We all know the phrase “ Think global but act local.” But what exactly does it mean? When a business enters a new foreign market, it can be somewhat challenging to conceptualize how to spread its message and resonate with new consumers. And not only that, but how can the business develop successful long-lasting growth?
The answer is with language localization. A strong localization strategy can mean all the difference between businesses that stay small and those that expand their business operations on a global scale.
What is a Localization Strategy?
Language localization is the process of adapting content to a target language’s culture. Where translation is the literal word-for-word rendering of text from one language into another, localization is an additional step that keeps the cultural context of the region and locale in mind. A localization strategy allows for a business to communicate its message on a global scale with a tone of voice that feels natural and familiar to the reader.
Without localization, a brand’s content can feel dated, be confusing to read, and hard to understand. In order to make your content appealing to new audiences, here are some details to incorporate into your localization strategy.
1. Learn From Your Locale
Above anything else, the first step in your language localization strategy should be customer-focused research. After all, how can you create messaging for an audience if you don’t know much about them? Your goal here is to understand your new market, from the inside, out. Dig deep to research the needs and wants of your new audience, their shopping habits, and more about their consumer behaviors. During this time, you’ll want to find out the small, cultural nuances that are important to prospective consumers - things like imagery, color-use, and idioms are all small details that can really pack a big punch in your messaging.
2. The Best Language Localization Comes From Native Speakers
It’s important to know that not all language speakers are created equally! Native speakers that live in-country are your best resource for localization simply because they have the most authentic language background. They know all the ins and outs of the language and have the cultural understanding needed to properly localize content so it seems modern and fresh.
Because of this, Language Intelligence only employs professional linguists who live in-country and are native speakers of the target language.
3. Create With Design and Experience First
You want to enter a new market with a bang, so it pays to create all of your messaging with the design and customer experience in mind. It’s important to know that your content’s formatting will not always seamlessly adapt from one language to another. There are a lot of factors that can change how your materials look in other languages, such as:
The Finnish language tends to be shorter than English, and German is typically 30% longer than English.
Translating your content into a character-based language, such as Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin.
Languages such as Hebrew and Arabic read from left to right, rather than right to left.
All of these formatting details need to be taken into consideration when creating content for your new global market. That’s where our multilingual desktop publishing services can help - we have an entire team dedicated to ensuring your materials are formatted properly and localized efficiently to appeal to a new audience. We’ll ensure your audience can consume your content in a natural, easy way.
Here’s more about our multilingual dtp services.
4. Cater Your Content to Each Market
Different locales will need different marketing approaches, so our biggest piece of advice is not to treat each locale and region the same. This goes back to the core tenant of language localization- the idea of adapting content to fit a specific culture and market. This also means that you may need to have different marketing and messaging approaches for each locale you enter, so plan accordingly. Our linguists are happy to help with this!
Expand Your Business With Language Intelligence
It is important to view localization as a method of growing your business while expanding into new markets. The team at Language Intelligence has created a comprehensive end-to-end language localization process to bolster your business when entering new markets. We’d love to help with any of your translation and localization needs, so please get in touch with us today!