If you own a business, communication is key to profit. When your customer base resides in your own country, marketing is a lot easier and intuitive. At the end of the day, aligning with a certain culture help you communicate and sell to local audiences. But most of the global population doesn’t speak English natively. You may have heard about localization then.
Localization is adapting your content for local audiences. More specifically you may want to adapt to different cultures and markets the content you originally created for your primary market.
What will local audiences think about your business communication? Actually the purpose of localization is to center your message on a specific culture. The entire content experience, including images, currencies, cultural references, and links, should fit the target market and audience.
Translation vs Localization
Simply put, the translation process consists of converting a text from one language to another while localization means adapting content to a specific culture and locale. Obviously localization requires a bigger effort in making the meaning suitable for a different audience.
The same sentence, translated into Chinese or French, can have a different meaning, or a different impact.
When translation goes wrong, it can sound awkward or even embarrassing…
A case in point: American Airlines slogan ‘Fly in leather’ (to promote their luxurious leather seats in first class) translated to ‘Fly naked’ in South Africa…. Not quite the message the company had been trying to get across!
You definitely want to avoid these translation blunders. And that’s where l10n, (the acronym for localization), comes in.
How to Avoid Losing Sales and Damaging your Brand
When you understand how costly poor localization can be for your business, you might wonder what’s the best approach to avoid these potential drawbacks.
It’s important to hire not just translators but localization specialists.
If you’re scaling to grow your revenues, you might want to hire a localization expert for Italy. It can be an investment that pays for itself.
Impact on Sales
A properly localized product description makes your product more accessible, appealing and desirable for local customers. Therefore localization can unlock sales potential, a higher conversion rate, a better image for your brand abroad, and much more.
In Italy, most customers are willing to interact with webpages in their native language. So if you are looking to grow your audience here, localization is key.
How to Localize Web Content: Tips and Best Practices
Translation blunders may be quite rare. But offering familiar content to users is crucial to make sales. Everything should feel relevant, from written copy to images, videos, and links. Even currencies and payment methods available.
Let’s say that a Chinese customer is familiar with a certain design for online shops. If your style looks very different, he might have trouble understanding what’s going on, and might leave your page before buying anything! That’s why the pros localize everything they can, in order to reap the benefits later.
In general, each sort of content, whether it is legal, technical, or brand content, etc. will need a different kind of localization.
How to Localize your Website?
This is where to start:
- Hire local language specialists
- Create an international website
- Consider using a Translation Management System (TMS) or AI-assisted localization workflow
- Create a style guide for your translators
- Remember to provide context to your team
- Have your content translated and localized (written copy, images, links, videos, etc.)
- Localize elements such as currency, decimals, punctuation and date formats
- Adjust layouts for different languages (i.e. some might need more space)
Some more localization tips:
- Tap into local language experts to create your localization team. No one knows a local culture better than locals.
- Focus on your local identity and offer a custom experience for any region.
- Connect with customers and become part of the local community.
Go one step further than translation and localize your content!
We are a team of translators, marketers, copyrighters and SEO specialists based in Italy. Are you looking to have your website/blog/campaign localized and tailored for the Italian audience? We’re ready to help.
Nicola defines himself as a “techno king”. Like Elon Musk says, bios and titles don’t matter that much. What really matters is passion for revolutionary technology that can change the world, like blockchain, internet, cyber security, finance, SEO and a lot more. Nicola loves exploring and engaging the reader in his discovery journey.