Top 10 Articles For a Localization Leader

Square

We have compiled a helpful list of some of our popular articles. Whether you are a localization leader blazing a trail or looking to captivate and inspire your audience as you grow internationally, these articles are certainly popular!

It happened! Your CEO came to the realization that to maintain its remarkable growth, the company needs to expand internationally. The C-Suite just mandated that international customers be given the same great experience as your domestic audience. The time has come for your company to initiate and optimize a localization strategy.

But wait – your manager just sent you an urgent message. She’s thrilled to inform you that optimizing the localization strategy is up to you. “It would be great if you could come up with a plan and a general idea of the cost of getting started. It’s urgent, so it would be wonderful to get it to me by the end of the week. Happy Wednesday.”

You wipe your brow, brew a cup, and sit down. You search online for “how does a company get started in localization?”. You call a friend at your old company who you think did a little bit of this in the past. Eventually, you come to the realization that three critically essential things ensure your company’s localization success. Read more.

Entering new geographical markets is one of the most popular growing methods, second only to mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Yet to succeed, brands typically need to adapt their products or services to appeal to buyers in those regional markets. And that requires undergoing a process known as localization. While translation makes content accessible in the local language(s), localization goes further by adapting it to another culture. To help you get started, we put together a step-by-step introduction to localization. Read more.

What began as a niche industry driven by arcade consoles has become one of the largest entertainment sectors in the world. As the gaming industry expands to a global market, video game translation has become increasingly important. Video games appeal to users by promising an immersive, interactive experience in which a digital world conforms to their will. Nothing spoils that promise faster than sloppy localization, which wrenches players out of the experience and renders games borderline unplayable. Read more.

Globalization (g11n) and localization (l10n) often sound like similar concepts commonly used interchangeably. While they have some similarities, they are not entirely indistinguishable.

Leveraging the benefits of globalization and localization is key to successfully expanding a company to different locations and ensuring that your content resonates globally. However, understanding the difference between these two significant elements is crucial. Read more.

Maximizing return on investment is every business’s ultimate goal. Various brands are constantly looking for foolproof strategies to achieve this feat. But in the advertising and marketing world, one fact remains true—the more targeted your content is, the more it will resonate with your audience. 

For this reason, many brands utilize localized data to determine specific customer insights to guide them in creating hyper-targeted content. This article looks at how localizing your marketing campaigns can help steer your business to success. Read more.

What do SpaceX, Reddit, and Instacart have in common? Aside from being household names, they’re all among the close to one thousand so-called unicorns or privately-owned companies valued at over $1 billion.

The success of companies that cultivate these traits reflects a broader shift toward early global expansion. At one time, international expansion was cost-prohibitive for all but the most well-funded businesses. Today, with the world rapidly becoming increasingly digitalized, those barriers are coming down. Read more.

Global internet penetration is massive and growing, with over 4.66 billion internet users worldwide, which amounts to 60% of the world’s population. To remain competitive in an increasingly international market, companies must find a way to bring design, UX, and localization together into one unified process. Unfortunately, putting aside cultural biases is easier said than done, and many companies treat globalization as an afterthought rather than a core product-development priority. Read more.

In 2013, a Spanish fashion retailer had to apologize after accidentally marketing one of its jewelry lines as “Slave Style.” ‘Esclava’ is a Spanish word commonly used to refer to a specific type of bracelet. Even so, when translated into French, the word means enslaved person. Because of this, over 5,000 outraged people on Twitter lodged a social media protest against the retailer. In such a social media-sensitive industry, a quick translation error gave rise to an uproar that should be preventable.

That said, if luxury fashion brands want to grow globally, they must speak to customers in their mother tongue. And that’s where localization comes in. Not only does it make content accessible in the local language(s), localization goes further by adapting it to another culture. Read more.

It’s evident that machine translation is on the rise. As more companies adopt machine translation, there is growing evidence that translating first with a machine and adjusting with human revision is faster and more cost-effective than human-only translation in many domains while still capable of achieving human translation quality where this is the objective. But how does this apply to an industry like Life Sciences that requires accurate translations? Read more.

Imagine you are a manufacturer that sells laptops to electronics stores worldwide. Your personalized content would involve creating individualized product recommendations for each buyer, helping them choose the right offer, designing product guides, and more.

Meanwhile, localized content would involve translating content to the client’s language, using their currency, designing offers in time for their national holidays, etc.

Unless you are a hyperlocal service or product provider, you need to localize your personalized content. Otherwise, some of your audience segments may fall through the cracks.

Personalized content marketing and localized marketing go hand in hand. Doing one without the other can put you behind the competition. Read more.