How do clients "start" translation and other questions from a Web Content Management perspective

Question

I'm coming from an SDL Tridion perspective. Paul suggested I could ask about how SDL clients choose their source and target translation language (pairs). 
 In SDL Tridion (Web Content Management), our settings are fairly straight-forward and include settings for TMS or WorldServer for where Translation Manager, the connector between Tridion and translation management systems, sends/receives translations to be stored in Tridion items (technically XML that we call Components). 
 But usually the languages and regions/countries are already chosen (e.g. English for the US as a source with maybe Spanish for the US as an initial target) when it comes time to Tridion configuration. I'm interested in learning about what's practical or common so I can recognize patterns and gotchas when say a US client says they want to "add translation" to their sites. 
 So some questions I have are: 
 
 Where do clients start? Do clients typically know how they're going to handle translation (and market localization)? Do they seek out help from vendors or consultants? Seeing customer examples, I've learned it's not just English, but English for a given country. In addition, customers need to keep in mind everything from localizing a message to a given market or region, as well as handling jargon and product-specific terms (Barbie's expression "Cra Cra" comes to mind). 
 Is "translation" (sometimes/often) a company-wide project? I see translation from the Web side (specifically with SDL Tridion where target content is sent/saved from XML, but "templated" into appropriate website markup), but noticed at least one customers that wanted to somehow combine their offline, product information translation process with their Web content translation. At least from the Web Content Management side, the internal users select items to translate and based on the (Tridion) "BluePrinting" settings, the translations are sent and come back after being translated into the correct websites. Is translation something companies handle from a company-wide perspective? I'd suspect "translation projects" might start in separate silos in business, at least based on how I see content handled (separate systems handle internal content, Web content, documentation, etc.). I'd guess there's some history involved where translation for product manuals and printed materials, for example, have a much longer history than the Web? 
 SDL software ecosystem? Maybe I should also start with a fairly newbie technical question: are SDL WorldServer or SDL TMS related to the SDL Open Exchange? Or if so, how are these related? I understand "what is this" type questions can be very open-ended--links to resources or documentation are also appreciated. Maybe related to this is where and how SDL software is used. For example, SDL Tridion is used by large corporations to manage their websites with dozens to hundreds of internal system users. 
 
 Any feedback, leads, or even questions on the Web Content Management (Tridion) side appreciated. As a Web Content Management "professional" I'm not looking to understand everything, but I do want to be a little more familiar with what SDL clients face when they start "translation" projects.

Paul · Answer

Unknown said: SDL software ecosystem? Maybe I should also start with a fairly newbie technical question: are SDL WorldServer or SDL TMS related to the SDL Open Exchange? Or if so, how are these related? 
 Hi Alvin, 
 It seems you've asked a few tricky questions, so I thought I'd answer the third one at least, The first two are really better answered from people with experience working with organisations at that level. 
 The SDL OpenExchange is part of the overall SDL Language Platform. It essentially comprises two parts: 
 
 it gives access to the APIs and SDK to allow developers to integrate their own products and processes with the SDL products, and 
 it provides a platform for developers to share their solutions (if they wish) with users of SDL products, for free or at a cost 
 
 At the moment the solutions on the OpenExchange available for sharing are predominantly solutions for the Translation Productivity users. So this would be SDL Trados Studio, SDL MultiTerm, SDL GroupShare and SDL Passolo. But we are beginning to see some applications created using APIs for SDL Language Cloud. 
 So, where does SDL WorldServer and SDL TMS fit into this? Studio (I'm dropping the SDL part of the name now) is the desktop client used by Translators, Reviewers, Post-Editors and Project Managers when working on projects that might have originated from WorldServer or TMS. So many SDL customers working with these products use the OpenExchange to create specific solutions for themselves, solutions that are never made available for download by other users. These solutions might be as simple as automating access to internal databases to help provide better context, integration with internal data management systems such as Sharepoint or to customised machine translation engines developed with any technology and not just SDL Language Cloud or BeGlobal. They might provide customised views and functionality within Studio itself using resources that are only available within their own organisation. 
 So the OpenExchange is a complementary solution provided to all licensed users of the SDL Language Platform, and as this grows we'll see a wider range of solutions available. It could be used for solutions made specifically for WorldServer or TMS too, but as these tend to be very customer specific it's a little less likely that we'll see them being made available for anyone to download. It's the desktop products used by everyone where the shareable value is greatest. 
 Hopefully that provides the sort of answer you were looking for, and maybe someone will be able to give you an experienced response to your first two questions... or add to my thoughts on the last one.

Trados Studio > 2. Trados Studio

How do clients "start" translation and other questions from a Web Content Management perspective