FAQ

EC Innovations, an award-winning localization pioneer based in Singapore, was founded in April 1997 by President and CEO Dr. James Wei. It is now one of the largest Asia-based localization solutions providers.

EC Innovations is a global provider of professional, enterprise-level language services and technology solutions. It is recognized as a pioneer and world leader in the localization of websites, software, and documentation. With state-of-the-art production centers in mainland China, sales and account management offices around the globe, strategic partnerships in Europe and the Americas, and linguists in 100+ countries, we continue to grow our business by supporting our clients’ ever-changing needs.

Backed by our ISO 9001:2015-certified quality management system, our language solutions allow a diverse array of clients to deliver local language products, services, applications, training, and content in a culturally appropriate manner. By allowing our clients to compete more effectively in the global marketplace, we help them grow their business internationally.

EC Innovations is a technology-driven language services provider with a mission to provide high quality localization solutions via a customer-centric approach. EC Innovations has the following competitive advantages:

APAC Expertise: With headquarters in Singapore and production centers across Asia, EC Innovations’ expertise in APAC translations is unmatched by any of our competitors. In addition to offering our APAC translation services directly to consumers, EC Innovations has also been a behind-the-scenes APAC language source for many of multi-language suppliers.

Low-Overhead Business Model: Our strategically located production centers operate with an in-house business model which allows our specialized linguists, desktop publishing experts, website/software engineers, project managers, and resource managers to work in a highly collaborative environment. By combining the world’s best in-country experts and centralizing our production and account management staff, we eliminate the overhead typically associated with language production, allowing our clients enjoy high quality language services at a fraction of current market prices—often at savings of up to 35%.

Full-Service Provider: EC Innovations provides a single source for all our clients’ language needs, including translation, interpretation, cultural consulting, ISEO/ISEM, marketing transadaptation and transcreation, multimedia localization (including voice-overs and subtitling), functional and linguistic testing, and more.

Commitment to Quality: We firmly believe that “Quality is the boss who pays our salary.” To that end, EC Innovations has an ISO 9001:2015-certified Quality Management System in place, as well as a highly regarded, proprietary linguistic certification program which all our linguists must pass. Our proven methodologies, technology, cutting-edge tools, and quality standards set us apart from our competition. Our outstanding service has helped us form long-term partnerships with many of the world’s leading companies, such as Intel, Siemens, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Sybase, and more.

Scalable Solutions: With over 400 full-time employees and more than 5,000 linguists and subject-matter experts, EC Innovations has the resources, infrastructure, and systems to support the growing requirements of our clients.

Account Director: The Account Director is responsible for assembling and overseeing the internal EC Innovations team.

Project Manager: TI’s Project Manager works under the supervision of the account manager and serves as a secondary point of contact for questions regarding projects.

Language Managers: EC Innovations employs in-house language managers who are responsible for all language resources and all aspects of the translation process.

Translators, Editors, and Proofreaders: EC Innovations employs internal and contract linguists. All translators are native speakers of the target language and experts in the field(s) for which they translate.

Other supporting staff members include IT, Finance, and Administration

About 80%-90% of our partners are ISO or J2450 recognized, and 50%-60% of our translators are certified by their in-country translation associations. (Not all countries have such certifications/recognition.)

EC Innovations is ISO 9001:2015 certified.

We carefully evaluate all translators and they must submit samples to be tested by third-party reviewers. We also avoid a one-size-fits-all approach: not all translators are suitable to all subject areas.

Pre-hiring procedures:

§ Evaluate background based on CV and certifications of candidates.

§ Invite candidates to do a sample translation (usually includes technical, industry and topic training).

§ Interview candidates to evaluate experiences, capability, personality and related experience to decide whether a candidate is qualified and suitable to be an in-house translator. Sense of responsibility and stability are considerations as well.

Post-hiring procedures:

§ Knowledge based training such as localization standards, tools, project processes and management, system and facility usage.

§ Assign a mentor, “shadow” for a period of 90 days for each linguist to help with development and full acclimation into EC Innovations’ methodologies.§ Ongoing evaluation of their linguistic quality and performance for each project completed quarterly and upload the evaluation results into TBMS.

Quality of translations:

§ Separate resources for translation,proofing and editing

§ Technology, e.g. spellcheck, as well as tools like our proprietary quality assurance tool LanRobot ™ and QAPro ™

§ Proper development and maintenance of assets (e.g. TMs, glossaries, style guides)

Memory management:

§ Use attribute settings to flag segments by source type, e.g. marketing, UA, etc. More leveraging, but also better quality segment matching.

§ Use real-time TM sharing tools like our TMShare ™ to ensure all resources can both benefit from and contribute to the assets in real time.

§ Use industry open standard formats to facilitate sharing across tools.

Technology to support job submission through delivery:

§ We recommend our TBMS (Translation Business Management System) as a means to streamline workflow management. Benefits include:
　1. Drag-and-drop, easy workflow design
　2. Flexible workflows that can be changed on the fly
　3. Auto-sorting of files (i.e., no manual assignment of flows based on file types)
　4. Real-time status reporting and scheduling information
　5. KPI dashboard
　6. Quality tracking
　7. Query management

§ Increase leveraging from

Reducing total costs:

§ Reduce the need for ancillary services (e.g. DTP, file engineering) by switching to structured file formats like　XML/XLIFF

§ Reduce the overhead of project management by using process automation tools like the above-mentioned EC Innovations technologies our TMs and other assets by efficient TM management and controlled authoring at the source

EC Innovations – Data Security and Safety Policy

EC Innovations is committed to leading the industry in ensuring the protection of our clients’ data safety and confidentiality, as well as performing appropriate levels of contingency back-ups and risk management of data. We will continually improve our data protection performance and conduct our operations with stringent measures to ensure all employees adhere to carry this policy in their respective roles.

Our business involves translation and localization services. All of our work is transferred via email and ftp with password protection

Yes. As a language service provider (LSP), we know the importance of expediting last minute projects with tight deadline. EC Innovations has completed numerous short noticed, quick turnaround projects for our clients. EC Innovations has a great reputation for impeccable quality, on-time delivery at a competitive price point.

EC Innovations does accommodate projects for quick turnaround with little notice, although we do not encourage this as it could jeopardize the quality of translation due to the rush. EC Innovations will offer our honest assessment and potential risks before accepting any urgent job. This mostly stems from what is a typical and necessary part to our process,wihch is ‘glossary development’.Often times it is preferable to have an ICR (in-country reviewer) to provide feedback to the key terms extracted at the onset of a project.The times the deadline often dependents on our client’s available internal resources.

Generally, there is not an extra charge if the urgency is reasonable. The only exception is if the team is required to work on a weekend, during a holiday period, etc. In this way, extra charges would be discussed on a case by case basis and quoted out accordingly.

Small projects can be completed in a 24-48 hour turnaround time. If this is something regularly required; this can be customized within the workflow.

Yes.

In general, EC could commit a reserved monthly output to the client as reflected below:

Simplified Chinese: 1.0-1.5 million words

Japanese: 0.5-0.8 million words

All other languages: 0.2-0.5 million words

DTP (desktop publishing): 5000 pages per month for each language.

We can handle volumes above and beyond this, of course; these are just the levels we can set aside if certain volume/spend commitments are made in advance.

EC Innovations supports all common CAT Tools:

§ SDL Trados

§ SDL Teamwork

§ SDL TMS (Translation Management System)

§ SDL Idiom World Server 9.0

§ Star Transit

§ Passolo

§ Catalyst

§ DejaVu

§ Multilizer

§ TTT/PC (For AS/400 software)

§ RC Wintrans

Software: Trados, MultiTerm, TBMS

Other Tools and Technology:CAT Tools, Glossary Development

Value-added features and benefits offered by our technology include:

§ QA ProTM : to create quality reports automatically

§ SmartTermTM: to create glossaries automatically

§ TM ShareTM: to share Translation Memory globally and in real time

§ LanRobotTM : to check grammar, typos, consistency, term translation automatically; tailored for both single- and double-byte languages.

§ XMLComTM: to process XML files so they are compatible with Trados TagEditor or other CAT editor.

§ TBMSTM – Translation Business Management System, a business intelligence system with the following features:
1. Drag-and-drop workflow design that allows you to go out-of-the-box and into production quickly and painlessly.
2. Vendor management, including financial reports
3. One-touch, real-time ‘KPI Dashboard’ and ‘Project Status’ screens
4. Automated file-sorting
5. Easy project scheduling with ‘Gantt’ overview
6. CAT- and vendor-neutrality

1) Quality Assurance (hereafter ‘QA’): QA is the group of steps and processes employed by EC Innovations to ensure the highest quality standards and client satisfaction.

2) Query Management: Query Management is the set of processes and tools put in place to manage the flow of questions to and information from the client’s content owners to the translators and reviewers at EC Innovations. Depending on the client’s specific needs, this may be managed through an online tool such as TBMS (Translation Business Management System), via email, via a client SharePoint site, a proprietary query management tool, etc.

3) Editing: Editing is the process in which a native speaker of the target language reviews the translation with the goal of ensuring that it is an accurate representation of the source text. Linguistic errors may also be identified and corrected at this stage, but the main purpose is to ensure technical accuracy of the translation, not its linguistic quality.

4) Proofing: Proofing typically follows Editing. At this stage, the text is assumed to be an accurate reflection of the source, so the emphasis is on the objective linguistic quality of the translation. This stage must be carried out by a qualified linguist who is a native speaker of the target language, but not necessarily a translator from the source language, since accuracy has already been assured in the Editing phase.

5) Subject Matter Expert Review (hereafter ‘SME Review’): For certain types of material, a Subject Matter Expert may be required to perform an additional QA step. Example: legal and medical translations, marketing copy, etc. This resource may or may not be a translator, depending on the requirement.

6) Linguistic Sign-off (hereafter ‘LSO’): Final phase of the EC Innovations QA process, in which the entrusted final reviewer examines the content in its final context and format (e.g. website material in a browser, marketing content in final PDF format and so on). Depending on the type and format of content, this may take place before or after client review.

7) Client review: Client review is the phase of QA during which the client reviews and approves (or, as required, rejects and amends) the translated material. This may happen before or after LSO, depending on the type and format of content.

Our quality processes include various stages:

Glossary Development and Translation:

EC Innovations will create a glossary for each project by extracting key terms from the source files. These key terms are then translated by the translation resources and provided to Woodward for review. Upon approval by Woodward, the glossaries will be used along with other linguistic assets, such as any available or relevant Style Guides or Translation Memories (TMs). Unless Woodward prefers another format, glossary review will take place in Excel format.

Translation:

EC Innovations has a strict policy of using only in-country linguists, whose work is reviewed by separate, in-country editors. Translators receive the following assets for their work:

§ Translation Kit (TK) with instructions, approved glossaries, TMs and any reference material available.

§ For localization of the XLIFF files, translators will use TagEditor.

§ Next, the separate editing resource reviews the material and returns it to the translator, who in turn updates 　files and assets. Finally, a proofer does a final review.

Client Review:

EC Innovations recommends a four-step process to maximize quality:

§ Glossary approval: Woodward in-country reviewers review and approve glossaries.

§ Work-in-Progress Review (WIP): Woodward in-country reviewers review a sample representing 10-15% of all material before translators complete the remaining 85-90%. If there are general issues of tone/style/terminology, it is far more efficient if they are captured here. after all material is translated and ready for review.

§ Client Review: Woodward in-country reviewers review and approve the final translations, returning any changed material to EC Innovations so that we may update the files and redeliver assets as needed.

§ Final Site Review/Testing: Since many issues are most easily captured when in the context of the final format, in the case of website localization, EC Innovations also prefers to conduct a final review of the published website before signing off on the final version.

1) Maximum use of CAT tools.

2) Process technology.

3) Intelligent approach to pre-project file processing.

4) A culture of innovation