Written by David Houlihan from Aberdeen Group

On October 15, Author-it Software Corporation and Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. announced a partnership they claim will open up a new level of efficiency in how multi-language content is developed and delivered. The two companies have accomplished this by building an integration between their two solution sets that effectively creates a unified workflow for source language and translation content creation, management, and delivery.

Overview of the Partnership
The partnership takes advantage of the two companies’ complementary solution suites. Author-it Software Corporation’s Author-it enterprise authoring platform possesses a very large footprint in source language content development, including component content management, project management, and dynamic publishing. At the same time, Lionbridge Technologies has developed a comprehensive set of translation management solutions. Most notable among these are Lionbridge’s translation project management portal, Freeway, and their Translation Workspace computer aided translation (CAT) tool.

While there is some overlap between the two solution sets, each company largely starts up where the other leaves off. This creates a very natural fit for a partnership. Essentially, all the two companies have done is build a shared workflow between Author-it and Freeway. As source language content is created and approved in Author-it, it’s automatically progressed to Freeway and enters the appropriate translation workflows. When that work is complete, the newly translated content is passed back into Author-it to be managed and leveraged alongside source language content.

The Impact of a Unified Process
While this may seem simple, the difference a common workflow for translation and source language content creation offers is significant.   More…

Posted by Michael Lai, Marketing Executive, Author-it Software Corporation

Welcome to the Author-it Blog.

It’s been an interesting journey working with our team to conceive, create and now deliver the Author-it Blog.  I previously thought of Blogs as the ramblings of people who ‘didn’t have a life’. They filled this void through endless hours of musing on subjects of great interest to themselves but of little interest to anyone else. So I did a bit of research; I looked at some blogs both within and outside our industry and ended up at the ‘source of all knowledge’… Wikipedia.

A few things stood out to me in the Wikipedia definition… commentary, online diary, network, and community. The ‘community’ aspect in particular tweaked my interest.

For many years the Author-it User Group has formed a fabulous part of what we are to the marketplace.  It provides an invaluable link between users. A place where they could share ideas, ask questions, provide tips to users and feedback to us.  It really is a community.

I see the Author-it Blog extending this community aspect by providing a medium for greater participation by our Author-it team.

The vision is a vehicle to open the doors of the company. To allow our clients, partners and prospects the chance to look inside Author-it, to meet us, ask questions and share ideas.

Commercial reality dictates that some of the amazing ideas and creativity that flows through Author-it sometimes have to be restrained, but I’d like the Author-it Blog to be a place where we can post our opinions, ask questions, solicit feedback and share our perspective with you.

While we are obviously biased, our perspective is born of more than a decade in the industry, tens of thousands of prospect meetings and over 3,500 client implementations all around the world.

I expect that we will challenge some of the general thinking out there.  Author-it has never been afraid to be different where we believe we are right.  We seek to solve business problems, not the symptoms.  To us the solution is always more important than specific technology fads or standards purported to be the only way to solve the problem.  In this, I hope we are able to stimulate debate and debunk some of the myths we believe exist in the market.

A blog is nothing if not read, thought about and responded to.  Your feedback is important to us and will help us improve this blog and its value to all.  Please comment on our posts, and if you feel the need, contact me personally with any additional thoughts.

Thanks and best regards,