Success in supporting a second language invariably spawns pressure to add others. The key is to adopt a globalization platform that can easily accommodate additional languages, as need demands. A multilingual knowledge management system needs to be optimized for the velocity of new information coming into the repositories and the criticality of information going out. Virus warnings necessitate turnaround in hours. Technical manual updates require a longer, more intricate workflow.
Translation is a linguistic task.
But localization involves engineering and creative disciplines to preserve design values in the new language. To give you long-term flexibility, the platform you choose should be sufficiently versatile to handle any and all formats. The multilingual knowledge management system you implement must be able to detect, extract, and route new or changed content whether it originates in an application repository, file system or database. It needs to automatically route this content through the localization process and various approval stages, then insert it to a target location. Quality control and data security must be maintained at every stage of the publishing process.