Localisation - content strategy
by Baddit Ltd on Apr 19, 2010
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Slides presented at Content Strategy Forum 2010 in Paris, 16 April 2010. Some presenter notes included.
Slides presented at Content Strategy Forum 2010 in Paris, 16 April 2010. Some presenter notes included.
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nikki tiedtke
* let me know if you can’t hear me – don’t suffer in silence.
* save questions for the end
Remarkably, someone out there went to the trouble of requesting details of what's not allowed, what happens if someone applies with disallowed characters and how many complaints had been made. They did this last year using the Freedom of Information Act, which meant the agency *had* to give a reasonable response BY LAW. This impresses me much more than just an ordinary polite letter. http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/disallowed_characters_in_names_o?unfold=1
Disappointingly, fewer than 20 people complained so do people really care about localisation? Well, I care, and so should you.
Remarkably, someone out there went to the trouble of requesting details of what's not allowed, what happens if someone applies with disallowed characters and how many complaints had been made. They did this last year using the Freedom of Information Act, which meant the agency *had* to give a reasonable response BY LAW. This impresses me much more than just an ordinary polite letter. http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/disallowed_characters_in_names_o?unfold=1
Disappointingly, fewer than 20 people complained so do people really care about localisation? Well, I care, and so should you.
Localisation is a huge topic. So huge that it has its own two-day conference (and probably others I don’t know about) called Localization World. The next one is in June in Berlin. I can only scratch the surface and make you think about the questions you need to answer. Localization World will give you more guidance on how to answer those questions, so if you want to find out more, I suggest you check that out.
Two main, not necessarily mutually exclusive, approaches - translation and transcreation. Internationalisation, can be – pedantically, the difference between localising something for an international audience as opposed to within borders. Mostly, it’s seen as the technical aspect that allows products to be localised.
You most often hear about transcreation in a creative context, usually marketing because some ideas don't travel that well. E.g. think carefully before putting the British flag on an Irish site.
And a reminder: think about how local ‘local’ is - it’s not just about country/language.
E.g. in the UK, calling someone a 'muppet' is not a good thing. Doesn’t seem to be an issue in US.
McDonald’s is a great example. When I was growing up the idea was that you would get the same experience all over the world - same food, same restaurant design, same experience. Yet by embracing localisation, McDonald’s gets an average spend in France - a country initially resistant to the brand - over three times that of the US.
Bring in the more subjective stuff where you're evaluating for quality of content, and you haven't just multiplied the work, you've multiplied the number of people involved in that because you need people who know the locality being served to make judgements for you. And somehow you have to try and baseline that. You also have to make decisions on how closely you want the content to mirror the source, if indeed you have a source.
So you can see already, how localisation brings in different aspects to add to your content strategy. Localisation is hard work already, just by multiplying the work. And that’s just the start.
My experience: sales teams take ownership because the business reasons for local websites tend to stem from local sales. However, they're not always in the best position to recognise good content - either through lack of time or content skills. So it's good to plan some support, whether through a trusted local agency, or through a central in-house team.
Voice: decision is use a straightforward/robotic tone of voice in the source language that can be translated easily, or stick with the conversational and risk losing it in translation or spend the money on good translation/transcreation. Good content costs a lot and so does good translation/transcreation.
How are present local content as a choice?
The eConsultancy article about this [http://econsultancy.com/blog/5529-10-heinous-usability-crimes-committed-by-playmobil] suggests that "the website should detect the visitor's IP address and automatically direct them to the relevant site, why make them work any harder than they need to? It's just annoying."
My user journey:
- Use Mac at home, search in Safari, Google detects UK IP address, defaults to google.co.uk - a good thing
- Come to Paris, search in Safari, Google detects French IP address, defaults to google.fr - serves French results and interface in French, even though I’m searching on a machine set up in English and I normally search in English. Annoying.
So IP address detection isn’t the obvious solution.
1. If you're not an English company, do you use English at least as an alternative language on the assumption that most native English speakers aren't great with foreign languages, whereas Germans, say, are great at English?
2. How do you show your company's origins? Does it matter if a German company comes across as, say, a UK company? Experience is that it can make a difference to local sales.
Other point is that many technical terms are sometimes left in English rather than translated because they are understood in a technical context. You need a translator smart enough to know when to leave it in the English.
Who does the actual management? What systems and processes are in place to ensure changes are reflected across the languages/locales. How are you going to roll it out? All in one go? If not, in what order? Do you risk people thinking you don't care about the US market if you roll out a French site first and leave the US localisation to later? If you're launching something that's PR worthy, how do you deal with staggered releases if the US press can see the French press release?
URLs - first question, do you try to snap up all the country variations of the top level domains for the markets you're serving or hope to serve? What if you can't - choose a different domain name or swallow it? And then in the URLs, do you translate them into French, German, American spellings, and so on?
"We never underestimate the importance of local knowledge. Which is why we have local banks staffed by local people..."
Make sure you staff it right and at the very least have a local review. Doesn’t have to be the content originator/editor but at least be able to comment on local sensitivities and customs.
"We never underestimate the importance of local knowledge. Which is why we have local banks staffed by local people..."
Make sure you staff it right and at the very least have a local review. Doesn’t have to be the content originator/editor but at least be able to comment on local sensitivities and customs.
Curation in localisation is about ensuring your local content fits the needs of the local market. Sometimes the best content for the US isn’t the same as the best content for France, even if it’s translated well. And if your product is online, like eBay, for example, you need to make sure your content matches the local implementation.
Designers and developers need to be aware of localisation. If you take the decisions early and at the strategic level, you're less likely to get the issues at the end like "Oh, the text is too wide for the button" or "Can you make the translation shorter to fit the space?" The design needs to be flexible enough to cope with other languages or you just come up with another design, which brings its own maintenance issues.
If you have video, do you subtitle, overdub, transcribe or re-record?
Also, usage norms and behaviours are different across the world. What about cultures that read from right to left, top to bottom? Where colours mean different things to Western norms? Cannot assume that UX findings from Western research applies to Asia.
Designers and developers need to be aware of localisation. If you take the decisions early and at the strategic level, you're less likely to get the issues at the end like "Oh, the text is too wide for the button" or "Can you make the translation shorter to fit the space?" The design needs to be flexible enough to cope with other languages or you just come up with another design, which brings its own maintenance issues.
If you have video, do you subtitle, overdub, transcribe or re-record?
Also, usage norms and behaviours are different across the world. What about cultures that read from right to left, top to bottom? Where colours mean different things to Western norms? Cannot assume that UX findings from Western research applies to Asia.
Designers and developers need to be aware of localisation. If you take the decisions early and at the strategic level, you're less likely to get the issues at the end like "Oh, the text is too wide for the button" or "Can you make the translation shorter to fit the space?" The design needs to be flexible enough to cope with other languages or you just come up with another design, which brings its own maintenance issues.
If you have video, do you subtitle, overdub, transcribe or re-record?
Also, usage norms and behaviours are different across the world. What about cultures that read from right to left, top to bottom? Where colours mean different things to Western norms? Cannot assume that UX findings from Western research applies to Asia.
Designers and developers need to be aware of localisation. If you take the decisions early and at the strategic level, you're less likely to get the issues at the end like "Oh, the text is too wide for the button" or "Can you make the translation shorter to fit the space?" The design needs to be flexible enough to cope with other languages or you just come up with another design, which brings its own maintenance issues.
If you have video, do you subtitle, overdub, transcribe or re-record?
Also, usage norms and behaviours are different across the world. What about cultures that read from right to left, top to bottom? Where colours mean different things to Western norms? Cannot assume that UX findings from Western research applies to Asia.
If strategy is to keep all content aligned, good luck telling the local teams they can't optimise content to generate the most leads, sales, registrations, &c.
To conclude, localisation's hard. It's worth it - and if you don't, I remind you of the McDonald's stat. Make sure you think about it at the same time as your main content strategy, not as an add-on.
To conclude, localisation's hard. It's worth it - and if you don't, I remind you of the McDonald's stat. Make sure you think about it at the same time as your main content strategy, not as an add-on.
To conclude, localisation's hard. It's worth it - and if you don't, I remind you of the McDonald's stat. Make sure you think about it at the same time as your main content strategy, not as an add-on.