Localisation: Cut Cost, Not Corners

What is Localisation?

Localisation is referred to as the method of making a company’s product or content better adapted for the target audience. While the translation of your content is a vital part of the process, there are several other elements involved in ensuring that your new foreign venture does not result in a blunder. Some components companies often consider when they are launching in a new market are:

• Graphic Content
• Proper Formatting(i.e., date and time)
• Culture References
• Political Influences
• Applicable Addresses and Phone Numbers
• Color Selection

By paying attention to all the minute details not only helps your company carve a local niche but rather safeguard the respectability as well. A flawed example of localisation was seen with tech mogul Apple in its initial launch campaign in Europe. Apple is looking to engage the European consumer with its Apple II Euro Plus overlooked the basic component of a phone, the keyboard. The Euro Plus was sold with an unchanged American keyboard leaving the clients searching for special characters such as umlauts, accents, and other special punctuation. This led to the ultimate failure of the Euro Plus leaving Apple to finally shut production three years after the launch.

Making Every € Count

The ultimate goal of any manufacturer in today’s market is to have a global consumer outreach. However, the main goal for companies is to make sure that they don’t break the bank when budgeting for your company. Your expenses will primarily be propelled by two main factors: the content you want to be localised (be it be a website localization services, a manufactured good, or simply an ad campaign), and secondly the continued maintenance of the localised material.

The Exploring Stages

If you are just in the initial stages of determining a localisation blueprint there are a few steps that can be taken on your behalf into ensuring maximum savings: 

1. Formatting Matters:
   1. Most often companies use PDF formatting as they are easy for citations and remarks, but they are not a source file and the text is required to be extracted and then translated. By sending direct source files, such as the ones generated in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign, cannot only be convenient for your language translation services agency but significantly help cut costs.

• The same rule is applied to multimedia content. In today’s age, we are so used to the “screenshot” method that it’s become second nature to us. However, this results in editing difficulties for translators. Instead consider sending the pictures in .psd or .ai format which can be directly work in on Adobe Photoshop, the go-to software for most agencies 
• Human vs. Machine
  • Depending on your specific sector can determine how you want your content translated. The two methods at hand are:

• Human Translation: This traditional method involves the translation be solely done by a professional human translator. This method while preferred by many companies can drive the cost up substantially as the volume of work increases. 

• Post-Edited Machine Translation: More commonly known as PEMT is quickly gaining popularity on a global scale. The first step involves the machine translation of your material which is then passed on to a professional post editor who will polish up the machine output. PEMT is an excellent choice when one is on a constricted timeline and can result in making a big impact in terms of cost-efficiency.
•  Two-Way Door
  • This third method is, in fact, the most fruitful for both manufacturing and localisation agency. By using an API interface, such as Adobe Experience Manager allows you to directly tell the agency what content you want to be translated and for which target audience. In return, the agency can submit the formatted content on a “cloud” like portal they have linked to the client’s portal for their approval.
• All-In-One
  • To avoid confusing and overwhelming, your localisation agency tries gathering a group of assignments to send in monthly rather than individual ones. By streamlining the channeling process allows agencies to work at a swiffer pace and pass along the savings to you.

The Initial Budget

When it comes down to computing the start-up budget for your campaign take into consideration these two components: the number of source words and the cost per word. This may vary on the method of outsourcing. For some smaller companies, it may be nothing as their outsourcing involves crowds from their consumer base. Whereas the average translation can cost anywhere from €0.01 to €0.03 per word. More specialised companies can charge even more. The equation to establish the start-up cost may look something like this:

Start-Up Cost = Number of Source Words X Number of Languages X Cost Per Word

The Yearly Maintenance

Following the launch of your campaign, the next step to keep in mind is the annual up-keep of your advertised content. This, in fact, should be a key factor in helping you determine your localisation budget. The essence of this budget relies on how frequently you would want your content reviewed by your translation agency. The equation to keep in mind for this budget is as follows:

Yearly Maintenance = Number or Source Words X Number of Languages X Number of Revisions Per Year X Cost Per Word

Why Us?

 To be an effective localisation agency, the company should hold three main traits: a mission, a vision, and a highly trained team. At TW Languages we check all three boxes. For nearly four decades we have provided “business to business” language service for the corporate sector. 

We have a clear-cut mission of helping our clients with their every translation need, therefore, guiding them in their path for globalisation. We continue to envision in setting a global footprint to help countries in every corner of this planet. And most importantly what sets us apart from competitors, is our team of highly trained professionals. We offer an in-house team that specialises in over 250 languages and hold a Master’s degree in a linguistics field. Our translators, being all of the native origins, ensure that they can justly help you with all your localisation criteria as they have a comprehensive knowledge of all the cultural nuances. For any further inquiries and assistance contact us today, it would be our pleasure to guide you.