This input from industry will be expanded greatly in the very near future, after which it will also include the following:

Participation in the in-house simulated translation bureau entails sending translation and localisation jobs for further processing and giving feedback on the products delivered.

The "learning company" is a new phenomenon where the Department of Translating and Interpreting actively searches the market for (innovating, if possible) real-life projects of varying durations for students to work on. On successful completion of such projects, students will earn credits. The idea behind this is knowledge circulation: industry gains from the work that is done by the students for the Department and the Department will be able to enhance its knowledge by closely cooperating with the industry experts.

2.5 Cooperation With Industry

The Department of Translation and Interpreting actively seeks to cooperate closely with industry. The type of training given at the Department is vocational by nature. Therefore, it is one of the main objectives of the Department to cooperate with industry in the areas of the curriculum and placements - both for students and lecturers. As already described in Section 2.4, the Department is already rather successful in this respect (with plans in place to further expand industry input in the near future). See also Section 2.6 for further discussion on this cooperation. The Department already liaises with both localisation producers and localisation translation companies in The Netherlands and abroad. One of the objectives for the future is to give industry a greater role in the area of assessment.2.6 Employability of Graduates

The Department of Translation and Interpreting has a number of instruments to measure the employability of its graduates.

Firstly, the third-year and fourth-year placements are very important factors in the employability of students. It happens very often that students doing their third-year placement are offered a job that will commence after their graduation, especially when doing their placement at a translation bureau. As for the fourth-year placements, it is a regular occurrence that placements lead directly to employment, with many placements being continued in the form of regular jobs. The Department works very closely with a number of renowned companies that offer such placements: SDL, Microsoft Ireland, Trados, various "ordinary" translation bureaus in The Netherlands and abroad (mainly the UK), Lionbridge, Eclipse, RWS, and Philips Eindhoven. Also Medtronic (the world leader in medical technology) offers jobs to graduates at its translation and communication division in The Netherlands.

A second important instrument is the Department alumni scheme, central to which is an alumni website. More and more companies submit their vacancies for publication on this website and more and more graduates find jobs through this very same website.It is noteworthy that one of the former graduates from the Department of Translation and Interpreting, Maastricht School of International Communication, Zuyd University in Maastricht has now become one of the world's leading localisation authors, namely Bert Esselink.

3. The Localisation Industry

The localisation industry has been growing rapidly and continuously in The Netherlands since the 1980s when the world witnessed the first personal computer, for which various types of content needed translation. The localisation industry received a boost a few years later when the first translation memories appeared, making translation much cheaper, faster and more consistent. The third boost came from the emergence of the Internet. Suddenly, data was accessible anytime, to anyone, anywhere. This opened up the international market for literally everyone, creating a huge growth on the translation demand side. And the market is still growing. It is a market that is growing for every area of the industry; and one that is growing constantly for all areas (notwithstanding seasonal peaks, e.g. higher sale of electronic goods at Christmas).

Over the past two years, various factors have contributed further to this growth. On the IT and multimedia side, we have the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 suite and Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, plus the rise in sales of home networking products, gaming products and domestic appliances. On the automotive/mechanical engineering side, new EU environmental directives have led to the development of new engines and vehicles, and more localisation work as a consequence. Another factor is that companies realise more and more that they will lose out on sales if they do not continue or start localising their products.

And let us not forget the joining of the most recent EU member states, which has led to an even greater demand for localisation, on top of the growing list of European directives which necessitate the localisation of all sorts of content. Lastly, within some agencies, the Dutch language has been added to the so-called FIGS list (French, Italian, German, Spanish), forming the tier 1 of languages for all localisation work that has priority for most clients of localisation companies. Officially, however, Dutch is still a B-language though it is coming closer to the FIGS list. This move augurs very positively for the localisation industry in The Netherlands as it indicates that the demand for localisation into Dutch is growing.

3.1 The Market Players

Since the acquisition of Trados by SDL and the acquisition of Bowne Global Solutions by Lionbridge (both in mid- 2005), SDL and Lionbridge really are the two main localisation players in The Netherlands. These two market leaders make use of freelance translators and translation agencies of all sizes for their outsourcing needs. Many enterprises in various industries also run their own in-house translation departments, but regularly call on freelance translators and translation agencies when their internal resources are fully booked. There is a great shortage of translators in The Netherlands - in particular in the localisation industry, thereby putting pressure on everyone at the supply end of the global information management chain. This shortage may be due to the growing demand for translation into Dutch (see the decision some agencies made to put Dutch on the FIGS list). The problem is that in a total population of 22 million Dutch-speaking citizens (Flemish included), there are not enough qualified translators. The shortage is also felt outside The Netherlands, e.g. at Microsoft in Dublin, Ireland where there is also a great need for native Dutch-speaking employees.

3.2 Expectations and Experiences of a Graduate

In this section, one of the authors, Anne Klarenbeek - who is a graduate himself - discusses briefly the expectations he had when he graduated and his experiences since then.

"Having graduated only four weeks earlier, I started working as an English-to-Dutch translator in August 2003. I quickly discovered that the pace was a lot higher than what we were used to at university. As I am working in a team that is specialised in the localisation of IT and multimedia content, I also noticed that, even though I had a greater than average knowledge of computer and networking hardware and software, I had a lot to catch up with. Personally, I found a great challenge (but also enjoyment and fulfilment) in jobs which require translators who are more skilled in "transcreation" than translation - typically required for marketing pieces - and I noticed the same applies to newcomers who have joined the localisation industry over the past three years (albeit not everyone likes marketing pieces as much as others do). This area wasn't covered at university so I had to revert to my talents and the assistance of my co-workers.

My daily tasks also include file handling and resourcing. You could call it account management to some extent. My translation/review to account management ratio is around 70%-30%. This makes for a nicely varied pattern and a welcome change after a number of hours of concentrating on a piece of Help material or a user guide. The daily life of a localiser takes a lot of concentration and discipline and is often dynamic in the sense that one moment you are playing with words trying to sell a body groomer, and two hours later you are fixing the length of a handful of software strings, having just spent half an hour in-between outsourcing work, issuing purchase orders and answering translators' questions on the work they are helping you out with. There is never a dull moment if you like this kind of work."4. The Future

The prospects for localisation look promising in The Netherlands. Gradually, more training institutions are including localisation as a subject in their curricula, and in particular the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the Maastricht School of International Communication goes even further in that it is adjusting its curriculum to make it possible for industry to actually take part in the training of prospective localisers (see Section 2.4). In addition to this, The Netherlands can boast to have the world leader in localisation, namely Lionbridge, and the world number two, SDL. Lionbridge once started as a small Amsterdam-based localisation company named INK that gradually developed and expanded, changing its name once in a while until 1996 when the company became Lionbridge. Now the corporate headquarters are in Waltham, Massachusetts in the USA. The Amsterdam office is now a Lionbridge subsidiary. SDL is originally a UK-based localisation company, with its headquarters in Maidenhead. Over the past years SDL expanded and took over other companies, among them Alpnet in 2001. Since then SDL has a subsidiary in The Netherlands (Hengelo). Both Lionbridge and SDL attract the world's greatest companies for localisation work: Lionbridge has the job of localising Microsoft's Vista and SDL has the job of localising Microsoft's Office 2007. Both companies are determined to strengthen their world position. All of these factors give the localisation industry an even stronger position in The Netherlands.