Honda Case Study

Background

Honda, as a multinational organisation, do business all over the world. Their highly technical service information has to be made available, without delay, in order for their global network to deliver the support and safety standards they have set themselves.

The Challenge

Changing technology has meant that Honda has been able to develop new ways to provide the information to its service engineers.

On CD ROM an engineer is able to access and cross-reference far more data, more quickly than with conventional service manuals in book form.

However, with the new technology comes the added complexity of file format issues. Honda required the return of ready tagged language versions that would integrate fully into its bespoke browser environment.

On top of this, there was a requirement for the translation service to be accessed by multiple users and for the solution to deliver the significant cost saving and consistency benefits that translation memory can provide.

The Solution

By using LanguageDirector™ technology, Honda was offered a customised, secure - Web-based language management platform that could be accessed over the web by multi-level users.

The expert technical team at thebigword worked with Honda to develop a DTD (Document Type Definition) that would maintain and validate the character of the document, returning it in a 'user ready' format. It is only a streamlined system such as this that can deal effectively and efficiently with the large volumes of files that are required.

The Benefits

Because the translation feeds into a central bank, Honda are able to take full advantage of Translation Memory to increase quality and speed while driving down costs. The project management expertise of thebigword's team is always at hand to ensure a smooth and co-ordinated work flow and the high quality of translation for which thebigword is renowned.

There is also a financial management advantage. LanguageDirector™ is constructed in such a way as to deliver transaction reports by user, country or division, simply at the touch of a button. This enables financial controllers to monitor exactly what is being spent on translation and where.

The Figures

Over 2 million source words (that's over 14,000 conventional pages) are translated over a 12-month period into 6 languages, with repeat text savings of up to 95% - impressive stuff!