 This is the linguistics career launch session called translation project management and localization. I'm Nancy Frischberg. I'm going to be the moderator of this discussion. And Marcus Robinson is our zoom producer today and he's going to provide useful resources in the chat. So, one of the reasons we call it this long complicated name is that several people in this group have had paths through translation into localization, and others have come from a different direction. I'm really excited to hear about each of those paths from our panelists and present to you these options for career choices that you may have thought of like translation, or you may have never heard about before, like localization which turns out to be relatively related. So, she is from Salesforce, and she followed this path. And so we're going to hear something about how she had other employment before and got to where she is now. Devine had, and I worked together at Sun Microsystems about 20 years ago, and she pursued her specialization and internationalization, and then took on some other tasks as well. Recently, Muhammad Gaffarian, I'm very happy to make your acquaintance through this panel, and he also has had experience in translation managing translation projects. And so that's where the project management comes in but now is also interested in localization and has a different language combination from the other people here on the panel. So, without further ado, I'm going to let you each tell a little bit about your story as from a student to where you got to today. So let's make this kind of an abbreviated version then we'll poke into some of those pieces on the timeline as we go along. Who wants to start? Raffaella, you want to start? Sure. Thank you Nancy. Can you hear me well? Awesome. Thank you Nancy. Nice meeting you everyone. And thank you for the invitation today. So, as in short, I was born and raised in Osta Valley, which is a region in Italy on the border with France and Switzerland. So I grew up speaking Italian and also learning French from kindergarten kind of bilingual. And then when it was time to choose what to do in high school. I love grammar. And so I thought, maybe I want to learn more languages so I choose a high school that was specializing in languages and literatures. So I decided to study English, German and Latin. And then when it was time to go to university, I was still enjoying languages. And I had a couple of students from ex students from my high school, who were attending the well known program at University of Geneva in Switzerland. They came and shared how fun it was, how great school it was, how fun it was to live in Geneva, such an international place to live. And so I tried the admission exams, I succeeded and I started and I got an MA in translation from the University of Geneva, specialized in French English into Italian translation and specialized in financial and legal translation. And in short, when I was taking my postgraduate degrees in terminology and machine translation, I found a job, part time job in a financial software company in Geneva. And I started working there. You know, they, it was a small company, but they had their clients were big names, big banks, and so in Italy, and so they needed to translate. And now today I will say localized at the time I didn't know that it existed this word translate their documentation and software into Italian and that's how I started working for them. And I worked for them a few years. Again, I will go more into details later because it's a fun and interesting thing that I didn't know what localization was I didn't, I could barely use a computer at the time. And then in 97 I met my husband from San Francisco, we lived in Geneva for a while, and me still doing working in this company plus working as a freelance translator. And I send my resume to 200 translation agencies and I finally got five good customers that I kept over the years. And when I moved to San Francisco in 2003 to follow my husband. I basically brought my, my clients, you know I didn't change my cell phone. And so that was big help at the beginning. And then here in Silicon Valley, I found out that my skills, you know as a translator terminologies machine they, they were highly looked for right by by the tech industry and so I started working first as a freelance doing translation at Apple, you know as a contractor, and then I started working for a search engine. So if you guys remember ask.com the old ask chiefs. I was there. Italian specialist. And that's how really I got into localization more and more. And then I worked for them for years, then I got laid off, the company was not doing well. And then I started working at Cisco as a localization project manager for their French support side, and I was doing also machine translation. So basically teaching their hybrid system. So based on statistical how to improve some patterns for the French machine translation. And then, after that 10 years ago, I started working as Salesforce as as a localization program manager, I was responsible for all Salesforce content help release notes that guides. It's a gigantic program as you can imagine, you know, three major releases per year, you know, millions of words. And that's why, why am three years ago I became a people manager and I have a team, and I, I work with with everybody in the company because of course everybody needs localization. So this is a nutshell. Thank you for that very compressed view of a productive career so far. Alright, we'll dig into some of those bits as we go along. Muhammad tell me about your experience. Sure. Hello everyone. Nice to be here. Nice to see so many, so many nice faces be among fellow linguists. It's such a pleasure. Okay, so we're just sorry I think so I was born and raised in in Iran and and my native language is far see or Persian you've I think you've heard both. It's confusing which one's correct. People have different ideas but anyway, and you know the matter of language and English as a second language was with me of course, since childhood and I started learning English when I was six I guess so I, I, my background my, my academic career started from electrical engineering actually so I did my undergrad in electrical engineering in my own city in Iran. And then, you know, life took interesting turns and and I got into different stuff, activism and human rights mostly. And, and, you know, after a while I had to I had to leave the country I went to Turkey and I and I taught English as a second language in Turkey. And that was a, that was a very moving experience, you know, in so many aspects. And one of the most important aspects of it was was living in a cross linguistic environment and a cross cultural environment. And, and you know, having having the background of being a being a language enthusiast this this passion for language and linguistics kind of you know grew in me exponentially and and I think after and and so so after a while I got into the US. And, and I think during these years I've done numerous translation jobs freelance translation works from from into Persian. I think my first localization job in the US was was as a localization manager for a satellite based internet technology which was, which was aiming to reach to the areas that are censored and and don't have free access to internet and internet content and we would it was a new technology that was aiming to reach to those areas where internet is also expensive. And my job was to and part of the job was to package content and send it by a satellite to to to those areas and of course these content needed to be translated subtitled localized and ultimately package and broadcast it. And so so that part was a localize that that job was a localization manager and a community average coordinator. The second aspect which was the outreach coordinator brought me into this realm of communication and and and project management. And I think my kind of the turning point of my my career was this program management at at this nonprofit that that whose mission was really to expand civil liberties and human rights through technology and we would make mobile applications and technological tools for the purposes of human rights and civil liberties for Iran. And so that was a that was a that was a program management focused kind of job. But of course, you know for many of those tools we didn't have to reinvent the wheel right we could localize so so many so many existing tools. I can make one example for you so there is this very famous platform called fix my street started in in United Kingdom. And and grew like all over the world this is this is a platform where citizens can can report issues in their daily life to be heard by authorities and officials. Like, you know, it can start from a traffic pot pot hole or it could it could be like a traffic lights or whatever. And and relocalize this platform and this became a very popular platform in Iran. You know, and again it involves many localization aspects. And this is the same for many other platforms. So I think now now I want to take a step back and I told you about this this question of language being with me and that being nurtured and grew into more even philosophical questions and and I really at some point wanted to do a coursework in linguistics and that brought me in a very strange and interesting way to the University of Kentucky. And I, and I, and I've recently graduated from a masters of linguistics in the University of Kentucky. It was probably one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, you know, digging into linguistics and on so many fronts and so many, so many so many aspects of it. The interesting thing about linguistics is that it has so many branches that just, you know, tickle tickle your fancy and keep you going. So, so doing that, I think I pictured my career as a as a linguistic project manager or a linguistic program manager where my background and experience come together and, and, you know, things things could could very well match and in after my graduation, I think I focused my job search to to be a linguistic project manager and that that that happened for the most part I'm right now a software project manager at Johns as Nancy mentioned but the project that I'm managing has so many NLP and automatic speech recognition aspects. You know, and having that technical background. I was also very interested in computational linguistics and NLP. And, and, and right now, as I said, the project that I'm managing has has so many of those aspects and, and, and kind of it all worked out for me pretty pretty nicely and seamlessly so. Yeah, that that was, I'm sorry I rabble on. I stop here and I will be happy to get into more detail. On any of those. Good. And Monica has asked the question that I'm first going to that I know that we need to answer, but I'm going to let Andrea introduce herself so Monica great question for foregrounding I'm previewing where we're going to go soon. So let's hear from Andrea because I think she has a really different career path. Yes, it is a different career path. And funnily enough, as Mohammed said when he was a child, you know he was he was interested in certain things. And I, I was interested in language from a very young age, preschool age. I was very excited because where I grew up. They're in elementary school in. In the first grades, three and four that they grade grades three, four and five. They taught Spanish to the children I was really, really looking forward to learning Spanish in school. And my brother and sister, who are just a little bit older went through the program hating it all the way and I was really excited and by the time I got there they had abolished it, and I was incredibly disappointed. I had to learn some on my own so that so I wasn't able to start learning languages until junior high until seventh grade, I think, and I so I took up German, because there was some German speakers in my family or Germanic speakers in my family. So I took up German, and I continued with it through high school and also they offered for a little while Russian. I was really excited about that so I took up Russian in high school. Because there were, there were a lot of Russian workers nearby so they had the opportunity to have a teacher Russian come to our school that was really fortunate. So when I went to college. I was interested in computer science, but I also love languages. And so, one of the first courses I took was one artificial intelligence about natural language processing. This was a very long time ago, still very much. You know, sort of early on in the time of AI. I was looking into potentially. How could I combine my languages and my computer science into a major and linguistics basically fit that bill. So, I was able to linguistics was kind of a random studies major because they weren't enough courses in the major to to make up an entire major on its own. I was able to take several computer science courses, and many language courses, and I was thrilled. But I always knew I wanted to go into computer science I didn't know quite how I was going to combine them. Initially, I was just a standard programmer in insurance and then banking. It was really exciting. And then I was living in the Northeast, Northeastern US. And I decided that I wanted to go where the action was which was Silicon Valley. So I moved to California and found a job and the first job I found was a job as an internationalization program manager. Well, internationalization manager. And I got into the field of internationalization and I got to hire a programmer. And I got into the field of internationalization and I think Nancy you said that we would be getting into what these are later. Yes. So I won't. Yeah, so let's just, let's stick to your career path. So, basically that's where I stayed. I stayed in internationalization occasionally I would do a little localization program management as I switch from this company to that company but you know wasn't wasn't my thing. I really like to be, and when you find out what these are. It's on the engineering side it's much more rewarding, I think, to be on the internationalization side of things. So, I went from computer associates to various small companies and contractors to Microsoft and start up this and start up that and I was at Sun Microsystems for many, many years, probably the longest I was at any company was at Sun. And then I moved to England, and I did some several years of contract work for Yahoo, and then American Express. And then I had enough and I retired. Very good. So I'm an old retired lady now. Yay. Okay, so people are still potentially not clear on what localization is. And so maybe we should talk about all three things localization globalization internationalization, how they differ how they're the same. We have our vocabulary in common, or at least we know where the, the disconnects are between different definitions so jump in here I mean Wendy's offered a lovely, excuse me, a lovely definition in the chat. So Wendy how did you come up with that do you know that from your life experience or do you, did you find that somewhere on the net, and you're welcome to speak if you like. Okay, so let me read out loud for anybody who's not able to see the chat, perhaps somebody in the replay localization project management is managing the project from start to finish, including negotiating things about budget possibly recruiting and managing translators editors proofreaders and preparing final files for delivery. So, how do you our panelists feel about that definition, what would you like to add to it or revise. I like to add. Sorry, go ahead. I just think we need to go to a more basic level. Yeah, I think so too. Okay, good. Alright, so give it rather than such a pragmatic. What are your tasks. Let's talk about what the goal of localization is. Yeah, we should the first address I think we should first distinguish between what internationalization is and what is it is, because there is no localization position is not possible. If a piece of software is not internationalized first. So think of a piece of software that should be language and culture agnostic, right. It should not be written just for one language English it should not be written just for one address format, or for one date and time format, but it should be written, then to be able to plug in other formats because in each culture and each language you have different formats different ways to, to, to, to, to say the day to say the time to call people right and so think of internationalization as the infrastructure. If that infrastructure is not there, and it doesn't allow for supporting different alphabets right unicode and supporting different formats. So the problem cannot exist. And that's the problem in many companies right that they don't do the job in the internationalization part, and all the problems trickle down during localization, and that slows down localization, and you have a lot of you have to fight right to create that infrastructure to support data software is then localized for different languages to support dates at times different formats and translation translation is the easy part in all this right. So, what do you think Andrea. Yes, I, I like to simplify it and say. The words are what they, what they represent internationalization is making the software generic and localization is making it specific. So, so the internationalization side is enabling. And the localization localization side is specifying, but to be clear, in terms of formats that they, they tend to be there's their fixed libraries that are typically used for formats these libraries have been built up over time and negotiated and argued and so on. As people have mentioned Unicode. Unicode is a coded character. Coded character set. There's some very specific terms, but it's basically associates characters with numbers, so that computers can represent because computers know nothing about characters all computers know is numbers. So Unicode has associated a tremendous number of characters with numbers. And that part is used in the world, except for China, which has some compatibility and some, some differences I don't know how, how much is still used in China, but when I left it was that was still the case. Interesting. Okay, good. Anything to these definitions on localization and internationalization, or tweak it a little. I think you beautifully put by both Raffaola and, and, and sorry, your name Andrea. Your name is under the little arrow. But and I'm bad with names anyway. But I think I very much resonate with what Andrea explained and described. I think the as as Raffaola said, the ideal scenario for software is is that it's internationalized and and kind of kind of inclusively put together but but then the reality is that from the user experience perspective and from the language aspect perspective. Some of some of the elements, you know, doesn't doesn't quite work for for all settings and all context and all cultures. And what what what is considered lighthearted and funny doesn't is not considered lighthearted and funny in other cultures and settings. So so some some user experience elements and some language elements need to be adjusted and modified and that's where localization comes into the picture where things are specified for for a certain local locale. Yep, that's it. Okay, good. That's something I like also I'd also like to to tell a little bit about globalization because there is a lot of confusion there to write internationalization where is what is globalization right so globalization comprises this two big processes right internationalization and localization and also a way the way a company does business. Right, because if they want to go global, they need to support international sales, you know representatives, they need to have the technical support in different country, they need to support, you know, in different languages for different cultures. So it's really a big big structure that it cannot exist. If international markets are put, you know, as a secondary priority, right, you need to have, you know, executive support to push, you know, a company with all this internationalization localization international marketing and support ahead to allow for globalization to be, you know, truly global. And I think this helped me help people now, if they start thinking about how big the software is, and then what the other infrastructure supports are why companies choose to market only in five languages, and not in 105 languages because you end up needing to have all that technical support and the customer support in all 105 languages if you're going to be doing it that way. I remember when I worked at Apple Swedish was one of the languages that they were offering software in because Sweden was a huge market for them, despite the fact that it's a tiny country relative to some other larger countries. But it was a good customer and they they Apple at that time this is the early 90s was definitely supporting Swedish as well as Spanish, French, and a few other languages. So now and then I have been using the abbreviations. If you're in these fields. It's hard to write globalization localization internationalization all the time. Those are long words. And so that's why we use these cute little abbreviations. I 18 n where there are 18 characters missing between the beginning of the internationalization until you get to the end of it. Okay. And the same with globalization is G 11 and I believe, and localization is L 10 in. Right. So there are 10 characters missing. And now you're in the in crowd and you can do those things too. And can I add something before you and runs away with this two things actually, we are the three of us have discovered four of us I should say I've described the ideal scenario. The stuff doesn't actually happen. Oh no Andrea you're going to tell the truth. Having having seen the back end and inside of it, it over a period of 25 to 30 years. I was still answering the same questions and still trying to convince companies to do the same thing over the, my entire career. But, but the other thing is, and people in this industry who know me know this is a big sticking point with me. These things I 18 and G 11 and L 10 and are abbreviations. They are not acronyms. There is no need to capitalize them. In fact, they shouldn't be capitalized because it they don't stand for anything. What is the one stand for what is the eight stand for what is the end stand for nothing. So, are abbreviations. What do they call them new numer, what was the term new numer is not numerations but something like that. And the one, the one other like that that I know it because very important to me and some of the other people in this group have heard me already and that's a 11 and a 11 why sorry. You know, some people say, but they, I hear, I hear, people just read it as accessibility. Right. So you don't, you see a 11 and why, and you read it as accessibility out loud. So, anyway, yeah, I don't hear it's pronounced a 11 why, or why, whereas I hear localization pronounced L 10 and, you know. So anyway, abbreviations. Yes, let's let's agree on abbreviations. Okay, let's see if we can get all the, they're called the numero names. That's it. No more names. I don't get up. Old lady forget stuff. It's okay. Okay, I hadn't heard that expression before but I get what it means. No more, no more reason. Okay, so now Andrea says she's been making the same arguments over the last 25 years for different companies. And are you finding Rafael also because you've been in this business for a long time. But now you're in a company you've been for 10 years in one company. So I'm hoping you don't have to keep making the same arguments. Well, different arguments. Okay, I think that in my experience right so far. I, unfortunately, I had to partially agree with Andrea. There are situations that are better. And I've been a session for 10 years because it's a situation where things are better, because we, the localization team, we work hand in hand with the internationalization team of engineers. So it's a, it's a very close collaboration that we have with them, right. So these are the people that are, you know, the internationalization engineers they support. So they externalize for the strings, they add the libraries, and they work with engineers teams from other products acquisitions that we buy right to make things work. So, to make things work before we start the localization process. For example, just the fact that we have what we call pseudo localization script right that it's basically a script that engineers can run while they are developing their code right to make sure that they live in a space for when we translate those strings right because when you translate from English into other languages you have expansion right and they make sure that by running this pseudo localization script. They externalize, you know, the strings the software UI strings. So all the, the commands, everything you see in, in a software UI, they are externalized in, in files that we then take for for localization for translation for localization. So that helps a lot of, and that's the important part right that's what my team does evangelize among engineers from other teams could be we work with everybody we work with you know every scrum teams a Salesforce to. We evangelize we share training videos every new hire in in our department in the, you know, tech technological department has an hour of training every new hire is an hour of training, or what they need to be careful. When they start writing their code, and they need to write that code that in a way that is localization friendly. So you know we, we are a few steps ahead of the game. But still, it's, you know, a lot of evangelization a lot of code review that my team does right to make sure that what the engineers right is correct, but not only engineers, we work with designers, right as well to make sure that the designers. don't need enough buffers right to to for expansion, so that you don't have you know truncation when you localize into other languages, and to make sure that you know you don't see flags, for example, that you don't want flags. But when you know but you just want a language menu language menu for selection of the language this kind of examples I mean there are many. But also, we also work with the product managers to make sure that we have, since you know you externalize that those softer your strings are in files that are then localized that translated by our external translators with whom we've been working for 18 years right they're really our subject, you know, knowledge experts of the field. And so the the important part also they translate those strings out of context. Yes, we do a lot to prepare them that we do, we provide a lot of documentation we provide glossaries. I mean, the new terminology for the new features for each major release that they then need to localize in their language, but then you still need to make sure that what they translate makes sense within right the UI. So what we do is that, you know, we work with, you know, teams to have test environments, where our translators where we can upload those localized strings to make sure that they work. Right. That one late one UI stream that was translated out of context, make sense when it appears in that place right within the UI. So, you know, it's a lot of work and what we push at say source is to have localization as upstream as possible right not down the road, not at the end of development when it's too late to do anything. Whereas in other companies, the localization team is just, you know, people will finish their development and then they will open a ticket to translate to localize what they have already created. And that's too late. That's why you are not saying in anything, whereas it says was we basically moved the whole thing upstream. So that's why things work better. It's not a perfect world. We don't have endless budget we don't have endless resources, but you know, it's very good. My manager is my manager is VP of globalization and localization. So you know, she's, she talks to the people that they need to push they need to have that a global mindset that you need to have. When a company wants to be truly global, right. And even in our case, things are not perfect because we don't have endless budget we know we cannot translate every, every piece of every document into 34 languages right it wouldn't even make sense, because as you, as you Nessie pointed out, at, at Apple, you know, going to Swedish was because you had a, you know, an important client, right. So for certain languages, yes, we don't have a lot of people a lot of customers while we had important clients. That's, you know, if they don't request a certain docs, why spending our money there where we can spend it into more Japanese documentation, because Japanese will more and more. So I want to pull out one phrase that you talked about several times and hope I'm going to check with the audience that everybody gets what it means. You talked about externalizing strings. And I'm hoping that everybody in the audience knows that means pull out the content from both the interface and the whatever the information on the page is. And by the interface I mean dialogue boxes error messages, all the labels around whatever the full content is, because that's content to and that needs to be localized. And so, I think that may also help us understand why Wendy is talking about in the chat. And unfortunately she's got sleeping children so she can't jump in and and do get out with us. But I think she's talking about localization and how closely aligned that is with translation in the older senses. So you're hiring. It's not that your team is all doing the translation Rafael, your team is making things ready for the translators to be able to be effective. Excuse me, as effective as they can be, given that they're not on staff, and they're not sitting in the same conference rooms as you. And again, we try to do our best to the fact that you know they can ask questions directly right with being working with them and with the same vendor and translators for 18 years so you know there is no competitive issues there so you know it's really a big team. And clearly they are, we consider them an extension of our of our team, we will be able to do everything we do. And, you know, the we prepare, we prepare for the in contest testing or LQA, whatever you want to call it when we see QA, when we do, when we check that what they translated out of context makes sense within right the software. Yeah, it's a lot of work to prepare or these to work with all the stakeholders again from engineers with core review product managers, designers, it's a constant reviewing constant, you know, telling people how to do things and what to avoid right. We do brown bags all the time within the company. We have office hours. Right. And you're going to see as you know people are you're both. You're you're evangelizing outward but you're also inviting the questions to come back to you. And so you are in a position of influencing, but not dictating. And so that right. And, and because there's constantly a renewal of staff, you have to re educate, you have to provide that basic education as people enter, and you also mentioned something that people may have not, you know, heard clearly and that is sales and acquiring other companies and integrating that software into the Salesforce software and so you've got a whole new batch of people who had a different way of thinking about it and now need to be washed in the Salesforce process. Sometimes, sometimes Nancy, not really depends, you know, if, if an equity if a company that we acquire has already an internationalization team and localization team and things work well, right. We just, you know, bring them in, and we work hand in hand with them if a process, you know a scalable process already exists, then we work together. And that means then when you have something that is partially localized by somebody who did it in their free time. Now it's not in the company anymore, you know, that's when you really need to to get it in and provide resources and make sure that, you know, internationalization was done properly, right. And then you can do localization and you can take it from things that were left essentially. So I want to contrast your big company situation with Mohammed's small project work. And so, talk a little bit about how yours is the same and different your experiences, Mohammed are the same and different as what Raphael is talking about. So, so of course, you know, Raphael and both Raphael and Andrea are way more experienced than me, the area of localization and their input is, is, I think the ultimate say is in how things work in localization, internationalization, but from a small company perspective, things are, things are a little bit more simple than what Raphael is describing beautifully. So, so I can, I can speak about, you know, different projects that have been involved with that had localization aspects but really in my, in my experience, it is, it boils down to two aspects, you know, kind of translation and extensive user experience research or making, making sure that, that, you know, UI elements and, and the strings work for the context that we're localizing, localizing the content to so, as I said, you know, things, things have different connotations things have different meanings attached to them in different cultural environments and that is something that we all know about. And so, really, the localization management involves with working with UX researchers that, that, that ultimately come back to you with the result of their research that, hey, this UI elements, well, well, first of all, there are, there are generic and general recommendations and then, you know, going in depth and going in detail of UI elements and making sure that the audience that you're working for are are are, they basically the UI elements are in line with your with what your audience wants to see. And in many of my projects, like the culture of the products that, that we produced in, in, in United for Iran was really we wanted to come off as, as a cool techie environment but not, and not coming up as, as a, as a formal language, a formal language that we wanted to use so, so making sure that, you know, it has that cool aspect to it like it has that lighthearted kind of humorous aspect to the UI element that that is where, you know, the localization manager of UX researchers really work hand in hand to make sure that, that, that, that tone and that, that cultural culture that you want to represent is, is conveyed in, in, in use so, so again, it's a lot more simpler than what Rafaula mentioned but in my experience it boils down to translation and UX research. Okay. Interesting perspective. Andrea, I'm going to read you a question we got I got privately in the chat and see if you can respond to this. Developers write software using code. Does that mean their code is internationalized. Every question. It's a good question. It's a good question. I'm not laughing at the question. I'm just. No, it's the short answer. Ideally, you have. Ideally, you, the software engineers are educated as to how to write internationalized code. Depending on what programming language or languages they're using what libraries they're using. They're easier languages to write internationalized code. And there are libraries are good libraries to use. And it's best not to reinvent the wheel. What I felt was my job, because most companies just had no idea they thought, Oh, I'll hire an internationalization engineer, and she'll just internationalize everything for me. It's not the way it works because you can imagine. Let's take for example. Okay, so I worked at Sun Microsystems, and many of you may know the Sun Microsystems Unix operating system Solaris. Now, I did not work on Solaris or other people who worked on Solaris. But if I were to internationalize all of Solaris, there's no one engineer who knows the entire product code base. It's impossible. It's impossible. These are big, big products. So the idea that they could just hire a software engineer to go and fix everything herself. Wave the magic wand. Don't you have that magic wand? Yeah, good device must must use later. So I, my, what I felt was my job is to educate the engineering staff as to how they can internationalize and provide them with coding examples and provide them with concept concepts and point them to libraries and much later on, and I mean much later on, there, there was, there were some tools. Oh, God, I've got that question. Isn't there a tool? Yeah, isn't there a tool to replace you Andrea? Yeah, well no is the answer. There are tools that help that are kind of what we call a lint tool or a filtering tool, which can analyze code and point out potential problem areas, and you can tweak the configuration of the tool to be customized to that particular set of code, but every programmer writes their code slightly differently. So you'll get a lot of false positives and you'll miss a lot of positives. So, you know, it's helpful, but it's not complete. And so, for example, Rafael I was talking about pseudo localization and I have a on my blog the nine things that you can test using pseudo localization. I'm not saying that I've ever seen a company exploit pseudo localization that way, but it's possible. So, so, so the answer is no. And one of the reasons why is that internationalization is not taught anywhere. So if you go if you go to university if you go to high school if you learn programming, if you go to a special certificate course in internationalization is not taught. What little is taught are things like their people are taught about Unicode maybe, and they're taught using Java which handles internationalization much better than see your C plus plus. So, like, so new engineers come in and they have to be taught again, and, you know, over and over again as as the turnover happens in the company, they need to be taught again and again, and they need to be reminded. And it's difficult because if you don't, if you don't think with an international perspective, if you don't look at things with an international eye. Then you'll miss things. So, and I think that's that would always be the case. It manifests itself in typically in the localization process. So this is why I said earlier why I as an engineer preferred to be on the internationalization side because localization treats the symptoms and internationalization treats the disease. I mean, that's that's really the case, you know, I'm suffering monolingualism, please help me. Right. Yeah. So, you know, as I'm as George Kent said, you know, user experience has the same issues. You really need to be in there from the beginning to design things in otherwise it's lipstick on a pig. So, and you could say the same thing about security and about performance. All of these things are things that need to be designed into the product and written from day one to work well. It's just that it's more stark in the world of localization that the problems are much more obvious. And it is, it is an issue with all of these other peripheral disciplines, if you will, in in software development. I hope that answered the question. I hope it did too. I'll wait to hear from our questioner to see if they have any more. They need any more expansion on that. So I would love to call on Wendy if she's still available. Are you here Wendy, because I think the kids woke up. And so you may have more, you may have comments. Also, to add to this discussion from your standpoint as a localization or translation project manager. I, I was trying to say I wanted to, I wanted, I wanted to type that quote to save it for localization treats the symptoms and internationalization treats the disease. I need to say that for future reference, but right. And Rafael said the same thing so you can copy it out of the chat. Okay. So, and it's so encouraging to hear these about these processes and these companies that take those types of problems so seriously because I think part of, you know, why I've been kind of, you know, trying to find other applications for the logistics is that I feel so frustrated in positions around localization, because everything I've encountered so far has been, you know, exactly the opposite of what, of what they were describing. And I don't want to mention the name of the company where I'm working. You can figure it out, right. She can figure it out. Yeah. And it's evident to, you know, when if people are looking and for health care organizations, you know, and, and I spent and in our field, I guess, you know, localization is also kind of loose loose use because it's, you know, the languages are all going to be for us. So, you know, we're looking at Spanish for the United States, Russian for the United States, Vietnamese for the United States, those types of population. But the, any sort of marketing and web content that's designed by our marketing marketing teams and things are designed with with no thought for use in different populations. And when they get to the point of wanting to, to, to translate it. There's also so much security that we can't even share the tech, the content with translators besides screenshots necessarily, you know, so a lot of things are behind a sign in firewall. So we're taking screenshots of websites and trying to get with the with translators and there are things that are just not, you know, that are not applicable or relevant and, and they say, No, we just do it, you know, we just, we have to we're required to provide this information in every language. We want to check that box, you know, turn it around give it to us, and we'll be done. And I think what you're describing is what Rafael is arguing against, namely, you're talking about way downstream localization. Right. And you're only worrying about localization of content, and not so much about localization of interface, and still right. And I guess you can argue that you know if you're in if you're in an organization that is targeting only the US population. You know, okay, they're not as interested in other markets, however, they are interested in the entire US population and we're not looking at that from from the beginning, but you also see it in, in, for example, healthcare software, and that, you know, I think was recently in the news for how, how horribly it was designed and when they tried to sell it marketed outside of the United States, it was just not usable, because it was requiring things like with what's your healthcare, what's your insurance provider. You couldn't move forward with recording patient health information unless you had this type of data which didn't exist outside of the US content. Right. If you have a national health service, and it's not coded in as an insurance provider, then you can't move ahead. Right. And it just, there was no consideration to that. Yeah, so it's very encouraging to see that that is not always the case. And there are, there are, there are organizations that take that, yeah, to take it into consideration. Okay, so great. Thanks so much, Wendy for chiming in there. I appreciate your perspective and you're kind of adjusting us to the off of what's the ideal and what do you have to work 10 years in order to set up and create those relationships versus if you've got an organization that isn't even awakened to the potential harms that they're causing and in a healthcare setting that's really scary. I wanted to address another question but I see we have a question in chat that I'll take first. And that is, does anybody want to offer advice on breaking into translation. And this person finds herself stopped by the certifications that she doesn't have but that may be something specific to the US sorry I keep banging my microphone. So who would like to talk about breaking into translation. If you want, I can a little bit. It's maybe all the, it's maybe all the information by now, because when I when I moved to the United States from from Europe so in 2003. I was a freelance translator right, and I had this experience in the financial software company without knowing that it was colonization. So when I arrived in San Francisco, I, I definitely didn't know anybody from my field. So, remember my husband. I went into finding a local professional organization, which by the way I didn't believe in because it was not such a European thing professional organizations. But so he insisted say let's let's go to this general meeting of the Northern California translators association. So, you know, very shyly very, you know not convinced I went there. And I found my, my initial group essential my initial community, all linguists or translators all there to talk to each other to refer each other to each other. I was then invited to be part of their board, I, where I volunteer for six years organize their events. It was great because you know as an event director, I was organizing all the events workshops general meetings and so I was a great opportunity for me to meet people in my field. So networking, you know, was, was the big thing. And, and then, and, and that's by the way how I met someone who was working at ask.com, my first real job in Silicon Valley you know after freelancing, you know at Apple or keeping my customers from Europe I changed my cell phone. But you know I needed more than that I needed a fixed income to survive in San Francisco. And so it's, it's someone someone from the association who was working at ask.com so hey we're looking for an Italian localization specialist. I'm interested. And that's, you know, through this connection through this networking that I created going through the NCT a that I was able to get my first job. And, and then, you know, I got my job at Cisco, going through, you know, I lost my job I was laid off for years later. And I went to a one of those groups that are, you know, when people look for for a job. The first time in my life that I was losing a job I was not used to being laid off right that's so us. And so I was there and we're in San Francisco and San, San Mary's Cathedral. And so everybody was. Was this right, was this the grace net group or is this a different group. I think it was that one. It was the other church it was that the, the one or not be here in San Francisco. Nothing to do with the church was really open to anybody. And I arrived there, I told people what I was looking for. But I was, I was doubtful because people usually don't understand what I do people don't know localization people don't know terminology nothing. And so I went and myself in front of this group at the end a woman came by said, you know what I think I know someone I was looking from for somebody like you with your profile. And so, somebody from Cisco was actually looking for someone exactly like me, what I, you know, and so I talked to this guy, you know, 10 minutes into the conversation. Yes, it's you and you know, of course I was, I had all you know all the checkbox. And that's how I went to Cisco and Salesforce is the same thing I started going to the, do you guys know have you ever heard about localization and conferences. They used to take place before the pandemic is a couple of times a year. They're organized by my current manager Theresa Marshall. So it's basically open to anybody it's free people can go there and people choose the topics that they want to discuss essentially about localization. And so I went to one of these localization conferences. I met her, we had a nice chat. When it was time for her to look for someone to hire. She just send me an email and it was a good timing because Cisco, you know, I was a contractor Cisco and my manager didn't have money for me for the next year. So you know I started looking into something and that's how I ended up as sales. So my big, my big recommendation if you want to move right. Either in translation or from transition to localization is to start go out there. I know now it's not a good timing, but before you know attend all the meetups, all the, you know, this, these places and mingle with people talk to people type people what you want to what you're looking for. That's my big recommendation. Yes, networking we've been promoting this everywhere sorry I just put a link in there that I didn't intend to I put it into the slack separately. Here's the definition of an unconference that's what I was trying to add. Because I think unconferences are great. And they really respond to who happens to show up the motto of the unconference is whoever's here is exactly the right group, whatever we talk about is exactly the right topic. And at the length of time. That's the right amount of time and if you're not, maybe there is, maybe there is an opportunity for a translation and conference. Hey, there we go. Somebody can organize a translation and conference. Right. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's this one other thing that I wanted to mention real quick. I thought about my last question. And you said that right, you know, when looking for advice and getting into a field, you know you don't hear a whole large variety of things you know you hear a networking, you also hear being able to have a sample of your work or or being being able to have something to present yourself with. So, okay. I think a lot of the freelancing can can also help the platforms that you can present yourself on that that shows the history of your freelancing work is is also useful. You know, one platform called Fiverr F I V E double R that that that should be also useful that you can present your skill, get orders from people there's a rate and review system there so so when the time comes, then you'll be able to say to your next employer that that quite, you know coincidentally as Rafaela described, then you'll you'll be able to say hey I have also this sample of work and people have rated me such and such so anyway great. And I also add it I'm not a translator and I never have been so I'm just going to throw this out. To create a body of work. Yes, you know maybe you can go into these sites where people will pay you but there's a lot of sort of crowd translation places. And if you're looking to develop a body of work. That might be something you could do to to say look I've done this for this open source thing I've done this I've done this. I have something to at least show that you've been you've been working you've been progressing. So even if you're not being paid, you know while you're searching to try and do some of this to develop this body of work to develop your essentially your portfolio. To show so I have a feeling that would that would help as well when someone is asking to see your work or asking you to point them in the direction of something you've done. If there's an open source piece of software that you could actually point to and say look I translated this part of that software. Then that that probably is a useful thing. Good. Okay. So translators without borders is another suggestion of a place to network and also be able to discuss your work. And then, Kiva talk about tell me what Kiva does because I'm not familiar with that. They do micro loans to people in the developing world. I used to know the translation manager there and they often need the people in so you know sorts of languages. And, you know, if you add to places like that in your resume. It's already something nice. Because at the end of the day when you look at a resume right you need to hire someone you need to see something right not just school, you need to see some experience and sometimes that's what people struggle with right to find opportunity to experience and to prove that they can translate right correctly. Okay, and another thing that I would like to suggest that maybe people are fully aware of this, but I think that a specialization helps a lot of translators right to find a job specializing in something. It's, it's, it's key, I think to our profession. What's the specialization. Do you mean specialization. I can give you my example so I specialized in legal and financial, but that was in school right. Then I started working for this financial software company I told you I had, I could they really use a computer at the time. So I started translating software content imagine what I knew about nothing. So it was of course a lot of you know huge learning curve, but I learned about you know banking telecommunication. So, so such a thrilling field, but you see what I'm saying that open up a lot of doors that I imagine right. I don't think that I would be, I would, I could have done as, you know, some knowledge, you know, some experience. So, and when I moved here my mother and I just say yes, unless you know it's theoretical physics right. But say yes to you know, don't be shy, don't play the European that you know if they don't have a requirement that you know if they don't have the 10 requirements say I cannot do this job. So just go out there try. And this is another recommendation that I give to people just go out there try and you know put the effort to do your, you know, a duty and and and today you find knowledge you find it on the web. In the mid 90s there was none of these in Geneva Switzerland right. You can learn a lot you can go to all these, you know blogs Andrea said that she has a blog on internationalization hey, I'm going to check it out, you know, put it in the chat put it in the yes. And, you know, clearly she knows what she's talking about. There is plenty of resources online even without paying for you to learn and you know to prepare for an interview to prepare, even if you don't have the full experience right. But you know to start the chewing the terminology know what what people want what people need and start going in a direction. Does it make sense. It makes sense to me I think we're getting some thumbs up from some of the audience and Laila is still pushing on the thing of certification. Does she need a certification from some internet. Which certification are we talking about. Can you specify. I think she's talking about Spanish English translation. Is that true, Laila. Yeah. So certification we're talking about the, the American Translator Association. certification. That's the one she mentioned also CMI. But that's something that helps right if you have in your resume as certification. Plus, some concrete experience I think that that will help. However, personally, what I look at a resume is the experience, then the certification, because there are a lot of people. And for example, somebody who comes from a very, very technical field, you know, think of, think of a chemist, for example, the suddenly wants to go into translation right somebody who he has enough of be a chemist. He knows a lot about the field, and you know he can start doing very, very technical translation. So I want to see, you know what he has done what kind of experience he has before knowing that he has, you know, certification from even from the American Translator Association. You know you can do both. If you have the time right prepare for the certification and, you know, add experience practical experience. I heard you explicitly say you look at the experience first and the certification second. You know there was a time when I was when I was looking at the degrees. That's when I didn't have enough experience. Today, I look a lot of the experience and then at the certifications. So there are people that they learned a lot and you know, they learn a lot and they they prove they prove it, you know, by doing it. So this is this is, I want everybody in the audience to know we did not feed them any hints or anything like that. The fact that you're making the same record and mendations that we've been making in our career management track is not a coincidence. It means that we're all talking about the same processes at least in the US. And that networking counts, not paying such strict attention to your ability to fill every single requirement, your ability to show some project work in some way. You haven't yet said it out loud but some of that project word work probably would help if it says you've worked on a team and had some collaborative experience that you can point to. And what else did we say that certifications are useful and school learning is useful, but it's not the only way in. Is that fair. Absolutely. Okay, you know what I've said it enough for the audience but I want to know do I need to say these things again. That's the beauty. That's the beauty about America. There is still a big difference. I don't know if you Andrea agrees that you live in the UK right, but there's still a big difference between you and the United States in the United States you need everything you just said the big baggage right. And at the end you have certifications here unfortunately in in Italy at least in France in the areas that I know there is still a lot of, you know, who you know from your family from your friends, you know because people were born and raised in the same place right they got job in the same place. In the States you know everybody comes from a different place right. And so we need, we are there, we all help each other, right. And, and that's fantastic. That's what I like about, you know, at least California the one that I know the best. To answer your question, I haven't worked for an English company. I have worked for people, but not for an English company. I, so I can't come in my husband has engineering is a very different animal here. So, it's, you know, in Silicon Valley, it's king. And here it is your maybe one step above a plumber. So it's, it's, it is very different here and female engineers it's very, very different. So, so I couldn't get a job with an English company. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have had a career, the same career in, in Europe, as I had in, in San Francisco in the end, you know, in Silicon Valley in the States, definitely, absolutely. I would say to that the way I got the two jobs that I did get while over here, because I didn't really have a network over here, but internationalization is a very small field. So, my first my Yahoo job, one of my colleagues in the field, he called me up one day and he said I know you're not doing anything Andrea how about working for you. So that was that was one, and then for for American Express. Again, it was somebody who knew somebody who they were looking for somebody who was in in England. And so they they recommended me. So, that's how I got that job so I was totally from my network that I got those two jobs and I will also say to those of you who are looking for work. No recruiter has ever found me an internationalization job or interview, not one. I have talked to many, many recruit engineering recruiters oh they're desperate to place you because it's big money. But there's not one HR person who ever found me internationalization work, and I would venture to say that there's not a lot for localization they do not understand it. It's not a term on their sheet it their automatic resume reader does not pick it up. It just, it doesn't exist so if you're looking to go into these fields, don't waste your time with a recruiter. And you're talking about an external recruiter now I believe right. Any, to be honest, any recruiter or any HR person. They know, you're much more in through your connections through trying to get the name of the person I mean if, if accompanies HR department posts a job. Okay, apply to that job. But, you know, I would I would say I wouldn't waste my time with recruiters I tried to educate them. I have to I can't tell you how many recruits my brother is a recruiter. I've talked to billions of recruiters. Okay, maybe maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit. But, but really that I have gotten nothing from them. So, I, after a while I just decided it's a waste of my time. That's something even at Salesforce, every time we have every post job opening, I need to work with the recruiter for a session for an informative session of who we look for what it is that we're looking for because people don't get it. Unless you explain to them what they need to look for, you know, and you know what kind of resume I want to see right. Yes. All right. And I want to respect everybody I want to thank everybody who's been participating and all the people who've been listening and contributing in the chat. I appreciate all of you and I want to see if there's any closing comments we want to make before we let this audience go. Mohammed, I'm going to call on you first because I haven't heard from you for a little bit. Not really. I mean, so I recently got out of job market and it's a it's a it's quite an experience being in the job market, especially in the linguistics localization fields. It can be overwhelming. You know, all I want to say is that, you know, quality of your job comes out of the quantity of the number of job applications that you do so so don't don't lose your hope. So just keep applying it will it will happen if you're if you're in the, you know, in the job market. And, and yeah, and do do the typical things that you hear everywhere and networking. Try to collect the body of work and it will happen. Don't don't lose your hope. Good. Thank you. That was very brief and very to the point. Good. Yeah, or Raffiella who wants to go first and who's going to go last. I would say along the lines of networking. If you're interested in internationalization. I will connect with you on Lincoln, LinkedIn, because I have loads of internationalization connections on LinkedIn. So, you can contact me there. Super. And I'm assuming that people from this LCL can contact each of you through LinkedIn. Right. Good. Excellent. Anybody can contact me, you know, ask questions that we didn't cover during this meeting. I also want to say I am very grateful that I was that I am a linguist because that allow me to move to the other side of the world and have a career. I think that I could have had such a beautiful career. If I had been a doctor, for example, or a lawyer, you know, which are much harder. So there is a lot of hope and languages they open, you know, doors in anything right in sales in in in anything. You know, don't just to continue right send those resumes that do those, those translators without borders have experience and networking networking. And networking through affiliative organization is a wonderful method of both learning more about your own field but also getting access to an early access to people who are thinking about job openings. They haven't even formulated it yet. But you can have that conversation. So I appreciate everybody's comments and contributions. And I think we can stop the recording.