In episode 170 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Christine Cuellar dive into the world of content localization strategy. Learn about the obstacles organizations face from initial planning to implementation, when and how organizations should consider localization, localization trends, and more.

Localization is generally a key business driver. Are you positioning your products, services, what have you for one market, one language, and that’s all? Are you looking at diversifying that? Are you looking to expand into foreign markets? Are you looking to hit multilingual people in the same market? All of those factors. Ideally as a company, you’re looking at this from the beginning as part of your business strategy.

— Bill Swallow

Related links:

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• Strategien für KI in der technischen Dokumentation, (original German version)
  
• Strategies for AI in technical documentation (English version with synthetic audio)
  
• Lost in translation? Create scalable content localization processes
  
• What does it all mean?! Foundations of an enterprise content strategy
  
• AI in the content lifecycle (white paper)
  

LinkedIn:

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• Bill Swallow
  
• Christine Cuellar
  

Transcript:

Christine Cuellar: Welcome to the Content Strategy Experts Podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we are talking about content localization strategy. So maybe you’re starting to think about introducing a localization strategy. Maybe you’re hitting some pain points in your localization processes, all that good stuff we’re going to be talking about today. Hi, I’m Christine Cuellar.

Bill Swallow: And I’m Bill Swallow.

CC: Bill, thanks for being here today to talk about localization. Bill is our go-to localization expert, and localization has been coming up a lot. So I noticed for me, on the marketing side of things, there’s been a lot of, you know, SEO stuff coming up for localization. People seem to be searching about it, asking questions at a more beginning to thinking about the whole localization process level. So that’s what we wanted to talk about today. Give you the chance to have some upfront knowledge about what you could be getting into with introducing localization in your content strategy. And yeah, let’s talk about it with an expert. So thanks, Bill.

BS: Thank you.

CC: First things first, the most basic question, what is content localization strategy? So what do we mean by that?

BS: Okay, so I can kind of frame this in, I guess the same point of view as a content strategy, but basically you’re taking a look at your entire localization process from start to finish. Plus you’re looking at what are the systems that are involved? How are authors prepping the content for localization? Are they writing well upfront? What does the publishing preparation look like? How are you choosing your translators? Are you going to pure machine translation? Are you using live people to do the translation? Are you using people who are content experts? Are you using people who are market experts? So there are a lot of different factors there that all kind of get balled up into this grander strategy of how are you going to approach getting your content authored and translated appropriately in other regional markets.

CC: Yeah, okay. That makes sense. And taking a step back even further, can you walk me through the difference between localization and localization strategy?

BS: Sure. Localization itself is kind of more of an action, and whereas strategy is more planning around that action, I think that’s the best way to put it. So localization involves a bunch of different things. It involves the act of internationalization. So that’s prepping your content, your code, your product, whatever it is to be delivered for multiple regional and language markets. And then you have the translation component of localization, which is actually getting things written, spoken however, in other languages. And the strategy piece is more bridging both of those and adding additional components so that you have a solid plan for every step in that process.

CC: Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And where do we step in? We here at Scriptorium, where do we sit?

BS: Generally we at Scriptorium, we sit on the source content authoring side. And we look at the overall content strategy, and we do look at a localization strategy as a component of that. They’re not separate. They’re very intertwined and we need to take a look at really both of them. So a lot of our clients do come to us because they have localization requirements.

And we have to account for those in the content strategy that we build for them. So we’re looking not only at the source content authoring process and what needs to happen in that to get the job done, but we also have to look at where are they going with their content, how are they going to localize it, what do they need to localize, what processes do they have in place now? Are they working? Are they not looking at systems? Are they adequate? Are they not? And look at the markets. Are they already reaching those markets? Do they need to do something different? How do we need to position the content as it moves through that funnel of production so that when it comes out the other side, it is ready for those markets. So they’re kind of intertwined there.

CC: Okay. Yeah. So when are organizations typically thinking about a content localization strategy?

BS: Well, localization generally it’s a key business driver. Are you positioning your content for one market, one language, and that’s all? Or are you positioning… I shouldn’t say just product because product services, what have you. Are you looking at diversifying that? Are you looking to expand into foreign markets? Are you looking to hit multilingual people in the same market? All of those factors. So ideally as a company, you’re looking at this from the beginning as part of your business strategy. And what are you doing to… What are you producing? Who are you producing it for? How do they need to consume it? So as soon as you catch a whiff of those multilingual requirements, bells should be going off saying, “Hey, we need a plan for this.” More commonly, an organization might be producing for one market or producing for several markets. They’re kind of doing things ad hoc, producing content, then sending it out to a translator. They’re getting something back, they may be polishing it up or it’s a finished product and then they send it out. It’s a very time-consuming process. It’s a very costly process, and it’s very difficult to kind of juggle when things will be done. Because if you don’t have a set process around things and you don’t have an idea of how long things will take, what efficiencies you’re able to build up front and so forth, you’re throwing caution to the wind and just putting stuff out there and hoping that it comes back in time so that you can go to market with it. We’ve worked with clients who have said that generally it takes about nine months or so to get their localized product out the door and into the market after the English is done. And for a lot of those, we’ve brought that number into three months, one month, depending on exactly what they’re producing and how they need to produce it, so-

CC: Yeah, it’s a huge difference.

BS: Looking at that… Oh, huge difference. And looking at that time to market, that’s perhaps more valuable than the cost that you’re dumping into putting a localization strategy or a content strategy together because you’re able to sell quicker into those markets. You’re not waiting for the opportunity to start seeing revenue come back from the initiatives that you’re taking to get stuff out there.

CC: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like… So correct me if I’m wrong here, but in the global world that we live in, it feels like localizing products and getting them ready for new regions is a very… I think that would be something that executives think about from the get-go like, yes, of course we want our product ready for new regions and locations. But why is the… It sounds like maybe the content piece of that is not thought about or maybe left behind until it’s an absolute emergency. Would you say that that’s… First of all, is that accurate?

BS: Sadly, I’d say yes.

CC: Okay.

BS: Content is often an afterthought in general, whether we’re talking about producing stuff just in your native language for a native market. Localization is usually even more of an afterthought because it’s like, oh, well, we wrote it in English, we’ll just have someone translate it. And by then you’re waiting until that product is done and then sending it to somebody else who’s looking at it going, “I can’t make sense of this. It’s not written well. And I’m going to take my best guess at how to translate this.” It could take months to get that back.

CC: So maybe organizations see the value in having their products and services available in other markets, but they don’t necessarily think of all of the content localization pieces that are involved in getting that out the door.

BS: No, and it’s similar for pretty much anyone trying to get anything done that you want to do something. But for example, I really want to put a new patio in the back of my house. I know exactly… I even have an idea of exactly how that should go in. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the materials needed to do it. And I’d much rely on somebody else who knows what they’re doing to put it in the correct way so it’s not graded improperly, so that there aren’t uneven portions that people will trip over and so forth. So looking at it that way, the same thing with localization. People who are running a company or starting a company, they may have an idea that yes, they need to get from point A to point B to point C to point D. They don’t know those steps along that path, and they need some help figuring out, okay, it’s not that you just write your English content, you throw it over to somebody else and they send it back. It’s a more intricate process. You have some systems in place that we’ll manage that handoff that will allow people to gate the content and proof it and make sure it’s correct before it goes anywhere. And you may have some other efficiencies built in that allow you to automatically format things when the time comes to actually produce. So there are a lot of bits and pieces that people just generally don’t think about because it’s not in their wheelhouse.

CC: Yeah, they can’t know what they don’t know.

BS: Exactly.

CC: Okay. So it sounds like most organizations realize that this is a problem once they’re actually trying to get their product out the door and into a new market, into a new region. What are some obstacles to getting a content localization strategy set up? I’m sure that one issue is probably like, oh, you’re in emergency mode and we just need to get this product out the door. That might present a challenge in and of itself.

BS: Absolutely.

CC: Yeah. Are there other obstacles as well to getting a more future-focused strategy in place?

BS: Oh, that one is a good one. That is the first hurdle to get over.

CC: Is the emergency mode.

BS: So being able to recognize or realize that you’re in emergency mode and getting out of that mindset and saying, okay, it’s not just that this will be a forever problem of just waiting and hoping for good quality coming out in the end. Once you’re able to realize that you need to break that mindset and start looking forward, then we start hitting other obstacles. One of them is going to be funding because there will be systems involved, there will be personnel required, there will be processes that need to change and so forth. And that will certainly cost a lot upfront. You’re going to basically see that return on investment in a pretty quick amount of time. We’ve seen one company make their investment back within a year, but they were producing an insane amount of languages already, and they just needed to tidy up their process. And again, by bringing that window in from nine months to about a month and a half or so, to be able to get their localized stuff out, they were able to quickly realize that return on investment there. But another one is buy-in, because you have a lot of people who are busy doing their job and you’re suddenly telling them that they need to change how they do their job, and it might be abandoning the tools that they like to use. Writing in a different way, looking at publishing in a different way and interacting with people who they normally don’t interact with on a day-to-day basis. So your source author’s interacting with a localization manager internally who needs to send stuff out to translators or your writer’s interacting with translators to explain what they had written so that the translator has a definitive idea of what it is and how to translate it for the market that they’re translating for. And then of course, you have the obstacle of governance and change management comes along with that. You need to be able to make sure that any of the changes that you introduce, that people are following the new way of doing things and aren’t falling back to old bad habits or even old good habits at the time. And you need to make sure that you have these gating processes so that once something is written in English, you have a formal review on that to make sure it’s correct, to make sure it’s written appropriately. That goes out to translation. They have their own gating process of making sure they receive all the files, that they understand the content that they have, all the supporting information that they need to help them translate and localize this information for that market. Then of course, they do their own quality checks. It comes back, you make sure that there’s a final review on the company side to make sure the translation seems good. And then you’re able to publish and deliver. So it still sounds like a lot of gating factors, but once you kind of get things going and figuring out where you can expedite and make things a lot easier, you start to bring in that entire timeline.

CC: Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned buy-in, and so I could see how if people feel like their workload’s being increased by suddenly needing to talk to more people, coordinate between more departments or even just have more things on their radar, I could see how that could create a lot of, oh, I don’t know if I want to go in this direction. What are some ways… And that’s probably one of the… As you mentioned, that’s just one of a few buy-in challenges. What are some of the ways that you maybe win people over or show people how this can benefit their work life versus just make it harder?

BS: That’s a good question. I think that authors in general to understand where their content is going and who is consuming it. And even though it’s… We’re talking about corporate content, we’re talking about everything from website content to product manuals to troubleshooting tips and all that stuff and training materials. So it’s not really… Even though it belongs to the company, a lot of authors tend to have a kind of, I guess, personal pride built around what they write.

CC: Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

BS: So knowing who is consuming it down the road and the reason why you have these additional checkpoints and processes in place will kind of help, I think get a lot of them around the idea of, yeah, this is a good thing and I’m looking forward to helping any way I can. Because the last thing they want is to have something written completely correctly in English and have it go out to, I guess let’s say a market in Denmark. And the content was translated incorrectly because the translator maybe didn’t understand what something meant, and they gave it a different term, which had a different meaning in that market.

CC: Yeah. And I could also see from a safety standpoint, that could be really dangerous too, if you’re not properly translating instructions for high stakes content, medical devices, stuff like that. Just like you do in English, you want that content to be accurate and understandable. Because if it’s not accurate, of course it’s wrong and people could get hurt also if people don’t understand it, even if it’s totally accurate. But it’s just hard to understand. That presents, I’m sure, a lot of dangerous situations where your people could get hurt and your company is liable. So yeah, it makes sense that you would really want to have a good process in place.

BS: Oh, absolutely. And even more along those lines, the regulations that we have to adhere to here in the US are somewhat different to… Very different to anywhere else in the world. There are different directives in place depending on where you are regionally, things that have to be included that have to be said a very specific way. So I guess the easiest way to look at it is that there are more legal ramifications in the US. So you could get sued if something is wrong, whereas opposed to if you go over to the UK, it’s generally more that there’s a directive you have to follow and you simply cannot release in that market if your, for example, machinery content does not meet that specific directive’s requirements. So there’s a slightly different approach. So it might be… There’s still a legal ramification if things go wrong, but there’s also another set of requirements that need to be met before you even start worrying about the legal stuff.

CC: And are most organizations aware of those kind of requirements when they start trying to get into a new market?

BS: Some of them might be, but again, if you’re in one particular region, chances are that’s the region you’ve grown up with and that’s the region you understand. And there’s been very little attention paid to what are their requirements in other geographic regions, other countries and so forth. So I can’t say is it common, is it not common? But in general, you know what? And when you’re looking to move to a foreign market, there’s the foreign context. You’re going to have very little insight into what that foreign market demands by its very nature. As a company moves into a new language market, new geographic market, they’re going to learn things as they go, and they’re going to bring that knowledge back and refine how things are being done currently so that it also satisfies that new requirement. And it’s going to be an iterative process until they really get their arms around it. And again, going back to a localization strategy for your content, you can kind of start putting those feelers out. Because if one market has one set of requirements, it’s like, wait a minute, now we want to go to three. What are the requirements for the other two before we even start thinking in that direction? So you’re able to start building upon that strategy that you’re developing. I mean, we’re not experts in all the requirements for every single market on the face of the earth. I can say that outright, but we can help companies start to identify what they need to start looking into before they start running.

CC: So since we mentioned one of the reasons this topic came about was seeing some SEO search trends, people trying to get more information on localization. What other trends are you seeing in localization right now?

BS: I think the big one is still going to be machine translation. It’s continually evolving and it’s getting smarter, still not, I would say, better than a human. It’s certainly quicker, but we’re getting there. And a lot of that… We talk about AI a lot. And obligatory nod to AI for this podcast, but when we talk about AI, and I think I mentioned this on another podcast already, that when you look at machine translation, that was really like AI Alpha or AI Beta where it was already using an algorithm to start putting together translations for written text. So with AI in the mix now, we’re getting a lot more, I guess, interesting results, a lot more targeted results with machine translation. I still don’t think it’s a perfect solution, and we’ll certainly need some proofreading, but it’s come a long way. And I think that that trend is certainly not going to fall off the radar anytime soon. In fact, recently Sarah O’Keefe had a podcast with Sebastian Göttel about strategies for AI and technical documentation, and they actually recorded that podcast in German. And they used AI to translate and voice augment into English. So not only were things machine translated from German into English, but the German speaking was then synthetically reproduced in English, which just is really cool.

CC: Yeah, it’s super cool to listen to, and we’ll link those in the show notes as well. There’s two versions, the German version and the English version. But yeah, you’re right. It was a super cool process, but you had mentioned earlier there was a human piece to it that was still needed because when it was originally recorded in German, then we got the German transcript, translated that into English. And when we translated that, at first it was Google Translate just to get it all done, but then Sarah needed to go and check it because she speaks both English and German. And we needed that human element to make sure that the translation was correct. Because like you were saying, you can’t just necessarily put it into a machine and cool, yay, it’s done. We need the human to make sure that it was actually translated properly and the things make sense. And we did notice once Sebastian’s synthetic audio was created in English, a lot of the prompts or the questions just were different lengths. The English version sometimes was shorter or sometimes longer of just the exact same question. It’s just the languages are different. So it’s really cool. It was a really cool experiment and does open up some interesting possibilities, would you say, for localization. And we’ve never been able to have a German and English podcast before, so that’s kind of cool.

BS: Yeah, no, it was very cool. I sat in the back of the room just watching the entire process, but it was definitely something I was quite interested in seeing. Yeah, there was a lot of editing of the English translation because again, it was pure machine translation and it needed some help. But once that was done, the synthetic audio really came right together, and I was impressed in how that happened.

CC: Yeah. And it’s so interesting because it’s definitely… It sounds like Sebastian, but then also it sounds not quite human, but it’s really close. It’s really interesting. But it did-

BS: Very uncanny valley.

CC: Yeah, it was, and I only speak English. I don’t speak German, so it made that podcast accessible to me. I was able to listen to it, and it does present some interesting opportunities, but as always with AI, the human element was definitely needed. It was very important to make sure that the humans at the other end of the screen could eventually consume it.

BS: Oh, yeah.

CC: Awesome. Well, bill, thank you so much. We covered a lot of ground today, and we really appreciate it. This was really helpful, and yeah, thanks for being on the show.

BS: Yeah, thanks.

CC: And thank you for listening to the Content Strategy Experts podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. For more information, visit scriptorium.com or check the show notes for relevant links.

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