E-commerce localization of AW LAB

The challenge

As part of an extensive project to expand abroad and consolidate its online sales channel, AW LAB asked Qabiria to translate and localize its online store and its blog from Italian to English.

The project involved the translation of product sheets and blog articles totaling about 250,000 words, to be published in 5 weeks.

The solution

In a first phase of analysis, conducted with AW LAB’s IT service provider, the best process for processing the original format was identified in order to extract the translatable content without corrupting the underlying programming code.

Then the initial count was rescaled by excluding all repetitions.

The actual translation was then assigned to a team of native translators experienced in the clothing sector, who strictly adhered to the brand guidelines.

Finally, the work underwent an intensive revision process, designed to ensure not only the highest levels of content quality, but also total fidelity to the original format.

The workflow

Translators assigned to the project worked simultaneously on the files, sharing the translation database and glossary through a specific tool, OmegaT.

OmegaT is a computer-aided translation program, not machine translation, that is, it does not translate instead of people, but is an aid to human translation. It brings together in a single interface the database of translations already performed, one or more glossaries, a spell checker, a grammar checker, and one or more electronic dictionaries, as well as other indispensable quality control functions.

The exact workflow from content creation to the editorial phase was:

• Blog posts were written by a copywriter from outside the company and delivered in Microsoft Word format.
• The product sheets were prepared in Magento, a CMS for e-commerce, a software platform for creating an online shop.
• The product sheets, in Excel XML format, were exported from Magento, translated by Qabiria into OmegaT, and then imported back into Magento ready to publish in the online store.
• Instead, blog posts were sent to Qabiria as Word files and then imported into Typo3, another CMS, by the client.

1. In the role-divided workflow, everything starts with the client’s request.
2. Then a Qabiria project manager prepares, uploads, and analyzes the file.
3. The results of the analysis or word count are then sent to the client.
4. The project manager then allocates the work to the translators. This notification is sent through Qabiria’s project management system or, in case of urgency, through a private chat.
5. The translator translates the assigned content.
6. The reviewer first and the project manager later review the translations.
7. The project manager delivers the translated files to the client.

Tools used and technical issues

The steps highlighted in the figure below were handled through the OmegaT translation program.

The first problem solved was the absence in OmegaT of a specific filter to translate Excel XML files.

At first these XML files were converted to Excel files (*.xlsx). However, this involved extra work on the part of the project manager and an extra step in the whole process.

Thus Qabiria requested and sponsored the development of a new filter for OmegaT, which was then introduced in the standard version of the program for the benefit of the entire user community.

The translation-ready files were then to be made available to all translators and reviewers.

This was made possible by OmegaT’s “team project” function.

With this feature, multiple translators can work together on the same project, sharing translation resources almost in real time. The collaborative translation that OmegaT offers us is based on the “version control” feature widely used by software developers to control changes to a programme’s code. One such version control program is Apache Subversion (SVN), the one chosen.

By uploading an OmegaT translation project to an SVN server, it becomes possible to assign it to several translators who can work on it simultaneously.

The tools used were therefore the following:

• OmegaT, for translation and as an SVN client.
• Subversion, the version control software.
• TortoiseSVN, SVN client for managing files to be shared.
• A private server on which Subversion has been installed.

Results

With these tools and this process, in just over a month and within the agreed terms, AW LAB received the localized version of the site.

The product sheets and blog posts were correctly imported into the respective content management systems.

From this project, the collaboration has continued to the present.

Qabiria routinely translates product catalog updates, not only into English, but also into Spanish.

Numerous marketing campaign copy and point-of-sale materials in Czech were translated into English for the opening of the first stores in the Czech Republic.