Who do you want to talk to?
Localization means adjusting your text for a specific audience—a specific language, culture, or geographic area, different social groups, a younger or older audience—and it pays huge dividends:
- It enhances the customer experience
- It boosts engagement
- It optimizes search engine results
- It provides a competitive edge
- It polishes your brand image
And with the explosion in data, it’s easier to do than ever before.
In English, but which one?
Truth be known, Canadian businesses have been “localizing” for decades. They translate their documents into French to “localize” them for Quebec. But localization doesn’t even have to involve translation. For instance, have you ever noticed that Microsoft Word offers 18 different options for spellchecking your English? That’s 18 different audiences.
Make people feel at home
If you want visitors to feel at home, you have to talk to them as if they are, in fact, at home. If you’re talking to Canadians, it has to feel like Canada. Provinces, not states. Canadian dollars, not US dollars. Parliament, not Congress. Colour, not color. Depending on how important these distinctions are, you could wind up like Microsoft and have 18 different English websites! Can’t decide? We can help at TRSB.
The same holds true for other languages. For French, you may need two versions, one for Europe and one for Canada. Spanish is used in so many countries, you may have trouble deciding on a single style. And some people say the Portuguese spoken in Brazil is like a separate language from that of Portugal.
Bring on that website!
So getting back to that website, let’s see if there’s anything that needs special attention:
- It has a video. Will you be doing French voiceover or subtitles? And what about your voice talent? What accent should they have?
- It has a slogan. In fact, it’s so important to your concept, you spent weeks finalizing it. Does it translate easily?
- One of your goals is growing your business in Vancouver. Have you thought about adding Chinese?
- It’s to sell guitars. How much does the translator have to know about music?
A good translator will take care of some of the localizing
If you say it’s raining cats and dogs, your translator will not tell French speakers that actual cats and dogs are falling from the sky. They’ll say “il pleut des cordes” (the rain is falling in ropes) or “il pleut à verse” (it’s pouring out). A professional translator can avoid a lot of problems for you.
