Reaching a global audience is more important than ever. Localization enables you to speak in your audience’s languages in ways they will understand.
Taking a structured approach to localising your content ensures you adapt to new markets fully.
Our localization checklist is designed to guide you through each step of the process.
1. Market Analysis: Know your target audience
2. Translation: Translation that’s accurate and contextual
3. Cultural adaptation: Adapting your Content to various cultural contexts
4. Regulatory compliance: Make sure your content complies with local laws
5. Multimedia localization: Visual and audio elements
6. Testing and feedback: Testing localized content and gathering user feedback
1. Market Analysis: Know your target audience
Before you start localizing, you need to understand the new market. That means gathering data about your target audience. Focus on demographics, language preferences, cultural differences, consumer behaviour, competitor analysis.
Unlock content to reach global markets: The power of localization
Use tools like Google Analytics, survey platforms and social media analytics to get insights.
Metrics:
- Demographics: Age, gender, income level, education, and occupation of your target audience.
- Language Preferences: Primary and secondary languages spoken. Are there any dialects?
- Cultural Nuances: Local customs, traditions, holidays, and societal norms.
- Consumer Behaviour: Buying patterns, brand loyalty, and decision-making processes.
- Competitor Analysis: Local competitors, their market share, and customer feedback on their products/services.
Tools:
- Google Analytics: Use it to understand visitor demographics, language preferences, and geographical data.
- Survey Tools (e.g., SurveyMonkey, Typeform): Conduct surveys to gain insights into local consumer behaviour and preferences.
- Social Media Analytics: Platforms like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and LinkedIn analytics can provide data on local audience engagement and trends.
- Market Research Reports: Use industry reports from sources like Statista, Nielsen, Gartner and Euromonitor for market data.
2. Translation: Translation that’s accurate and contextual
Translation is more than just converting text from one language to another. It’s about keeping the original message meaning and tone. Hiring native translators, contextual translation and creating a glossary of key terms are key steps.
Tools like translation memory can help with consistency and speed.
Consider:
- Hire Native Translators: Translators should be native speakers familiar with local dialects and idioms.
- Contextual Translation: Don’t translate literally; focus on the same meaning and tone.
- Glossary of Terms: Create a glossary of key terms, product names, and brand-specific language to maintain consistency.
- Translation Memory Tools: Use tools like GAI (Guildhawk’s machine translation solution) to store and reuse previous translations for consistency and efficiency.
- Proofreading: Check content for errors and inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, punctuation and formatting.
- Cultural Sensitivity: Make sure translations are free of cultural bias or offensive language.
- Inclusive language: Ensure that translations are relatable to your target audience – choose inclusive vocabulary that will resonate and appeal to them.
3. Cultural adaptation: Adapting your Content to various cultural contexts
Cultural adaptation is about making your content relevant and engaging for a local audience. That means adjusting visual elements, tone, humour, idioms and local references.
Simple changes like converting measurement units and date formats can make a big difference to a user’s experience.
Tips:
- Visual Elements: Adapt images, colours and symbols to local cultural preferences. For example, avoid using colours that have negative connotations in certain cultures.
- Content Tone: Adjust the tone of your content (formal vs. informal) to match the cultural communication style.
- Humour and Idioms: Modify or replace humour and idiomatic expressions to make them relatable.
- Local References: Use local events, celebrities, places and companies that will be recognisable and will show the target location.
- Measurement Units and Currency: Convert units of measurement and currency for clarity.
- Time and Date Formats: Adjust date and time formats to local conventions to avoid ambiguous information (e.g., DD/MM/YYYY vs. MM/DD/YYYY).
4. Regulatory compliance: Make sure your content complies with local laws
Compliance with local laws is essential to avoid legal issues and build trust with your audience. That means adhering to privacy policies, product labelling, advertising standards and e-commerce regulations.
Your content must comply with local laws for localization to work.
Consider:
- Legal Disclaimers: Include local market specific disclaimers.
- Privacy Policies: Comply with local data protection laws (e.g. GDPR in Europe).
- Product Labelling: Follow local regulations for product labelling and packaging.
- Advertising Standards: Follow local advertising laws to avoid misleading or inappropriate claims.
- E-commerce Regulations: Make sure your website complies with local e-commerce laws including payment methods and return policies.
- Intellectual Property Rights: Check your content doesn’t infringe local trademarks, copyrights or patents.
5. Multimedia localization: Visual and audio elements
Multimedia content also needs to be localized to be relatable to your target audience. That means translating and dubbing audio content, re-creating graphics and adapting user interface elements.
Don’t overlook using native speakers for voiceovers and accessibility.
Consider:
- Dubbing and Subtitling: Translate and dub audio content or add subtitles to videos. Make sure lip-syncing and timing is accurate.
- Re-create Graphics: Modify graphics and images to local cultural context and avoid misinterpretation.
- Localize UI/UX: Adapt user interface and user experience elements to local usability standards and preferences.
- Voiceover: Use native speakers for voiceovers to ensure the right accent, dialect, and tone.
- Accessibility: Make sure multimedia content is accessible to local audiences, including people with disabilities, by adding captions and alternative text.
6. Testing and feedback: Testing localized content and gathering user feedback
And finally testing and gathering feedback is important to make sure your localized content resonates. Methods such as focus groups, A/B testing, beta testing, surveys and usability testing will give you valuable insights.
Analytics will help you measure the performance of your localized content and find areas to improve.
Methods:
- Focus Groups: Run focus groups with local users to gather qualitative feedback on the localized content.
- A/B Testing: Use A/B testing to compare the original and localized content.
- Beta Testing: Release the localized content to a small part of your target audience and collect feedback.
- Usability Testing: Conduct usability tests to identify any issues with navigation, comprehension, or user satisfaction.
- Surveys and Questionnaires: Distribute surveys to gather detailed feedback on user experience and content relevance.
- Analytics Monitoring: Track metrics such as bounce rates, session duration, and conversion rates to assess the performance of localized content.
Understanding and implementing localization strategies can be the key to unlocking new markets with a competitive advantage.
By following this detailed checklist, you can ensure a comprehensive and well-researched localization process.
This will not only enhance user experience by appealing to consumer preferences, but also generate revenue growth, engagement and drive business expansion.
If you need help with your localization strategy and don’t have the in-house expertise, we are here to help. Get in touch.
