A major player in the publishing industry wanted to capitalize on the emerging Brazilian middle class. Headquarters decided to translate 1000 technical books into Brazilian Portuguese on a limited budget and short turnaround times. Ccaps and tauyou responded to the prospect with a solid proposal, while at the same time educating the client on other ways to enter a new market without incurring high costs. After much discussion, analysis, and quotes, the client disappeared with no commitment. Was it a real opportunity or an adventure not worth the time of our sales team? In this highly interactive session, Fabiano Cid, Managing Director of Ccaps Translation and Localization, and Diego Bartolomé, CEO of tauyou <language>, presented at the GALA Conference in Istanbul the scope of the client's request, how they structured the offer, and the risk analysis they did internally afterwards. Then they asked audience members, "How would you have dealt with this prospect?" and responses were varied but highly enlightening. The conclusion? Do not be afraid to share your failures as you may learn a lot from others.

1. HOW WE FAILED TO WIN A
100,000,000 WORD CONTRACT...
Fabiano Cid & Diego Bartolomé

2. AGENDA
1. Fabiano talks
2. You interrupt him
3. Diego talks
4. You interrupt him
5. Fabiano talks again
6. You talk
7. We interrupt you
8. Diego interrupts Fabiano
9. We all shout at each other
(NOT NECESSARILY IN THIS ORDER)

3. FIRST CONTACT, FIRST MEETING

4. FIRST CONTACT, FIRST MEETING
- Contacted by prospect on April 10, 2013
- They had a project of "mass translation" and
wanted to arrange a meeting for that same day
- Meeting held at prospect's office.
- Project scope was explained and prospect
seemed to be familiar with the need for machine
translation.
- Rough numbers provided and Fabiano promised
to get back to him the following day with some
ideas.

5. THE CHALLENGE
• 1000 titles @ 300 pages per title (average; 300,000 pages
total)
• 2160 characters per page (without spaces)
• 7 characters per word (average)
• 300,000 pages x 2160 / 7 = 92.571.428,57 words
• An assumption for repeat words quantity
• Language: Brazilian Portuguese
• Content: Science & Technology Books
• XML input and XML output
• 6 to 8 months

6. THE CHALLENGE, TRANSLATED

7. THE CHALLENGE, LOCALIZED

8. WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE
Now that I am looking back, I should
have qualified the lead:
• Publishing is not our target industry
• We have no experience whatsoever in this market
• Areas of expertise varied immensely

9. WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

10. WHAT I DID INSTEAD

11. HERE’S AN IDEA!
• Using MT (Machine Translation) for books
is prone to result in bad quality
• Readers would complain and company’s
reputation would suffer
• How about release all titles for free
download with a BIG disclaimer; the most
popular would be properly translated

12. HERE’S AN IDEA!

15. PM + MT + PE

16. FIRST PROPOSAL

17. FIRST PROPOSAL
• Ccaps suggested a combination of machine
translation (MT) and human post-editing (PE)
• Since the material would be available to the
general public as high-quality publication,
extensive human interference by professional
linguists was needed.
• Nevertheless, we provided a three-tiered
proposal, reflecting the three possible levels of
human post-editing.

18. MT ENGINE

19. MT ENGINE
We would have to build one engine from scratch for
each domain. This preparation process requires:
• bulk analysis of the source text
• detection of untranslatable terms
• compilation of a glossary for each domain to
improve MT output

20. MT ENGINE
We would also have to understand the way the
XML tags have been used to make sure the output
respects the original placement.
• Domain-Specific Engine Setup:X per domain
• MT Maintenance: included
• MT Storage: included
• Machine Translation Output: included

21. NO POST-EDITING

22. NO POST-EDITING
“With no post-editing, customer receives from
Ccaps the whole set of books translated into
Brazilian Portuguese with a raw output generated
by the MT engine. The format specified would
respect the number of XML tags, but these would
be positioned in the same location as the source
text, requiring repositioning. “

23. LIGHT POST-EDITING

24. LIGHT POST-EDITING
• MT output would undergo a light revision to
make sure that the text is readable and
grammatically correct
• No guarantee that it reflects the source text in its
entirety, both in semantic and stylistic terms
• Depending on customer’s expectations, this may
not be a suitable solution as it could create
liabilities not only in terms of the quality of the
published material, but also more complicated
risks of a legal nature.

25. FULL POST-EDITING

26. FULL POST-EDITING
• Ideal scenario since it combines the best of
automated and human translation
• It will take longer and be costly than the other
two scenarios, but would greatly minimize the
risks involved.
• Post-editors are not necessarily experts in each
domain of the translated books, additional
technical review by an SME
• Resource to customer’s experts, who are already
familiarized with the subject matters

27. SOME ENGINEERING, DTP, ETC.

28. SOME ENGINEERING, DTP, ETC.
Engineering:
• Preparation and post-processing of translatable files,
• Extraction and placement of editable graphics in correct order
and location
• XML tag processing
• Charged by the hour; not possible to assess time needed
Desktop Publishing:
• Preparation of graphic files for translation
• Making necessary adjustments to graphic elements once the
translated text has been reverted back
• Charged by the hour; not possible to assess time needed

29. WE ARE READY!

30. WE ARE READY!
• Not possible to predict the time to complete the whole
project
• Need to have a fairly large sample of data and more
testing time to evaluate quality and ascertain the effort
involved in the MT setup
• Based on initial analysis of samples provided, we
expected the following throughputs:
• Light Post-Editing: 7.500 words/editor/day
• Heavy Post-Editing: 4.000 words/editor/day
• We needed to know the scenario of choice to predict the
time and effort involved

31. CHANGE OF SCOPE

32. CHANGE OF SCOPE
• Down to 100 books (rather than 1,000)
• Consider 10 domains
• Still 10,000,000 words
• Ccaps proposal still valid, as it does not
contemplate full amount
• Nope! Customer needs total cost

33. UPDATED PROPOSAL

34. MASSIVE CHANGE OF SCOPE

35. MASSIVE CHANGE OF SCOPE
“One of the options concerns a workflow in which the
content will be Machine Translated by another vendor first
who will also offer an online accessible infrastructure for you
providing Translation Memory, an environment for technical
and final review of the translation and tracking functionality.
Secondly I like to have a separate session with you. The
agenda points I then like to cover are:
• Brief introduction to your company
• Overview of your own approach to TM, MT, Terminology
Management, Staff selection and Quality Management
• Your opinion on advantages and challenges of a workflow with
other vendor

36. OUR HONEST OPINION?

37. THIRD PROPOSAL
Specific amount:
• Domain-Specific Engine Setup: X
• Light Post-Editing: 2X
• Heavy Post-Editing: 5X
Turnaround time:
• Six months to complete

38. THIRD PROPOSAL

39. NO ANSWER

40. EITHER WAY?

41. EITHER WAY?
• We may have not won the contract but is it not
likely that we would have lost money?
• Could they have been so unsatisfied as to not
be willing to pay the agreed price?
• How bad could we have looked if things went
wrong, which was extremely likely to happen?

42. WHAT WOULD
YOU
HAVE DONE?

43. HOW I MAY HAVE SOUNDED...

44. HOW I HOPE YOU WOULD SEE ME

45. WHY?
"LSPs see themselves as the keepers of a proven method
to produce translations and often push back on what they
see as unreasonable customer requests. They strive for
stability and predictability instead of providing solutions that
will rock the client’s world. Their customers want to
outsource their global communications to a trusted partner
that has their interests at heart. They don’t want to hear
about difficulties; they want to hear about solutions that will
allow them to beat their own competition."
Hélène Pielmeier, Common Sense Advisory

46. THANK YOU
Diego Bartolomé
CEO
diego.bartolome@tauyou.com
Tel: +34 (93) 711 2996
Fax: +34 (670) 331 0225
www.tauyou.com

47. THANK YOU
Fabiano Cid
Managing Director
fcid@ccaps.net
Tel: +55 (21) 2507-5989
Cel: +55 (21) 98222-9988
www.ccaps.net