If you want to capture the attention of your global audience, localization is a must. Even if you operate in an industry where you’re pretty sure people know your language. That’s because customers are much more comfortable with brands that take the extra step and speak their native language. The same goes for apps – if an app’s interface is translated, the end-users are much more likely to be happy with the app and keep using it.
There are various reasons to localize your content. Some are about the brand trust you gain by removing the language barrier. Others are more complicated:
An insurance company shouldn’t offer English-only content in a Spanish-speaking market.
Car brands can have offerings in many regions using the same language, yet each dealership has different promotions and deals.
English content perfectly suitable for the UK region, where your headquarters are, may not be understandable or even appropriate in the Middle-East countries.
These are three basic variations of altering content to reach the target market. In most cases, you need to translate your content to the target language. But that’s not all. Every country or region has its own cultural, political, and religious context. You need to adapt your content to the context of your target audience.
Make the content resonate
To make your content resonate with your local audience, many aspects of the content need to be adjusted. Many apply even if you don’t translate, and it’s not only about text. Take New Zealand, for instance. Your US content can stay in English, but the geographical and social contexts of the two countries are different, and your content should reflect that.
Idioms and local humor
If you use idiomatic phrases and humor perfectly understandable in your home region, make sure the target audience can understand them too. If not, you need to localize the idioms and jokes to make them fit the target audience’s context.
Images
Companies usually use images to make their content more attractive. That makes them more important for localization than it might seem. If you use images featuring people, then all the more so.People better relate to the content that’s culturally closer to them. That’s why your landing page with images from the Scandinavian region will have better reception in Finland than in Mongolia. Similarly, illustrations from Cameroon will perform better around Cameroon than in the USA.Aside from the natural human inclination to a well-known environment, you may also encounter local political and religious regulations that your content, especially the visual kind, needs to adhere to.
Videos
Videos are great and people love them, but spoken word can be hard to understand for non-native speakers. Make sure to provide quality subtitles translated and localized for the target audience.You should also include subtitles for accessibility reasons. That’s because your audience may partly consist of hearing-impaired people who really appreciate subtitles.Besides subtitling your videos, all the principles, rules, and possible restrictions applicable to images are relevant to videos as well.
What's next?
Localization vs. translation – what's the difference?
Translation ensures people understand your content language-wise, while localization ensures the content evokes the intended idea and emotions.
