Standards Raactivations - The Lisa Estate Saga Continues

Following a period of relative calm, a new series of tweets, a blog article by Arle Lommel on 27 April, and a rather strange email from a French LSP recently appeared on the grapevine stating, in general, that: 1) it has been announced that the European Telecommunications Standards Initiative (ETSI) have been selected by LISA to take over their ‘open’ industry standards, 2) that the European Telecommunications Standards Initiative (ETSI) “has agreed to accept responsibility for the LISA open standards works”, and 3) that this is very good news.

Firstly, I have not been able to find any such “official announcement” by ETSI or LISA to this effect – on their website or anywhere else, so I am very much confused about who exactly has made this announcement on behalf of the entities in question and on what authority. Secondly, the only people that seem to be saying that this would actually be good news and welcomed by the industry are people that are not actually involved in standards work, and Arle Lommel.

Well, if these unconfirmed announcements turn out to be true, I don’t think it will be particularly welcomed by those in our industry who are actually involved in, or knowledgeable about standards, and I personally would not call any such development “good news”. On the contrary, it would mean that once again the ambitions of some individuals and strange goings-on have taken precedence over openness, best practice and looking out for our industry’s best interest.

I have already mentioned what was stated and implied in the above mentioned communication and I think several matters require clarification in this context. The facts concerning the potential overlap in the scope of the two organisations are as follows:

1) ETSI is a respected standards body and has developed some important standards in some technical fields. Their work to date has fitted exactly their own description of themselves as producing: “globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies” (source: ETSI website).

2) The LISA standards are XML standards for the translation and localisation industry, and that is a completely different field of specialisation. It is true to say that the ‘communicative” element is inherent in many technologies, standards and activities but to say that there is any real overlap or synergies between what ETSI has been involved in so far and the LISA standards efforts, would be untrue. The fact is that ETSI deal with the underlying technologies used to transfer data in different systems while the LISA standards were concerned with language assets. Therefore, it seemed ridiculous to me from the beginning that anyone would seriously suggest ETSI as a continuator of the LISA work on our industry standards.

I have been involved in standards development in the translation industry since 1998 and have worked with both OASIS and ISO TC 37 TCs. As long as I have been involved with our industry standards I have never heard any mention of ETSI as an organisation which was interested in developing standards for the translation and localisation industry. It was recently mentioned in a blog by Arle that public opinion within our community was divided on this subject ‘with larger users tending to support ETSI and tech developers tending more to support OASIS.’ Frankly speaking, I find this statement incredible and unbelievable, and I am prepared to bet that by “larger users” he actually means a couple of companies, and he should definitely say who they are. In fact, I would love to see some solid data and names to support this improbable statement about our industry’s support for an organisation that most people have never even heard of.

Another fact, I have been told, was that ETSI has in fact been lobbying some large companies to get their support for moving into ‘a new field of standards development – namely the language industry’. But there is surely a huge difference between planning to move into a new field and begin work on some new standards, and actually claiming any experience or expertise in this field and making a serious bid to take on the work carried on for over two decades by many industry experts. Another fact that I find strange in these lobbying efforts is the idea that ETSI and the supporting companies would initiate an unfair campaign together against other standards organisations such as OASIS and Unicode, who are firmly established in our industry for standards and would be considered as logical heirs to the LISA body of open standards both by industry experts and laymen alike.

I fully appreciate that ETSI might like to broaden its ICT standards base to include language industry standards, and they may see acquiring the LISA standards as a way of doing this. I can also fully appreciate the fact that they might be lobbying for the LISA standards by asking Arle Lommel to make all sorts of more or less substantiated statements, or involve  a friendly French LSP (from their home turf) to do some enthusiastic PR on their behalf, or even the fact that they might think that a couple of phone calls to some managers might be helpful to their cause. In other words, it is perfectly valid for ETSI to want to broaden their scope, but I do not see how this benefits the translation and localisation industry, and I do not understand why the new ETSI pundits and lobbyists take it upon themselves to also mislead and misinform the general public about certain fundamental facts.

One such misleading fact is that ETSI allows any expert to be involved in standards development whether or not they are members of ETSI and there are no fees involved (as is the case with OASIS or Unicode). It’s an interesting piece of news, except it seems to be far from accurate. In fact, at ETSI, just like any other standards organisation, technical committees (TCs) are actually responsible for standards development and they are open only to full and associate members. Section 1.4 of the ETSI Technical Working Procedures states clearly who can participate in technical committees. It also states that observers and non-members are only allowed to attend meetings on an exceptional and temporary basis and must apply to attend in writing. The authorisation to attend is limited to three meeting or six months whichever is shorter. By default of course, such observers have no vote or any real say in the actual standards development, their participation is subject to approval and might be difficult to achieve in practice or turn out to be a futile exercise. Another misleading suggestion was that non-members would be welcome in the ETSI Industry Specification Group which a number of people have said that ETSI will establish for the translation and localisation industry. However section 3.4 of the ETSI Technical Working Procedures sets the same stipulations as above and allows only for participation of non-members on an exceptional and temporary basis. There is no mention of a time limit here, but there is mention that non-members will have to pay a per meeting fee and will have no right of vote. So, it seems, that the ETSI rules are quite typical, and there are no special conditions or preferences, so nobody should be making any promises or suggestions otherwise. Similar to all other organisations, at ETSI you don’t get to have much say unless you join properly and pay a membership fee. Also, you can ask or be asked to participate as a non-voting expert for free (or at a lower fee) but your request will be processed according to similar procedures as anywhere else and your power to influence the proceedings might be very limited. One way or another, you will have no real say for free, and the saying that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ still applies.

So, to sum it all up: 1) we are being told by certain individuals that ETSI has made an official statement to the effect that they will formally be given (or transferred) the LISA standards and will be in charge of maintaining and developing them from now on. But, such an official announcement does not seem to have been formally issued so far by LISA or ETSI, and no details of any such deal have been disclosed; 2) We are being told that this is ‘great news’ because ETSI is the best possible ‘location to host the LISA standards’. But there is absolutely nothing to substantiate this claim because ETSI has neither the record,  nor expertise in translation and localisation standards work, and seems a very unlikely candidate for any such responsibility by comparison with, for example, OASIS or Unicode.  – what is more, ETSI’s focus is primarily on Europe and this important point seems to have escaped the attention of many people; 3) We are being told that ETSI allows non-members to participate in their technical committees and Industry Specification Groups without any charges. The suggestion is that being involved in standards development within ETSI will be for free (as opposed to the cost involved when working with organisations like OASIS, Unicode or W3C). According to a very reliable source – published ETSI directives - this is not the case. In fact, if you look at the membership fee pricing scheme at ETSI, it appears to be a very expensive organisation to join, if you actually wish to become involved in standards development.

Therefore, given the above facts, we must conclude that the pundits lobbying on behalf of ETSI must either be completely ignorant of the actual facts and rules that govern standards development and industry experts groups participation at ETSI, or they are spreading silly gossip and misleading us on purpose. I cannot help but wonder what might be the goal behind this misinformation campaign and what is the real agenda. It will be very interesting to see, for example, if and who ETSI decides to employ as industry consultants and what they refer to as “Specialist Task Force Experts”.

The OSCAR group which developed the standards within LISA have officially proposed that the standards should be put in the public domain so that any organisation could work with them. The LISA members that I have personally spoken to in the past month and various standards development experts who have voiced their views at events, or in various online discussions, are predominantly in favour of the LISA standards being taken over by a dedicated industry standards organisations such as OASIS. Recent developments, would seem to suggest, that in spite of the prevailing opinions, campaigning on behalf of ETSI is going strong. Either, this is all codswallop or somebody at LISA has suddenly decided that the standards had to be transferred to one specific organisation, and that organisation is ETSI. It is a pity that the real justification for this is not being provided, and people are being misled once again. I have seen nothing to convince me that ETSI is a good home for the LISA standards, and I am not impressed by some of the lobbying activities going on. It is my opinion that there are not enough people doing the actual work of developing standards for translation and localisation to justify all this sort of political campaigning. At the end of the day, I still hope that facts and reason will prevail, and all will be well in the world again.