Where would you draw the line between translation and localization?


Kieran McBrien: Translation is a task based on the pure language level, while localization is a process that also has to take legislation and cultural factors into consideration. For example, pictures or videos in training or media products originating in the US will often reflect the very diverse ethnic mix of that country, which may not be appropriate for other countries in which that content may also be intended for use. Another illustration is that Germany has a high-level data security legislation that is much stricter than in the US. Yet another is that a female narrator in an audio or video production might not be accepted in some countries. So localization goes far beyond translation.

Can you give some examples?

Kieran McBrien: An eLearning course on Microsoft Office is quite straightforward. We have to take a different approach, though, when localizing trainings on sexual harassment in the office because there are different laws and norms in different countries. The medical industry is very special too - when they introduce new drugs, we have to respect national health systems and laws. The more complex the content, the more subject matter experts we need.

Who else has to join the team?


Kieran McBrien: First of all, Senior Project Managers and Senior Technical Analysts examine the product, decide what the target product should look like, and design the process. They are the most important people in the group. In a second step, translators, graphic artists, and audio and video staff create and adapt the different elements, and at the end, engineers compose the parts and rebuild the product.

Do they also respect different didactic and pedagogical issues?


Kieran McBrien: That would make sense, but nobody is prepared to pay for it. Therefore companies try to create eLearning with generally accepted standards and learning practices and use the products as templates. Due to new products and technologies, content changes more rapidly so that it becomes easier and cheaper to use authoring tools for new trainings. High-end localization is getting rarer, but the volumes will increase significantly.

For budget reasons many companies just translate their original material into English for a worldwide use. Is that a good strategy?


Kieran McBrien: If companies only transfer into English, they waste a lot of money because non-native speakers simply will not read it. People tend to overestimate their skills in a foreign language; others don't want to learn at all - you should thus avoid any extra barrier. When addressing some people at the highest level of company management, it could work, but if you do training for the basic employee on topics like production safety or compliance, the number of people who speak English is very low. Of course, it all depends on the size of the target group: If you have three employees in Dagestan, it would be too expensive to convert the content, but if you have several hundred in Spain, you should localize the content.

How do you test whether your software works?


Kieran McBrien: Technical quality management is part of our process. For example, we test whether or not different platforms and browsers can handle oriental characters and fonts. Then we make sure that the new text fits into the text boxes and buttons.


But how do you test whether your software really -œworks- in target cultures?


Kieran McBrien: Ideally the customers and their target groups are involved in the quality process right from the start in order to give us early feedback. There is a trend toward more centralization. If headquarters lose control, different countries will build up their own corporate identity.

But centralization can fail too - do managers learn from the mistakes in badly adapted advertising campaigns?


Kieran McBrien: In the last four or five years, many people have had the experience of products and services being ignored or rejected by local markets. Now there is a growing awareness of the need for localized content.


Does that show on Websites too?


Kieran McBrien: That depends on the cost and on the type of content. Product pages look the same and can easily be adapted. Dell offers websites for more than eighty countries, and Google is online in more than a hundred languages. We see an increasing trend to create websites for small markets like Estonia, Slovenia or Vietnam. But it is important to keep the content simple, without big pictures or animations because there are countries that only have little bandwidth.


Do products of localized websites sell better?


Kieran McBrien: Not necessarily. Companies have to show that they take the local market seriously, but that cannot be done by culturally friendly graphics alone. The customers do not only want to get the information in their own language; they also want to get the products and support in their own country and pay in their own currency.

Where do you see the translation and localization market in five years?


Kieran McBrien: We will see a stronger consolidation in the industry and have smaller projects and markets to deal with. The biggest barrier is the lack of good translators. This will become a bottleneck, as there will be an increasing volume of content to localize, driven by new product releases and shorter technology cycles. But as new content is more simply built, it can be adapted more quickly. As a result, topics like content management, workflow, and cost-effectiveness will become more important for our clients.