BeatBabel

Description

After attending events across countries, we realized that we belong to a very tight knit industry and people outside of our "clan" rarely know what it really is that we do. When we tell people in San Diego, we work in the field of localization we usually get a blank stare. Local what? Understandably so! If you search for localization in any newspaper you will have results about medical studies and genetics or moving companies. Not quite that either! In order to answer some of the questions we have heard over the years, we figured we would address those in this blog. Let us explain what this strange word "localization" means... Though most of you may have never used the word, localization is influencing our global village and economy every day and is essential to our international business success. What is Localization? According to several definitions found in dictionaries and sources like Wikipedia, localization refers to the process of adapting a product or a service to the technical, linguistic, and cultural requirements of a specific country and locale. The term localization is often associated with software and websites. The localization process includes translation, but that is only one of the steps involved in the process. Localization implies that you need to customize and optimize a product to put it into the proper linguistic and cultural context. If you look at the written text, many cultural aspects need to be taken into consideration. Localization includes adapting all those unique details. For example: - Writing system and language: character set, encoding, word order, punctuation, hyphenation… - Numbers: date, time, phone numbers, currency, measurements… - Culture: company names, address formats, trademarks, color associations, image appropriateness, cultural context as well as legal standards. Being aware of those aspects will help optimize your message to a specific market. Why would I need to localize my website, software or products? Sales: The answer is simple - to increase your market share and to add new customers who don't speak English. The US market is not doing so well right now, people are affected by a slower economy and are not purchasing as much. A localized presence (via your website or marketing material) allows you to cross language barriers and to attract a larger number of customers, no matter where they might be located. This is especially true for companies active in international markets. Have you noticed how some of the phone companies or bank ad signs in parts of San Diego are only in Spanish? And while the economy is sluggish here in the US, this may not apply to markets such as China and Latin America, especially Brazil... So, a product released only in English could miss out on huge segments of existing and emerging markets worldwide. If you are a mid- to large size company, you can invest thousands of dollars developing your product or service. Adding localization is normally only a fraction of the initial development costs but will allow your potential market to grow exponentially. Localization is a vehicle for growth in revenues, profit and market share.

Products & services

Similar companies nearby