Mathematical Software

Background

The client is a world leader in mechanical computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering software. Through acquisition and reorganization, it has transformed itself into a leading provider of Internet-based B2B solutions for discrete manufacturers, and is the world's sixth largest independent software company. EC has happily enjoyed a great cooperation with it for the last eight years.

Challenge

The product we localized is math-realated and used extensively for engineering calculations, which allows complicated mathematical equations to be expressed, performed, and displayed. Its unique visual format and scratchpad interface integrate standard mathematical notation, text, and graphs in a single worksheet, making itself ideal for knowledge capture, calculation reuse, and engineering collaboration. Through its acquisition, the company has focused on making the broad capabilities of their technology more widely available to customers operating across geographic boundaries. They sought to localize the software into Simplified Chinese to serve users in mainland China. EC Innovations Inc. was selected based on its consistently high quality. To meet their requirements, we faced the following challenges:

  Since this was the first time that the product was to be localized into Chinese, everything had to be done from scratch. There was no previous localizing team to consult and no existing translation to leverage.
  It is a highly specialized software for today's top engineers, in which a myriad of mathematical functions are involved, and it was a daunting task to translate the math content accurately.
 It was a large project, entailing the use of various tools in the course of the localization process and various specifications in the style guide - varying for different batches - had tobe strictly abided by.

Implementation

Utilizing EC's ten years of experience in localization and drawing on resources in and out of house, the EC team overcame all of these obstacles on its way to delivering a satisfying result. The following were our solutions:

  We worked with a professor in mathematics to create a glossary as the baseline for the whole project.
  Translators were chosen from candidates who had extensive experience in software localization and math backgrounds. In addition, we sent those translations which we felt were technically difficult to the math experts for review.
  Related personnel were required to undergo training on tools and style guides, so as to improve their proficiency.
  The EC team became acquainted with the client's project collaboration platform that provides a shared space limited to those involved in the project - and improved communication efficiency in weekly phone conferences.

Conclusion

We delivered all files with high quality before the due date. The client announced the release of the product on schedule. Simplified Chinese is among the nine languages supported by the product.