Ask any person on the street these days what he or she thinks of "globalization", and you're almost certain to get an opinion. Ask about "localization", and you'll probably get a blank stare. But localization enables globalization. It's a bland name for a fascinating industry, only fifteen years old and growing rapidly.
Localization services providers help companies like Cisco Systems, United Airlines, and Macromedia, among many others, to sell their products and services in other linguistic or national markets. Information technology, or IT, companies are the largest group of users. Language translation is a key element of the localization process. Web sites, product promotion and training material, software, and legal agreements may all need translation. But localization also includes careful consideration of subject matter, graphics, and colors, to appeal to and avoid offending people in the target country market.
"Only one in four of the world's population speaks English to some level
of competence," notes Michael Anobile, Director of the Localization Industry
Standards Association, or LISA (www.lisa.org),
based in Geneva, Switzerland. "That leaves nearly five billion people
who are unreachable without translation, and a growing percentage of those
are accessing the Internet." These facts, along with the current growth
of the world economy, are spurring U.S. companies to think harder about how
to tailor their products for greater acceptance in individual countries. "Today
more than half the Web sites of U.S. IT companies are in English only,"
says Anobile, "leaving a lot of untapped opportunity."
Technology Advances
Continue to Reduce Localization Costs
Despite significant improvements in translation technology and standards in
recent years, most U.S. companies that localize their products don't do it
all themselves. For help they turn to the estimated 450 localization services
providers.
Translation is costly, since it is labor intensive and often requires establishing relationships with translators outside the U.S. who have specialized knowledge of an industry. During the past decade, companies like Sunnyvale, California-based Trados, London-based SDL International, and ATRIL in Barcelona, Spain have developed software that automates part of the translation process. Their products save translators from having to translate terms and phrases more than once. The context-sensitive algorithms and database technology enable storage of translated material in "translation memory" for subsequent reuse, cutting translation costs associated with a localization project by up to 50%. In 2003, these companies signed up more than 400 new customers worldwide and experienced considerable revenue growth.
Localization services providers tap technology from companies like Trados, but also employ their own tools and processes to speed localization. Plus, they know the minefields that can set back a project. For example, text in German consumes about 30% more space than English, so a company should take that into account in planning its Web site. The Chinese language, with an alphabet consisting of several thousand characters, requires two bytes to store each character, instead of the single byte required by English letters. Also, putting statements in positive form in the "source language" document, and avoiding ambiguous, "auxiliary" words like "would", "may", or "should", saves mistranslation and confusion. Planning for localization when the product is created can significantly reduce costs later.
How Localization Works
An in-depth look at one of Welocalize's recent localization projects offers
a better understanding of how localization works. Welocalize recently collaborated
with LEARNWRIGHT, creator of Web-based training courseware for pharmaceutical
and biotechnology companies, to localize an existing English-language on-line
training course on safe chemical manufacturing practices for use in Germany
and Switzerland. Since the course contained audio and animation segments in
addition to text, Welocalize needed to manipulate numerous and complex files
in order to perform the translation. "Taking apart the many multimedia
and database files in preparing for translation was like peeling an onion,"
said Jennifer Lui, Engineer at Welocalize, "and after translation it
was equally challenging to reassemble all these elements for seamless execution
of the software."
The images used in localized material are as important as the language. The depiction of people is a matter of great sensitivity; likewise, a particular animal may be the object of reverence in one country and of repulsion in another. Colors draw widely different reactions, too. In many countries, the color green is associated with environmental safety, but in a number of countries containing dense jungles, it's associated with disease. Localization usually involves maintaining a balance between brand consistency and customizing the material for cultural acceptance. "The LEARNWRIGHT course contained a quiz in the form of game show featuring Alex Trudeau from 'Jeopardy'", notes Yewell. "Few Germans would recognize Trudeau, so we substituted a generic name."
The Localization Decision
How do companies decide whether or not to localize a product for a particular
national or linguistic market? "Of course, there are strategic considerations,
but usually it comes down to a financial analysis comparing the incremental
revenue from localizing to the incremental costs," says Tim Hussey, Senior
Director of Globalization for San Francisco-based Macromedia, the leading
developer of Web publishing and rich internet application software.
Most U.S. companies charge "core product development" expenses against their U.S. sales. So in the financial analysis regarding localization they consider only the incremental expenses to localize. Of course, in some cases a product can still be marketed to another country "as is", without localization.
Whether or not a company decides to localize, it must consider issues such as how it will distribute the product and provide customer support. "Deciding to market a product in a different country involves long-term commitment," says Ulrich Henes, Director of the Localization Institute, a localization training organization in Madison, Wisconsin. "If you go into a market and then pull out, you'll damage your brand."
At present, the majority of U.S. companies that have localized products have done so only for the largest linguistic markets, typically French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Many are beginning to localize for China. Large companies like IBM and Microsoft have localized their products for many smaller linguistic markets. In addition to the primary languages, Macromedia, a medium size company, translates some of its packages into Korean, and is continually evaluating whether to localize for new linguistic markets. To sample one of Macromedia's "localized" Web sites, click on "International" in the upper right area of Macromedia's home page at www.macromedia.com.
"Overall, payback from our localization efforts has been very good," observes Hussey. "However, deciding whether to localize for a new target country or whether we've over-invested in a past localization effort is not always straightforward. There are numerous factors affecting a product's success in a market, and isolating the impact of localization requires some judgment. Plus, measuring the cost of localization usually means separating out the time spent by internal staff who have other functions as well. It's a lot easier to measure those costs outsourced to services providers."
According to a 2001 survey performed for LISA by Geomarkets.com, the cost of a localization project can vary from $100,000 to over $1 million. This same survey says the average company's localization activities generate incremental expenses ranging from one to five per cent of its product and Web development budget. A 2002 survey by SimulTrans L.L.C., a localization services provider in Menlo Park, California, indicated that average localization spending amounted to 19.5% of localization revenue. LISA's research indicates that on average a dollar spent on localization produces ten dollars accumulated revenue over multiple years, and that this return is increasing thanks to the growing sophistication of localization tools and techniques.
To get a current, industry-wide perspective on the financial return from localization, the Localization Institute's Henes plans to poll about 30 IT companies engaging in significant localization. Companies participating in this "Localization Metrics Initiative" will report their investment in localization and the revenue produced by that investment, as well as the minimum return they expect when investing in localization for a new linguistic market, among other data.
As part of this Localization Metrics Initiative, a core group of companies, including Macromedia, Palm, Sun, PTC, and Symantec, collaborated with Henes to develop a set of metrics that they would commonly use to report revenue and costs. The data gathering will be completed this summer. "Having the results will be very helpful," says Hussey, project leader of the Initiative. "When we're on the fence about localizing for a particular market, we'll be able to look at the experience of peer companies that have already done it."
Thanks to Open Standards,
Return on Investment (ROI) and Quality Are Improving
"It's important for companies to see payback on their localization investments,
and LISA has been working with localization vendors to ensure that the quality
of translation improves at the same time," says Anobile. Defining metrics
designed to improve that quality and enable interoperability of localization
technology systems has been the cornerstone of LISA's work.
LISA is best known for two open source standards, Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) and TermBase eXchange (TBX), designed to improve quality and ROI in creating and maintaining multilingual documentation. Based on the widely used Extensible Markup Language (XML) for the Internet, these standards were developed and are maintained by a committee of LISA members including IBM, PeopleSoft, SAP, Sun Microsystems, GlobalSight, Welocalize, RWS Group, SDL International, and TRADOS.
LISA publishes the popular QA Model, an automated, standardized quality assurance model for software localization, developed in collaboration with IBM, Microsoft, Rank Xerox, and a group of translation services providers. "We also promote the so-called J2450 Language Translation Quality Metric that's now used worldwide in the auto industry for more consistent translation," notes Anobile.
In a new initiative, LISA is actively involved in defining and assessing translation quality metrics for the American Society for Testing and Materials, which touches dozens of industries-metals, petroleum, construction, and the environment, to name a few. Anobile confirms that there is much left to be done. "With the pace of both technology development and globalization accelerating, we've got our work cut out for us for the foreseeable future."
Leslie Downey is a consultant based in the Washington, DC area who assists information technology organizations in expanding their global business. E-mail: LeslieDowney@starpower.net
© Leslie K. Downey