“A Good Base”: Ivan Smolnikov Discusses Localization in Russia

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Russia is either the twelfth or seventh largest economy in the world (depending on which measures ones uses to count these things) and showed strong economic growth in recent years even as much of the West faced flat or even negative economic growth trends. These factors have made Russia more attractive as a destination for international companies requiring localization. In this article, Ivan Smolnikov, CEO of ABBYY Language Services, talks about the Russian market, the advantages and challenges of localization in Russia, and the role of technology in the globalization industry.

LISA: What are do you think are the main characteristics of the Russian translation and localization market today?

The Russian market is undergoing an enormous qualitative change with regard to two aspects – language services and linguistic technology. Russia is becoming an attractive location for multilingual localization, with lower costs than Western countries. Although, at the moment, there are not so many language service providers who can provide high-quality localization in European language pairs, for example, the number is increasing, as is the competition. The market is also becoming technology intensive. For example, ABBYY is doing extensive R&D in the fields of linguistic technology, terminology management, the creation of electronic dictionaries, and translation memory, etc. ABBYY Language Services, for instance, has its own proprietary translation management system, and is developing a cloud-based collaborative translation platform. ABBYY is the only Russian company which is a leader in both linguistic technology, and in services. As regards structure, the market is very fragmented. There are many small agencies providing low-cost, and low-quality, translations.

Another factor is that the Russian market has great growth potential. According to Internet World Statistics, Russian is the ninth most used language on the Internet, and one of the leading languages in terms of growth. Right now, a great deal of Russian translation is carried out outside Russia. If customers realize that it is quality- and money-wise more efficient to work with Russia directly, the size of the market will increase. I would say it is under used now.

Russia also provides a good base for localization into CIS-countries' languages, because it is more efficient in terms of budget and project management. It is not always easy to work with these countries directly, because they don’t usually house well-established localization companies, able to handle serious localization tasks.

LISA: Where are most of the translation & localization projects coming from?

The bulk of translations involve the documentation of large international corporations, which are localizing their materials into Russian. There are also large Russian companies' projects, selling their products abroad, and needing to translate into the target markets' local languages. In these cases we sometimes translate into up to 50 languages, albeit that this is a smaller part of the business. The third category is comprised of foreign companies, or multi-language service providers, who contact us from abroad.

LISA: What are the advantages of using Russian companies, as against others, with regard to multilingual localization?

The main advantage of using Russian companies is lower costs. The cost of TEP (translation, editing, proofreading) is supposed to be almost the same for all companies when performed by native speakers of the target language (no matter where these companies are located). So, if you are going to provide the same excellent quality as European companies, you have to be operationally more cost effective. Having headquarters in Russia, we have the following competitive advantages; lower project and general management expenses, lower taxes, and, in our case, strong technological advancement - e.g. automation of routine operations in the course of working on a project. Our technology intensive approach, and comparably lower costs for technology and software development, permits us to develop new customized technologies for handling complex projects, and to reduce the end-customer's costs.

So, we feel that Russia is a good place to which to outsource the localization jobs, because here we can provide European-level services (most of the time European and US clients are amazed by our service level) with the same high localization quality, but at lower prices. Here, I am talking about leading Russian LSPs, not the small agencies market segment, which I mentioned earlier.

LISA: What about Russian and ex-Soviet language pairs? Is there a difference in pricing compared to other language pairs?

There is definitely a difference, and it is easier, cheaper, and more reliable, to translate directly in a country in which Russian is spoken. Firstly, translators in Russia have considerably lower rates than Russian translators residing in Germany, USA, or elsewhere. So, being located here, we are able to provide considerably lower rates for localization into Russian and CIS languages than into Western European languages. Most Western companies charge almost the same prices for Russian and ex-Soviet languages as for other common European languages, because it is usually difficult for them to collaborate directly with Russian residents, so they prefer to use intermediates (local SLVs), or Russian translators residing abroad.

Secondly, we think that Russian translators living in Russia are better experts in Russian, because people residing in a language environment other than their native one tend to make more mistakes, mostly stylistic, because they adopt its differing language patterns.

When going to a local SLV, you never know how reputable it is. The market in Russia is quite difficult, and strongly fragmented, so that we can list no more than 10 high quality SLVs among the 700+ translation agencies in the country (and not more than 3 MLVs among them - you can look at LISA's “Globalization Services in Russia: Market Assessment and Analysis” report).

So, when translating into Russian and CIS (ex-Soviet) languages, it is much cheaper to do it through local companies, where, thanks to our many in-house experts, the high quality is guaranteed.

LISA: You mentioned ABBYY’s developments in linguistic technology. Can you be more specific?

ABBYY puts strong emphasis on applying technology to language services. It touches practically all aspects of the business; internal business process management, translation project management (we use our own proprietary TMS), terminology management, customer service, and applications for end-customers. In all these fields we have our own proprietary solutions. I would highlight three points: (i) integration of translation services into clients’ ECM ,CMS and DMS, which would significantly enhance translation workflow and quality; (ii) Lingvo Intranet Server and Lingvo Content, which are tools for working with terminology - which not only allow source-target pair storage, but also dictionary and insert definitions, explanation, context, etc.; and (iii) the ABBYY Translation Platform, which provides a shared online workspace for all the participants in the project, including specialists from the client’s side. The tool stores all the information relevant to the ongoing project(s) (TMs, glossaries, project requirements, style guides, etc.). Specially attached modules can carry out QA tests (terminology, grammar and spelling, etc.). The advantages for the client are, enhanced continuous quality, easy spot checks at any time, ability to participate in the translation process, complete transparency (TM matches, terminology bases, etc.), direct access to translators and editors working on the project, and efficient communication of requirements directly to the project team.

The ABBYY Group has a very strong R&D team, a significant part of which is dedicated to development of linguistic technologies and products. Additionally, ABBYY Language Services has its own development team, because we believe that technology adds value to translation & localization services.

LISA: Thank you, Ivan