When you are preparing to expand into a new foreign market, you’ll want to carefully take into account a number of key considerations for language localization. This involves adapting your communications and materials for a foreign language in a specific region. Language localization goes beyond just making sure that the language variant produced speaks authentically to your target audience. You’ll also want to be sure that your localized content agrees with the standards, customs, and practices common to the target region.
For example, let’s say you want to translate from a foreign language into English for the USA. If there are dates in your source document listed numerically, there’s a good chance they express May 8, 2022 as 08-05-2022. This is because the DD-MM-YYYY format is common to most of the world. However, if English for the USA is required, you’ll need the date expressed as 05-08-2022. Conversely, if you are translating into English for the United Kingdom, you’ll want to retain the DD-MM-YYYY format.
Let’s consider other regions. Should you wish to expand your market into Europe, you’ll want to prioritize German. It has more native speakers in the European Union than any other language. Also, Germany possesses the largest economy in Europe, which makes it an important trade partner. But which version of German would you need? Will you need German for Germany? Maybe German for Austria? Or German for Switzerland? Each has its own distinct characteristics.
TrueLanguage stresses the importance of both language localization and translation when entering a foreign market like Germany. Language localization takes translation to the next level by adapting the content to the local audience and using phrases and verbiage appropriate to the local culture and dialect.
Pagination.com supported the importance of localization in a recent report about the main differences between marketing language in the U.S. and marketing language in Germany:
“Germany, in contrast, has a formal culture. Addressing someone by their first name is only acceptable if you are talking to someone you know well, and casually chatting to someone on the street is relatively unheard of.”
The report is a thorough description of all the messaging differences. These include the approach to jargon, how to write websites and CTAs, and how to use video and images. TrueLanguage takes all of these considerations into account when localizing assets for businesses.
Read the report here.
