In recent years, Virtual Reality has seen a massive uptick, specifically when it comes to tourism.
Some within the industry believe the Virtual Reality (VR) is going to completely revolutionize the tourism sector. We’ll tell you all we can so you can make up your own mind on the subject.
VR? AR?… Tell me more!
Virtual Reality is a technology that allows users to be immersed in an artificial world via a headset and occasionally with other accessories such as haptic feedback systems or omnidirectional treadmills that enable developers to create an even greater feeling of realism for their users. AR (or Augmented Reality) is more like a HUD (Heads-up Display), a layer of technology that gets imprinted on top of the base reality we know. This may be as simple as a telephone notification that lights up in your field of vision, time or weather, historical information about a specific place you are visiting, or as you may remember from 2016, Pokémon that invade the streets of your hometown.
The first thing of note, VR has been taking a more and more noticeable role in day-to-day life, even outside of the obvious use for video games. Some realtors are diving whole-hog into the world of VR, offering virtual tours of new listings, or as-yet unbuilt properties. Or for those looking to just update their homes, interior designers can allow you to see what your new place would look like before the first touch of paint marks your walls.
But how about testing a bit of bungee jumping in VR? Or maybe you’d prefer to visit the moon, on the back of your flying dragon?
VR has been a real boon for tourism, which is why there has been such a marked increases in the number of available experiences in this domain.
What are the advantages for the tourism industry?
First of all, it’s a wonderful marketing tool!A virtual visit won’t replace being there live and in person, but it’s a great way to offer a client a choice of destinations to see what really would be the holiday of their dreams.
These virtual experiences are slowly replacing paper brochures as they simplify the writing process (no need to find the right words to create that emotional reaction within your clients) and they aren’t limited to the paper-consuming print media. This means these experiences can be shared on social media to even those potential consumers who don’t own a VR headset. And as we’ve all noted in recent years, text marketing has largely been replaced by video.
Can VR make the tourism industry dynamic again?
Studies have shown that clients who have experienced a virtual visit have come out of the experience with a stronger desire to visit the destination. Often, these VR experiences even benefit from natural reserves that are generally less often visited.
At the same time, tourism that can be considered to be “off the beaten track” has become more and more in vogue. Those travelers looking for experiences outside of the mass tourism market are therefore particularly receptive to these images of natural reserves.
On top of these experiences creating that emotional reaction for your clients, they’re also more often shared on social media networks. The utility is thus twofold from a marketing perspective because of recommendations and word of mouth or the best ways to quickly discover a new destination.
Virtual reality thus seems to be a good solution for relaunching the tourism industry while we are still globally working through the governmental restrictions and limitations of this Covid era. And for this reason, within the industry, digital uses are being developed.
Will I be enjoying VR while I’m on my visit?
It’s possible that the experience will also continue once you’re on site! Some museums have started offering immersive experiences, specifically for showing how a location’s architecture has evolved over time. But there are also games on offer in some where you search for virtual clues in order to win.
Note, however, that while VR travelling solutions are becoming more and more commonplace, the costs related to this adventure are not negligible. You should therefore study your project upstream to make sure it makes sense for you. Yet, this is only the beginning, and it’s clear, as with most things, the more the consumers flock to the solution, the more reasonable and affordable the cost-to-benefit ratio will become.
TradOnline and VR/AR
TradOnline works for a number of actors in the tourism industry and with our location in Laval, we are particularly attentive of the latest innovations in the fields of Virtual and Augmented Reality. Why? Because each year, Laval is home to Laval Virtual, one of Europe’s largest tradeshows centred on immersive (and emerging) technologies!
Have you launched your own VR/AR project? Looking to adapt it for an international audience? Contact us!
Once does not a habit make, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to at least recount my personal experience. I’d like to talk to you about my 2021 summer holiday, and more specifically about my road trip to Germany in a fitted van with 2 young children. (Photo of one of our mountain camping spots – summer 2021).
Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn this into a travel blog, but I would like to take a look at this from a linguistic point of view.
Children and languages
I’ll start by making it clear that we had initially planned to stay out 3 weeks, but that we ended up cutting a few days short.
Why? Our two kids, aged 8 and 5, had difficulty with the fact that that couldn’t understand the language being spoken by everyone around them, or even to them. Of course, they quickly learned the words necessary to mind their P’s and Q’s, but nothing useful for talking to other kids their age at a playground.
I do want to say that I think it is important to introduce young children to such experiences as it’s a good way to help them understand the importance of learning foreign languages.
Despite this little change to our plans, the trip was chock full of new discoveries and opportunities to learn, but I’m sure that’s nothing surprising to you!
Travelling with Google Translate
From a linguistic point of view, it’s always possible to get by with English while in Germany, even at the register of any grocery store. On the other side, we met very few people who spoke French.
As it is, it’s always a stressful moment when you’re sitting down in a restaurant with a menu you can’t read and crossing your fingers you don’t end up with something completely inedible. I have to admit, Google image translator provided us invaluable aid in these moments of desperation. Obviously, it didn’t provide us with a quality translation, but it provided crucial information about certain key words that gave us more or less an idea of what we would find in our plates (which generally contained some sausage, to be fair ^_^).
And that wasn’t the only time Google extended a helping hand…
Another huge help came while we were trying to do our wash without understanding a single word on the displayed programmes! Give Google’s solution a test yourself… At least for me, it allowed me to finish my laundry, and get it back in good shape!
And the uses of Google translate don’t end there when you’re abroad.
From time to time, we would end up at a campsite where the receptionist spoke neither French, English, nor Spanish (the 3 languages I, myself speak). After my husband gave a go of understanding what they said in German, I took out my phone and recorded them through Google translate. To my utmost delight, success! It wasn’t exactly a good French translation, but it was enough for me to understand they had a place for us to spend the night!
Of course, these solutions won’t replace professional translation and interpretation, but they do make travelling easier in a way that wasn’t possible 20 or 30 years ago! Want to share your own anecdotes about the linguistic troubles you had on holiday this summer? We’re all ears!
Quality assurance is a generic term that covers a number of processes that allow us to ensure the best possible translation to our clients.
This step is all the more important when dealing with voluminous projects.
Some of these processes fall under the purview of the client, others, the project manager, and others still, the translators.
Quality assurance starts with a good customer brief
When a client discusses a request with their Project Manager at TradOnline, the project manager with systematically request certain information:
What is the general context of the request? What is the target audience of the document?
Do you have a glossary/term base?
Do you have reference documents?
Are there product names that must not be translated in your document?
With these responses in hand, the project manager will be able to correctly brief the translator assigned to your project. It’s important for our translator to fully understand the challenges at hand and needs of the client in order to provide pertinent translations.
At the end of project, your project manager will export the documents in the initial file format and run a visual verification of the document before delivery to the client. This is notably to verify that nothing was left untranslated.
Professional translators: quality assurance an obligatory yet key skill
When it comes to translators, it is their responsibility, before accepting any project, to verify that the subject matter falls within their competencies.
It should be noted that while our translators are professionals, it is standard practice to use spell checkers because, to borrow the words of Alexander Pope, to err is human.
In 90% of cases our translators use translation memories (based on the client or the domain), which offers additional support when seeking coherent terminological translation.
It should also be noted that throughout their careers, professional translators cultivate the ability to identify any problematic segments that may lead to misinterpretations. Indeed, it’s far from rare that our project managers receive a list of questions from the translator seeking clarification from the client during a translation project. We view this as a sign of professionalism and a gauge of quality.
A translator who truly enjoys their work will always have it in their minds to grow and evolve as a translator over the years through lifelong learning, uncovering and learning about new tools, mastering and providing new services, etc. Our translators are constantly growing!
Technology in service of terminology
Before delivering a project, our translators are able to run an automatic QA on the CAT tool we use: memoQ. The QA feature highlights:
Terminology inconsistent with the glossary or use of prohibited terms
Segments missing translation as well as those where the source and translation are identical (though this isn’t always an error) or where the segment formatting is different (missing tags, tags in the wrong order, etc.)
The difference in the length of the source and translated segments. If the difference is unexpected or unusual, the QA will throw an error for manual review.
If an identical segment was not translated in exactly the same way. Generally speaking, the QA tool is a great asset for comparing the translation to the Memory and Term Base.
Number formatting and punctuation are also verified against the target language standard formatting, including spaces before or after punctuation, double spaces, duplicate words, duplicate punctuation marks, capitalization, tags, etc.
It is also possible to activate a spell checker in the QA tool for final verification
The automatic QA tool provides a valuable complement to the proofreading our translators carry out before delivering the project.
This QA tool and the terminological coherence provided by the Term Base and Translation Memory are the reason why 95% of the projects we handle at TradOnline are managed on our Computer Assisted Translation tool, memoQ. If you’re looking for any more information about our Quality Assurance procedures, or anything else, reach out to us on our contact form below and we’ll be happy to get back to you!
Drupal has seen a slight dip in its market share over the last 18 months, but it still remains squarely planted in the top 10 CMS’s on the market with hundreds of thousands of websites relying on the framework. And the developers are still hard at work, with the release of Drupal 10 currently scheduled to drop June 2022.
But, 2022 is still a ways off (at least as of the time I’m writing this), and for those of you running Drupal 9, you may have some questions about how to get your site translated. I’m sure if you’ve read any of our past articles, I don’t need to tell you about the benefits of translation, especially if you’re targeting an international audience. Providing your offering in your target’s native language is a sure-fire way to improve your chances of closing a sale.
So, whether you already offer your content in multiple languages and are just looking to add a new market segment, or whether this is your first time delving into foreign markets, our project managers are on hand and ready to help you make your internationalization project on Drupal a success.
Taking the first steps
One of the small quality of life improvements you have in Drupal over certain other CMS platforms is an internationalization module that comes already included in the core system (assuming you are using Drupal 8 or later). Alongside this, a number of system messages and interface elements are already translated into numerous different languages by the community. Once you’ve selected the languages that you want, these are automatically imported with the language pack. You’ll just have to install the four modules that comprise the core of the multilingual system. These are the Language, Interface Translation, Content Translation, and Configuration Translation modules.
You’ll want to head to the Manage menu, and then look in Configuration, Regional and Language, Languages where you’ll find a list of languages you can add. After you’ve added your new language or languages, you’ll have to add a Language Switcher block that will enable your visitors to choose what language best suits them. If you need more information, all of the steps can be found on the Drupal website here.
Taking it further
Now that you’ve added your new languages, the next step is to decide what content you’re going to need translated. The core Content Translation module will allow you to translate everything from custom blocks to terms, comments, and even pages. However, in order to facilitate interactions with an external provider, we suggest you opt for the Translation Management Tool module. This has the non-negligible advantage of enabling your content to be exported (and then re-imported) in the industry standard xliff format.
While it may be an option to just create an access for your translator to update strings in the back office, choosing to export the translations in the xliff format means that you don’t need to create another potential vulnerability with a new access code, and it also enables your translation service provider to leverage existing, or create new, translation memories. These memories will help ensure your strings are translated consistently and will allow you to save money on recurring content. With a simple xliff export, we’ll be able to find an accurate word count, taking into account repetitions, to quickly provide an accurate estimate. And since it is an industry standard, we can help optimize project management costs.
The Translation Management Tool is also fully compatible with Drupal 7, 8, and 9.
Translating Themes and Modules
Of course, not everything is always so neat and tidy. When it comes to translating strings hardcoded into your theme, you may be at the mercy of your development team. When Drupal 8 was launched, the Twig template engine was introduced. This allowed developers to take advantage of the internationalization module and specifically tag content as translatable by using the {% trans %} and {% endtrans %} tags. However, if your theme developer didn’t leverage this capacity, it will need to be manually updated by creating a copy of the theme and then using a module such as Switch Page Theme to enable a non-default theme to be used on specific pages.
Likewise, when it comes to modules, you’re again at the mercy of the developers. If they’ve used industry best practices, you should have a .po (Portable Object) file for each added language that you can simply export and have translated by your chosen language service provider.
However, if they’ve included hardcoded strings that are untranslatable, you’ll need to reach out to the developers to have the issue corrected, or manually copy it and change the code in-house if you have such capable developers on hand.
Other options
I’ve taken the time to list some of the major challenges and benefits of translating a website on the Drupal platform, but, as with everything, the list is non-exhaustive. For example, the Translation Management Tool will also allow you to work completely online via Smartling or Memsource, if you so decide. You can also opt for 100% Machine Translation through Deepl or Google Translate. While Machine Translations has come a long way, we don’t suggest you opt for this solution unless you’re going to ask a professional to provide post editing services.
If you’d like to know more about Machine Translation Post Editing, or if you have any other questions or concerns about translating a Drupal website, don’t hesitate to contact our professional and helpful project management team. We’re here to facilitate your internationalization project and ensure it is a success!
With the ongoing governmental responses to the Covid crisis, more and more of our clients have been contacting us to discuss launching their products and services abroad in the hopes of finding favourable markets in which to continue to grow. It is a sign that the return to normality will undoubtedly pass by exports. However, with or without an international crisis, it is important you plan your project (and marketing strategy) upstream!
The difference between translation and localization
If you’ve already read up on commercial development strategies translated from an American company, or inversely as an American, read into said strategies by a French company, you’re sure to have noticed certain techniques aren’t adapted culturally to the way the target audience does business. If a business were to follow these American giants’ guidelines to the letter, there is a good chance that these efforts would fall flat within French borders.
So, what’s the point we’re trying to make here? Simply put, it’s not always enough to just translate a document, to stick too close to the source material.
Sometimes, your project calls for localization.
Translate or localize: how do you know which to choose?
Choosing between these two procedures will depend nearly entirely on the type of content our clients send us.
Basic content (informative) can often be translated as is. This includes product descriptions or customer testimonials as well.
Depending on your core business sector and the product or service you offer, it is possible that the majority of your content will need to be rewritten (localized) to provide for a more adapted marketing approach in your target countries.
Through past experience, we’ve come to realize that, generally speaking, products destined for the general public are more suited to localization as there is a wider variety of terminology and tones used, and less structured jargon.
The process of adaptation can be relatively simple at times, requiring little more than a veneer of cultural content to the translation to ensure it is appropriate. This could be crafting more or less shocking hooks, the use of formal or informal language, the uses of more local references.
On the flip side, localization, or adaptation,can require a much heavier hand in certain circumstances. For instance, your General Terms and Conditions of Sale may need to be completely reworked with your attorney upstream of translation if you’ll be selling in countries that have extremely different laws and regulations.
To illustrate the point, imagine your are sending a newsletter out to a foreign client. Now, ask yourself, will the client be using your product in the same manner as your local client? Do they have the same expectations and characteristics (think of your customer “persona”)?
And what about the localization of videos, subtitles and voice-overs?
The same rules apply for your videos. Either your videos are made in a way that they speak to a wide variety of audiences, or you’ll need to create a localized version (at least through adaptation of your subtitles, as images are often more universal than text).
This is something that you should be thinking about before launching your video project, especially for businesses with limited budgets. Given the cost of creating a marketing video, it may be more financially prudent to create one single video that you can distribute to all of your clients. Along the same lines, be aware that adding text to your video, while it may be visually interesting, can create new problems if you have to have new graphics created for each language as well…
How do I test the efficacy of my marketing messaging on my international audience?
TradOnline, in partnership with The Machinery, offers a method to quickly verify the validity of your messages and concepts internationally. An original start-up that allows users to test the feasibility of their service or product on a new market by verifying that it responds to a known need. Less expensive than a classic market study, this will provide you with insight into your messaging and the actual need of your product or service before you launch internationally.
Testing your offering and marketing messages with an ultra-qualified (core) target audience. They use A/B testing of your marketing hooks and various ways of speaking about your offering and its advantages.
Above all, they deliver quantitative results allowing you to feel out the market and refine your approach. And you can make your decision with peace of mind.
Discuss it with your management, marketing, and innovation teams!
