Understanding how to efficiently leverage business content and resources to effectively meet the needs of globally diverse partners is the focus of this presentation. Topics covered include: • Globalization 101 – The "Globalization Academy" ensures we are all speaking the same language when talking about globalization including terms such as: regions, locales, localization, transcription. • Strategic Considerations – Our mission to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new content and new audiences; to boldly go where no content strategist has gone before. We'll discuss strategic considerations including the structural model and governance model. • Tactical Considerations – How to "Make it so…". This presentation was given at Information Development World on October 2, 2015.

1. Content Globalization… the Final
Frontier
By Felice Schulz
Twitter: @FeliceMSchulz

2. Content Globalization: the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the Enterprise
Content Strategist…
- Adapted from Captain Kirk, Starfleet Command
@FeliceMSchulz

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Whether you
have 2 or 44
locales you are
dealing with…
you need a
Global Content
Strategy

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Today we will
cover
1. Going Global
2. Globalization 101
3. Strategic Considerations
4. Tactical Considerations

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Content Globalization: The final frontier
Going Global

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.
Today you need a Global Presence

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The Internet is becoming the town square
of the global village of tomorrow
- Bill Gates

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Efficiently leverage businesses content
and resources to effectively meet the
needs of globally diverse sets of digital
consumers

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Globalization What is Important?

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Globalization
What is Important?
What is Difficult?

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Globalization
What is Important?
What is Difficult?
What does Success look like?

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Where do we start?

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Globalization Academy
Globalization 101

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Globalization
Lexicon
• What is it: Globalization
• Where is it:
–Market
–Region
–Locale
• How is it done:
–Translation
–Localization
–Transcreation

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Mission plan
Globalization
The strategy and process of setting
up a global digital presence:
platform and especially content
that performs globally:
–in multiple regions
–for multiple markets
–in multiple languages

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Set Course
Market
A distinct group of an audience that
may be based on:
–Business POV or
–User POV

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Set Course
Region
A business-focused area of the
company’s global presence.
–A region can comprise one or
more markets, in a certain large
geographical area of the world.
–A region is typically (but not
always) “run” by a single,
centralized office.

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Set Course
Locale
A specific published instance of the site
in a particular language.
– Often used interchangeably with
“country”, but…
– A locale is defined more by language
and content set and may be any of
these:
• one country / one site
• one country / multiple sites
• one site applicable to several countries
or markets

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The Away Team
Translation
The process of translating content
(words) so that it is in the language
of a given region, locale, or market.
- Typically a direct
correspondence between
content in other languages.
- Includes minor adjusting, turns
of phrase, slang and other
“intangibilities

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The Away Team
Localization… the big issue!
The process of not just translating
content, but somehow modifying or
adapting to make it distinct for one
or more locales (or regions or
markets).

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The Away Team
Transcreation*
The process of creating unique
content for a particular locale and
culture (or region) typically to evoke
a specific emotional response where
the original might not translate.
Such as recreating a targeted,
culturally-appropriate campaign
(words and images).
* Global Content Strategy: A Primer, Val Swisher, XML Press, 2014

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The Away Team
Transcreation*
• Why do we transcreate, even though it can be
more expensive? It may be necessary to
ensure a campaign is successful in each
locale. Choose what to transcreate carefully.
• More of a content development process than
a translation or basic localization process.
• Transcreation includes the words and images
and may also include layout changes.
• Successful transcreation requires a cohesive
global content strategy.
• You need to manage transcreated content to
ensure trademarks are correct, messages are
on target.
* Global Content Strategy: A Primer, Val Swisher, XML Press, 2014

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A common lexicon is not enough

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A common lexicon is not enough…
We need a common process

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Globalization Process

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Strategic Considerations
Our mission: to explore strange new worlds; to
seek out new content and new audiences; to
boldly go where no content strategist has gone before

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Our mission: to explore strange new
worlds; to seek out new content and new
audiences; to boldly go where no content
strategist
has gone before..
- Adapted from Captain Kirk, Starfleet Command

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Project Mission
A GLOBAL MODEL:
• Addresses the organization, needs, and relationships of
the business in the different regions, serving the needs
of various markets / locales.
• Responsive to High-Level Business Needs
• This model is a combination of:
- The Structural Model – the structure of the content
across the various globalized platforms: what is
needed where, how is it similar, how is its different
(based on answering the strategic “why”)
- The Governance Model – the processes for
developing, maintaining and sharing content
across the global presence (based on answering the
strategic “how”)

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Landing Party
When determining a Globalization
Strategy, first consider the high-level
business needs:
 What are the business’ strategic goals in
terms of globalization?
 What is the base content and how does it
serve / achieve those goals?
 What is the geographical scope of the
platform(s)? What regions and locales? What
languages are needed to support this scope?
 What are the audiences that need to be
addressed? Do they differ across locales?

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Landing Party
When determining the Structural Model
consider:
 What content is offered in the different regions and/or
locales?
 What content can be shared across regions (and/or
locales) with only translation?
 Where and how is the content different? Modified?
Entirely different sets? Some “held back”?
 To what extent do the sites need localized content? To
what extent do the sites need transcreated content?
How should different locales correspond in terms of
brand character, structure, individual content items?
 What are the content types that need to be
converted/adapted by locale?

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Plot a course
When determining the Governance
Model consider:
 Why and how does regional or locale
management differ?
 What processes and tools will be used for
translation?
 How do we maintain content?
 How do we determine what new content is
needed?
 Which Governance Structure to implement?:
– Centralized
– Federated
– Hybrid

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Plot a course
A single, central source of content and
control. The “home office” or “primary
region/locale.”
Centralized:

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Plot a course
Multiple, separated sources of content
and (especially) control: distinct self-
regulating regional offices.
Federated:

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Plot a course
Leverages capabilities and attributes of
each model.
– Use centers of excellence and
regional teams to group expertise
at levels above individual
businesses
– Use central team for larger project
and content that needs to be
consistent across regions
– Use regional/locale based teams
for smaller projects and localized
content
Hybrid:

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Tactical Considerations
Make it so…

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Make it so
Tactical Considerations:
• Global-ready Content
• Translation
• Design
• Content Management Systems

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Make it so
Global-Ready Content Considerations*:
If you are writing copy knowing it will be translated, consider the
following to make it global-ready. It can save your money, time and
improve quality:
 Write shorter sentences: long sentences are difficult to understand in
original language and are more difficult to translate.
Recommendation is 26 words per sentence.
 Write less content. Remove needless words
Instead of “our software works on a variety of platforms” try “our
software works on various platforms”
 Say the same thing, the same way every time: This keeps your
translation costs lower, since once a phrase is translated and in
translation memory it costs less to translate. Pick one: such as “Click
Ok”, “Press the Ok button”, “Select OK”.
 Avoid idioms and jargon: because you have no idea how that can
throw a wrench into the translation process.
 Use correct grammar.
 Don’t forget that you may need to have different images for the same
content.
* Adapted from Global Content Strategy: A Primer, Val Swisher, XML Press, 2014

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Make it so
Translation Considerations:
 Who is translating?
• Internal, leveraging SMEs: provides the best opportunity to ensure
business specific nuances are addressed. Easy to maintain a single
Translation Memory.
• Language Service Provider(s): Highly trained translation specialists, it’s
their only job. If you use multiple services, you should maintain a single
Translation Memory for consistency and to reduce your costs.
• Machine translation, such as Google translate or translations modules in
CMS. Provides the least accurate translation. It still requires a human to
review and approve. May result in more rework cycles.
 What are you translating?
• Know what content you want to translate vs. transcreate.
 What are your processes?
• Know how the translation process fits into your larger content
globalization process. The majority of globalization tasks are typically not
related to translation.
Ideally all content should be available by locale in the local language but there are
exceptions that can be accounted for

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Make it so
Design Considerations:
The design will need to accommodate for the various
language needs
 Know your content: min, max and average length of
content chunks for each language. Language length
impacts display requirements. Just as too much text
can be problematic so to can too little text.
 How many template variations will be needed to
accommodate the locales? Additional sets of templates
will be needed for right to left languages like Arabic
and Hebrew, etc.
 Which languages will you use to test? Take into
account comparative lengths when deciding what
languages to use to test the templates.

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Make it so?
Design Considerations:
://www.yetanothertechblog.com/2013/12/27/l10n-string-length-and-verbosity-across-languages
http://www.yetanothertechblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/comparison_gaia.png
“Why using English as a reference for
designing UI may not be a great idea”.

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Make it so
Content Management Systems:
Technical capability of the CMS and web platform must also be
considered as they impact the ease/cost of stakeholder groups
maintaining the sites.
 Will there be a master site and inheritance?
 What will be inherited?
 How are locales and languages supported?
 How many and how to manage the CMS elements by which
content is entered, maintained, and published. Especially if
they vary by region or locale.
 How will the CMS support the workflows for globalization of
content?
 Who gets what permissions?
And any other tools needed to manage the
creation and maintenance of content

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Questions & Discussion
Not even content strategists can know the un-known

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