BLOGS
How to Reduce Turnaround Times for Global Content with Structured Content
May 25, 2023
Producing timely quality content for all your international markets is challenging. High turnaround times for content creation and localization can delay the rollouts of your global initiatives, restricting your company from growing as fast as you would like.
But structured content can help. Adopting a structured content approach can reduce the time it takes to produce and publish content in multiple languages.
When you design a content pipeline with localization in mind, you can optimize the process by automating where appropriate.
In our recent roundtable discussion, experts from the team at Rubric explored how structured content can help to reduce localization turnaround times.
Here's how to reduce your content turnaround times…
How structured content reduces turnaround times
Structured content is a system that treats your content like data. It uses a clear structure within which you store your content in smaller units.
This structure, when used correctly, makes it easier to produce, manage, and distribute content in a variety of formats and languages. For example, the same data can be automatically presented as a print document, online help, or a webpage.
Rebecca Metcalf, Rubric's Global Content Business Analyst, says:
"Having structures and rules is really important. There need to be set rules that we can then codify and automate to, for example, exclude content that doesn't require translation."
Structured content reduces turnaround time in other ways.
Dominic Spurling, Rubric's IT Director says:
"The reduction in turnaround time can also be achieved by reducing the time spent resolving conflicts and version control issues. Because the content is in a machine readable form, it makes it possible to do comparisons and to autonomously flag potential version conflicts."
Utilizing automation tools to streamline processes
Automation is one of the major drivers of reduced turnaround time with structured content. Every time you remove manual touches of the content, you cut the delivery time.
All manual processing steps add time. Whenever a person has to assess or alter content, it can add hours or days to your publishing workflow. By adopting a structured content approach, it becomes easier to reduce the manual steps to only those that matter, and automate everything else.
Dominic says:
"At Rubric, we automatically check the content that we receive. We look at what has changed in the English so we know the scope of what we're going to be translating in the current hand off. By doing these kinds of automated analysis, we can really cut down the turnaround time and reduce the number of errors."
An example of this would be creating help documentation for a software product. Some parts of the content, such as code snippets, should always stay in their original language.
By storing code elements as a different type of content, you can automatically separate them before the content is sent to translators. This reduces unnecessary translation work and makes quality assessment quicker and easier.
4 benefits of using the right authoring and publishing tools
Choosing the most appropriate tools is key to getting the most from structured content. This includes content authoring tools like MadCap Flare, content management systems like Adobe Experience Manager, and any other tool that interacts with your content.
You can achieve a well-structured taxonomy for localizable content within almost any system but some are inherently more structured than others. At one end of the spectrum are systems like Ixiasoft’s DITA CCMS, which require all content objects stored to conform to the DITA specification.
Systems like WordPress are at the other end of the spectrum, offering greater flexibility but with fewer safeguards on the structural integrity of content. This has not deterred some of our clients from using WordPress as a “headless CMS” for structured content, including user interface strings.
There are various benefits of using the right tools with a structured content approach, including:
1. Increased speed of translation and localization
The right tools will make it easier to structure your content so it works well for localization.
The structure and automatic checking means translators will only be served content that should be translated. This reduces turnaround time by reducing the scope of work.
2. Increased consistency
Authoring and publishing tools that are designed to handle structured content also help improve the consistency of your content. They help you to upkeep the structure you have decided upon.
This ensures all your content has the same high quality, polished presentation no matter what language your audience uses.
3. Reduced localization costs
By reducing the manual touches and unnecessary rework, you can also significantly save on localization costs.
Moving to an "automation" mindset for your content processes also gives you the power to continuously improve the efficiency of your publishing.
4. Easy content scalability
Possibly the greatest benefit from the perspective of global growth is the scalability that comes when you match structured content best practices with the right tools.
Dominic says:
"Instead of publishing in one language, you can publish to multiple languages, but that can be simultaneous with the English publication."If you're using Madcap Flare, for example, which is a self contained authoring and publishing tool, you don't immediately see WYSIWYG of what your content it's going to look like. Before it turns up on your website, it goes through a build pipeline and has all the templates and styles applied to it. Localization then is somewhere in the middle of that pipeline."
Choosing structured content for higher quality content
Moving to structured content might seem daunting if you haven't used it before. But it is a highly worthwhile move to make.
Structured content, combined with the right tools, can significantly reduce the turnaround time for your global content. The resulting consistent quality across your language can help improve customer experience and lead to stronger loyalty for your brand.
At Rubric, we help our clients to use structured content to streamline their process and get the most from this powerful approach.