A practical knowledge gap
Searching for a translation standard can lead to several different kinds of document. One may describe a service process, another an exchange format, and another a way to classify errors. They may all be useful, but they answer different questions.
Consider a team launching a product in five languages. Its project manager needs an agreed brief. Its engineers need reliable file exchange. Its translators need terminology and context. Its reviewers need a shared basis for accepting or rejecting the result. No single label resolves all four needs.
We want to make those relationships visible. Our catalogue connects planning, production, technical exchange and evaluation without treating them as interchangeable.
Why the history of LISA matters
The Localization Industry Standards Association brought together organizations working on multilingual products and language technology. Its archived self-description, hosted by W3C, records an emphasis on practical cooperation and localization procedures. The page is historical, not a current organizational profile. Historical LISA introduction.
That history provides a useful starting point. In particular, the questions behind reusable translation resources and explicit quality criteria remain understandable to today's teams. Our history article follows the evidence for each connection rather than assuming a single succession story.
Association LISA is a new, independent editorial project. We do not claim to be the former Localization Industry Standards Association, its legal successor or its authorized representative. The historical language-industry organization used lisa.org. Ownership of associationlisa.com does not establish continuity with it.
Our continuity is a continuity of interest: explaining interoperability, shared requirements and accountable assessment. The name does not confer ownership of standards, historical logos or institutional authority.
What readers should be able to do
We aim to help readers:
- Distinguish a formal standard from a specification, framework or historical model.
- Select references that match a particular translation or localization problem.
- Identify the edition and status of the document they are discussing.
- Understand how requirements affect evaluation.
- Ask more precise questions about tools, providers and AI-generated output.
Our intended readers include translators, reviewers, localization managers, developers, researchers and people commissioning multilingual work. The explanations should remain useful when the reader is new to standards terminology.
AI makes explicit criteria more useful
Generating a translation and deciding whether it is suitable are separate tasks. Our editorial position is that wider access to automated generation makes the second task more important.
We therefore approach AI through concrete questions. What was the text intended to do? Which terminology was supplied? What would count as a serious error? Can an automated finding be traced to a source passage? How was the evaluator checked?
We may explain research methods and propose illustrative workflows. We will identify them as such. A site's own checklist or an AI-generated score will not be presented as a new international standard or as certification.
Five languages, one body of knowledge
English is the source language. Dutch, German, Spanish and Polish editions will carry the same underlying materials. Translation should improve access without changing document identifiers, status distinctions or the meaning of an example.
The English source is an editorial reference, not a claim that other languages are less authoritative. When a wording problem appears in a translation, the correction should also prompt a check of the shared source.
What we publish and how to assess it
We publish original explanations, historical context and clearly labelled examples. We link to official publishers for specifications and normative requirements. Paid standards are not reproduced or reconstructed from their abstracts.
The first collection consists of a historical overview, a guide to the standards landscape and individual reference articles.
Read the editorial policy, explore the catalogue, or send a correction.