Locobyte founder, trainer and chief consultant Yu Zhang is a localization expert with 16 years of experiences. Started in 1994, his localization career involves working from both the buyer and the vendor sides and mingles varied localization roles ranging from linguistic contracting, independent consulting, QA testing, project management, corporate employment, to localization entrepreneuring and business ownership. As a localization trainer Yu Zhang takes advantage of his corporate trainer and college teaching experiences while capitalizes on the insider and in-depth localization knowledge that he acquired through many years of hand-on practices, as well as his original and scholastic studies along and on these practices.
Yu Zhang has rich corporate localization experiences. He was a founding member of Intel's in-house localization linguistic team and a key contributor to its growth from three to over fifty members. His roles at Intel included localization process and tool trainer, DTP and graphic localization trainer, localization process designer, TM and terminology owner, project analyst, QA reviewer, Chinese language supervisor and linguist evaluator, Y2K global emergency response team member, localization tool development team member, and Trademark and Brand Name Localization Committee member. Besides Intel, Yu has worked extensively or full time for other major IT companies such as Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instrument, Motorola, PC Doctor, Netscape, Cisco, and Apple.
Yu Zhang has worked for clients from highly diversified industries. Besides IT industry, he also specializes in biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device localization. He has been a localization terminology contractor for Beckman Coulter for over a decade, and has worked on major projects or long-term contracts for companies such as Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, 3M, Abbott, Stryker, Varian, ICU Medical, GE Medical, and Siemens Medical. Some other industries he has worked for include chemical, metal, engineering, automotive, energy, legal, financial, retail, consumer products, airlines, hotel, food and wine, entertainment, advertising, media, publishing, educational and other organizations, represented by Fortune 500 companies, leading law firms, prestigious institutions and named foundations.
Through his diligent practice and studies Yu Zhang has acquired expert knowledge and insight in a wide array of localization areas including localization workflow design and process optimization, in-house team setup and role definition, localization quality management, localization communication standardization, translation memory and terminology management, style guiding, linguistic QA testing optimization, linguist testing and training, trademark and brand name localization, and machine translation application. A member of LISA, ATA and NCTA, Yu was also a LISA Forum speaker and had premier articles on translation and localization management published on LISA Globalization Insider, ATA Conference Proceedings, and NCTA Translorial.
Yu Zhang received solid training in researching. He holds a B.S. degree in genetics from Peking University, the oldest and most esteemed university in China, a M.S. degree in cell biology from Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's national and the highest research institution where he also conducted researches in genetics and published papers internationally, and a M.S. degree in molecular plant biology from University of California at Berkeley. For unchallenged academic excellence he received a prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship as the rank No.1 nominee. Yu also studied Chinese linguistics, phonology and comparative classical poetry at UC Berkeley where he completed all required Ph.D course work and received a UC Berkeley Merit Award in East Asian studies.
Yu Zhang is a highly achieved Chinese linguist. He is a conventionally published author of creative writing and has works included in Chinese Prose Poem Society's official anthology. Before and in addition to localization, he had worked as a China Press (Silicon Valley) journalist and had taught Simplified and Traditional Chinese languages at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Intel University. As a Chinese localization linguist he has processed many million words of vastly diversified contents for some of the most demanding clients. He also had studied Japanese and German languages along his academic course. His comparative knowledge between Asian and European languages allows him for a comprehensive understanding of linguistic issues in localization.
Davis, California, USA