“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela
It is easier to build trust and understanding when you communicate with someone in their own languages.
Companies that offer multilingual information and customer support manage to increase brand loyalty as their customers know that there is someone who understands them and their needs.
If you’re planning to have additional languages for your website, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with the two concepts of localization and globalization. In this article, we explore the difference between these seemingly similar, yet very different concepts.
What is Localization?
Localization refers to the adjustment of a specific resource or product to fit the demands of one locale. Localizing your materials involves making necessary changes to existing content to ensure that an audience in a targeted locale will understand it. The following are ways to localize your content:
Translate the content
Immigrants to the United States originate from many different language backgrounds and may have different levels of English proficiency. Using data from the 2013 U.S. Census, about half of the total immigrant population consisted of Limited English Proficient (LEP) Individuals. LEP Individuals have limited ability to read, speak, write, or understand the English language.
One way to localize your website content is to translate the information provided, to offer it in your audience’s native language.
A direct translation could lose the original message, so you want to make sure the translation keeps the meaning in tact, with attention to cultural nuances. The localized content should maintain meaning so that it can resonate with the specific target group. This means that your translations should not only be correct linguistically, but they should also reflect the message of the source language accurately.
Use comprehensible formats
Aside from translating content into a language that the local audience can understand, localization also involves using easily comprehensible formats, such as:
Date and time formats
Telephone number formats
System of measurement (imperial or metric)
Currency (symbol and amount)
Keyboard formats used
Punctuations, icons, and symbols
Image and text content sensitivities
Keyboard formats used
Use appropriate visual design elements
In addition to capturing the above elements, localization requires an appropriate visual design that makes sense to the target audience. When creating content for your website, you should incorporate visual design elements that improve user experiences. For instance, you should consider the effects of photography, layouts, illustrations, color, and space on your website. The appropriate visual design elements to use may vary from one target audience to another.
You should note that localizing content isn’t just about using understandable formats, comprehensible visual elements, and translating the existing content to the audience’s native language. It’s also about creating content that maintains its intended message when reaching different audiences.
What is Globalization?
Globalization is the adaptation of a specific resource to fit the demands of multiple cultures. In other words, globalization is the development of a product that is easily accepted worldwide. A globalized website, therefore, should:
Support multiple languages
Just like localization, there is an element of language translation in globalization. However, there is a difference between how you translate content for localization and how you translate content for globalization. For localization, you translate the existing content to a language that your specific target audience understands. For globalization, however, you translate the existing content into multiple languages to make it accessible to multiple target audiences.
Offer content in a variety of formats and designs
When globalizing your content, you should also consider all audience groups by integrating elements of style and design that appeal to each one of them. This is because the way users scan a web page varies depending on their country of origin.
For instance, western users typically read from left to right, while users from East Asian and Middle East countries read from right to left. Also, offer content in a variety of digital formats, print mediums, and file types. Globalization often involves code that allows a website to be more flexible and universal for different formats. Globalizing your website content will go a long way in ensuring that your website will provide a user-friendly experience to all users.
When globalizing your website content, your goal should be to provide a unified and coherent global experience. When designing your website, you should not only maintain consistency, but you should also maintain compliance with global standards.
Localization vs. Globalization in a Nutshell
Localization is the adaptation of a resource or product to fit the demands of one specific culture or locale, while globalization is the adaption of a particular resource to fit the demands of multiple cultures and locales.
Localization makes a resource accessible to an audience of a specific locale, while globalization makes a resource accessible by people from different cultures and locales.
Localization conveys value to a specific audience, while globalization makes a resource acceptable by people from different cultures and locales.
Final Thoughts
Customers feel more comfortable when content, services, and products are tailored to their unique personal needs, their market, and their cultural environment. Through localization and globalization, companies can reach their target markets in a customized fashion and gain a competitive advantage.
The important thing to remember when adopting either of the two concepts is to keep content across all languages as accurate and up-to-date as possible so that communication with all users is consistent. If you are in the public sector, and wondering if this applies to you, the short answer is yes. You have to adapt content to meet the needs of LEP individuals as well as the global community.
What is Localization?
Localization refers to the adaptation of a specific website, resource or product. In simpler terms, it is the process of translating content to fit the demands of one locale.
Localizing content is not a limited act. It’s not simply translating the existing language to a market’s native language.
keep the original’s intent and make it fit with local customs. In many situations, there’s no use to translated content if it doesn’t reflect the original intention.
With localization, content needs to meet the locale’s acceptable cultural norms and talk straight to the target market. It’s a more complex version of the translation, adding other nuances into the mix.
For example, localization includes formats and expected usage norms. This can include:
Numbers, date and time formats
Currency types used
Keyboard formats used
Symbols, icons, and punctuations
Text and image content sensitivities
Different legalities on locale
Localization requires a proper visual design that makes sense to the target market. This may differ from market to market. What’s crucial, however, is the “fit.”
You need to have content that fits the total values of the market you are targeting. In essence, you make it into something that a different market would appreciate because it fits into the cultural context of the area you’re targeting.
What is Globalization?
Globalization is the flipside of localization. Often referred to as internationalization it’s the process of making a product or content multilingual.
You’re setting the business, product or offering to a standard that is more easily accepted worldwide. When it comes to a website, globalization strips code relating to specific languages.
This process entails a few things. First, globalization processes anything that acts as a barrier to global development. Any code, language norms or legacy encoding receive standardization.
Globalization also helps add markups. This will allow for more natural translation in the future.
However, the code should be able to support any future localization efforts as well. For example, an international standard website will have certain features. These include making date-time formatting easier to change. It will support localized calendars, number formats and the like but may not have them immediately enabled.
A globalized product or website should support multiple languages. Localization elements will be separated from the source code.
Loading of local content happens upon request of a user. A default product will be “generic” and can be used more readily for different cultures although they will not speak to differing cultural norms out of the gate.
The Pros and Cons of Globalization and Localization
So which concept is right for you? This depends on the intent of the business.
Globalization is useful for products and businesses looking to delve into other markets. Setting an international standard for themselves through a competent translation team helps. This will make future localization efforts quicker and more easily accessible.
What globalization removes, however, is the “local flavor.” Making a product acceptable to many countries and cultures is problematic.
You cannot add a specific style that entices a particular locale. This creates a disadvantage when you need to penetrate a certain target market.
Conversely, localization gives you a way to appeal better to your specific target market. Target markets like direct communication and people are more likely to engage something specifically directed at them.
Localization, however, limits your value to any other market than the locale. For local businesses, this is not a problem. International business may need to be a little more wary. This will hamper your ability to show your product’s wider marketability.
If people know that the content has traces of marketing not targeted to them, it is harder to convince them to convert. This is why globalization requires “scrubbing” the code of anything that looks local.
Which One Do I Choose?
Not sure which to go with? It’s a question of market focus when it comes to business-level translation.
If you are a local business, here’s a tip. The answer to choosing between globalization and localization is the latter. No question about it. If you are a global business, however, it is much more complicated.
It’s crucial to have a globalized product, website or content that will act as the prime reference. This globalized version will be the source of all your localization efforts.
Once you finish the globalization of your business, you would want to move towards localization efforts. Adapt localization according to your target markets. What is the scope of your localization and its timeline for your business? It depends on your approach.
Localization efforts are valuable only if your target market will care. As an example, there’s no point in translating for a Chinese locale if you don’t have a Chinese audience. It’s vital to decide if catching a particular audience is worth the work.
If you think it is, go for localization. Even then, it’s crucial to start with a robust and globalized foundation.
In either situation, it’s useful to have a translation and localization team that can do both.
Some Closing Thoughts
English is not everyone’s language of choice. The question of globalization vs localization is less a matter of choosing one over the other as it is a matter of fulfilling your needs.
If you are going for a specific locale, localization is the key. If you are planning to go global, start globalizing. Localize only when you get the local audience that is worth translating for.
Are you looking for a team who can translate, localize and globalize for you?
Once you’ve analyzed your audience, how do you use this information? How do you keep from writing something that may potentially still be incomprehensible or useless to your readers? Draft your document with your audience’s needs in mind, but remember that writing can be refined over many drafts. With each subsequent draft, think more carefully about your readers, and revise and edit your document so that you make technical information more understandable for nonspecialist audiences. The lists below are some of the ways you can adapt your writing to your audience’s needs.
The following “controls” have mostly to do with making technical information more understandable for nonspecialist audiences, and they refer to information you will refine as you begin to put your final report together. However, it is a good idea to be aware of your audience’s needs even in the early stages of your report drafting.
PROVIDE THE RIGHT INFORMATION
Add information readers need to understand your document. Check to see whether certain key information is missing—for example, a critical series of steps from a set of instructions; important background that helps beginners understand the main discussion; definition of key terms.
Omit information your readers do not need. Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers—after all, it’s there so they feel obligated to read it. For example, you can probably chop theoretical discussion from basic instructions.
Change the level of the information you currently have. You may have the right information but it may be “pitched” at too high or too low a technical level. It may be pitched at the wrong kind of audience—for example, at an expert audience rather than a technician audience. This happens most often when product-design notes are passed off as instructions.
Add examples to help readers understand. Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions. Even in a non-instructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a technical concept, examples are a major help—analogies in particular.
Change the level of your examples. You may be using examples but the technical content or level may not be appropriate to your readers. Homespun examples may not be useful to experts; highly technical ones may totally miss your nonspecialist readers.
GUIDE YOUR READER THROUGH YOUR WRITING
Change the organization of your information. Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For example, there can be too much background information up front (or too little) such that certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to be consolidated into the main information—for example, in instructions it’s sometimes better to feed in chunks of background at the points where they are immediately needed.
Strengthen transitions. It may be difficult for readers, particularly nonspecialists, to see the connections between the main sections of your report, between individual paragraphs, and sometimes even between individual sentences. You can make these connections much clearer by adding transition words and by echoing key words more accurately. Words like “therefore,” “for example,” “however” are transition words—they indicate the logic connecting the previous thought to the upcoming thought. You can also strengthen transitions by carefully echoing the same key words. A report describing new software for architects might use the word software several times on the same page or even in the same paragraph. In technical prose, it’s not a good idea to vary word choice—use the same words so that people don’t get any more confused than they may already be.
Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections. People seem to read with more confidence and understanding when they have the “big picture”—a view of what’s coming, and how it relates to what they’ve just read. Therefore, write a strong introduction to the entire document—one that makes clear the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section.
Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups. It can help readers immensely to give them an idea of the topic and purpose of a section (a group of paragraphs) and in particular to give them an overview of the subtopics about to be covered. Road maps help when you’re in a different state!
CRAFT EFFECTIVE SENTENCES
Change sentence style and length. How you write—down at the individual sentence level—can make a big difference too. In instructions, for example, using imperative voice and “you” phrasing is vastly more understandable than the passive voice or third-personal phrasing. For some reason, personalizing your writing style and making it more relaxed and informal can make it more accessible and understandable. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read—put people and action in your writing. Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All of this makes your writing more direct and immediate—readers don’t have to dig for it. And obviously, sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words are to be mistrusted.
Edit for sentence clarity and economy. This is closely related to the previous “control” but deserves its own spot. Often, writing style can be so wordy that it is hard or frustrating to read. When you revise your rough drafts, put them on a diet—go through a draft line by line trying to reduce the overall word, page, or line count by 20 percent. Try it as an experiment and see how you do. You’ll find a lot of fussy, unnecessary detail and inflated phrasing you can chop out.
MAKE YOUR DOCUMENT VISUALLY APPEALING
Add and vary graphics. For nonspecialist audiences, you may want to use more graphics—and simpler ones at that. Graphics for specialists are more detailed, more technical. In technical documents for nonspecialists, there also tend to be more “decorative” graphics—ones that are attractive but serve no strict informative or persuasive purpose at all.
Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks. For nonspecialist readers, you may need to have shorter paragraphs. Maybe a 6- to 8-line paragraph is the usual maximum. Notice how much longer paragraphs are in technical documents written for specialists.
Add cross-references to important information. In technical information, you can help nonspecialist readers by pointing them to background sources. If you can’t fully explain a topic on the spot, point to a section or chapter where it is.
Use headings and lists. Readers can be intimidated by big dense paragraphs of writing, uncut by anything other than a blank line now and then. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings—look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things—these can be made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions—these can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting, and don’t overdo it.
Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style. For nonspecialist readers, you can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Typically, sans-serif fonts, such as Ariel, are useful for online readers. Serif fonts, such as Time New Roman, are useful for print texts.
By now you should be able to see that many of the decisions you make as a technical writer depend on who will read your report. From content, to language, to layout, every aspect of your communication must keep your readers’ needs in mind.
We will spend time later in this book expanding our discussion of audience as well as document design–an important consideration that can help tremendously in making your document professional and easy to read.
Blogger-Akash Shinde (Assistant Director)
Student of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Migrant Worker 