Thirty-seven percent of the 111 respondents to TAUS/LISA’s survey think that the lack of interoperability costs their business more than 10% of their total translation budget (or revenue in case of the service providers). Twenty-five percent say it costs them more than 20%. Only nine percent think it costs them less than 5% of their translation budgets. Forty-three percent of the respondents don’t know exactly how much it costs them. It is clear though that the lack of interoperability costs the industry a fortune. We are talking about the industry’s failure to exchange translation memories and terminology in a standard format, and to integrate translation software with content and document management systems.

There is a huge opportunity for efficiency improvement. Most importantly, as the survey points out, we could

1. standardize and simplify the translation business process
2. reduce translation management and overhead cost and
3. improve translation quality.

If only we could achieve true interoperability among vendors, buyers and translators. So, what holds us from achieving this?

The respondents to the survey quoted the lack of compliance to interchange format standards as the primary barrier, blaming the fact that a few suppliers dominate the translation technology sector as a secondary issue. Thirdly, they say, the industry is missing an organizing body or umbrella organization capable of leading the effort and monitoring the compliance. The problem is not really the lack of standards or the maturity of standards. We already have standards: TMX and XLIFF are flagged as the two standards that everyone finds essential.

Yet 64% of the respondents agree that translation standards may require an upgrade so that we can overcome the disconnects between on the one hand content management systems and social media platforms and on the other hand the translation platforms. Read full article.

See: TAUS