In our documentation, you'll find abbreviations for ease of reading. Here you'll find the meaning and a brief explanation of each term within the structure.
You'll also find industry terms that may vary among colleagues and companies, which we try to standardize to facilitate communication.
BeLazy hubs
BeLazy's functionality is organized into hubs, each covering one part of the localization workflow. You'll see these names throughout the documentation.
Content and Project Hub: The connectors and workspaces that bring projects into BeLazy from any origin system: vendor portals, translation management systems, content management systems, the Email Assistant, the BeLazy Portal or your own integrations.
TMS Processing Hub ("Into TMS"): Lets you choose the TMS in which BeLazy creates a project to import, analyse and process content that arrives as files.
Business Management Hub: Defines the workflow beyond the TMS, takes care of the financials and holds the vendor information. This is where your business management system is connected.
AI Hub: Uses AI integrations to perform individual workflow steps on content exported from the TMS. Using AI in BeLazy is optional.
Orchestration Hub: The set of points where you can customize and extend the automation beyond what the user interface configuration covers, for example with webhooks, Google Apps Script or your own systems.
Sales Management Hub: Integrates commercial business management systems such as Plunet and XTRF with CRM systems, to separate project-related and sales-related work.
BeLazy concepts
Business management system (BMS): Your BMS serves as the central system for tracking translation work. You can assign work to linguists and monitor project progress within this system. One BeLazy organization can only have one business management system connected. You can see its details under the profile menu / Manage my business management system in the user interface. The BMS is connected through the Business Management Hub: Plunet, XTRF, Protemos, or your own system via the BMS Integration API. It is not a requirement to work with a BMS to use BeLazy: if you don't have one, BeLazy's Google Sheets-based project management can take its place.
Vendor portal (VP): A vendor portal serves as the source of work, offering translation projects to translation companies and linguists. BeLazy facilitates the transfer of these offered projects to your BMS. Examples of VP include: Plunet Vendor Portal, XTRF Vendor Portal, Junction, Symfonie, LCX.
Translation management system (TMS): A translation management system is another type of source of work, a system that handles the actual translation of the content. The TMS, in comparison with VPs, often does not track any financial data or does not provide end customer information. Examples of TMS include: memoQ, Crowdin, XTM, Phrase, Lokalise, Transifex. A TMS can play two roles in BeLazy: as an origin system in the Content and Project Hub, where BeLazy picks up projects that already exist in the TMS, or as the processing TMS in the TMS Processing Hub, where BeLazy creates the TMS project to import, analyse and process content that arrives as files.
Connection: A connection is where BeLazy picks up projects from. Connections come in two types: connectors, which are part of BeLazy's code and regularly log in to an external system (a vendor portal, TMS or CMS) to fetch new and changed projects, and workspaces, which receive projects pushed in via API. A connector is usually described by a name, a URL, a user name and a password.
Workspace: A workspace is a connection that, instead of fetching projects from an external system, receives projects that external systems push into BeLazy via the Project Ingestion API. The Email Assistant and the BeLazy Portal deliver projects through workspaces. You can also connect external tools or email parsers through a third-party app such as Make.com, or build your own programmatic automation, such as a vendor portal, on top of this functionality.
Origin system: The system a project comes from, connected to BeLazy through the Content and Project Hub: a vendor portal, a TMS, a CMS or a workspace. Some articles also call it the source system.
Opportunity: An opportunity represents a work item offered to the organization through a connection in the Content and Project Hub. You can choose to accept or reject an opportunity. BeLazy requires acceptance to initiate the transfer of the opportunity to the Business Management Hub. Each opportunity appears as one line in the Approvals pending list on the user interface. Opportunities can be approved manually or automatically by auto-approval rules. Ignore removes an opportunity from the list without rejecting it in the origin system.
Project (or BeLazy project): Once an opportunity is accepted, and BeLazy performs the necessary operations, it becomes a project and it is created in the Business Management Hub: in your BMS, or in BeLazy's Google Sheets-based project management if you don't use a BMS. The project reflects the work item as tracked there. Each project appears as one line in the Deliveries pending list on the user interface. Closed or delivered projects are shown in the Delivered within list, or the project list under the Connection card. One opportunity becomes one BeLazy project.
BMS project: By default, every BeLazy project is turned into one BMS project. However, BeLazy's bundling functionality can be used to merge multiple BeLazy projects into one BMS project, for example merging workflow steps, different languages of the same project, different files of the same project into one project, or creating a daily or a monthly project. One BMS project can contain multiple BeLazy projects, but each BeLazy project belongs to one BMS project. The term BMS project is used even if you don't have a BMS, to distinguish it from the BeLazy project: in that case, BeLazy's Google Sheets-based project management displays the BMS projects.
Bundling: Merging multiple BeLazy projects into one BMS project, task or job based on the merging rules you configure, for example merging the languages or files of the same project, or collecting work into a daily or monthly project.
Frozen: A frozen item no longer takes changes from incoming information. When an opportunity is approved, BeLazy freezes its description and takes a snapshot, so later scope changes in the origin system are not applied. In bundling, a BMS task becomes frozen once its status shows that work has started, and BeLazy creates a new task instead of merging new work into it.
Notification: A notification indicates an irregularity with a project or connection that needs your action: the automation found a new value (e.g. a new service is requested from you and the system does not know which BMS service to use for this) or ran into some difficulty (e.g. your user name and password don't work, or the other system is down). You can see notifications under the bell icon in the top header. A yellow cloud next to a project means it has pending notifications, and the project is approved once they are resolved.
Onboarding: Onboarding is preparing a connection for automation by enabling automated access to both the source and target systems, and by mapping the information coming from the source system to the information that the target system expects. You start onboarding by clicking Automate on the connection card, which opens the onboarding wizard. To change the configuration later, click Edit automation.
Automated connection: A connection that went through onboarding and is able to create projects in the target system with or without the click of a button, unless something unexpected happens.
Metadata and extra data: Metadata is the information that describes a project, such as languages, deadline, volume, customer or specialization. BeLazy describes every project in the same way with standard metadata, and stores additional, connector-specific information (such as product lines) as extra data. Both can be used in mapping and exception rules.
Value mapping: Translating a value from the origin system into the value your own system uses, for example mapping the customer's project type "IT" to your "Software Localization" service.
Exception rule: A rule that overrides the default mapping when certain conditions are met, for example applying a specific price list when the job name contains France and the currency is Euro. See the article Metadata and exception-based configuration.
Auto-approval: Rules that automatically approve or reject incoming opportunities from a given connection when they meet conditions such as languages, weighted quantity, specialization or deadline.
Synchronization: BeLazy checks each connection for new and changed projects every 30 minutes by default. You can also synchronize based on email notifications, via the API, or manually with the synchronization button on the connection card.
Helper tools and APIs
Email Assistant: A helper tool in the Content and Project Hub that lets project managers create projects in BeLazy directly from emails and push them through automation.
BeLazy Portal: A customizable order portal in the Content and Project Hub that enterprises and LSPs can set up for their customers, so they can place orders with only the metadata needed to automate the project.
Google Sheets project management (the BeLazy spreadsheet): A helper tool in the Business Management Hub. If you don't use a commercial business management system, it offers ready-to-use project management configured entirely in BeLazy. If you do, it adds reporting, vendor assignment and other automation.
Project Ingestion API: Part of the Content and Project Hub. Lets you push projects into BeLazy workspaces from any system, with feature parity with BeLazy's own integrations.
Update Opportunity API: Part of the Content and Project Hub. Lets you correct or complete an opportunity's information after BeLazy has received it and before it is accepted.
BMS Integration API: Part of the Business Management Hub. Lets you connect your own business management system to BeLazy.
BMS Extension API: Part of the Business Management Hub. Gives direct access to entities in Plunet, XTRF and Protemos for changes such as vendor assignment, deadlines or finances.
AI Hub APIs (AI workflow APIs): Part of the AI Hub. Let external AI-based engines process the bilingual content of any workflow step in the TMS integrations BeLazy supports.
Webhooks: Let BeLazy notify another system the moment something happens to your opportunities, projects or quotes, so that system can react without repeatedly querying the BeLazy API.
Industry concepts
Freelance translator: A translator who works independently for multiple LSPs or directly for translation buyers.
In-house translator: A translator who is employed by an LSP or a translation buyer.
LSP (language service provider): In other words, a translation company. LSPs can be MLVs or SLVs.
MLV (multilingual vendor): Generally an LSP that serves directly the translation buyers, and helps them manage their multilingual content in many languages. MLVs are often technology- and customer process-savvy, that's the value they add for the translation buyer. Because of the number of languages they handle, MLVs usually have a much bigger revenue than SLVs. MLVs outsource work to SLVs, freelance translators and sometimes have in-house translators.
SLV (single language vendor): Well, not really single language... at least two languages are involved! These are usually smaller LSPs that only service certain language pairs, but they do those right. One variation is the RLV (regional language vendor) which services not only one language like Dutch, but all the Balkan languages, all the Nordic languages, all the Baltic languages, all the South-East-Asian languages, etc. SLVs don't often work directly for translation buyers, however, some technology-savvy buyers prefer to work with them. Please note that the terms MLV and SLV are not completely clear. An SLV that provides e.g. Croatian for Apple through an MLV may also provide services to direct clients in Croatia.
Translation or localization buyer: Often also referred to as enterprise, these are companies that order translation for their own marketing, compliance, support, contracting, etc. reasons - to facilitate their international expansion or operations. The content comes to them either from other people (shared services approach), or from computer-operated systems (integrations). They decide what to translate, into what languages, if they produce computer software code like most companies do today, they are responsible for internationalization, etc. Most of the time they drive the agenda of continuous localization.
Automator: Any company or person that wants to automate the receipt, delivery and processing of jobs.
Additional concepts
Application programming interface (API): In computer software, most of the things you want to achieve you achieve through clicks in the graphical user interface. Using APIs, computers can automate the performance of certain tasks in other systems programmatically. For example, your own business management system can request project information from BeLazy and create it there, or can directly push projects into BeLazy.
Agile localization: Agile localization means localizing software strings and other things as part of the agile software development process, in foreseeable sprints (rather than starting it just whenever somebody requests it), with a view to continuous improvement.
Continuous localization: Continuous localization is a technology-powered process that provides a high degree of automation in the localization of small batches of content with regular updates. It can relate to any area, not just software development (e.g. websites), but it also involves continuous improvement.