Translation Workspace Will Take Translators To Cloud 9

By Monica Brownell, Director of Operations, Western U.S. at Lionbridge

My 11-year old son was preparing a PowerPoint presentation for school when I reminded him to save the presentation on a flash drive. He looked at me as if I was saying something surreal, and then I told him what a flash drive was and he said:

“I know what a flash drive is, but why would I want to do that?”

To take to school, I said (saying “duh” in my head). Then he gave that condescending look and explained:

“Mom, I will send it to my Google account and I’ll be able to access from anywhere, even from Australia.”

Then I realized; he is in the cloud already! How naïve I was, thinking that because I was not fully there yet, he could not be there. He never created the roots that attached us to our personal computers and personal digital assistants. He started in the cloud, where he’s now looking at me, wondering why I’m not there already.

This eye-opening experience with my son made me realize that our new product, the Lionbridge GeoWorkz Translation Workspace, will give translators the means to reach out to the cloud to work. And cloud 9, I must say. Finally, a robust tool that set translators free from their PCs and laptops, and from the fear of losing their work due to a crash. No more panic attacks when the power goes off. Bye, bye to time consuming backups and file downloads. There is no need to fill up the memory of their machines with heavy translation memories and other language assets, and invest in external hard drives to keep up with the growth of their data. Everything will be there, in the cloud, allowing them to share, collaborate and get into the crowd.

We are all in the cloud in our personal lives, using social media like Facebook, MySpace, Gmail accounts, and picture management sites like Flickr. Now is the time to move to the cloud at work, and I see Translation Workspace taking translators to Cloud 9.

What do you think? Is it time for cloud computing where you work?