Mistakes in Localization Process could ruin your reputation as a Foreign Brand

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What is Localization?                                                        

Localization is the process of both translating and transcreating of a product or service to adapt a message to a specific culture. Brand localization is a part of their marketing scheme so that they could reach out to a wider range of audience in global market. Localization is important for a brand because it gives an opportunity to connect to its worldwide audience who are often divided by the barrier of languages and culture.

Why you should consider localization?

• Growth and Expansion
• Accessing into Global Market
• Increased Revenue
• Unlimited Sales
• Worldwide Reach

What are the common mistakes made by companies in the localization process?

Dolce & Gabbana

The well renowned luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana shared a series of ads in social media where a Chinese woman was trying to eat Italian food with chopsticks while a male voice was giving her directions. While this ad worked well with the Americans, it was considered to be so offensive to the Chinese consumer that they decided to boycott the brand altogether. So while localization you need to keep cultural differences in mind.

Electrolux

A Swedish vacuum company called Electrolux made a mistake when they established their products in American market they used the tagline “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”. While the tagline is grammatically correct it never really increased the sales of the product in the American market. Vernacular languages are harder to translate because it’s not often the same words that mean the same things, the context should be kept in check.

Ford

Ford, in an attempt to highlight the car’s excellent manufacturing, launched an ad in the European market that goes like, “Every car has a high quality body”. When they targeted Belgium they translated the slogan into, “Every car has a high quality corpse”. Mistakes like these are very common in localization and that is why ou should have an excellent team of linguistic and cultural experts.

HSBC Bank

In 2009 HSBC Bank spent a fortune to launch its 5 year old “Assume Nothing” campaign worldwide. In many countries it was translated into “Do Nothing” which was not something they tried to convey. They again spent 10 million USD to change the tagline into “The world’s private bank” which gave them less trouble to translate into other languages. So as you can see sometimes a wrong translation can cost you millions.

KFC

When KFC opened their first chain of restaurants in Beijing, China their famous slogan “Finger-lickin’ good” was translated into Eat your fingers off”. It took KFC quite some time to convince the Chinese consumers that it is not they message they intended to give. Well we know how much of a big name KFC is, so now it’s one of the top restaurants with more than 5000 of them. If you are starting small and your brand isn’t as big as KFC then this kind of mistake in translation will not be a good impression for our brand.

What can be done to avoid such problems?

Learning more and more about the market that you are targeting helps to a great extent. While expanding your business in a global market you need to learn more about the language they use, their culture, trends, gestures, and visuals. All these things must be kept in mind while localization.

Cross-referencing your translated text with a person who belongs to the foreign market you are targeting will be helpful. In case of mistakes they will be the first one to notice. This step at one demolishes the linguistic and cultural barrier that is between people.

Make a localization strategy before proceeding. This strategy includes learning about the targeted market and the language spoken there, their history, culture and social life, behaviour of the audience you are targeting and international SEO. Following these few steps will help you in an error free localization process.

If you are looking for localization services then you are at the right place. We, Transolution Linguistic Services, provide localization services for more than 400 pair of languages. We have an excellent team of native translators, professional linguists and cultural experts to work on our localization projects. We use native translators to avoid the mistakes we discussed above. Little knowledge about the market and audience that you are targeting can harm your reputation as a foreign brand and for the same reason we use native translators only for our localization services. Visit our website today to know more about us and also to get a free quote.