A company that approaches a foreign market will most often seek to sell a product or disseminate information about its product in that market. However, in order to capture the attention of the foreign audience, it will need to use the words and expressions that are used locally, comprehend values and needs, and position its product respectively.
Naturally, this applies to fundamental linguistic aspects. For instance, there are major differences in British and American English in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and the same holds for the Portuguese varieties spoken in Portugal and Brazil, as well as many versions of Spanish in South America.
It is for this reason that localization is only performed by a native speaker living in a respective country. Translation is always edited and proofread, and editors might make changes to the text in order to ensure that the message is properly conveyed to the audience.
Website localization
In today’s world of economic globalization expanding your presence across borders is crucial. The best ways to achieve this is to develop a high quality website. It is good to have versions of your site in a few foreign languages, but can you be sure that a prospective foreign customer will be interested in your product? Are you certain the translation quality is sufficient to do the job?
Poor localization is a reason behind low sales.
Take a close look at your site: which currency is used to indicate your prices? Which units of measurement are used? Does your company make use of British grammar to attract American public? What is the sequence of the sections on your site; is graphic information effective?
We will give you the right answers, substantiate changes in the text and advise you on focus areas. You might not need to translate the entire site. Our specialists will provide a competent analysis of the site and make it look “at home” in the local market, whereas native speakers will see to it that texts are comprehensible and catchy.
Localization of apps
The market for mobile apps is probably the fastest-growing IT segment. Creating an app and offering it via a popular platform is never enough. Competent localization is what will drive sales abroad.
When we take up a localization job, we have our customers approve all nuances: from units of measurement and menu sections to the maximum number of characters in a single line and sequence of graphic elements (for countries where they read right to left). When it comes to sales, there can be no trifles. Completely harmless ads and slogans that we come across a thousand times in our everyday life will be considered unethical or offensive in other cultures.
When you set us a task, you will have access to our vast experience of working in foreign environments and markets of other countries. Obviously localization is only performed by native speakers — translators and editors — living in respective countries.
Game localization
We’d like to take this chance to boast a bit: game content localization is among our all time favorites. It looks a lot like literary translation, just as creative, out of the box and multidisciplinary. Due to its format, there are many nuances to this kind of translation — both linguistic and cultural.
Technically game localization has a number of quite specific requirements that are not described in sufficient detail by developers. Should a dot or comma be used as the decimal separator? How can a more voluminous Russian translation fit in boxes for a compact English-language statement? What about hieroglyphs, if a game is released in Oriental markets?
But the most challenging and exciting thing is to communicate the atmosphere of the game in order to capture the player’s attention. How should jokes be rendered in the local language? Humor is always built on local traditions and is always a challenge even for the best specialists.
Poor translation will ruin even the most charming and immersive fantasy game, and the game itself will become senseless and lose its inherent value.
We believe that there are ways to overcome the above difficulties. To this end, localization is performed in the target country of sales, where deliverables can be assessed by a focus group, if required, and texts are proofread by independent editors.
We’ll make the entire world fall in love with your games!
