DTP Training at Welocalize.com

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Jul 3, 2001

Linda McMurrer, Desktop Publishing Manager at Welocalize.com, doesn't flinch when confronted by a steep learning curve or a complex project. She is a consummate professional who combines competence with curiosity, a sincere willingness to find the best way to do the job.

Last Spring, as part of a company-wide professional development initiative, she developed a DTP training course for her staff. With very few training materials available, she managed to pull together a coherent program, identify tools and resources and develop a methodology to advance her own understanding of localization DTP and communicate that understanding to her colleagues. The lessons learned are also being communicated via her company's XCED Globalization Institute.

In a recent e-mail interview, McMurrer explained the process and the results of the DTP training program at Welocalize.com.

Can your describe your company, the company's evolution, strengths/specialties and future plans?

Welocalize offers Integrated Globalization Services for faster international time-to-market. Our strengths include multi-language business consulting, internationalization, localization and translation expertise. Through our unique team of experienced, multicultural staff, our XCED Globalization Institute and our enterprise-wide XTEND Globalization Management Suite, we deploy and maintain an integrated and collaborative Globalization environment with our clients that offers predictable and scaleable internationalization, localization and translation solutions. Our President and CEO, E. Smith Yewell, and his wife, Julia, co-founded one of the Internet's early success stories, InterTrans, Inc. InterTrans was an Internet-based international business services company offering translation services and an international trade portal called the Import Export Bulletin Board (iebb.com).

The company changed its focus to localization in 1997, the IEBB was eventually sold, and the company name was changed to Welocalize.com. Plans for the future include expansion into Asia.

What is your formal title at Welocalize? How long have you been in that position? How long have you worked with the company?

[Linda[1].gif]My formal title is Desktop Publishing Manager. I have held this title for about one year. I have been at Welocalize.com for over two years.

How did you wind up in localization?

For fifteen years I worked in the North American headquarters of an international plastics manufacture, (Rehau Inc.). I worked in the accounting department doing all types of general accounting. I went to night school during this time to study graphic design. After getting an associate degree in electronic graphic design, I started searching for a new career that was a reasonable commute from my home in northern Virginia. Accounting to graphic design was a bit of a stretch, but both are detail oriented and can be project oriented. I took the job at Welocalize.com not really knowing much about desktop publishing and close to nothing about localization. It has grown on me and I have grown with it.

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