Hello Diego Schiavon ,

Maybe you could also ask for advice and information on www.proz.com - this is probably the largest public forum with a live jobs board as well.

Hello Steven,

proz.com is where I got the link to this forum... ;-)

I wonder if Ádám Biczó could give you some guidance as an experienced localisation engineer?

This is the legendary article about Localization Engineers written by Bert Esselink long time ago: http://www.fti.uab.es/tradumatica/revista/articles/besselink/besselink.pdf
And at that time it was sooo true...

These days it really depends on the employer/client - I've seen way too many "loc engineers" being in reality just a dumb manual clickmonkeys taken directly from street, without proper skills, just performing some stupid copy&paste-like tasks...
And the employer's attitude was like "why would you spend your valuable time putting together some automation when we can let these cheapo manuelos do it manually for a fraction of your salary?!"
Go figure...

But on a more positive side...

Really skilled LocEngineer can be asked to do basically anything... anything what it takes to make something localizable.
I know this is perhaps not what you wanted to hear, but it's true...

Therefore the preferred background is definitely extremely good knowledge of basically anything concerning IT - SW, HW, file formats, communication protocols, etc. Any piece of knowledge can make you better than the others, can make you find easier, more effective, faster, or even actually CORRECT(!) solution for a problem.

Programming language again depends on the environment you would be working in/for.
For example, I grew up in the times of good old DOS batch scripting... and that, together with a knowledge of wide variety of additional tools (very often coming from Unix world and compiled for Windows) makes me, well, quite good in that area, I dare to say...
Although I did some experiments with Turbo Pascal back in late 80's I admit that only very recently I digged a bit deeper into programming(?) and started combining my batch scripts with Windows Automation via Windows Scripting Host (namely JScript, since I hate VBScript, simply because "everybody" uses VBScript, so I don't want to), also known as ActiveX. Creating a batch script which is able to automate file handling and additionally process the file automatically in MS Office via Office Automation is very cool thing and can do a magic!

Tools and specifications? Again - the more the better!
Using the right tools for specific tasks is a key... so knowing which tool is good/best for a specific task is definitely a competitive advantage.
And knowing various specifications like HTML, XML, XLIFF, characters encodings, and many more only add to to this advantage... so that then you can recognize when someone is asking you to do a stupid or impossible thing and stop people thinking/going into this apparently incorrect direction and direct them the right way...

For my career you can check my LinkedIn profile... though you won't find too many details there, because first, it's impossible to describe every little thing I know or did, and second, nobody would read it anyway ;-)

I worked as both employee and freelancer... though the freelancing was more like an employment anyway - one company gave so much work that I had hardly time for anything else.
Which is better again really depends on your particular conditions... but these jobs usually require quick (read: immediate) turnarounds, so being a freelancer is probably not a particular advantage from the working time and work/life balance perspective...
For example, when I woke up in the morning in Europe, the Asian guys were already working a few hours and managed to cause enough issues and screwups which I could start fixing it right away at 7 AM... then the European guys started causing their issues which I had to fix... and in the evening the Americans took over... So, more often than I liked I hardly had a time to take a sh*t... because someone would start causing new issues in the meantime... ;-)

So, yeah... are you ready for that?! :)

Hi Diego,

Diego Schiavon said:

- What are some common tasks that you do in your work?

The tasks differ from supporting Project Managers to implementing new workflows, testing, bug fixing, writing scripts, defining filetypes and finding workarounds for special problems. It all depends on the environment and CAT-Tool and/or TMS you are working with.

Diego Schiavon said:

- What is the preferred background for a LE?

Well, that's hard to say. If you have a talent for IT, you can come from any kind of field and learn it on the way. Ideally you have an IT-background with good linguistic and soft skills.

Diego Schiavon said:

- What programming languages do you use?

This again depends on the environment you are working on, mostly it should be enough to know a scripting language like Python or Javascript. Now I've started with Visual Basic.NET, because it is useful for the latest SDL products if you combine it with Visual Studio 2019 and the templates provided by SDL.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sdl.TradosStudiotemplatesforVisualStudio

Diego Schiavon said:

- What tools and specifications do you need to know?

I'm gonna be annoying, but this again depends on the environment and CAT Tool/TMS you are working with. What you definitely need to know is XML, XLIFF, TMX and TBX. These are the main filetypes within localization industry. Of course, there are others, but these are the basics. Regular expressions are also necessary.

Diego Schiavon said:

- Can you sketch your career until now?

Sure, I've done Translation and interpreting MA on the University of Szeged, Hungary, and Webdesign and webprogramming in a private school. Firstly I did some freelance translation and webprogramming, but I realized that I'm not the guy who can sit 8 hours day by day alone. I was so lucky, that a bigger LSP, which was a department of a huge US company, was looking for a localization engineer and they hired me. There I met Greta in the comments below, still she is one of the best (ex)colleagues ever.  Unfortunately they closed this department and I was again very lucky to become a Language Technology Expert at tsd Technik-Sprachendiest GmbH in Cologne, Germany. This last sentence also answered your last question, I'm an employee.

I hope that I could give you some useful information on becoming a localization engineer.

If you are interested in IT and you like languages, I can tell you that this is your job.

I wish you good luck on your journey.

Best regards,

Adam

Hi Evzen,

Thanks a lot for the reply, it reads almost like a reference work on the subject!

I suppose that in the beginning I would be a "dumb manual clickmonkey taken directly from street, without proper skills, just performing some stupid copy&paste-like tasks". But I feel at home with XML specifications,
can do some XSL (XML to XSL:FO), some basic regular expressions, I know the basics of languages like Python, JS, Java, PHP.

>So, yeah... are you ready for that?! :)

I do not know. What you wrote is not completely discouraging, I think I will continue collecting information. And then, I'll see.

How about Passolo or Catalyst? Do you get to use them often in your work?

Regards,

Diego

Hello Adam,

Thank you for your exhaustive reply. What you write is quite encouraging, I think I check many of the boxes, if only for an entry-level position.

>Ideally you have an IT-background with good linguistic and soft skills.

I do not have an IT background, but still probably more so than someone with only linguistic skills.

>mostly it should be enough to know a scripting language like Python or Javascript [... ] What you definitely need to know is XML, XLIFF, TMX and TBX.

That's encouraging.

How about tools? How much do you rely on Passolo?

And how do you see the future of the role of localization engineer?

Cheers,

Diego

Diego Schiavon said:

But I feel at home with XML specifications,
can do some XSL (XML to XSL:FO), some basic regular expressions, I know the basics of languages like Python, JS, Java, PHP.

See, I personally am basically hopeless with XSL... simply because I never had a need for it, since everything I needed I could do using different tools like XML Starlet, or lately using a more-or-less simple JScript which used MSXML ActiveX component.

Python... I personally hate Python... because "everyone uses it", but they do it mainly because they don't know anything else, not because it has some particular advantages for them... because it's not part of Windows and needs to be installed, which is a no-go for many potential users of my scripts... and also because the concept of indentation being a part of syntax is IMO totally stupid (it's me who defines how my scripts will be pretty-printed and readable, not someone who thought it's a cool thing to define loops by indentation!!!... it's purely MY decision whether to indent or not and by how many spaces, not anyone else's!)

Diego Schiavon said:

How about Passolo or Catalyst? Do you get to use them often in your work?

It depends :)
There were times back in the early 00's when I used Passolo daily (and even worked very closely with Achim Herrmann from Pass Engineering (now SDL) on testing the then-brand-new betaversion of Passolo 4.0 and the .NET parser...

And I also used Alchemy Catalyst 3 and then 4 at that times... and then only like 15 years later Catalyst 11 and 12 occasionally...

But the tool I used most has actually nothing to do with localization itself, but it's something I cannot imagine my career without - the absolutely FANTASTIC and versatile FAR Manager.
This thing just confirms that basically ANY computer tool made by Russians or Ukrainians is LOADED with extremely useful features, but extremely lightweight at the same time (anyone remembers Volkov Commander? that thingie was less than 64 kB in size!!!).

And if FAR Manager, then of course with conjunction with ConEmu... another extremely useful tool not directly connected with localization...

Total Commander?! Uffff, NO, thanks...
No one who is serious about scripting (i.e. command line), should use a GUI file manager! That would be just a pure nonsense.

Hi Diego,

no worries, I share with you what I know, altough I have to admit that I'm only since 2016 into localization engineering.

Diego Schiavon said:

How about tools? How much do you rely on Passolo?

There are lots of tools you can use as a localization engineer. I think that Beyond Compare, Agent Ransack, Textcrawler, Glossary Converter, Regex Buddy and a proper file manager can help you out a lot. As for CAT tools I have more experience in SDL products and memoQ, and some less in Across and Star Transit. I used Passolo for certain problems and localization tasks, too, but not that keenly.

Diego Schiavon said:

And how do you see the future of the role of localization engineer?

It's hard to say as the industry is changing so fast. What I can see, and this is my personal opinion, is that cloud-technology, AI and MT will form the future of localization industry, too. If I'm optimistic, there will be a need for localization engineers for a long time, hand in hand with the changes of the industry. If I'm pessimistic, technological singularity will make localization engineering disappear, as well as almost every IT job - the question is when this happens. So there will be more and more automated and optimized workflows and tasks, and localization engineers will have to adapt.

Best regards,

Adam

Hi @Diego Schiavon and @ Ádám Biczó ,

regarding tools: when speaking about localization engineering, I always mention and recommend the Okapi Framework (https://okapiframework.org/).

And the members of the Okapi Tools users group might actually be able to give Diego more tipps on his planned career as localization engineer.

Good luck :-)

Kind regards

Christine