Bilingual Computing Standards in Japan
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Computing Japan recently did a survey of multinational companies
operating in Japan, to find out what the standard bilingual computing environment is. Our thinking is that the market naturally finds its way to the best solutions. We quizzed companies specifically about their desktop PCs, servers, mail, accounting systems, help desk support, and even their telephones.
We found, perhaps to no surprise, that Micro- soft and Lotus have made great strides in making Japanese and English user environments homogenous. Given that both companies have substantial integrated workforces in the States and Japan, the bilingual issue has no doubt been an internal one as well as customer- driven.
By John Dodd
The standard desktop Most of the multinational companies we surveyed are using either Windows 95 or 98, for their desktop environments. The average company has 3 major configurations. First and most common is to simply provide users with an operating system that matches their native language capability. For Japanese users this means being able to work in both English and Japanese for the mainstream applications such as Office and Notes. However, if the company has a proprietary application, such as accounting or inventory tracking from the US, then most companies move to solution Two. The second solution is to load one machine with two partitions, changing between the partitions with a product like System Commander. For example, GM Japan actually uses an EDS-supplied system switcher and menuing system that allows Windows 3.1 users to switch between Japanese and English. Like a lot of US companies, GM Japan has a requirement for all Japanese users to have English capability. IS&S manager Hirotaka Komori says, "About 70% of our users are Japanese but all have bilingual systems because of our internal English-language communications software." The biggest drawback of this approach is that users typically have to close down their applications in one environment in order to switch over to the other. Another drawback is the amount of engineering and support time needed to get dual-boot operation going smoothly on many different types of machines a company may have. One company that has tried to make things easier to maintain is National Mutual Funds Management (Japan) Ltd. Simon Evans, general manager of finance/administration says, "We used to use several different software tools to create a two partition environment --including System Commander --but this created a lot of engineering and maintenance overhead. Now we have NT Workstation which has a built-in partitioning capability. So now, while we still have to reboot to move between the English and Japanese environments, at least all of our machines are using the same software and problems tend to be the same, and therefore more predictable." EDS's manager of technical services Farhad Farshad agrees that NT Workstation makes for an easier bilingual environment. He says, "Since Win95 at boot time directly loads the operating system from the boot sector of the primary hard disk, you can not tell it to load different system files. So tools like System Commander load their own system files from the boot sector first to create a menu that allows you to choose which system files to load. Also, Win95 has its own fixed way of organizing system and application files in predefined directories and that's why with Win95 most people keep their OS's and apps on different partitions." However, Farshad does caution that there is a drawback with the NT Workstation approach. "Drivers are not as widely available for NT Workstation and they are harder to configure, especially for Japanese hardware that you might want to use in English, so this limits the scope of what you can do." The third solution is to operate a PC entirely with a Japanese OS and use English apps within the Japanese environment. For Windows9x users, we heard of no-one having compatibility problems with English apps running on a Japanese OS, other system slowdowns with big Powerpoint files, and a problem with Outlook97E clashing with Japanese windows (Outlook98E works fine). The remaining issue is one of the Japanese menus being unreadable to a non-Japanese speaker. We did find a number of companies using multiple language versions of Office. The typical procedure is to install each language version in a different directory so the programs and DLLs don't get mixed up. An additional solution belongs to linguistic talents like Dell Japan's quality manager. He swears by using full Japanese systems and apps even when creating English documents. He says, "Moving to an all-Japanese environment makes your system more stable. It boots quicker, and I get fewer system hangs and Windows protection errors than running English apps under a Japanese OS." The standard server Almost every company we spoke to uses Windows NT 4.0 as the file server. Those companies with foreign IT staff tend to use NT 4.0E (English version). NT 4.0E handles file serving and printing for both English and Japanese apps and data. For multinationals with international buying agreements, such as the Microsoft Select program, NT 4.0E is also cheaper. However, a number of people commented that NT 4.0J is a better solution overall because, as EDS's Farshad says, "There are a number of irritations caused by writing Japanese to an English-language file server. For example, Japanese users storing file names in kanji on an English-language server can create a non-deletable file that can't be removed easily by tools like Explorer. You have to go down to a lower level to remove the file." Other comments we heard about drawbacks of Japanese apps on an NT 4.0E server include some printer driver problems and also not being able to read kanji filesnames when doing a selective restore of backup files. For a backup program, most companies chose the same language as the operating system. ArcServe is most popular, and the Japanese version was used with Japanese NT servers, while English was used for NT 4.0E. We did find one company who mixes these up --running Backup Exec-E on NT 4.0J --to back up both English and Japanese files. They reported no apparent problems so far. And on the topic of bilingual printers, the most popular was the HP LaserJet 5000. Two major e-mail choices The companies in our selection were evenly divided between Microsoft Exchange/Outlook and Lotus Notes. Both products now have the capability to have a local Japanese server working transparently with an overseas English-language server, and to pass Japanese and English mail both ways. Further, both products allow Japanese clients to work with an English server, so long as the files are named in romaji. But by far a bigger issue than the e-mail software is the corporate firewall policy. Those companies that have firewalls in the US to get to the Internet have invariably had a difficult time choosing the right products and training their US IT people on how to set things up to allow Japanese e-mail through the firewall. The most popular firewalls are Firewall One and Gauntlet -- either on UNIX or NT. Lotus has done very well business-wise in Japan, with over 1.4 million clients, and has reasonable support for its recent Japanese products. However, some interviewees commented on the complexity of setup as a problem. As Jardine Wines and Spirits business systems manager Eric Simonet comments, "We have a Lotus Notes-J server. Compared with our installation in France, the implementation was very time consuming and the things we could do were limited. We also experienced some scripting and file conversion problems." EDS's Farshad adds, "After a lot of fine tuning we have got Lotus Notes working well, but there are sometimes problems in transferring messages between Notes and other messaging systems like MS Exchange, where the files get forced as attachments or you just get garbled mail." Accounting With over 700 licenses in Japan, Systems Union's SunSystems software is by far the most popular bilingual accounting package used. Generally users were happy with the operation of their package, although one responded that the older (Netware) version had special memory needs that conflicted with other client programs. Other software that we saw making headway in Japan was SAP --although those who responded said they were using the English version and doing invoicing from another program. One company, Dell Japan, has its own internally developed software that runs on Tandem machines in the USA. Dell told us that development is underway to move to local SQL server software, as part of the company's overall trend to moving towards client-server software. Help desk support Surprisingly almost none of the companies we talked to run Help Desk software, though most of them did have a Help Desk. Since the average population of Japanese to non-Japanese in most large foreign companies is about 19:1, it is no surprise that Help Desks were overwhelmingly manned by Japanese. One major exception to this would be within the ranks of the top 5 foreign investment banks. Telephones It's easy to overlook the telephone system, but in a truly bilingual environment, this should also be capable of providing two-language choices for setup, greetings, and caller instructions. Most of the companies surveyed were using predictable brands, with Lucent (AT&T), Nortel, and Inter-Tel being the most popular. For the same functionality, the Inter-Tel units appear to be most popular from a price viewpoint. |
