Localization
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Localization as Revenue Enablement
Localization teams often struggle to demonstrate their value. A question pretty much any top-level executive will ask localization leaders is this: “How do you measure success?” Most business leaders asking this question ultimately want to see a strong link between your team and your ability to help grow top-line revenue. If that isn’t immediately apparent…
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Why You Shouldn’t Localize Your Business
It might be surprising to hear that you shouldn’t localize your business, especially when it comes from a localization advocate like me. But there is a very simple reason behind this advice. Your business can expand into other countries. Your company can amplify its reach in new markets. Your firm might decide to create new…
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Careers for Foreign Language Majors in Language Services
What kind of careers can foreign language majors pursue? There are far more options than you might initially realize. When I first chose to pursue a degree in Spanish, I did not have a clear plan for how I would apply my interest in languages in the working world later on. But when it came…
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Moving from “Localization-Friendly” to “Geo-Inclusive”
There’s irony sometimes in localization. Even though localization practitioners are in the business of helping provide access to experiences and information, our own localization industry jargon frequently alienates the very stakeholders and collaborators whose support we need in order to craft better experiences for users. Yet, I caught myself doing precisely this recently when I…
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Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Just Localize Everything
With better and better machine translation engines making more content accessible to the world, should companies go ahead and localize all of their content into other languages? Here are five reasons why the answer is “no.” 1. Localizing everything means you think all markets need the same thing. They don’t. Even if they did, they…
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The Opportunity Cost of Low-Quality Translation
Localization managers at companies that purchase translation services are often trained as follows: when it comes to translation, your top considerations are quality, speed, and cost. Pick two, you simply can’t have all three. That’s the common logic the industry uses today. And, the way the language services industry is set up actually means that…
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Seven Types of Bias in Software Localization
Can bias get built into software in ways that actually harm non-English customers? It can, and it’s actually very common. In this article, I’ll break down seven types of cognitive bias that commonly stand in the way of delivering a truly remarkable experience to customers from outside a company’s home market, and especially for customers…
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Demystifying Localization Project Management
Why does localization seem like a black box? How can we open it up and make it less elusive? These are questions many companies wrestle with. When you work at a company that’s going global, it’s important to be able to communicate quickly and efficiently about localization, but that isn’t always easy! In this post,…
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Localized vs. Native Language Marketing Content
If you’re expanding into new markets and using content marketing as a strategy to attract more visitors to your website, one of the very first questions you’ll probably ask is this: “Should we localize marketing content, or should we create it natively in other languages?” The answer really depends on your overall international expansion strategy.…