Language Standards for Global Business
Vienna, Austria
December 14-15, 2006

Standards, standards, standards - the grouping of technological, process and language standards
Ziad Chama, Freelance Translation Technology Consultant, SDL/Trados, Germany

You want to know what standards mean in the context of localization? Ask three different people, and you may well end up with three different answers: some will tell you that localization standards have something to do with well-defined, standard processes that you need to adhere to in order to ensure quality and consistency in your translations.

Others might answer that standards in localization refer to so-called ISO locales, i.e. using unique language identifiers, for example "EN-US" for American English rather than variations such as "US English", "English US", "English USA", etc. Then, there are the technology aficionados, who will likely reel off the textbook definitions for cryptic sounding acronyms such as TMX, XLIFF, TBX, XML, XSL, etc.

In a way, each one of those answers is correct. However, they only tell one side of the whole story. It is not until you put together all three types of standards (i.e. process, linguistic, and technical) that you will get the full picture and realize the impact of standards on localization.

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