 If this session is about multi-lingual how lingo tech and in and work together to launch their website If this is not where you're what you're expecting, you know, encourage it to stick around. There'll be some interesting things That will cover together an agenda will start with some introductions And then we'll go to talk about the challenges that were encountered I'll give you some Tips on the solution that was implemented and then we'll go through some multi-lingual lessons learned and best practices as far as Doing an introduction. I think it's helpful to get to know kind of who we are and what Where we're coming from so by show of hands who here works for a Drupal agency digital agency, okay? excellent anybody here work for a business is using Drupal, okay, and What about anybody here in the translation industry? All right, excellent few of us super okay We'll Hit aspects of each of those during the presentation So my name is is Clark Fuller I've been with lingo tech for over five years and I manage our client success group So we are involved with onboarding the client so that Implementing implementing the software Training them on it supporting them after after they're onboarded and using it this picture is From my first Drupal con so I've been in the Drupal community for over three years and my first Drupal con was Portland 2013 and went out to the Oregon coast as part of that trip and found this amazing green algae growing on the rock I couldn't believe it if you if you happen to take a trip to Portland don't miss the chance to go to the coast check that out That's actually not the twist of fate I was going to tell you about I really enjoyed the Drupal community enjoyed learning about people getting to know them on a Personal basis not just their technical skills or who they work for but you know more about kind of who they are and what makes them tick I I Happen to grow up in a large family. So there were 11 children in my family and 10 of us were boys so I I am number seven in that group and You know felt very comfortable with with boys and kind of felt like I was starting to figure out You know how to relate to them how to raise them etc Then I got married and was blessed with two beautiful little daughters So that's been a new experience for me, you know trying to I'm now outnumbered and And learning a different way of communicating. It's been a lot of fun. I really am grateful to have them in my life Let me tell you a little bit about lingo tech. So we are a company that does translation software and services We are headquartered in utah in the greater salt lake area We have We are venture backed as you can see there On the software side, we have a cloud-based translation management system That was the first of its kind to market we This is an enterprise level application. So it's got lots of you know features for handling Large difficult projects. We'll talk more about some of those features a little later in the presentation We also have connectors that we've built to pull content from your content management system and bring it into The cloud-based translation management app and then push the content back to your system So one of those connectors is our Drupal connector that will be focused on today We also have connectors in many other content management systems, including sales force wordpress, etc We have translation services So the if you're not familiar with translation services There's a it's largely staffed by professional freelancers. These are You know independent contractors who live in in the country Where they are where they're translating for or the language that they're translating they These are folks that are professionals, you know, they have master's degrees a lot of them have doctorate degrees They've been translating for many years. They're really good at what they do and I have a lot of respect for them It's a difficult job to do translation. Well Our language services group takes that that collection of individuals and certifies them puts them through tests to ensure their Linguistic abilities and also certifies them on our software. So they're to ensure their technical abilities or sound We have a dev zone So in addition to our own integrations that we've built into our application We have many folks who have built custom integrations So they they use our dev zone and our multilingual api to Build their own integration if you're interested in that you can go to devzone.lingotech.com and check that out And then, you know, we have Many integration partners so folks digital agencies others who are building integrations with us or have partnered with us to To help offer solutions to their clients If you're a digital agency and they're interested in partnering Just feel free to come up and talk to us after or stop by our booth in the exhibit hall and we can give you more information on that So that's kind of the dry stuff about why I work why I like working at lingo tech this is this is One of the more meaningful parts of it Oh, what happened there lost my video see One second Here You may have to skip this but it's so good. I don't want to skip it. That's all right Sorry for the technical challenge here like that. Okay. Well I'll skip that and Um The video was essentially The video was about Here we go, right. Well, thanks to the wi-fi looks like we're not going to get it So let me explain it to you the video was we had a co-worker who Had um his dad had al s and so during the the time of the ice bucket challenge we um We did a challenge where we we had a a big Um Filled a front loader full of water and dumped it on us for our fundraiser. So it's a pretty neat thing The video is better than that but uh, you know, we'll have to catch that another time So let's talk about interactive intelligence. So they they're in in for short. They're headquartered in Indianapolis, indiana this uh Picture here is a picture of their headquarters This is one of those those businesses that is a large business that you may have you probably never heard of before Unless you're in the industry that they serve They uh, they focus on contact solutions for the contact center industry And they have over 2,300 employees Um, they also do a lot with business process automation So great company to work for but again probably one that unless you're in that industry you may not have heard of We we got familiar with them When they were re-platforming their their corporate site onto Drupal 7 So they were working with an agency named blue coda And the agency was aware of us and and brought us in and and we worked together with them to Redo their site as with any Any any Drupal site there are in large, you know large complex projects there are challenges One of them is they had uh, they had really bad process management. So when they were trying to Um, they're looking at ways of improving their translation management They realized that what they had was just not scalable and if you're if you're familiar with how translation is done the story probably Probably rings true for for some of your clients where They're copy pasting. They're sending files around. They're not You know, it's not automated at all. There's no version control. So they Marketing creates a word document. They send it out to the translators marketing changes it. They send it back There's no way to track those changes, etc It's a very inefficient error prone process There were tight deadlines. They had They were starting to build the site out in november and they wanted launched in december and they wanted all the translations done And that's with the amount of content that we were dealing with. That was a pretty aggressive timeline. So um trying to Make that happen on time You know, they When they looked at that they said we need a solution that works out of the box, you know, we we don't have time to To customize a bunch of stuff We've got to just have it plug and play and be ready to go and that was part of the benefit of what our solution offered And then they also had non-technical reviewers that that they needed to incorporate feedback for so these are in and staff who they're not Linguist but they're bilingual speakers and they are experts in their subject area and they want wanted to incorporate the feedback from those those staff And for them, you know, that this is not their their day job. This is something they're doing on the side It's very challenging to to engage with them because they have lots of other priorities They need a solution that is quick and easy And something that that they don't have to spend a lot of time coming up to speed on And so that they were looking for help in that area Some of the project logistics they were starting off with nine languages and then growing that to 12 There were over 470 pages of content and for a website, you know, this is this is common Web content tends to be a lot smaller And and there tends to be a lot of pages rather than big long form pages And this the the number of pages exacerbates any process Problems that you have right when you've got a bunch of pages if you're doing this Copy paste and sending files back and forth that it just makes it Exponentially harder to keep track of all that as your page size goes up The word count 33,000 words overall. So, you know, not a huge word count, but decent and given the number of pages It makes it difficult and then we had numerous contributors in time zones So with you start to think of all the different people involved that have to touch this you've got a Professional human translator a separate professional reviewer and then you have in and staff spread out all over different time zones You've got project managers sprinkled in there In addition to the localization project managers on the inside. So there's there's a lot of different People involved in coordinating that making sure that they're the work is being done in a timely manner You know, that's that's why Our our application exists to help address some of those project management challenges So to address these we we helped the client implement the lingo tech solution So as we've talked about we have a translation management application. It's a cloud-based application. That's the image down there on the bottom And then up top is the Drupal module. So This this is a module that you plug into your site. We have both d7 and d8 versions of the module and It it does a couple things for you one is it it helps configure your multilingual environment If you've ever done multilingual and d7, you know that there are a lot of switches a lot of modules And it can be a challenge just getting everything set up We have a configuration wizard that walks you through that process Automatically installing the modules that you need Configuring those and then we also have an admin screen that allows you to pick which Content types and fields are translatable and turn those off off and on and manage them in one place And then we have an admin screen that allows you to see exactly what content is on your site and select it for translation And send it up. So a lot of a lot of management built into the process When the module exports the content it sends it up to the translation management System which imports it. So we send it up as an xml file Send it through a filter to embed it or to filter it out and and bring it into our system The cloud-based translation management system then does several things to help you reuse your your past content So if you're not familiar with translation technology, there's this feature called translation memory, which is Where the system will track all of your past translations in a database and when you have new content that you translate It compares the source of what you're translating. So let's say an english sentence It compares that to other english sentences in the database And and uses logic to determine how strong of a match it is And if you find something that is exactly the same meaning same grammar Punctuation white space, etc The project manager can choose to reuse that translation and just pull it right into your document So that does two things for you one is it saves time So the translator doesn't have to look at that sentence They can just skip over it. It also saves money. So in a paid translation scenario, you can save Save significant money by reusing your past translations Another feature of the system is that it the Drupal module tracks changes in your content So when you have nodes that are getting updated The on the admin On the admin screen, it will show you which nodes were changed and if you can Have those set to automatically upload if you want or if you want to make it a manual process where You see what has changed and then upload it. You can do that as well Any questions on On this piece of it feel free to you know, we'll have a question Time afterwards feel free to just ask that happy to dive into more details there So what are some of the results of implementing this? Well, there were greater translate the greater efficiency for inon They spend a lot less time chasing emails around their their Project managers could log into the system and see exactly where they were at in real time one of the the challenges that People often have when doing translation is it's kind of a black box They package up their files send it over to the Translation provider and then hope that you know, they come back to them by the deadline and they're done With a system like this you can just see exactly where everything is at there's no more guessing And uh, you know that that takes a lot of stress out of it for lots of different folks improve time to market so the When you build these efficiencies into the system The translation process gets faster the delivery gets quicker We mentioned the copy paste, you know that slows you down on the exporting the content and also on re-importing it because you've got a Typically a technical staff member who's having to take this word document and figure out how to put that back into their site and copying pasting pasting and getting things wrong sometimes so Cut all that out and you you provide a much quicker turnaround on translations and also accelerated time to market when after Inon went live. They saw an increase in their website traffic for the the translated pages, you know, and that's that's part of the big driver here is is they wanted to be able to talk to their International users in their language have all the different Parts of their message beyond brand and give them the same customer experience They were able to achieve that and then they had higher staff engagement satisfaction So we talked about this challenge of the inon staff Not being dedicated to this full-time And you know if you give them a good tool that they can use and they feel like they're contributing to the process and that results in willingness to keep going and also, you know, greater satisfaction in seeing the the website live This is a quote from Kaz Suzuki who was one of our main leads there lead contacts at inon and you know he He was Grateful to see the project succeed, you know and as the digital agencies here know that's this is the end game Right to be able to have a mutual success for them and for you something that you can both build on and And continue to to refine and improve So the the next step is to expand the network, you know, once once you have One connector installed and you've got Some folks internally who understand the vision see that there See the benefit to bringing in content from different connectors and storing that in a central system And reusing translations across your different applications Once they catch this then it's a natural step to say well, what what else can we bring in, you know, we're using We're using elicor we're using life rate. Let's let's bring that in and in and is taking those steps And you know, we we see this with many organizations They they feel like their content is very siloed and they've got different departments who are doing their own thing in terms of translation They really want a way to centralize it And and reuse it and that's part of what the solution like this offers So what were some of the lessons learned and some best practices we might recommend? First one is to build with multilingual in mind and and I know that this sounds like a You know, kind of an obvious one, but you'd be surprised how this comes back to bite people over and over The the challenge is Many agencies have their preferred ways of doing things right they have modules that they like they have Certain configurations that they like and that those may or may not play that well with multilingual and often You'll get the site built out and then Try to use it realize. Oh, oh no this certain module You know has these serious issues or is not compatible in this way So starting with that in mind is really important You know would encourage you especially if you're in d8 to Do some looking in the issue cues for the modules that you're planning to use and you know get a feel for For what might work well with with what you're trying to build And this is something that we're happy to work with you on so, you know If you have questions about about certain modules feel free to To hit us up on it But that that will save you a lot of lost time down the road if you start with multilingual in mind Second item is to to get the right translation solution for what you're trying to do And we're very candid to admit that our solution is not the right fit for everybody There are certain cases where It may make sense to use something out of the box with drupal. So drupal has multilingual Capabilities where you can insert translations directly into the site It doesn't give you translation memory or some the process management Aspects to it, but it can be an effective way to get translation directly added to your site There are also solutions that allow you to export files So, you know download files and send them off to providers of if your client is wanting to do They've got a provider that they've always been working with and they want to keep working with them Then, you know, maybe using using a solution like that is is the best fit And then, you know, as we've talked about there are clients who need an enterprise solution They need the full features that a solution like ours provides and in those cases, you know It can it can be a big big time saver for them Scope and get started this applies more to the Translation of the content than the technical piece, but one of the things that tends to get people Stressed and confused about translation projects is the timing of when it all comes together So in inns case they were building the site and planning to Get it launched quickly, but they weren't starting the build until november And they already had a bunch of content ready to go And they knew that if they started translating In november they may not get all get everything done in time to launch And so, you know, how do you how do you handle this when you've got Content but the site's not ready to support that content yet What what we do is we Start the we work on the files that they have so if they've got it Written in word or in some other format we can import those files directly into our system Do the translation stored in translation memory and then when the Drupal site is ready Upload the files from Drupal and have the translations fill in from translation memory That allows the the technical piece to to progress at its own schedule get the translations done ahead of time And then tie them back together using translation memory That's been a very effective approach And you know something that we recommend especially in a in a project like this where you've got varying timelines Another one is to develop internal champions. So You know, this is a a change in behavior a change in approach for For a business You're going to need somebody internally who understands the value of it both strategically and tactically So you want to make sure that that you you have those people identified and that you're supporting them however However, they need You know cause was was one of the folks for us who in his case he happened to be both strategic and tactical Oftentimes we'll see those roles split. So you'll kind of have an executive sponsor And then you'll have maybe a project manager And maybe a developer who's working on the site But you want to identify those folks and and make them successful, you know, make sure they have what they need The last one is to foster teamwork and collaboration. So As the digital agencies know, you know, there there are a lot of different players in a in a Project like this, especially if you start to add in the translators and reviewers and the linguistic staff You know, it gets to be a pretty good group of people to manage And keeping everyone On the same page Keeping everyone moving in the same direction can be a real challenge But that's part of of what is required to make a project like this successful. So doing regular status calls with them providing training You know, that that's all important to To help everyone feel cohesive and and feel like they're they're getting their questions answered And with that, we'll go ahead and turn it over for questions Any questions from the The audience Yeah, we we do. Yep. We so we have a droop light module and The gentleman in the back raise your hand christian benias keto. He's our Local droop light rock star. So we're so glad to have him on the team And he can answer any questions you might have about our droop light module Good question Yeah, that's a great question. So this is a part that is confusing for folks because they They understand that there's different workflows in droop. You know, and you can use something like workbench automation to Sorry workbench moderation to implement a workflow. And then you've got translation workflows, you know, you might have Translate step a review step Linguistic review by the client. So how do you tie those together? And that's that's what our module does so we have We can use the rules module to integrate with with workbench moderation stages And you can set triggers so that when Content reaches a certain stage in your workbench moderation flow It then goes up to lingo tech goes through the translation flow and then comes back into workbench moderation So you can have like an in translate state in workbench Send it up send it through and then bring it back down and keep it going through the process Good question. Yeah Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's that's another good question. So we there are two main ways of storing translation in drupal 7 The first is field based or it's all it's also called entity based in that method Drupal is is storing a row in the field table appropriate for that field and then flagging it with the language code So there's there's no extra nodes being created It's just storing data in the field table The other method is node based translation and in that When the translation is downloaded a new node is created And so our module supports both by content type So if you have one content type that makes sense to do node translation The common use case there is press releases where they might say, hey, I you know I only want this in certain languages and I want to do some custom stuff with the menus whatnot So you could you can set that press release content type to store using node translation And then set your other Other content types to store using entity translation And for what it's worth You know, we if the client doesn't have a business reason for choosing one or the other we recommend Field translation or entity translation. That's the the drupal 8 model. And so, you know, it makes the side a little more Um, future proof if you can do entity translation, but as I mentioned, we support both in drupal 7 Yeah, that's a good question. So As I mentioned about right sizing the translation solution, there are some cases where it makes sense to proxy and you know, they're Some of the the pros to proxying is that you can You can scrape the content off the site, you know and and have it displayed It's in some cases. It can be A little easier to install and get going There are some real challenges with it though One is that you you are no longer using the content management system so that it, you know, you've you've invested in this system You've got it built up, but now you're relaying on this third party to to manage your content And in other cases, you know, depending on where that that proxy is hosted You may have challenges getting certain Countries to be able to view the page. So there can be some real challenges with it But again, you know, it's in the right case. It can it can be effective for Yeah, yeah, uh-huh for right to left you're saying, uh-huh. Yep We support those and our There's the the translator workbench is the environment where the translator is actually doing the work and it you know It switches to To accommodate that Right, uh-huh Yeah, and and some of that So and this is a good a good point and something to be aware of so there As you internationalize your site And localize it there are certain pieces that won't be handled by a translation solution, you know And some of that is is the the image assets Yeah, so ours. Yeah, our solution focuses on the the written content and handling the assets is is done Usually via a separate map Yeah, yeah, it's a sticky one for sure Yeah Other questions All right, well, thank you for coming appreciate your time and feel free to uh You know stop by our booth or come up and ask us any other questions you might have. Thanks so much