Engineering

The Engineering Services department is the backbone of our operations at Cosmic Global. This is where the magic happens, where our customers' wishes are made into reality. The technical wizards that form this team are skilled in reading between the lines to grasp what the client wants.

Sometimes, when a project reaches us, we aren't privy to the inner-workings of it and have to use our imagination to fill in the gaps to bring out a cohesive, well-thought out product. This is where our Engineering Services team truly come into its own. From a few lines of code, they can understand, formulate and work towards building the product to fit in seamlessly with our clients', be it in German, Portuguese or Mandarin.

How we work

The Engineering Services team is the second port of call, after the Sales team, whenever a new project / client is signed up by Cosmic Global. After in-depth discussions with the Engineering team, the project gets split and funnelled into the various departments based on the requirements. The team runs a critical analysis, wherein the overall scope of the project, budget, estimated time etc are all calculated, taking all the data, text, images, embedded devices etc into account.

Once the other teams complete their tasks, it is the job of the Engineering team to put it all together and take the product for a test run, iron out the kinks and deliver the finished product.

The four main arms of the department are localisation testing, content integration, technology integration and multimedia production.

Localisation Testing

Content localisation forms a huge chunk of the work carried out by Cosmic Global and each and every product we localise has to be tested vigorously before it can be released to the client. Even before a piece of content, such as programming code, can be released to the translating team, it has to be cleaned and sorted, so that the translators do not get lost in the lines of code. The Engineering team prepares the pre-localised content by marking them clearly for the ease of the translators.

Text data, embedded data, images, audio clips, every type of content that has been localised is tested for its target market before it gets knitted into the framework of the finished content.

Content Integration

Does this piece of text make structural sense? Does it fit into the available space in its new language or should the kerning be altered to fit? Is the image suitable to the target country or does it have any cultural meaning that will be inappropriate? What about the final word count – does it fall into the acceptable parameters? What about text truncations? Does the font size needs to be changed?

Every piece of content product by the various departments of Cosmic Global is put through the wringer and unless all of these questions and more are answered satisfactorily, that piece of content will not be put through. It is here that the different parts of a product are put together and made to function as a whole and as such, the rigorous testing that is carried out is imperative for the success of the final product.

Technology Integration

This is where the localised content is put through its paces and tested to see how it performs, especially in relation with the original content. Syncing the original sound track (OST) with the voice-over, syncing audio with the animation / video content, syncing OST, animation and the audio components together into one cohesive content – these are all just some of the works carried out in the technology integration stage.

The main final product has to pass through three vital processes:

Functionality – is the localised product working in a similar manner to the original content?
Key-testing – is the user, such as a student following an e-learning course, able to perform the tasks correctly, following directions from the content?
UI testing – Does the text content, say, synchronise with the screen shots?

Multimedia Integration

At Cosmic Global, a great deal of audio, video and animated content have to be localised and the Engineering Services team plays a crucial role in the production and integration of the same. If a video has to be localised, depending of the clients' requirements and the budget constraints, one of the three methods of narratives – voice-over, dubbing or sub-titling – are made use of.

Once the method has been decided, the relevant sub-team produces the content as per the given set of instructions. The finished product is tested for cohesiveness and depth of content before it is released to the client.