Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Market Trends: Going In-house

Multivac Sepp Haggenmuller GmbH & Co. KG, manufacturer of packaging solutions used in over 100 countries worldwide does translation projects for 31 languages are now directly managed from the headquarters in Wolfertschwenden, Germany, with many in-house and external resources included in the translation process.

Multivac made a decision to translate documentation into more than the 25 EU languages required by the EC Machinery Directive. With this decision, the translation volume immediately rose by a multiple factor, from its original 11 languages served to 31. Around the same time, the number of technical documents needing to be prepared also rose by about 20%.

Needing greater flexibility and transparency of translation projects, the editorial team decided to administer and manage their language projects in-house. This allows the company to keep the language data -- the entries in the translation memory and in the terminology database -- in-house, so they can be used during the creation of the source text. It also allows re-use of sections of existing translations, keeping costs down.

They use Across Language Server as the central platform for all language matters in the company to enable them to meet their specifications in an optimal manner. In addition, Ovidius TCToolbox, the XML-based editorial and content management system (CMS) used by Multivac, was integrated with the Across Language Server, allowing initiation of projects in the CMS.

Precisely the reason for us, freelancers, to start looking inside large industry compounds for either full-time employment or short-term contracts (I prefer the second, not an employee by nature). I predicted many months ago that as belts tighten, the middle-man (the agency) will be slowly pushed out of the equation. Not exactly excellent news for me, because my agents save me time and money on marketing and project managing - so I have more time to translate.

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