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Localization and Translation
Translation and localization of Web sites and other advertising and promotional materials is a key strategy in opening foreign markets, especially when you‘re selling products or services:
- to precisely-targeted market segments, and/or
- for which customer relationship management is important.
Your Web site is a 24-hour-a-day salesperson for the services you're offering. It must be able to explain your offerings to cross-border prospects, and convince them to buy from you instead of one of your many competitors. To be effective, translation and localization needs to be undertaken in close coordination with affiliates "on the ground" in the target location.
At this time, ACRO is localizing Web sites for the following markets: United States, Ireland, Canada and the United Kingdom (Great Britain).
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Localization and branding
- Products/services are branded for differentiation from competitors.
- Copy, images and colors create the brand.
- No one single choice of copy, images and colors is universally optimal; the cultural preferences of each target export market must be recognized and accommodated.
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Cultural considerations
- In many markets, local models and surroundings in images are viewed much more favorably than American or other non-native models and surroundings.
- Colors provoke differing reactions in different cultures.
- Navigation conventions differ from market to market e.g., should the "NEXT" arrow point to the right or to the left?
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Technical considerations
- Local phone calls are billed by the minute in many countries; fast downloads and offline browsing are the norm.
- Different countries have different technology-level distributions among Internet users; e.g., not everyone has 3GHz processors, 32-bit color and DSL.
- Localized copy is not always of the same length as the original version; this can affect page layout and require changes in font sizes.
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Legal considerations
- Tax laws differ among markets.
- Some countries have enacted privacy legislation more stringent than that in the US.
- Each country has its own laws with regard to marketing, advertising, credit, etc.
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Standards considerations
- 46% of orders placed with U.S. e-commerce sites go unfilled as a result of order-processing failures (payment methods, currency conversions, fulfillment problems, etc.)
- Date and time conventions vary.
- Currencies and payment methods vary from country to country.
- Currency exchange rates are ever-changing.
- Differing moral standards affect the acceptability of content and advertising.
- For all practical purposes, all the world but the USA uses the metric system to express weights, sizes, distances, etc.
Political considerations
- American companies, and Americans in general, are not always highly esteemed in export markets.
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| Linguistic considerations |
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- The common-usage and idiomatic differences between English as spoken in the UK and English as spoken in the USA are sufficient to have prompted the writing of a 477-page book (“British English A to Zed”, by Norman W. Schur) on the subject.
- Idioms and metaphors have to be rephrased to make sense in the target culture.
- You need to be prepared to be contacted by prospects and customers in non-USA markets.
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