dublin teaching hospital between August 2006 and February 2007 found that 40 per cent were foreign nationals even though workers born abroad account for just 9 per cent of the total workforce in the Republic.

Dr CC Davidson and Mr David Orr, plastic surgeons at St James’s Hospital, Dublin, analysed 201 injuries identified over the six-month period.

Some 82 of these injuries were sustained by workers in the construction industry, about two-thirds of which involved foreign nationals.

Manufacturing, hotels and restaurants and the agriculture and fisheries sectors were the next most common areas of employment in which injuries were recorded.

Significantly, 63 per cent of foreign nationals were working in different jobs to those they had in their native country.

The researchers also found that the foreign workers sustained more severe injuries than Irish employees.

More than 50 per cent of foreign nationals required hospital admission, including five individuals who suffered the amputation of a complete digit.

A young Polish national treated at St James’s suffered an amputation of his thumb and index finger on his first day at work here.

In total, 12 foreign national workers were found to have severe hand injuries, including tendon and nerve damage. Burn injuries, in both Irish and foreign nationals, were also common.

The study, published in the current issue of the Irish Medical Journal (IMJ), found that most of the foreign nationals injured were from the new EU accession states. These immigrants have been eligible to work here since the union’s expansion in May 2004. A smaller number of workers from Asia and Africa were injured.

“The injured foreign national workers in our study were a younger cohort with less time spent in their current positions at the time of injury when compared with the Irish workers”, the authors noted. Specifically, they identified former shop assistants working in the construction industry, car salesmen employed as carpenters and college students working as chefs.

Commenting on what might be done to reduce the level of workplace injury among foreign nationals, the authors said, “freeing up of labour markets should be paralleled by specific training requirements for potentially hazardous jobs”.

“Adequate language skills or translation facilities may need to be part of such regulation in order to protect vulnerable migrant workers.”

Irish Times

Government to run second translation unit

THE GOVERNMENT is to run two separate language units for translating primary and secondary legislation from English to Irish.

The post of director for the second of the two units has been advertised, and the recruitment decision predates the public service jobs embargo, according to the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

The new Rannán Seirbhisí Aistriúcháin will translate secondary legislation, such as statutory instruments, while an existing Rannóg an Aistriúcháin will continue to produce Irish versions of primary legislation, it says.

The director of services for the new rannán will be paid between €97,000 and €120,000, and Nuacht TG4 reported it will carry an allowance of €13,000. Translators will be sought, but the department says it is envisaged that some will be on contract.

The Houses of the Oireachtas communications unit has said funding for the new unit will come from “within existing allocations”.

The intention is “to develop the capacity of the private sector to provide outsourced translation services at the requisite standard and to meet needs by a mixture of staff recruitment, outsourcing to the private sector and providing advisory and support services to departments and other rule-making authorities”, it has said.

The unit will tackle a large backlog of statutory instruments from 1993 to 2004 – some 46,000 pages – which require translation.

The existing rannóg, set up after the 2003 Official Languages Act, will continue to focus on primary legislation. It costs just over €1.3 million annually and employs 17 translators. This unit also produces order papers and minutes of proceedings for both Houses of the Oireachtas, along with simultaneous translation services for both Houses and one Oireachtas committee. The second unit owes its origins to a High Court ruling in a case taken by Dublin-based solicitor Pól Ó Murchú. The court found in 2004 that there was a constitutional responsibility to publish statutory instruments simultaneously in Irish and English. The Government appealed to the Supreme Court, citing issues relating to “the correct interpretation of specific constitutional and legislative provisions and in relation to the separation of powers as between the executive and the judicial arms of the State”.

“However, regardless of the outcome of the appeal, the Government has decided as a matter of principle that statutory instruments should be made available in Irish,” it has said.

Irish Times

Testing for National Medical Interpreter Certification to Enter Pilot Phase

The National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters will begin the pilot phase of the performance exam that will be part of the testing for National Medical Interpreter Certification. Over the next few weeks, 300 interpreters will “test the test” designed to verify the ability of interpreters to apply their knowledge and skills in real-life medical interpreting scenarios. This process will provide additional input to the assessment tool’s design, allowing test developers to make final adjustments before its national implementation.

The National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters program, just founded jointly this year by Language Line® University and the International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA), will consist of a single “certification process” that will award to individuals the credential of “Certified Medical interpreter” (CMI) in a specific language. To qualify for the CMI credential, a medical interpreter will have to successfully pass the prerequisites, the National Board Written Exam, and the National Board Performance Exam.

“This new National Board is committed to bringing to fruition a national certification that recognizes the professional achievements necessary to provide quality language assistance in healthcare settings,” said Louis Provenzano, President and COO of Language Line Services. “Accurately assessing an interpreter’s knowledge and skills is essential and every measure has been taken to ensure that the National Board’s written and performance exams accomplish that goal.”

A call for subject matter experts and pilot participants was shared with attendees at the Third Annual National Medical Interpreter Certification Forum held on May 1, 2009, in Denver, Colorado, where an invitation was also extended to interpreter organizations to participate in the pilot. Medical interpreters interested in volunteering to take the written and performance exams should email info@certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org.

“I would certainly encourage interpreters to become part of this process,” advised Orlin Marquez, President of the Medical Interpreter Network of Georgia. “Certification has been a long time coming. We are thrilled that this effort is finally making significant progress, and we eagerly await a recognized national certification for the valuable services provided by medical interpreters on a daily basis.”

The National Board Written and Performance Exams were developed under the guidance of PSI Services, LLC, an industry-leading provider of professional testing services. Interpreter focus groups, a national job analysis survey, and input from subject matter experts helped define the test content outline in this highly complex statistical and scientific process. Test scoring guidelines were also established. A report on the test development and validation process will be provided following the analysis of the pilot results on the official National Board website at www.certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org.

“This pilot phase is a critical part of the test certification process as it is a key component in ensuring the reliability and validity of the test instruments,” said John Weiner, Chief Science Officer with PSI Services.

The test design team included active medical interpreters who hold medical degrees, professionals with medical interpreter test design experience, specialists with medical interpreter training development background and those with experience in establishing national interpreter standards, medical interpreting trainers, and testers with experience administering medical interpreter testing.

About the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters

The National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters will be a non-profit organization, formed from an independent group of industry professionals that represent all key stakeholder groups including professional medical interpreters, trainers, employers, and regulators. The Board will serve as the certifying entity and will be given independent authority over all essential certification decisions. It will not be responsible for accreditation of educational or training programs or courses of study leading to the certification. The formation and structure of the National Board of Certification will adhere to the standards and requirements for certification program governance mandated by the National Organization for Competency Assurance.

Earth Times

Video Interpreters Save Lives

Dr. Bruce Hensel reported on a potentially lifesaving video interpretation service for patients in hospitals throughout the country.

“I can tell you from experience, when patients don’t speak the same language as the doctor, life threatening problems can occur, even if you have a phone or staff interpreter around. I’ll show you why; this video service is personal, comforting, reduces liability and can be life saving for some patients,” Dr. Hensel said.

It is called “MARTI.” It is not a person..a computer or a video screen. MARTI is, in a sense, hundreds of people; And one of them is about to make a major difference in Maria Bocanegra’s life.

Maria is among millions of Americans who do not speak the same language as their doctors or nurses. In the past, Dr. Michael Chin would have tried to solve that problem with local staff who are not trained interpreters, or a telephone interpreter; But those methods have two potentially dangerous limitations, according to Dr. Michael Chin of Corona Medical Center: “We cannot know if the medical terminology has been translated correctly and we do not know if the patient really understands your translation so they can trust your care.”

MARTI, which stands for “my accessible real time trusted interpreter” uses two way video to solve both problems while adding the human touch.

Ken Rivers, the CEO of Corona Medical Center, says using a professional medical interpreter in this way makes an impact: “It’s a face with a voice, and when you bring that to the patients and the family members and they can see someone talk to them then they can feel that someone is communicating directly.”

Jeff Paugh from the Language Access Network says that 70% of all human communication is non-verbal, “So it is very important that when you talk to a patient you see the frowns, the sadness, the tears, the smiles, the grins, everything else…the arm movements, the hand movements. So, you can interpret what the patient is actually going through and feeling.”

The system’s interpreters are trained in translation and medical terminology and on call 24 hours a day 365 days a year

“We can do up to 150 different languages including American sign language,” Paugh said.

“Using the MARTI is very simple; push one button and MARTI will connect to Columbus, Ohio where the interpretation center is housed,” Dr. Hensel said.

Maria, who has diabetes, came in for hyperbaric treatment of a wound that wouldn’t heal; the blood tests, exam and therapy are complex.

MARTI helped Maria communicate her feelings and understand everything, according to her Brother-in-Law Fred Diaz, “Its just like talking to a person like someone in person. She feel a lot comfortable talking and she knows that that way she can understand what the doctors or nurses are asking her. Patients are starting to feel that way all around the country. Numerous hospitals have portable MARTI’s now: Community medical centers like Corona Regional, and high end tertiary care facilities like Sloan Kettering and universities like Ohio State.

There are MARTI’s in intensive care units, children’s centers, labor and delivery, and in emergency rooms. In places like that; the video interpretation saves more than just time.

“It can be life saving; if we don’t understand what the patient is saying we can’t treat them,” Ohio State nurse Lisa Kozer said.

“MARTI’s creator came up with the idea when he and his brother were in Mexico. His brother got hurt but nearly died because he couldn’t speak Spanish. He was lucky and survived. His creation is now saving countless others. It’s already in numerous hospitals around the country and will soon be in more,” Dr. Hensel said.

NBC Los Angeles

Mayor banned from holding council meetings in Corsican language

The mayor of the Corsican village of Galéria has been told that he cannot hold council meetings in the Corsican language, which is closer to some Italian dialects to French. There has been long-running and often violent nationalist agitation on the Mediterranean island.

“They won’t tie my hands,” swore Galéria’s Mayor Daniel Rossi, whose plan to hold every other council meeting in Corsican has been ruled inadmissable by the Sub-Prefect of the Haute-Corse area, Marc Démulsant.

“The French language is the language of the Republic’s institutions,” Démulsant declared, adding that the decision is in breach of a law passed in 1994 on the use of the French language and article two of the French constitution.

“If this was put into practice, this proposal would not allow councillors and members of the public who do not speak Corsican to to participate fully in the debates,” the Sub-Prefect said.

Rossi’s plan was agreed five out of six councillors present at a meeting in April but five opposition councillors were not present. They accuse the mayor of trying to keep them out of the council’s proceedings.

“He doesn’t give a toss about saving the Corsican language,” opposition councillor Dominique Martinès told the AFP news agency. “He just wants to stop taking part in council debates.”

Martinès says that she understands Corsican but not well enough to follow complex debates.

“We would have liked to have been there when he pushed this motion through,’ she says. “But he always organises meetings on a weekday morning. I have my flock of goats to look after and I can’t be there at that time of day. It’s the same for my colleagues.”

Rossi, who describes himself as a “left-wing Gaullist”, says that Démulsant has misinterpreted the law and insists that he will press on with his plan.

He says meetings will be bilingual and that a French translation will be handed to regional authorities.

“It’s perfectly legal,” he claims. “I can conduct marriages in Corsican and draw up birth and death certificates in the language. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be the same for meetings.”

The French state has an uneasy relationship with regional languages and Corsican nationalists campaign for separation from France, sometimes resorting to bombings and assassination of representatives of the state.

Radio France Internationale

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