Post by habiba123820 on Nov 8, 2024 22:23:18 GMT -5
We live in a world where the key to business survival is global relevance. This is causing business leaders to take a hard look at localization versus translation of their products and services.
According to Forrester research, 64% of buyers said they value localized content when making technology purchases. As such, most large companies have been prioritizing localization for years, including hiring localization or translation managers whose primary role is to improve content on a global scale. These companies already understand how to take translation to the next level. In other words, they’ve likely already overcome the logistical and linguistic pitfalls that many companies face when starting to localize.
Many mid-sized companies just starting out with localization rely on a decentralized approach to sourcing, where each team in the organization or each regional location sources from the supply chain of wordpress web design agency their choice. And without a centralized approach to asset management, there is no single repository of approved bilingual terminology, language-specific style guides, and translation memory databases. By transitioning to a comprehensive translation platform, however, they can significantly improve their logistics strategy and translation outcomes while keeping costs low.
If your company is about to go global, you’re making big decisions about how to transcreate content across regional and language barriers. Knowing the difference between localization vs. translation can help you prepare to scale efficiently.
Defining Localization vs. Translation
Translation and localization are quite similar in concept. It’s easy to see how teams can miss the mark, resulting in substandard content that fails to capture the attention of their global audience.
So what does localization versus translation mean for your business as it seeks to go global?
Translation is taking words from one language and conveying the same idea in another target language. Whether the translation is done word-for-word by a machine translation (MT) service or completed idiomatically by a skilled linguist, the simplest process fails to take into account all the other elements of living in a digital world. Document translation only involves the words on a page. It cannot encompass the many dimensions of software, applications, or web content.
The Benefits of Choosing Localization Over Translation
Basic translation approaches may work for small businesses looking to expand very slowly and in very limited markets. But for growing companies that maintain extensive content operations in multiple languages, localization is the only way forward.
Localization goes further, deeper and more comprehensively than just translation. This strategy allows you to:
Target locations, not languages
Spanish is spoken all over the world. Translating an app’s user interface into Spanish may make the text readable for users who speak the language, but the app will still be perceived differently by users in Buenos Aires, Havana, and Madrid. This is because the translation only translates the words on the screen. It doesn’t address the different sociolinguistic expectations of global users.
Localization allows you to go deeper by specifying which locale you’re targeting in relation to the language you’re translating. Localized content transforms the user experience in ways that make it more linguistically, culturally, and functionally relevant. Content layout, currencies, images, and languages can change—all with the goal of making your content feel like it was created from scratch in the target language, specifically for people in the target area.
Maintain Digital Functionality
When translating website or app content literally, you’re bound to run into difficulties. English text translated into German can increase in character length by up to 50-100%, which could seriously impact the clean design and readability of your fixed-length homepage. Or, if you’re entering an Arabic-speaking market, you’d need to invest in additional internationalization efforts to make your interface switch smoothly to a right-to-left reading style.
Localization is much more sensitive to the digital functionality of the translated content than simple translation. Through complex file analysis and a comprehensive approach to the digital elements of translation, you maintain the full functionality of your assets, no matter in which country they are displayed.
According to Forrester research, 64% of buyers said they value localized content when making technology purchases. As such, most large companies have been prioritizing localization for years, including hiring localization or translation managers whose primary role is to improve content on a global scale. These companies already understand how to take translation to the next level. In other words, they’ve likely already overcome the logistical and linguistic pitfalls that many companies face when starting to localize.
Many mid-sized companies just starting out with localization rely on a decentralized approach to sourcing, where each team in the organization or each regional location sources from the supply chain of wordpress web design agency their choice. And without a centralized approach to asset management, there is no single repository of approved bilingual terminology, language-specific style guides, and translation memory databases. By transitioning to a comprehensive translation platform, however, they can significantly improve their logistics strategy and translation outcomes while keeping costs low.
If your company is about to go global, you’re making big decisions about how to transcreate content across regional and language barriers. Knowing the difference between localization vs. translation can help you prepare to scale efficiently.
Defining Localization vs. Translation
Translation and localization are quite similar in concept. It’s easy to see how teams can miss the mark, resulting in substandard content that fails to capture the attention of their global audience.
So what does localization versus translation mean for your business as it seeks to go global?
Translation is taking words from one language and conveying the same idea in another target language. Whether the translation is done word-for-word by a machine translation (MT) service or completed idiomatically by a skilled linguist, the simplest process fails to take into account all the other elements of living in a digital world. Document translation only involves the words on a page. It cannot encompass the many dimensions of software, applications, or web content.
The Benefits of Choosing Localization Over Translation
Basic translation approaches may work for small businesses looking to expand very slowly and in very limited markets. But for growing companies that maintain extensive content operations in multiple languages, localization is the only way forward.
Localization goes further, deeper and more comprehensively than just translation. This strategy allows you to:
Target locations, not languages
Spanish is spoken all over the world. Translating an app’s user interface into Spanish may make the text readable for users who speak the language, but the app will still be perceived differently by users in Buenos Aires, Havana, and Madrid. This is because the translation only translates the words on the screen. It doesn’t address the different sociolinguistic expectations of global users.
Localization allows you to go deeper by specifying which locale you’re targeting in relation to the language you’re translating. Localized content transforms the user experience in ways that make it more linguistically, culturally, and functionally relevant. Content layout, currencies, images, and languages can change—all with the goal of making your content feel like it was created from scratch in the target language, specifically for people in the target area.
Maintain Digital Functionality
When translating website or app content literally, you’re bound to run into difficulties. English text translated into German can increase in character length by up to 50-100%, which could seriously impact the clean design and readability of your fixed-length homepage. Or, if you’re entering an Arabic-speaking market, you’d need to invest in additional internationalization efforts to make your interface switch smoothly to a right-to-left reading style.
Localization is much more sensitive to the digital functionality of the translated content than simple translation. Through complex file analysis and a comprehensive approach to the digital elements of translation, you maintain the full functionality of your assets, no matter in which country they are displayed.