Please translate this into Yugoslavian
On yesterday’s blog, I talked about GILT and international go-to-market strategies. To make things more complicated, the term “localization” is not only used to describe a market entry method but is also used more generically as a synonym for translation. This is especially true for software products where changing the product for a new market (localization) is practically the same thing as translating the software.
In this blog, I will talk about one of the challenges when localizing/translating a product for a new market: the growing number of recognized languages and dialects.
All documentation including marketing materials, sales brochures, user guides and repair information must be translated into the local language before a product can be brought into a new market. Globalization, a booming world economy and political events have led to rapid growth of the localization industry and the number of companies which offer this service. In China alone, there are now 3000 registered translation companies.
Customers expect product information in their native language, sometimes even in their local dialect. For a number of years now, product information in the US has been available in both English and Spanish. Recently, localization vendors have even started to differentiate between different Spanish dialects within the US. Marketeers have noted that a product cannot be placed properly in the Californian market when a Spanish dialect from the East Coast is used. Requests to localization vendors can sometimes be quite specific. One company required a translation which would target “Spanish-speakers in the Detroit metro area”.
Some translation requests, on the other hand, may be a bit too vague for today’s political landscape. At least one company has been known to request a translation into “Yugoslavian”. During Cold War times, Yugoslavia had 3 official languages - Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian. In the meantime, 6 countries have replaced ex-Yugoslavia and localization experts now differentiate between the following languages : Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin, plus a special version for Montenegro), Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, Bosniak/Bosnian.
(FYI: Matt Rosenberg at About.com:Geography lists 32 new countries created since 1990. )
The trend for more localization languages is going hand in hand with the trend for more personalized and individual products. As competition increases and more product choices are available, consumers look for products which meet their personal needs and are available in their dialect.
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