Localization: Pros and Cons
Localization is the buzz word in the translation world. The Globalization and Localization Association describes it as “the process of adapting a product or content to a specific local or market.” It goes beyond translation of material and into really making content fit into the culture or subculture of the target market. It’s as specific as specific gets.
From a marketing point of view, localization works because it makes an audience feel understood. Understanding connects. If you get me, I’m way more likely to trust you, to buy your product and to choose you among many options. This is gold for marketing engagement rates and loyalty in sales.
I love localization because it is niche, detailed and takes culture into account. With a localized approach, “Hispanic” is not one market but many submarkets instead. Spanish is not just Spanish - it can be Colombian Spanish or Peruvian Castilian - and this is a difference that natives can hear immediately in accent as well as word choice.
I also love it because it is respectful. It’s the opposite of an experience I recently had at an antiques store in Beverly Hills. As my family walked in and began looking at and discussing fine china, the sales person approached us, smiled and said, “visiting from Mexico?”
I held back the urge to advice her not to assume all Hispanics in California are Mexican or any other single Hispanic nationality that she may be most familiar with unless she wants to turn people off and potentially lose sales.
Approaching a market with the respect and understanding as to how defined a subculture it is can be delightful for an audience. Take an interview I saw on Jimmy Kimmel a few weeks ago with some of the cast of Avengers: Infinity War. Dave Bautista recalled the first time he went to see Deadpool, Ryan Reynold’s ultra niche antihero movie. The movie spoke to him from a personal and creative point of view so much and so well that he saw it SIX TIMES.
That’s the kind of loyalty you get with that level of specialization.
If you want to deeply appeal to a very targeted market, localize. It’s the right approach and it’s the popular one. It’s not, however, the only one and occasionally not the best.
When CPMC worked on the Health Harmony Spanish-language adaptation for Care Innovations, the approach was to appeal to a broader audience. All words that were too particular to a single country as well as any country’s native colloquialisms were excluded in favor of words that were easily recognizable across all countries and would appeal to most Hispanics.
This made sense for our client, Care Innovations, because their product was science-based. Scientific language tends to be universal across countries that share the same language. Theirs was a healthcare product and our team was certified in medical translation. The product would have to be understood by clinicians (back-end users) as well as patients (front-end users) - it was complex and it was our task to simplify it and make it consistent and top quality across the board.
Our more generalized approach ended up saving the company money when they introduced the product to new markets (Spain, for example) and the clinicians there accepted and approved the guides and user interface used for previous markets (US Domestic Hispanic) without any need for localized changes.
Localization makes sense for most cases, especially when the message needs to appeal to popular (or some sub) culture and the product or content is B2C or niche B2B. It should be the first consideration and will work for the majority of projects, so it should definitely be explained and suggested to a client.
Generalization can also work, though, and should not be automatically dismissed, if the project is B2G, scientific in essence or doesn’t need to appeal emotionally to a target audience. This approach, if done right, may even save you time and money.
The choice will depend on the specifics of the project as well as budget and timeline available.