1. Challenges vs Benefits! General Manager – Saudisoft Co. Ltd.
Adding a New Language?
Challenges vs Benefits!
By: Wafaa Mohiy
General Manager – Saudisoft Co. Ltd.

2. The Story Introduction Rising Actions Climax Resolution The End!
The idea behind the session is to share the experience that we went through for supporting languages other than our core competency language. Will go through how we started, obstacles, challenges and how did we manage to run concurrent projects for more than 20 languages at the same time.

3. Introduction …
Industry Snapshot - GALA!
Total GALA LSP members: 338
SLV GALA members: 61
“A dozen member companies are self-identified as “RLVs” – reaching just beyond a single language, sometimes to two or
three.”
Laura Brandon, Executive Director Globalization and Localization Association

4. Introduction … The story begins with a simple question!
Can you support other languages?
Do you have resources who can translate into “Chadian Arabic”?! What about Chadian French!!
What about other Arabic Script Languages you can offer?!!
Would it be a problem to allocate resources for rare language like “Ewe”?
It always start by existing or even potential client asking this unexpected question. From our comfort zone, we usually expected a question about the Arabic variation like what is the difference between Arabic SA and Arabic EG? But asking about Kurdish, Farsi as other Arabic script language or even African the typical answer was usually No!.

5. The Rising Actions… Repeated Questions! Different Clients!!
Same fear - Failing!
“No” did not seem to be wise answer!
As the question gets repeated, some internal questions were raised with major client asking for 11 languages. Why not?
Adding a new language was scary because simply we did not know what it takes or even if we should. We have strong experience in handling one language, would it be the same? What if we failed! How this will affect our relationship with our clients and our capabilities. Loosing business VS What it takes to successes.

6. Climax … Regional Does not mean comfort zone! Language Knowledge
Is it same experience?!
Tools?
We have decided to list all the fears/unknowns. New language is a new language. Even if it was spoken in your region, e.g. Kurdish. It is spoken in different regions and there are two scripts for the same language. Some languages you might now even know they exist; e.g., or you never met a person who really speaks the language. Thus Language knowledge is important.
We have strong experience in handling one language, would it be the same? Should we add more skills to our skillset?
Tools, do they support these languages?

7. Climax … Side effects! Resources!! Quality Skill Set
Scalability, stretching vs Risking existing resources
What if we could not support our clients with different services?
Not knowing the language might make the quality a nightmare
Should we add more resources? And in which areas??!

8. Resolution … Resources Find communicate Ask for Feedback Assess
Training
Ask for Feedback
Resources
Conferences (local), LI, Proz
SMS as important mean of communication in some areas!
Get reference for assessing and arbitrating to qualify

9. Resolution … Resources
Recognition
Commitment

10. Resolution … Resources
Freelance Vs. LSP

11. Resolution … Quality! Process Automate Measure Criteria Who Reference
3rd Party tools
Your own
Automate
3rd party tools
Human!
Measure

12. Resolution … Quality!

13. Resolution … Quality!

14. Resolution … Skillset! Analyze skills. Add Roles/Jobs
Automation for similar tasks
Decide on Service
Resource coordination
Engineering for Testing!
VO Studios!

15. Gains…
Responsiveness to your customers

16. The End … 15 African Languages 13 BiDi and ME languages/Dialects
22 Asian and Indic languages

17. The End …
scary