Bulk Translation Processes That Never Sleep

Their charter is to develop a best-in-class localization pipeline to deliver localized games, applications, and services in thirty-three languages. 

They engaged Keywords Studios to co-develop a revolutionary new approach to games localization that would result in fully disambiguated localization services. This means having the output of our game-specific MT engines go directly to the reviewers and editors to fine tune to the best quality standards. A new approach that allows for translation work to be done in massive quantities at unrivaled speed, eliminating management time without compromising the quality of the final output.

The Challenge

The Global LaaS team within this software corporation sought to move to disintermediated services using a Direct-to-Translator job model via cloud translation platforms. Their goal was to achieve added control, security, data tracking, transparency, and to open the environment to a community of self-managing editors/reviewers. 

One of the main challenges was being able to process their enormous catalogue of games in 33 languages straight from the kickoff. At Keywords Studios we already had healthy pools of collaborators that can funnel massive amounts of content for many languages. Even so, this endeavor required an incredibly fast scaling of the teams working on languages less typically requested in the game industry. Furthermore, that talent sourcing not only had to be done at an unprecedented speed, but it also required to be thorough to maintain localization quality up to optimum standards.

Parallel to an incredibly challenging talent sourcing task, technical challenges for their envisioned model also included:

• Disintermediated: It had to achieve fully automated localization services that brought the outputs of MT directly to reviewers and editors.
• High volume: It would have to produce consistent daily throughputs of 10k words per language with 95% of job-turnarounds within 48-hours.
• Top-level quality: Finally, it had to maintain top level localization quality and responsiveness to client requests even in a disintermediated setting.

Key Deliverables

Our teams recognised the task at hand was colossal in its complexities and had to be tackled by our entire organisation’s talent and effort.

Our Resource Management team had to recruit close to 200 quality Editors/Reviewers in a 6-week timespan and collaborate with Production so new and current resources could start processing content in a record time frame. Even with a track record of decades building a network of collaborators for a wide array of languages, we still had to either reinforce those teams for some languages or even build them from scratch for others. 

Meanwhile, our Machine Translation software engineers had to make the newest AI advancements in Neural Machine Translation accessible and user-friendly to our client’s teams, so they could manage hundreds of tasks on their side without assistance. Not only that, the platform would have to be safe and integrate with their processes and other industry-standard CAT tools.

The Solution

Our solution is a testament to the unparalleled level of adaptability of our global Localization teams and their capacity to work in unison. To make it possible, we leveraged the different skill sets of our many studios around the world and worked in a follow-the-sun model thanks to our global footprint. Our ‘One Keywords’ philosophy was essential to fuel our client’s ambition of updating their Localization to new standards and achieve fully disambiguated services for Translation and Linguistic Support services. 

Only a global corporation like Keywords Studios that can act as one and synergise the talents of diverse teams could have accomplished this revolutionary innovation. KantanAI’s software development prowess, Resource Management’s extraordinary capability to quickly source expert talent in more than 33 languages, and our Production departments’ flexibility to never-before-seen challenges were all essential to the project’s success. Only partnering with Keywords could our client have set in place the unique solution they were looking for in the time frame they required.

Keywords Studios successfully developed a customised DTT solution, built on the decades of experience of our teams, to address their goals head-on and pioneered a new approach to gaming localization.

• Always working: Our cloud Direct-to-Translator delivers thousands of words in 33 languages per day with 24x7x365 availability.
• Added efficiencies: Creates new and unique efficiencies via AI-enhanced CAT tools and NMT, with added control, security, and data tracking.
• Experts in the loop: KWS’ experts in the loop ensure quality and responsiveness to the client at every step of the process.

Results

• Keywords Studios successfully built a highly automated bulk translation service for 33 languages for dozens of games in 6 weeks. KantanStream is the TMS platform used to accelerate the delivery of content, providing impressive results since its implementation:
• KantanStream integrates with the our client’s CMS, extracting localizable content automatically and delivering it directly to a community of self-regulated professional translators.
• We can process 10k tasks a month in 33 languages while combining the accuracy of Translation Memory and the cost efficiencies of our custom Machine Translation engines for video games.
• Our AI-powered process ensures project turnarounds of 48 hours or less by leveraging the flexibility of its large translator communities that can deliver high quality translations 24x7, 365 days a year.
• This mix of the newest AI advancements in Neural Machine Translation embedded into our tailored engines for video games, and the power of a self-regulated community has set a new standard in localization processes. Despite this high automation, our experts in the loop ensure smooth operations and accountability to the client.
• This unique experience will allow us to roll out similar services for other clients in need of new approaches to attend to the ever-growing content demand of players today.