In episode 65 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow talk about the need for a localization strategy.
“There may be things you’re writing in your source content that you don’t want literally translated. In many cases, there are stark cultural differences between one location and another. Writing something at all may be inappropriate for another audience.”
—Bill Swallow

Related links:

* Localization strategy: Your key to global markets 
* Localization best practices (premium)

Twitter handles:

* @PattersonScript
* @billswallow

Transcript:
Elizabeth Patterson:     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 talk about the need for a localization strategy. Hi, I’m Elizabeth Patterson.
Bill Swallow:     And I’m Bill Swallow.
EP:     And today we are going to talk about the need for a localization strategy. So I’m going to start with a really general question here, Bill. Why might companies need a localization strategy?
BS:     Well, before we dive into why a company might need a localization strategy, I think it’s important to dispel one of the more common myths out there. Despite a growing need for multiple languages and content going out to multiple regions, translation is still seen as a bit of a commodity or a commoditized service. In that sense, you would write content, throw it over the wall, sending it to the translators, waiting, and then you get it back and you’re all good. If only it were that simple. You spent a lot of time and effort and money developing your source content and the last thing that you really want to do is just throw it over the wall and hope that someone’s going to understand what you are doing and why, translate it appropriately, and send it back to you in a format that’s usable.
BS:     Ideally, you want to have some kind of prep behind that, making sure that the translators know what your intent was with the content, whether it’s technical information, marketing and so forth, how they should be translating it, what their specific audience is, not just the language but who are the people who are going to be reading this in that language. Where are they located? Because that also has a high impact on the success rate of your translated content. But if you just throw it over the wall and expect a translator to understand all of these things, you’re really doing yourself a disservice and you’re not taking advantage of all the value that you’ve put into developing the content from the beginning.
EP:     Right. So I guess my question here is, say you are considering a localization strategy, but you’ve got some more time before that’s actually going to happen and you need something translated, so you need something done quickly. What are some options if you need something done quickly while you’re working on putting a localization strategy in place?
BS:     Probably the best option is to at least meet with your translator ahead of time, give them information that gives them the context that they need in order to understand the purpose of the content. If you don’t have a localization strategy in place yet, it may not necessarily be written in the best way for them to translate, but they should be able to understand with that context you provided how best to translate that content and send it back. Now,