Creating an Authentic Global Experience: a Comprehensive Guide

For brands aiming to reach a multilingual, international audience, language services are indispensable. It extends far beyond the mere translation of website content; it encompasses every touchpoint, from digital assets and product information to digital marketing initiatives and customer support.

This comprehensive approach permeates every facet of operations, including adhering to regulatory requirements, filing patents, handling multimedia content, developing training materials, and executing international digital marketing strategies.

The central challenge lies in achieving unwavering brand accuracy and consistency across every juncture of a customer or user's journey.

One Brand, Countless Markets Global brands operating across multiple international markets engage in a multitude of activities, many of which necessitate content and documentation localization, tailored to each local market's cultural context. Some illustrative examples encompass:

• Website content and other digital assets

• Software and mobile applications

• Multimedia content

• Digital marketing campaigns

• E-learning and training materials

• Help desk resources, knowledge bases, and customer support

• Voice assistants and chatbots

• Regulatory compliance materials

• Patent filings, litigation, and legal documents

• Financial reports and documents

• Technical manuals and documentation

• Clinical trial, healthcare, and life sciences documentation

The harmonious integration of all these diverse components is imperative to forge a consistent, accurate brand experience across multiple languages.

Nurturing the Global Business Odyssey

The global business journey encompasses a spectrum of activities, including international patent filings, the development and internationalization of products suited for a global user base, localized market entry strategies, and the deployment of multilingual customer support, comprising chatbots, FAQs, and knowledge bases.

To facilitate global expansion, it is vital to view this journey holistically, transcending the confines of individual translation and cultural adaptation tasks.

Whether you opt to collaborate with a single language service provider (LSP) or engage multiple vendors, or even contemplate appointing an LSP as a strategic partner for your language initiatives, there are well-defined stages in the global business journey:

• Safeguarding Intellectual Property (IP): Entering international markets entails rigorous regulatory compliance for establishing local offices or launching products, necessitating patent filings and preparedness for potential litigation to protect your IP assets. An LSP must not only deliver precise translations of legal documents but also exhibit proficiency in complying with diverse jurisdictional requirements.

• Cultivating a Team of Linguistic Talent: Localization projects spanning numerous languages in diverse foreign markets demand a global workforce. The complexity of localization requirements escalates with the diversity of content types that require translation. Building an international talent pool of linguists, reviewers, and subject matter experts is indispensable. Effective talent management ensures consistent performance, high-quality output, and the ability to adapt and scale. Large LSPs oversee the complete talent workforce cycle, encompassing everything from sourcing and onboarding to quality assurance and talent retention.

• Communicating with Global Audiences – Translation, Localization, Transcreation, Interpreting: With a global localization team in place, you can initiate the translation of your digital content and other documents into your target languages. This may entail collaboration with various internal stakeholders, prioritizing language pairs, and preparing content for translation and localization. Additionally, establishing clear agreements with your LSP regarding the scope of work, workflows, targets, quality standards, and deadlines is essential to a successful language program.

In essence, achieving a truly localized global experience necessitates a holistic approach that transcends language translation to embrace the intricacies of diverse markets, regulatory landscapes, and cultural nuances, all while maintaining brand integrity and consistency.

Wins & Losses of AI for localization. Part 2

AI for Localization: The Drawbacks

While AI undoubtedly offers numerous advantages, it's essential to acknowledge its notable limitations, especially when tasked with responsibilities typically handled by humans. As technology continues to evolve, it's critical to be aware of these challenges when making decisions about your localization strategy.

Drawback #1: Potential for Mistranslation

AI is typically equipped with a strong foundational understanding of language, but it can struggle with nuanced subtleties that human translators excel at recognizing. Mistranslations can easily creep into content, resulting in a sense of discord for users. In some instances, these mistranslations can lead to customer misunderstandings about your products and services. They may even pose legal challenges, particularly when localizing legal content or when a mistranslation drastically alters the user's perception of your offerings.

Furthermore, AI-generated translations may not always make contextual sense, potentially causing you to miss out on the full benefits of localization. This issue can be challenging to identify without the expertise of a human localization specialist meticulously reviewing the content.

Drawback #2: Limited Cultural Understanding

AI can perform content localization through translations, but it may fall short of delivering the hyper-localized experience that human localization experts can provide. Specialists possess a deep understanding of local culture, including intricate language nuances, street-level familiarity, familiarity with popular signs and symbols, and even insights into how information should be presented or organized within apps or websites.

Localization extends far beyond mere translation; it encompasses a wealth of cultural insights. Localization experts can ensure there are no cultural misunderstandings and that content seamlessly transitions from one cultural context to another.

Drawback #3: Lack of Creativity

While AI can generate translations or content based on pre-existing data, it lacks the creativity and problem-solving abilities of humans. In most cases, AI relies on straightforward translation, often unable to offer creative solutions or adapt content creatively for different regions. Consequently, your content may be merely translated rather than genuinely localized for each target region, which is a crucial aspect of successful localization.

Creative content plays a pivotal role in effective localization efforts, and AI's limitations in this regard can be a significant drawback.

Drawback #4: Limited Adjustability

While AI content can be edited, making minor adjustments can sometimes lead to unintended consequences, such as content regeneration or repetition. This can necessitate human oversight to fine-tune content and ensure it aligns perfectly with your requirements. In many cases, AI-generated content may need revisions to meet your specific needs, a task that's best handled by human experts.

Bridging the Gap: Combining AI and Human Services

AI indeed offers speed and efficiency advantages, but it's crucial to recognize and address its potential limitations. A harmonious approach that combines AI and human expertise can help you achieve your localization goals effectively. Human translators and localization specialists can ensure content truly reflects your intentions, covers all your requirements, and maintains a high standard of quality.

Starting with AI-generated content can streamline the process, but the inclusion of human oversight can be invaluable in delivering a localization strategy that meets the expectations and needs of your diverse audience. As AI continues to evolve and gain prevalence, organizations must carefully consider what best suits their localization needs while upholding the quality standards their customers expect.

Wins & Losses of AI for localization. Part 1

AI continues to reshape our world, streamlining various processes and simplifying the handling of repetitive tasks. Localization, in particular, has witnessed significant changes with the introduction of AI. While AI brings numerous benefits to the table, it also presents certain challenges that must be considered.

It is crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of both the potential advantages and drawbacks associated with employing AI in localization efforts.

AI for Localization: The Advantages

AI brings forth a multitude of advantages when it comes to localization. When aiming to tailor your content for a global audience, generating multiple versions to suit diverse needs is often a requisite, and AI proves to be a powerful tool in achieving this.

Advantage #1: Speedy Localization

In situations demanding swift completion, AI emerges as the go-to option for localizing content. Unlike human translators or localization experts, AI possesses the ability to swiftly generate substantial volumes of content. This rapid content creation capability can be a game-changer when facing tight deadlines or introducing localized solutions to new audiences promptly.

Advantage #2: Ideal for Repetitive Content

When targeting a broad audience, the need for reviewing the same content repeatedly arises. This repetitive nature of localization can become tedious for human specialists, potentially leading to fatigue or decreased productivity. AI excels at handling such repetitive tasks efficiently, allowing for consistent quality and minimizing human resource fatigue. Moreover, AI is particularly suited for processing relatively straightforward content, such as product descriptions, which may require mass production and localization.

Advantage #3: 24/7 Availability

AI operates round the clock, making it accessible whenever the need arises, irrespective of other ongoing activities or user demands. If you have human team members providing crucial inputs, AI can continue generating the necessary content without interruption. This flexibility enables you to manage your localization tasks on your schedule, eliminating concerns about time zones and workers' availability. All you need to do is access the platform whenever it suits you.

Advantage #4: Cost-Effective Localization

Cost-effectiveness plays a pivotal role when localizing extensive content for a geographically diverse audience. Often, budget constraints come into play, especially when targeting a broad demographic. AI frequently offers a more cost-effective solution compared to engaging a specialized localization expert who might charge premium fees for their services. Employing a blended approach that combines AI with human intervention can further optimize costs while maintaining quality standards.

In summary, AI presents numerous advantages in the realm of localization, including speed, efficiency, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness. However, it's crucial to weigh these benefits against the potential drawbacks when deciding the best approach for your localization needs. A balanced approach that leverages AI's strengths while addressing its limitations can help organizations achieve their localization goals effectively and efficiently.

The Significance of Localization in Multilingual Content Marketing

Content marketing represents a strategic approach that supports the entire customer journey, from raising awareness to driving sales. However, only 1.5 billion individuals worldwide speak English either natively or as a second language, constituting roughly 19% of the global population. If you're a multinational brand or a local business planning to expand into new territories, embracing multilingual content marketing becomes paramount.

A staggering 65% of consumers express a preference for content in their own language. Consequently, sticking solely to English-based marketing content leaves substantial portions of your potential markets untapped. This underscores the need for a well-thought-out content localization strategy.

So, What Exactly Is Content Localization?

Content localization entails the adaptation of content to cater to the linguistic, cultural, and other specific requirements of a particular country or region. It extends beyond mere translation, encompassing aspects such as ensuring culturally relevant references, employing appropriate numerical formats, and adjusting images and graphics.

Localization is the linchpin of multilingual content marketing, involving the creation, translation, and dissemination of marketing content in multiple languages to engage a broader global audience. The primary objective is to communicate effectively with potential customers and cultivate brand awareness in diverse markets. Multilingual content marketing empowers your brand to extend its reach and connect with customers in regions where language preferences and cultural backgrounds may differ.

Which Marketing Content Warrants Localization?

Importantly, marketing content transcends websites alone. In fact, numerous types of marketing content can, and should, be localized to resonate with target audiences, including:

• Websites: Encompassing product descriptions, blog posts, landing pages, photos, graphics, and user interfaces.

• Social Media: Covering text, images, and user-generated content in social media posts.

• Email: Encompassing email marketing campaigns and transactional emails, such as automated welcome messages or order confirmations.

• Downloadable Materials: Including e-books, case studies, guides, checklists, and whitepapers.

• Interactive Content: Comprising quizzes, calculators, surveys, contests, and games.

• Videos: Encompassing product demonstrations, promotional videos, explainer and how-to videos, customer testimonials, and expert interviews.

• Podcasts and Webinars: Spanning marketing podcasts and webinars, complete with transcriptions and subtitles.

• Print Marketing: Covering brochures, posters, flyers, catalogs, direct mail, and billboards.

• Advertising Materials: Including TV and radio commercials and banner ads.

How Can a Multilingual Content Strategy Fuel Business Growth?

The benefits of content localization are plentiful. A localized content marketing approach can drive brand expansion in several significant ways:

• Reaching New Markets: Content localization helps surmount language barriers, facilitating market entry into diverse regions. By crafting content in local languages and adapting it to regional cultural norms, your brand can form more profound connections with customers who prefer content in their language.

• Enhancing Customer Experience: Localized marketing content engages customers in various markets more effectively by showcasing your company's understanding and respect for their culture, language, and preferences. The objective is to make them feel as if the content was crafted exclusively for them.

• Building Brand Credibility and Loyalty: When customers in new markets encounter content in their language, it bolsters credibility and trust by demonstrating your commitment to the local market and comprehension of its unique needs. This, in turn, fosters customer loyalty once you deliver on your brand promise.

• Enhancing Search Engine Visibility: Through website content translation and optimization for different languages and markets, you can bolster your search engine visibility. This results in higher rankings for target keywords and attracts more qualified traffic to your site.

• Elevating Conversion Rates: It's a fact that 4 out of 10 consumers would refrain from purchasing from websites in languages other than their own, with over three-quarters favoring products with information in their local language. Therefore, localized content contributes to increased conversions by delivering a more personalized customer experience and enhancing the relevance of marketing messages.

Content localization requires a significant investment in time, money, and talent. The process becomes even more complex for multilingual content marketing as you add languages. 

However, you don’t need to do everything in-house. Work with a reputable language service provider to help you with your localization projects. And work with a multilingual digital marketing agency for your performance marketing requirements. Loki Solutions localization team is dedicated to help you with content marketing localization in any adventure. 

The Power of AI in Localization: Bridging Cultures and Breaking Barriers

In today's interconnected world, localization has become an essential aspect of global business and communication. Whether it's a software application, a website, or marketing content, adapting content for different languages and cultures is crucial for reaching a diverse audience. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI), localization has become more efficient, accurate, and accessible than ever before.

Automating the Translation Process

One of the most significant contributions of AI to localization is the automation of the translation process. Traditional translation methods often involve human translators who painstakingly convert content from one language to another. While human translators are invaluable for their linguistic expertise and cultural understanding, they can be time-consuming and costly.

AI-powered translation tools, such as neural machine translation models, have revolutionized this process. These models, like OpenAI's GPT-3, have the ability to generate high-quality translations quickly and cost-effectively. They continuously improve their accuracy by learning from vast datasets of multilingual text, making them valuable assets for businesses and content creators looking to localize their content efficiently.

Customized Localization

AI goes beyond mere translation. It allows for a deeper level of customization in the localization process. AI algorithms can analyze user data, preferences, and behavior to tailor content to specific audiences. For example, e-commerce websites can use AI to recommend products based on a user's location and language, enhancing the overall user experience.

Furthermore, AI can identify cultural nuances, idioms, and colloquialisms, ensuring that the localized content not only reads correctly but also resonates with the local audience. This level of customization is essential for building trust and engagement in global markets.

Improved Quality Assurance

Quality assurance in localization is critical to maintain brand consistency and ensure accurate communication. AI can play a significant role in this aspect as well. Automated quality assurance tools can detect and correct linguistic errors, inconsistencies, and formatting issues in localized content. These tools speed up the proofreading process and minimize the risk of errors, enhancing the overall quality of localized content.

Real-time Communication

The advent of AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants has also transformed real-time communication in the context of localization. These chatbots can provide instant responses in multiple languages, assisting customers, and users regardless of their location. This not only improves customer support but also fosters a sense of inclusivity for a global audience.

Enhanced Efficiency and Cost Savings

By leveraging AI in localization processes, businesses can significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency. Traditional localization methods often require extensive project management, coordination, and manual labor. AI-driven solutions automate many of these tasks, allowing teams to focus on more strategic aspects of localization, such as cultural adaptation and content creation.

Conclusion

AI's impact on localization cannot be overstated. It has revolutionized the way businesses reach and engage with diverse global audiences. Through automated translation, customization, improved quality assurance, and real-time communication, AI is breaking down language barriers and bridging cultures. As AI technology continues to evolve, the localization process will only become more efficient, accurate, and accessible, enabling businesses to thrive in our increasingly connected world.

Google Released a Dataset to Address Gender Bias in MT

While making an effort to address the gender bias in its neural machine translation (NMT) technologies, Google has recently released a newly adjusted dataset that comes to be able to improve the rate at which Google Translate accurately translates gendered language.

“This is a challenge because traditional NMT methods translate sentences individually, but gendered information is not always explicitly stated in each individual sentence.” – is stated by the AI team.

Based on the latest experiences and tests run against Wikipedia entries on a person, rock bands, teams it appears to improve significantly the gender guess and access, though there is still lot’s of job to be done. “It’s worth mentioning that by releasing this dataset, we don’t aim to be prescriptive in determining what’s the optimal approach to address gender bias,” the team shares. “This contribution aims to foster progress on this challenge across the global research community.”

Game localization in China

The video game industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and one of the pillars of the global entertainment industry as per based on a report released in April 2021 by Newzoo. Though China is considered to generate for more than one quarter of the global game revenues, China game publishers are setting their sights on international markets, with attempts to ship their games overseas. With clear incremental cost spent on localization, publishers can increase their revenues from international sales of the localized products. The growth of the game industry and the elevation of video games as a form of global entertainment might be attributed to language transfer in bringing the products to global and new markets, so the significant role played by game localization.

One of the challenges that many localization teams face when handling products like games, which inherently contain a lot of cultural elements, is how much to foreignize and how much to domesticate or adapt the delivered products. Each decision taken in handling character names, place names, plot rewrites or transcreation can result in a product that is so foreign and new that it is difficult for non-Chinese gamers to pick up. So similar to other non-Chinese products that it loses the qualities that make it a unique Chinese game. While analyzing gathered players’ perceptions on the translation of video games, “foreignization strategies are generally preferred as games can be best enjoyed when the look and feel of the source text is maintained.” When Culturalization takes a step beyond localization, making a more fundamental examination of a game’s assumptions and choices, and then assesses the viability of those creative choices in both the global, multicultural marketplace as well as in specific locales.

The choice to domesticate or foreignize a product, and to what degrees, is not just a theoretical or independent decision. There are multiple reasons for choices made during the localization process, each of them impacting the decision to foreignize or domesticate in big or small ways. Most of these issues are deeply rooted in the way the Chinese game market functions, in the unique characteristics of the Chinese language, and the deep cultural and historical roots of Chinese culture itself. All of these issues affect decisions that localization teams make when they choose to either foreignize or domesticate a game.

The ultimate goal of game localization is to deliver equivalent player experience in the target market, which often requires a high degree of creativity and decision making in the translation process. When localization fails to do so, players will develop a sense of disconnectedness, where they are unable to associate the cultural element with anything in their own culture. It is important for the localization industry to acknowledge that game localization must be understood as involving both cultural convergence and cultural differentiation.

What is Content Localization?

Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that your well-crafted content for a North American audience in English can still be sent out in its current form to an audience anywhere in any part of the world. Have you ever had the experience of reading a foreign website that was simply translated? More often than not, it misses the benchmark in clarifying the core intent, and you begin to make assumptions about the company and its goal.

There is a wonderful story of the Coca-Cola brand name translated into Chinese as, “bite the wax tadpole.” This is problematic for many reasons, and we haven’t even gotten beyond the brand name. Think of the sheer number of words (not to mention the images and videos) in your content, anyone of them could be equally as problematic in one of your hoped-for foreign markets or for your distant customer segment.

Content Localization addresses this issue. It’s the process of adapting your content to a specific destination, ensuring that it has been translated and adapted in a culturally-sensitive way so that an audience on the other side of the world can feel right at home and like the content was designed for them and in their native language.

Content globalization and localization are the two sides of a single coin: while the content globalization side is the process of simplifying content to make it more generalizable to other languages and cultures; the content localization side is the process of taking that content and putting the local touch on it.

To build an effective global strategy, we must pay attention to both sides of that coin.

Gaming Industry

Gaming industry leaders are well aware that online distribution and globalization have transformed game translation into a vital factor in international sales.

Loki Solutions offers a comprehensive video game localization service including translation, content editing and reviewing, video and audio analysis. Our managers call on the expertise of translators, graphic designers, dubbing artists and quality assurance personnel, while the most advanced technology available is used to ensure linguistic and terminological uniformity. Translation memories, style guides and termbases are just a few examples of the tech we use.

Loki Solutions has completed several large projects in GameDev. With integration of technologies we use and experience we have – we ensure that at the end of the process, your product will look, sound and work terrifically, while retaining its original look and feel.

Advanced Technologies

One of our most useful tools in our work is the translation memory (TM). Translation memory lies at the heart of designated translation software: We all live in amazing times, with impressive advances in the field, and we’ve coming a long way from the days of word processors. The programs we use allow us to shorten work times on our documents and streamline the process, thereby reducing costs.

Translation memory is a database managed by a unique designated translation program (CAT – Computer Aided Translation) which stores the texts you have translated in the past and is comprised of units of text (paragraphs or sentences, not individual words) with each of these units consisting of the original text and the translated text.

When you want to translate new texts, our software will automatically retrieve your previous translations, thus preserving uniformity of terminology, and work times on the project will be significantly shortened. Translation programs tend to be particularly effective when working on the type of text featuring multiple repeating sentences (such as technical manuals, or user guides), but are undoubtedly effective in other cases, for instance when translating financial statements that had already been translated the previous year and were just updated and adapted to the current year.

In Loki Solutions we think of you first, and we want to provide the best results in the shortest time and at the lowest cost. The functionality of our instruments and its efficiency helps you keep the cost of localization under control. Translation tools using translation memory technology help us achieve all of this and let you enjoy peace of mind, knowing that your materials are in the finest hands in the market.