Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?

[John Rosberg]

Having the localization company proof it's own work is akin to editing
your own writing -- while it may work very well, it's almost certain to
introduce errors.

Since you are localizing your software, I would guess you've
sales/service operations in at least some of the areas into which these
localized products are being shipped -- I've used sales/service
personnel with pretty good results, once the expectations are agreed
upon in both directions.

Another source may be Sales Partners or Distributors (if any) -- their
product AND language knowledge positions them very nicely to double
check the localized versions of your products.

Hope this is of assistance.

John Rosberg

-----Original Message-----
From: Localization Question [mailto:localization_question at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 6:40 AM
To: techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?

My company localizes its software using a third-party firm. For the most

part, the service and quality seems excellent. However, there have been
a 
few glitches and imperfections. I am wondering if we should be using 
reviewers or editors, who are, of course, fluent in the relevant
language, 
to improve the localized documentation. The localization firm does
include a 
reviewer.

So, three questions:
1)  Does your company get linguistic experts, or any other sort of
expert, 
to review localized materials?
2) Is it reasonable to simply trust the localization firm to be doing a
good 
job? My colleagues and I have edited materials and caught the odd error,

despite a complete lack of fluency.

3) If you do have additional reviewers, how did you get them and what is
the 
relationship to your company?

Thanks.

_________________________________________________________________
Don't just Search. Find! http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/default.aspx The
new 
MSN Search! Check it out!