My dream TMS tool: A checklist I wish I had 10 years ago

Bryan Montpetit 00:00
And we're about to get started with a great presentation, which is how to pick a CAT tool and not regret it later from Anna Malkovich Kima, which I'm sorry if I pronounced that or mispronounced that. But before we do, again, just wanted to extend a big thanks, encourage you to post on your preferred social media channel. really participate in the community. And I think that what we've got going on here is fantastic. We're bringing people together from all over the world to discuss, you know, language related items, issues, topics, all these great things. So thank you for that. And with that, and it will be coming in and giving you a wonderful presentation, which I'm very, very interested in hearing. So do we have no hi guys? Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Welcome.

Anna Iokhimovich 00:46
Thank you. Hi, Brian. Hi, guys. How you doing today? Hello. I'm doing great. Thank you. It's a unexpectedly sunny day in Estonia today. Broadcasting from my home in Tallinn. Can you guys please tell me if you can see my screen now?

Bryan Montpetit 01:09
We can absolutely. And I don't want to actually, you know, be in your presentation a more longer so I'm gonna let you take the rails and go with it. And I'll pop back in and a little bit.

Anna Iokhimovich 01:21
Okay, look, thank you so much. So, ladies and gentlemen, let me start. My name is Anna. Yo, hemorrhage. Hello, hi, everyone. My name is Amna humanI chama, I had the localization in Estonian company called Paxful. We are peer to peer marketplace for trading Bitcoins. And today I'm going to be talking about yet again TMS tools. And I think that this topic has a very like interesting how to say like points of view, in this case in my presentation, because any translation management system per se is kind of like wet aquarium. Okay, so there are many inhabitants like creatures, they have to cooperate coexist there somehow, and everyone wants their own like things like they, they have their own goals to achieve, and they want specific functionality from translation management systems. So today, let's dream together about what an ideal environment for all of us would be looking like. I believe that this speech will be useful for those who are choosing their first or next translation management systems. For linguists choosing their first or next gap tools or just willing to learn more about that. If you are a company developing your own team as to or maybe you are developing CMS to for internal use, which is quite an often think Olson or maybe you're just a student, or you're studying localization as a subject, you want to learn more about what's going on under the hood. I believe that's, that's, again for you. So let me briefly introduce myself. I'm from Tallinn, Estonia. Work in packs full for nine years and localization by now not just impactful in different companies, please feel free to join me to friend me on LinkedIn. I'm very open for any kind of connections. And so let's dream to and before we started, like, special, thank you to eager Alpha ICF, who's going to be a host in this in this conference also eager and I we used to work together in Evernote I several years ago and I'm flattered to have an amazing experience working with him. Okay, so TMS. First of all, any relation management system has like a bunch of users, which we can group in three big categories because they there's project managers and people who can be called like localization owners or heads of departments. Root product owners, like whoever, whoever, whoever is in charge of budgets, have resources of, you know, vision and building the future. And I'd like to talk about TMS from perspective of each of these groups here. So, as a translator, as a translator, what do you want as a translator, as a translator, I want the tool to be easy to use as much as possible because I might be working with different clients. Each of them have their own TMS tools and God knows God knows I don't want to waste my time on you know, learning how they work. work. So I want the UI to be as much intuitive as possible. Plus, I'd like to have a comprehensive user recommendation. So I just go and google up, like for quick help and solve things by myself without bothering someone. Ideally, there should be a support, like a very autosave, human friendly and fast responding and you know, actually taking care of users. Again, we are dreaming here. Okay. I'm not saying that the TMS tool that we're working with now fits into all these fields. But we are quite happy with our choice right now. What else to know, oh, my God to do my job? Well, as a translator, I want to know the context, right. So ideally, the TMS I'm working with should have a leave file preview functionality, like, you know, I'm translating, and I can see straight away how how the translated content going to be looking like in the, in the result content, you know, a web page or email, template or whatsoever. Also, what's very important, oh, I wish I had this functional functionality, like nine years ago, when they just started is a possibility for translator to ask a question and get an answer weekly, from whoever project manager, a developer, sometimes it's also applicable. That's just amazing. I think most of the tools now provide this functionality is just awesome. In context, translation, ideally, it's a condom, alternative for leave file preview, but more integrated with the web platform, for example, I'm translating, so I can navigate through the pages of the website and translate all the strings that I see there and translated and see how they will be showing shown to user you know, with all those ugly truncations, and overlapping things and length issues, layout issues, so I can catch them on very early stage of translating stuff. Plus, ideally, I'd like to be able to see translations in other languages, as well, because sometimes, I'd like to know how a certain string is translated in other languages for my own language group, for example, say, as a Russian speaker, I wouldn't mind to see Bulgarian translations or Ukrainian translations below Russian translations, you know, just to be on the safe side, in case of any doubts. Also, ideally, I would like to have tasks, okay, and I want my tasks to be prioritized, I want them to be sorted by deadlines by priority. And I want to have them displayed at a very, very visible place in the UI without having to, you know, do 10 clicks till I get my task list. Also, it would be wonderful, if, as a translator, I just can click in and get straight to the content that I have to translate, but not just the strings included in that cast. But to a file that I'm translating, sometimes it's really, really annoying not to have this possibility. Oh, so ideally, I'd like to know how much money I might be earning from completing a certain task, just you know, a rough estimation, because you know, along the way, as I start translating, my TM gets populated with translations. So the cost of every new segment might be, like smaller, but at least some rough estimation will be very, very sweet. So since we're talking about money, I'd like to know how much I'm making at any moment, you know, so ideally, I just would like to understand statistics are calculated how much I'm earning for you know, specific kind of work like translating, editing machine translated content or proofreading other linguists translation, and I'd like just to know to have a button somewhere on my personal dashboard, just click there and see my you know, score. Okay, so by now you have earned in this month, I don't know 100 euros and 50 cents. Unfortunately, I haven't seen this functionality in many tools, but would be so awesome. Also, ideally, I'd like to know how many hours I have spent on some proofreading or ltt. You know, not all translation management systems provide functionality to track your our work, and that would be so awesome to have just combined in one place so I can check my earnings straight away from clicking just one button. And, of course, I'd like to be able to act ports, all these calculations all together in one click to you know, maybe to have a generated invoice generated on the fly. Or maybe I can export all this information to, I don't know, Excel, Google Sheets, whatever, where I can just easily copy paste all the data into my invoice while dream with me. Next one, I want to earn more, okay, so I want to do more in less time. So of course, I want to have a possibility to use a translation memory, which is easy to upload to do TMS, which is easy to download. If I'm translating this or whatever, like off site, which is easy to leverage to edit, and share. For example, it would be wonderful if I could select not to use translations in the translation memory submitted before a certain date, or some been submitted not by me, or, you know, there are so many use cases which we could have played around with. But unfortunately, I didn't see much possibilities in the translation memory systems I've seen so far. Machine Translation as a translator, ideally, I would like to have a selection to use it or not. But to be able to do this, I have to build a trust connection with I might be using it and then making it perfect, you know, humanizing and stuff. But ideally, I'd like to have this possibility. The glossary one more thing, the glossary? Of course, you must have it okay, it's an industry standard, and it must be uploadable downloadable, editable. And, you know, human friendly to work with, easily accessible with all the terms well explained. And each term might be might have several possibilities. get translated. That's okay. Also, yeah, I just worded for my reviews. And I can add my own terms without bothering someone without bothering project manager, without like asking requesting for adding a new term without bothering my peers. My other translators who might see my newly added term, which I added just for myself, and for guys like fears, they will see it will have to translate it, I'd like to avoid it. So it's just my own private tool. I want it to be very, very helpful. Also, for offline translation possibilities, I want to have a very simple and easy to do cleat want to click possibility to upload and download actually files. And I want to still somehow, even with one translation, have a possibility to see the context in Folsom. And finally, I don't want to break a thing. Okay. So I do want to have my strings validated for any kind of issues, placeholders, tag line breaks, non breaking spaces, you name it. Plus, I want this validation to be running not only when they translate in the TMS, but also when I import their translated actually files. So you know, so there is no even a single tiny chance that something might be wrong with my translations from a technical perspective. Of course, also, I'd like to have those validation rules do you go shovel with localization project manager? There are so many corner cases in different languages, you know it all those breaks between percentage line all those, you know, small, be? familiar language, and I can discuss it and negotiate with project managers

Bryan Montpetit 14:16
think we're having a little bit of connectivity issues. And I'm not sure if you can actually hear me at the moment. No, looks like we lost No, unfortunately. Called hopefully she'll come back and in a moment or two. Meanwhile, I know that we had some questions. That one that came in originally, I think I might be able to, to shed some light on which was, as the translation memories are populated? Are the Freelancers for example, are the translators earning less money? It's one of I guess, a question that can be answered in a couple of different ways. And this might be basic for some. But what I'd like to to mentioned with respect to this question is, it's not necessarily that they're earning less. Now most translation companies and or in clients that are using translation technology do have a tiered pricing scheme. So what this means is that for content that has never yet been translated, there will be a particular rate established. Subsequently, if there is similar content that you're then presented with that has a match from the translation memory. So a very easy example is, let's say the house is red, you have new a new string that comes in or a new segment that is called the house is blue, you have a 75% match. And typically, the percentages themselves yield a lesser rate. So that being said, it's not necessarily that they're earning less, although there is a tiered scheme. So it depends on perspective on how you look at it. All right. Hopefully that answered that question. We do have some other questions that came in. I think that we have a concerning no minimum fees. I think this is more related to the the previous one I'm just going to look through. Yeah, like for continuous localization, but so Samir will be able to take care of that one for you. I will definitely let him answer the continuous localization aspects as bad back.

Anna Iokhimovich 16:16
How long? How long I have been in weight seems like I had issues.

Bryan Montpetit 16:21
For me, it felt like forever. So the the last slide that we saw, I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember what it was. I think you were just going through a couple of final points, but I'm not sure. So if you'd like to, I think it was point six. If I recall correctly. Okay.

Anna Iokhimovich 16:41
Sorry, guys, something went wrong with digital Estonia. Apparently.

Bryan Montpetit 16:47
Not a problem, you can feel free to resume you have you still have some time left. So okay,

Anna Iokhimovich 16:51
great. Great. Okay, so I'll just very quickly review what I have been talking about. So A, any translator doesn't want to break anything. Okay? So validation of strings for placeholders, tags must absolutely take place, no matter if translator is translating on site, or offline and just upload translated content. Plus, it's a very good practice, if you can configure QA checks, the validation rules, the level of project or maybe, you know, bunch of projects, and you can fine tune them by language, that would, that would be so awesome. Okay. Also, as a translator, I obviously don't want to miss any notifications, like important information about new tasks, new strings to translate, and I'd like to receive them through a channel that I personally select, okay, like a email or slack or, I don't know, maybe messenger or Telegram, when I've got whatever you name it. And finally, I'd like to configure notifications by myself as a translator, because you know, some guys, they need more information. So others, they just avoid those, you know, flooding emails or slack notifications, but it has to be personalized, it has to be customized. I truly believe that. Please, guys, tell me you can still hear me.

Bryan Montpetit 18:17
Absolutely. Okay. All

Anna Iokhimovich 18:19
right. Wondered. So much. You know, I just didn't know how else to validate if I'm still there or not. Okay. Thanks. Thanks.

Bryan Montpetit 18:28
Not a problem. All right.

Anna Iokhimovich 18:30
So, from Slater sports are kind of done. So we have two more roles to look through. And I'll try to make it as quick as possible. So we have a little bit time for q&a in the end. Yeah, great. Thank you. So localization project manager, you know, the multi handed Shiva of the

Bryan Montpetit 18:52
domain center optic, would you be able to share your screen please?

Anna Iokhimovich 18:55
Oh, my God, I'm not sharing Jesus. Thank you very much. This is what happens when you are giving a speech from home. Not in front of the audience. Right. So

Bryan Montpetit 19:11
you you are or will be in one moment. There you go. Thank you very much.

Anna Iokhimovich 19:15
Oh, boy. Okay. Well, anyways, Brian, do I get it right that all these slides will be shared later on with the participants? Absolutely. Yes. So, all right. So if you guys need something, you're very welcome to look through the slides. I do believe this checklist might be beneficial for someone here. I honestly hope I had like 10 years before I started here in localization. So I would have avoided so many, so many awkward moments during the work life. Okay, so here we go again, localization project manager what we poor fellows localization project managers want. First of all, I want to know what's called going on. With all my projects, I might have 20 of them. I honestly don't want to click into every single project to check if everything is okay. I just want to have one big dashboard like a health monitor, telling me which languages are on track, which are behind which projects? Have that deadlines or milestones? which don't? Are we on track or not? How many words did we have lately? In each of the projects? How many words did we have altogether? Like, I really want to notice how much how much we spent, for example, budget wise on translating a certain project or a certain project or all of them in last week, in last month, that was so awesome. I wish I had some insight someday. What is the selected workflow for certain project? You know, some projects are like task based and they have deadlines and milestones and releases don't happen very often, or that content is not released to development cycle like marketing emails, or okay. Or maybe we have a continuous localization, which means that strings come in like every, every day, I don't know, five times and translations are updated on production, like, equal, you know, count of times per day, like five times is it? It's important for me to plan my work and the plan to work to plan work of my team? is machine translation available for for a certain project or not? Who works on those projects? Which link? Which linguists are working there? Are they active? Have they disappeared? Are they done? Do I need to poke someone? What's going on? What integrations are available for certain proach? A product or projects? Or a like? Do I have Google Drive integration here enabled or not? And how many answered questions or new questions do we have? Do I have personally to go and click on an answer to them? Maybe in some projects, it's like to maybe some projects, it's 200. I want to prioritize my time. And I want to know how many validation failures I'm having in every project. So in my dream life, I do have a dashboard showing me all this information. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything like this yet. But if you guys have, please write your comments in the comment section, I'll be reading all of them after the speech and would be very happy to learn about something like that. The next one. I want to work with files easily. Okay, we all know, let's be realistic, automation is not is not the case everywhere, there is still a lot of manual work, like uploading files, downloading files, uploading files, downloading files. So ideally, I'd like to, you know, do it very, very, very easily. Or, ideally, maybe even have someone to do it instead of me. Like if I have a stakeholder or ordering a translation from my team. Why don't they just go and upload the files by themselves without bothering me? Hmm, that would be really cool. Also, ideally, I would like to define a structure of folders in my project, that I which would enable me to manage very, very grant read how to say like, okay, to fine tune the tasks allocation, the files selected for translation, you know, the more folders I can grade, the more subfolders I can create, the better honestly, like, that's my personal opinion. Also, I want to be able to hide certain files from translation or to hide certain strings from translation. Also, I'd like to create a file straight there in the TMS without having to create them somewhere, you know, in doc x and then upload it back. Plus task management, I want to manage tasks, and I want to manage them with as less effort as possible. So ideally, I want to have a set of linguists assigned to a certain project. So when I created the task, I don't even have to select them for you know, to assign them to a task, and all the tasks will be assigned automatically to predefined persons. have of course, I'd like to have a dashboard with all the tasks per project or to see all the tasks assigned to this certain person to see a dashboard showing me information about any of my linguists would save me so much time from you know, having to chat to people in Slack to see Hmm, looks like you haven't been like active in the project for three days. What's going on? Are you on vacation? We're losing you and whatsoever. There's Also, it will be so nice to have possibility to route the tasks and bulk edit them, like assign deadlines, add files to them and stuff. I haven't seen this functionality yet anywhere. If you guys know that any team has does it, please let me know. And finally, of course everyone wants it integration with JIRA. My current problem is that I cannot create a ticket in JIRA and grades up tickets and link it to tasks in our current translation memory system or translation management system. But I wish I could do it. I wish I could have a more tight integration between TMS and JIRA, not necessarily Jira, Trello or you know, whatever ticketing system you guys are using. Also,

Bryan Montpetit 25:51
I don't want to I don't want to interrupt and I know you've still got some, some pliers to go but we're almost at time. So I don't know if you want to either just recap quickly, or if we can move into some questions, I apologize for the for the inconvenience,

Anna Iokhimovich 26:06
no problem was internet connection issues and stuff. Okay. So very briefly, I do reckon honestly, genuinely recommend to read through all these checkmarks for project managers and for localization owners, who and localization owners, one ones will be mostly focusing on scaling the team monitoring its performance, you know, seeing the big picture, managing costs, and building a very close alignment with development process. Now,

Bryan Montpetit 26:45
you're cut out a little bit a little bit again. You are, how's that sound? And I again, I don't want to to interrupt, but perhaps we can ensure that smart cat has a copy of the, you know, the presentation. So a little chrome home can actually go ahead and share this with everybody and make sure that people can communicate with you via LinkedIn, because I believe you mentioned that originally. Should they have any questions? We also have the community as well, which I would appreciate if you participate in I'm pretty sure that some questions are going to be popping up there as well.

Anna Iokhimovich 27:20
Okay.

Bryan Montpetit 27:22
And thank you very much, right.

Anna Iokhimovich 27:25
I'm really sorry for you. No, but thanks anyways, for having me. Let's keep in touch on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward.

Bryan Montpetit 27:35
Thank you very much. It's the world we live in. I'm sorry, everybody. The connection unfortunately kind of is a little bit dodgy at the Times