I was Chairman of the Software Localisation Industry Group. We had been working with another group
to introduce Professional Certification for localisation. We needed it to pitch it to the industry: this article (published in Localisation Ireland)
was based on my speech.
Outside of the localisation industry, nobody knows what we do. Think of the times you're drawn into conversation with a stranger as you get your hair cut, sitting down on a plane or on a bus, and they ask what do you do?
How do you explain it to them?
The best reaction I've got so far is:
"Oh, you mean you turn dollar signs into pound signs!"
So I think there's a need to raise the public's awareness of what localisation is all about.
Why?
First, it's in all our interests to maintain Ireland's position as the centre of the localisation universe. Is this important?
Think back over the past few years: Frame has gone; Claris has gone. Recently some vendors relocated their engineering ops abroad. When does a drop become a river? When does a river become a flood?
Second, I think our professional profile within the software industry leaves something to be desired.
Professional certification provides us with an opportunity to achieve those goals. But it also gives each of us the potential for competitive advan-tage: whether you're an individual who wants to progress in your career path, or an subsidiary trying to con-vince your American parent that you provide value.
Professional certification provides a focus for raising your standards.
About two weeks ago I was looking through the jobs page - as you do! - and I came across an advert that read:
"Software Development House requires experienced testers for their development labs. Ideally people from a non-localisation background who want a fast moving career in testing and development."
Ideally people from a non-localisation background - I found that intriguing.
Why would a development company, desperate for testers, specifically exclude QA people with localisation experience? It made me curious, although I had my suspicions. So I was disappointed to have my suspi-cions confirmed. They were a devel-opment house, they said. They told me they wanted testers who under-stood how software was put together They wanted testers who could break the functionality of the product: to test software to destruction and beyond. They didn't want in their own words: "testers who only knew how to look at screens all day to see if they were laid out correctly".
Now I find that insulting to my people. Completely inaccurate. But that's one perception prevailing about our standards, or lack of them.
Then I noticed another advert. Here, the story was a little different. Its language and tone was breathtaking - exciting almost. Opportunities in localisation it flashed in 8 point times Roman. All you need, it gasped, is FAS, A+, CATT, MCPs, etc. etc.
A writing teacher once told me never to use the word etc. at the end of a sentence because it simply meant you couldn't think of anything else to list.
So here we have an advert that says you can get a job in this business if you have a certificate that falls under the classification of etc?
But the first ad looking for testers also suggested something else. The company was getting lots of applications from testers in the localisation business. It was offering a fast moving career in testing and development. There was a vague suggestion that the localisation people they met felt there was no future or fast-track career in experience, that's not the case.
A lot of my top team leads and managers came through the QA route.
So here we have another view of localisation - this time from within the professional software industry - that the job is simple, perhaps even superficial, with a vague hint that perhaps it doesn't challenge people.
That's certainly not my experience - nor yours, I Imagine.
So what has this got to do with certification?
Professional certification provides us with an opportunity to change that perspective within the software industry.
The more people I interview, the more people I speak to in the industry, the more it has led me to believe that perhaps sum of localisation knowledge in the country hasn't changed much over the past four years.
Yes, more people have come into the business, but in my experience that knowledge has become diluted. Everybody knows a little bit, but the passion and drive to understand all aspects of localisation seems to have dwindled. It's as though people feel they can get by with a little bit of knowledge. As tasks got simpler, and it became harder to recruit, we started lowering the entry barriers - in localisation.
Whether we are a publisher or a vendor; we still have a role to teach the US teams to write and structure their software so that we can localise it quickly and with a minimum of effort.
But where do we get that knowledge?
How can we guarantee consistency in what people know as they move through this industry?
Some people think localisation is a business of implementation - resizing, bug-fixing, documentation production and so on.
I disagree. Localisation is really about the business of influencing.
As a director of localisation, I need to hire people who can influence the development of our Canadian software so that it's localisation enabled.
How can they do that if they don't know what they are talking about?
That's why technical standards need to be kept high.
Professional certification helps provide a solution. It sets measurable, consistent standards that people have to meet.
I believe certification creates an opportunity to solve the recruitment and resourcing problem that persists in this industry. It opens the possibility of developing alternative resource us to bring people in from different backgrounds, different environments, rather than swapping our resources between companies.
Why do we need professional certification in this industry?
Three reasons:
