With the advance of technology, people and businesses are more connected than ever. Someone on one side of the world can contact someone on the other side of the planet in mere seconds. However, there are still barriers to communication – specifically the language barriers that many businesses and consumers face. Yet, language isn’t just broken down in broad categories – localization is crucial.
What Is Localization and the Need for High-Quality Localization
There are approximately 6,500 languages spoken around the world. However, even a single language is often broken up into regional localizations. In other words, the words that a language uses in one country or region might differ from the vocabulary in another. For example, in English, words like “soda” and “pop” are used in different regions as well as examples such as “tennis shoes,” “sneakers,” and “gym shoes.”
While this sort of localization of a language is often easily translated across regions, not focusing on the specific localization of a language often looks poorly done. If you were trying to reach out to the northern region of a country using southern dialect and vocabulary, your company would likely see lower success rates and less engagement than with a carefully localized translation.
Localization services like the ones that Offshore Ally offers are made to help your company translate items like documents, brochures, product information, and more into another language with specific regard to local dialects.
This can also include software localization that translates digital media into a form usable in another language. This includes steps such as extracting the original code used in the software, translated as needed and adopted back into the software in a way that makes it usable for different language speakers.
Technical localization takes in more than just the words that show up in a website or program. It also considers UI languages, fonts, and measurement units. This ensures that even once the program is translated in a different language, it not only reads well but is attractive too. For instance, if the vocabulary of another language uses longer words than English, Offshore Ally will make sure that the software still offers an attractive appearance that’s easy to interact with.
Need for Localization Services
Localization services go a step beyond simple translation and, because of this, they are absolutely crucial to users. There are plenty of reasons that working with a localization service like Offshore Ally is in your best interest.
For one, marketing is all about communication. When a business is marketing a product or service, they’re trying to reach customers on a personal level and convey what their product or service is and why the consumer should purchase it. If this isn’t presented in a way that customers are familiar with or feel a personal connection to, this isn’t going to work. If a translation isn’t specialized in the region you’re trying to advertise to, consumers will notice and won’t show the same reaction as if the marketing effort was more regionalized.
Language localization will also help you avoid cultural faux pas. If you aren’t intimately familiar with the language you’re translating to and the weight words carry in different cultures, you’re more likely to accidentally slip up and potentially even offend the consumers you’re trying to reach. This is something that even large Fortune 500 companies have been guilty of and have caused not only harm but significant profit loss.
As for software localization, this ensures that the language translation you need reads well in a digital manner. When your software is translated, if you aren’t careful, this can cause issues in areas such as formatting and operational functionality. These are two factors that are largely responsible for how readable and interactive your content is. The better software is localized, the higher your conversion rates will be.
Another area where software and language localization overlaps is in search engine optimization or SEO. This refers, mainly, to the way that users interact with search engines and how businesses can use these interactions to naturally lead consumers to their website and other online content. This heavily relies on the keywords and key phrases that users might search to find information related to a business and the products or services they offer. Localized language plays a huge role in this because the way people look things up in a search engine closely relates to the vocabulary they use in their day-to-day lives.
Benefits of Outsourcing Localization Services to Us
When you’re considering working with us for localization services, there are a number of benefits you’ll be able to take advantage of. These include the following:
- Expand Your Company’s International Influence – With the rise of practices such as e-commerce, there’s a better chance than ever for companies to practice business not only in their localities but abroad as well. With the translation services that Offshore Ally offers, your business will experience better reception abroad since its content will be easy to understand and interact with.
- Higher Traffic and Conversion Rates – SEO is a concept that depends heavily on user practice. This means that localization has a significant impact on the behavior of consumers and how SEO is best practices in these areas. By using localization services, your company will experience higher conversion rates and more online traffic.
- Avoiding Cultural Faux Pas – When a company is familiar with local culture and language, it’s easy to make a mistake. Unfortunately, these mistakes can cause offense or even a significant loss in profit. When you work with Offshore Ally, you can avoid these mistakes and focus on pushing your business forward, increasing sales and conversion rates, as well as broadening your consumer demographic.
Why Choose Us
If you’re looking for localization services for your company, here’s why you should work with us:
- High-Quality Localization – When you hire a localization service, you need to depend on the fact that those experts have the skills and the process to make sure the end result you need is exactly what you get. Our experts at Offshore Ally work carefully to ensure that you have a high-quality, localized translation that will help your business thrive on a global scale.
- Quick Turnaround Times – While localization is a detailed process, Offshore Ally also knows that the business world moves quickly. Your company doesn’t have time to wait on localized translation if it wants to keep up a pattern of constant forward movement. That’s why our experts work hard to make sure that you get the results you need quickly without long waiting periods to hold you back.
- Fluent Language Speakers – Offshore Ally knows that translation, especially localization, depends on more than just direct conversion. Our experts are native speakers or otherwise fluent in the language they specialize in. This means that our translators are intimately familiar with the language that they specialize in and are ready to offer you the most accurate localized translation possible.
If you want to expand your business into the global market and make sure that you account for regional languages and cultures, you’ll want to work with a localization service. The services that Offshore Ally offers will allow your company to reach its full potential abroad by approaching regional translation correctly.