Content Strategy Across Geographies and Platforms with Melinda Flores

!PRESENTED BY!
Melinda Flores!
Associate Director, Content Strategy!
VSA Partners
Global Content Strategy
Don’t Get Lost in Translation
November 18, 2014

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Agenda
•  Big in Japan: the Japanese digital experience
•  Deﬁning global content strategy
•  Taking your content on the road
•  Don’t get lost in translation: Best practices
•  The case for localization
GLOBAL CONTENT STRATEGY / NOVEMBER 18 2014 / VSA PARTNERS

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Big in Japan

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Does this baby make me look fat?

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Shopping online in Japan

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“The coordinates are easy at longish length!”

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Rakuten Global Market site

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Content overload? Not in Japan.

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Why is the Japanese experience so diﬀerent?
•  Character comfort
•  Need for a high degree of information and assurance
•  Mobile, mobile, mobile
•  Lack of hierarchical contrast
•  Low adoption of new programming languages
http://randomwire.com/why-japanese-
web-design-is-so-different/

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Product pages are packed with information

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Simpliﬁed English product page

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Simpliﬁed English product page, 6 months ago

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Go global or go home
GLOBAL CONTENT STRATEGY / NOVEMBER 18 2014 / VSA PARTNERS 13

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What is global content strategy?
The planning, creation and management of content, in terms of:
Governance
Workﬂow
People
Work
Global content strategy is concerned with scaling content for global markets !
in a way that is eﬃcient, consistent, relevant and sustainable.
….around the world
Substance
Structure

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The benefits of a global content strategy
•  Tell a consistently compelling story about your offering, !
no matter where audiences find you
•  Make sure your content is ready to scale for global markets
•  Streamline translation and publication workflows to !
save money and time
•  Improve content reach and performance

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Taking your content on the road
•  Less is more (cheaper and faster to translate!)
•  Replace idioms and obscure language with common
expressions
•  Adhere strictly to English grammar rules
•  Be exceptionally clear, e.g., use nouns with the words !
this, that, these, and those
•  Be aware of visual cues that may be irrelevant or even
offensive in other cultures
•  Create a corporate glossary (!!!)

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Why a corporate glossary?
•  Safeguards your product and company branding
•  Preserves your company trademarks, service
marks, copyrights, and so on
•  Ensures that everyone in your organization uses the
same terminology to describe the same things
•  Makes your content easier to read for people of all
reading levels
•  Lowers the price and time it takes to translate the
content into multiple languages
•  Helps to ensure the quality and consistency of
the translations

http://www.contentrules.com/blog/simple-rule-3-real-editors-dont-
do-it-without-a-terminology-manager/

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Translation: Best practices
•  Use native-speaking translators who are ideally
based in the target country for translations (at least !
1 person to translate and another for QA)
•  Find translators who are subject matter experts  
and skilled at marketing translations, whenever
possible, to nail style and tone
•  Create separate experiences for each country !
(not language) and don’t forget about differences
among dialects—there are signiﬁcant differences
between French Canadian and the language spoken !
in France
•  Store and track all translations in an owned
terminology database to save time and money

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Translation vs. localization vs. transcreation
Translation
Localization

Transcreation

Content
No change (direct
translation of
existing content)
May be altered to be more
culturally appropriate/
relevant
New content may be
developed to suit local needs
Design
No change (same
images)
May be altered to be more
culturally appropriate/
relevant
Change to suit new content/
local needs
UX
No change (same
layout)
May be altered slightly as
required by content needs
Change to suit new content/
local needs

Adapted from: http://www.slideshare.net/IntelligentContent/
planning-your-globalcontentstrategyswisher

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The case for localization
Global UX: Design and Research in a Connected World,
Szuc/Quesenbery

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Lost in translation

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Localization means addressing user needs

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Localization win or fail?

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Global markets require localized,  
culturally relevant content

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Additional Global Content Strategy resources
•  Contentrules.com and anything written by Val Swisher on
Slideshare—she knows her stuff!
•  Milengo.com global content strategy blog
•  Global UX: Design and Research in a Connected World,
Szuc/Quesenbery

@melindarox
Questions?

@melindarox
Thank you!

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