mastering the globalization spectrum - episerver white paper

Mastering the Globalization Spectrum A Guide to Localizing Your Digital Marketing Reach in a Global Economy

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Understanding The Challenges ................................................................... 3

A. Introduction

B. The Online Landscape

C. Brand Globally. Execute Locally

D. No Magic Wands

E. The Globalization Spectrum

2. Translation Management Planning ........................................................... 4

A. Translation Memory

B. The Role of Technology: Content Management Systems

C. Review Process

D. Key Takeaways

3. Quick Tips ......................................................................................................................... 6

A. Multilingual Copy

B. Global Website Design

C. Global Search Engine Optimization

D. Customer Experience

4. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 8

A. If It‘s Worth Doing...

B. About the Authors

C. About EPiServer

D. About Steve Walker, COMSYS

5. Globalization Success Stories ...................................................................... 9

A. Fleura

B. Mazda

C. Le Creuset

3

EPiServer Inc. Phone: (630) 974 -3000

2 Mid America Plaza, Suite 600 Email: [email protected]

Chicago, IL 60181 www.EPiServer.com

A. Introduction

Your website is arguably the most cost-effective and flexible market-

ing tool available. Are you reaching the broadest possible audience

through this powerful channel?

A tightened American economy and the goals of reaching a

larger audience base have caused a rapid increase in the num-

ber of multilingual websites. Research from the Global Sense

Advisory organization indicates that nearly 46% of all websites

are available in multiple languages. In general, the number of

businesses offering multilingual online experiences will grow

12% per year.

The case for expanding your online presence internationally is

strong. At EPiServer, our e-commerce and content manage-

ment platform is built for simple, culturally appropriate, global

websites. In today‘s global economy, most organizations are

evaluating how to best support either a multilingual or multi-

regional web audience.

Successful delivery of multilingual content must include proper

organizational processes and technology. COMSYS

and EPiServer provide a complete solution for those organiza-

tions looking to serve a larger audience. Steve Walker, a

Senior Director for the Global Content Solutions practice of

COMSYS (a Manpower company) offers insight into the re-

quired business and technical foundation that is required for

effective Localization. EPiserver will share its customer-centric

philosophy on globalization, then review some of the common

misconceptions about globalizing your web presence.

Together, we will explain the parameters that should be con-

sidered before embarking on this process and explain how the

right back-end technology and translation strategy can dramati-

cally simplify your process and improve customer experience.

Finally, we highlight some of the top pain points we‘ve wit-

nessed brands encounter and that you should keep in mind.

--The EPiServer and COMSYS teams

Tailoring your online presence to an indigenous audience

should be an important part of your online growth strategy.

But don‘t assume the investment is limited to one-stop

translation services. A successful online presence in any

language requires the same ongoing management, optimization

and updated content as your existing website.

B. The Online Landscape

In today‘s global economy, the exponential growth rates of

doing business online means that international expansion is not

limited to a small number of major brands. Enterprises of all

sizes can—and should—expand their reach by localizing their

web content.

It‘s important is to appeal to your customers locally. In some

countries, consumers have been found to pay more for a

product packaged with information that is written in their own

language rather than transact on a site in a foreign language.

Effective communication and profitable global commerce

requires marketers to speak the same language as their

consumers.

C. Brand Globally. Execute Locally.

Localization is the process by which a company leverages its

existing online content (articles, images, layout, rich media and

website structure) and tailors it to suit the needs of a specific

audience.

If you are serious about going global, you‘ll dramatically

improve your ROI and expand your customer base by

localizing web content with translated copywriting, branding,

and products appropriate to your target audiences.

Localization, which encompasses more than just a direct

translation of the content on your site, enables you to make

content available in many different languages, communicate

with different brands, as well as allow local marketing

managers to upload their own information to regional

websites.

1 Understanding the Challenges

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Consistency in communication will play a large part of how

your brand is perceived and valued. Formal or informal,

quirky or plain speaking, you want your brand values to

resonate with consumers the same way all over the world.

Increasing internationalization means people expect to see

the same brands in different countries. Your marketing

challenge is to maintain branding consistencies throughout

the globe, while also delivering content that is compelling to

your target market.

D. No Magic Wands

The greatest misconception about globalizing your customer

experience is that it‘s a simple translation project.

Localization is a manpower-driven process.

The abundance of low-cost or no-cost online translation

services permeate the field. Beware, automated translation

services will cost you dearly in the long run. There is no

substitute for localized translation services. Nor is there a

substitute for the long hours of planning that will be

required for the translation process.

A well-thought-out Globalization strategy that aligns your

business objectives with potential processes and

technologies is an important starting point. A robust

Content Management System will be one of the critical

technology components of your globalization solution.

Ultimately, the combination of technological infrastructure

and commitment to organic communication will serve as

your Globalization environment.

E. The Globalization Spectrum

The concept of the Globalization Spectrum is simple; as your

company becomes a more sophisticated provider of

localized content and functionality, your organization will

require more out of your Globalization environment.

Your requirements, such as translation memory planning and

workflow, will dictate additional processes and technology

to support your path along the Globalization Spectrum.

Proper education in these processes and technologies will

reduce your implementation costs and provide important

visibility into how you manage the adoption of these changes

into your environment.

Companies often start out small and just translate a few key

pages, and over time require more advanced functionality

such as translation memory and a language-specific user

interface. Once these items are in place, organizations often

look to add regional sites with global e-commerce and SEO

functionality.

A. Translation Memory

Translation memory is a database that stores so-called

"segments", which can be sentences or sentence-like units

(headings, titles or elements in a list) that have been

previously translated.

A translation-memory system stores the words, phrases and

paragraphs that have already been translated and aid human

translators. Translation Memory is the backbone of a

multilingual website and demands a consistent

communication style and word choice.

2 Translation Management Planning

Identifying where you currently fit on the Globalization Spectrum and where you need to invest will help determine the globalization features that are relevant to your

business. In the next section, we give you the tips to get you started along the Globalization Spectrum.

5




Starting at the beginning you need to create discipline in au-

thoring. English, a widely rich language with roughly a quarter

of a million words can be very difficult to translate because

we can say the same thing in many different ways. With the

right technologies in place, you will develop an expansive

translation memory—which ultimately becomes part of your

company‘s Intellectual Property.

As you continue along the localization process, this memory

bank will grow. If you are inconsistent, right down to whether

you feature linking buttons on a page with different messages

such as ‗learn more‘, ‗read more‘ or ‗click here‘, you will be

heading for increased costs and message inconsistency. It‘s

true that authors prefer to be ‗creative‘ but being consistent

in how you present your content will reap dividends.

Consistency in word choice also offers the added benefit for

Search Engine Optimization, too.

Once you‘ve made the decision to go global you need to iden-

tify the quantity of your site‘s content you want translated and

the target languages you want to use. According to Forrester,

the top multinationals on average publish websites in nearly

30 languages. If you don‘t need full global reach, translation

into 10 languages promises a reach of about 85 percent of the

global online audience, with the top five languages enabling an

estimated reach of 68 percent.

B. The Role of Technology: CMS

(Content Management System)

The CMS you choose will make a big difference in the success

of your translation initiatives. The right CMS will enable you

to manage your many sites, different languages and even

localizes your brand from a single command center.

With a CMS you can enjoy the benefits of brand consistency,

with each page adhering to your company‘s style, look and

feel. Content can be managed either centrally or locally.

Managing access rights to website language versions can be

personalized.

You need to know who is doing what and where, so look for

a CMS that enables you to set access rights, where you will

only be able to edit in languages for which you have

permission.

A CMS should let you personalize content and direct your

target audiences to your localized site. By segmenting your

visitor profiles you can create local promotions and make

your content all the more relevant to your website visitors.

However, that’s only half the story…

Your CMS needs to be modular, meaning it should allow

you to snap on new modules as they‘re developed as well as

give you the opportunity to integrate other technologies

with it, importantly in this case a translation workflow to

manage multilingual websites.

Website administrators can specify which language variations

can be created by authors, fallback languages that are to be

displayed if the requested language variation does not exist

and replacement languages that can override a specific

language variation. Your CMS provides the overall structure

and organization to make this process more user-friendly

and consistent.

A translation workflow lets you assign translation

activities to a unique translator for each local variation. It‘s

where you ‗export‘ your content destined for translation to

an XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) format,

which enables translators to concentrate on the text to be

translated without having to worry about the source code.

This is then exported to the translation agency and, once

translated, is checked back into the system.

During the translation process the translator will activate

the translation memory (database of commonly translated

words, phrases and paragraphs) and will be offered up exact

matches where content does not need translating again.

Most translation agencies work on a price per word basis.

So if, for example, a document has been updated where

changes are only in paragraphs 3, 4 and 7, then the

translator will only see the words and phrases that have

changed and can ignore the 100 percent match in the rest of

the text, and the company will only be charged for the

translation updates.

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C. Review Process

This is often disregarded as an unnecessary evil but actually

there‘ll be significant challenges if you don‘t get this last piece

in the process sorted.

Reviewing is an important part of the localization process and

you‘ll need to allocate adequate resources to the review pro-

cess, to handle queries and the rest. It‘s essential to build in

enough time for this part of the process. This becomes very

clear, for example, if you are launching a product or promo-

tion simultaneously across all markets.

The reviewer‘s role is usually to give feedback on whether the

translation is accurate to the source and conveying the same

sense. You will have spent much time and resources crafting

your original source so this is not about asking the reviewer

for their personal opinion on it or for them to rewrite it in

their own preferred style. Rather, you are asking them to

work through it, alongside the original source, and to make

comments on the accuracy and appropriateness of the trans-

lation. The further each individual language diverges from the

original source, the more problems you can potentially be

creating for the future.

Feedback generally falls into three types:

Errors: Where something has been incorrectly translated

Appropriateness: Where the translation is inappropriate

for their specific audience or geography

Terminology: Where there are already precedents for

how you translate certain terminology within your

organization or the industry

D. Key Takeaways:

Once you’ve made the decision to go global you need to

identify the quantity of content you want translated and the

target languages you want to use.

Translation Memory is the backbone of a multilingual

website and demands a disciplined approach to content

authoring. Ultimately, it will serve as the skeleton to your

multilingual online presence.

CMS should let you personalize content and direct your

target audiences to your localized site. By segmenting your

visitor profiles you can create local promotions and make

your content all the more relevant to your website visitors.

A. Multilingual Copy

Same Language. Different Words: Many

languages are spoken across multiple continents

with important regional variations. Translating in

Spanish, for example, will require localization for

each country because words differ between nations.

If you‘re selling computers to a Spaniard, you refer

to them as ―ordenadores.‖ If your end-user is

Mexican or Puerto Rican, your product is now a

―computador.‖ Yet, the rest of Latin America

feminizes the term, referring to it as

―computadora.‖

Same language, different spellings: English has

variants on spelling especially depending on which

side of the Atlantic you are on. In general, American

spellings are acceptable in the UK. Although if you

are serious about your localization and decide to

have two separate sites for the two territories, then

using the Queen‘s English will be more readily

accepted by your UK audience.

Alliteration and Puns: Avoid these wherever

possible. In the UK, many newspaper headline writers

make plays on words but such meanings are very

unlikely to translate well, or even be acceptable in

other cultures. If it‘s ambiguous, don‘t use it.

Meanings and spellings: You need to consider that

translation does not always result in a one-to-one

correspondence between the source and target

languages. A single word in English may have multiple

translations in another language. ‗To know‘ in English

can be either ‗Connaître‘ or ‗Savoir‘ in French

depending on the context of what or who you know.

Similarly ‗supply‘ in English can have varying meanings

in Spanish depending on how it‘s used, whether as a

noun or as a verb. You need to ensure that content is

translated according to a particular context.

3 Quick Tips: Translation, Design,

SEO and Customer Experience

7




Acronyms and Abbreviations: Decide ahead of time

how you will treat acronyms, abbreviations, initialization,

brand names etc., which may or may not work cross-

culturally.

Write in short sentences: But not so short that they’re

just one word. ―Engage‖ might work in English but

Germans are unused to this style and translators find them

challenging.

Product names: Will they cause embarrassment or even

offend in another language?

References: Avoid making references or comparisons in

idioms, colloquialisms or metaphors. Don‘t describe

distance in terms of American football fields. Be sure to

convert all measurements into metric units.

B. Global Site Design

Copy length and design: Beware the length of content

may change depending on which language is being used. As

a rule of thumb, you can expect text to expand 20-30%

when translating. If possible, employ dynamically resizing

text boxes. This can have a marked impact on design. You

may need to decrease the font size in the target language.

Page Layout: If you divide your web template into three

columns with one column of bulleted words, then you may

see an overrun and a lot of hyphens appear when the

content is translated. For bi-directional languages such as

Arabic or Hebrew, page layouts (menus, text boxes,

captions etc.) need to be mirrored to accommodate

reading right to left.

Understand the role of Color: Colors have unique

meanings in each culture. The color red symbolizes

happiness in China, death in Egypt and anger in Japan. It‘s

worth noting green/blue backgrounds in conjunction with

black or white text have proven to be the most universally

liked combinations in heuristic analyses.

Optimize images for the local market: B2B

companies often forget that corporate culture is very

different across the globe. Stock images of working

professionals wearing conservative suits won‘t resonate

with a French audience as well as with an Indian audience.

This is because work environments are unique to each

culture. Also consider that images of women in the

workplace may offend gender sensibilities in more

traditional cultures.

C. Global Search Engine Optimization

Domain Extensions: Although most visitors will visit

your .com domain, it‘s important to register your

domain with the appropriate extension. For example,

use .fr in France and .es for Spain. In doing this, you

make sure that Google, or whichever search engine

dominates the local market, will present the right

version of the site to local visitors.

Regional Search Engines: It’s hard to imagine an

internet where Google does not dominate the search

engine landscape. But major markets beyond our

borders rely on homegrown search engines. For

example, Russia‘s Yandex search engine enjoys 60%

market share in its home market. Similarly, China‘s

Baidu engine completely dominates local search for the

most populous country on earth.

Social Media and QDF: A recent SEO feature, QDF

(Query Deserves Freshness) prioritizes the most

popular and recent content in its organic search results.

Social media offers an instant opportunity to improve

your SEO rankings for terms in real-time. In addition to

updating your RSS and Twitter feeds in your native

tongue, you should also be translating those updates in

every language you serve.

8




D. Customer Experience

Search: Be certain that your site can accommodate

multilingual search queries. Most important, be sure your

search results are also fully translated.

Customer Support: Are you staffed to meet the

needs of your multilingual consumer base? It‘s important

to have a plan in place for customer service professionals

to provide service to any customer who needs it. As

mentioned earlier, regional dialects can differ significantly

from country to country. An American Spanish speaker

will have trouble supporting the support needs of a Span-

iard even though they presumably speak the same lan-

guage.

A. If It‘s Worth Doing…

It‘s worth doing well. Globalizing your online presence is a long-

term investment that will yield an impressive ROI over time.

Eventually, we expect all brands to take advantage of this

strategy to boost sales and improve customer experience.

However, we strongly urge marketers to proceed thoughtfully

into this new realm. The right Content Management System and

skilled translation professionals are the most important tools

you can employ.

B. About the Authors

COMSYS and EPiServer have worked together on a number of

joint projects, delivering successful websites for their clients –

empowering them to strategically create, manage and deliver

information worldwide.

The combined power of EPiServer‘s CMS and COMSYS‘s know-

how in managing enterprise website projects reaps rewards for

our clients by delivering best in class solutions. Improving pro-

cess efficiencies by integrating translation systems with EPiServ-

er CMS enables you to be up and running quickly to reach new

markets, countries and continents – wherever your custom-

ers are.

C. About EPiServer

EPiServer is the world‘s fastest growing provider of Web

Content Management (WCM), online community and

e-commerce platforms. More than 3,500 customers worldwide

use EPiServer CMS to create collaborative and engaging

websites.

EPiServer CMS is the foundation for more than 10,000 web-

sites and is used by more than 130,000 web editors daily. The

EPiServer platform is delivered through an extensive network

of over 500 partner companies in 30 countries.

EPiServer combines the stability and support of a commercial

product with EPiServer World, a thriving developer

community of more than 12,000 developers.

EPiServer is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with an AAA-

ranking by Dun & Bradstreet since 2000. The company was

founded in 1994 and has offices in the United States, Sweden,

Denmark, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, South Africa,

Australia and the United Kingdom.

EPiServer is controlled by the IK2007 Fund. IK Investment

Partners is a European private equity firm with Nordic roots,

managing €5.7 billion in fund commitments.

For more information, please visit EPiServer.com

D. About Steve Walker, COMSYS

Steve Walker is a Senior Director for the Global Content

Solutions practice of COMSYS (a Manpower company). As a

thought leader in the Enterprise Content Management space,

Steve focuses on identifying innovative solutions in the content

creation, management, and distribution processes.

As a former Division Manager, Project Manager, Solution

Architect, and Software Engineer, Steve has a wealth of hands-

on subject matter expertise. Steve is also a frequent speaker

on all topics around the Global Content Supply Chain. Most

recently Steve has presented topics around Leveraging your

Content Management System for Global Audiences and

Applying Web 2.0 trends for Intranet development.

4 Conclusions

http://www.episerver.com

9




1. Fleura Fleura wanted a CMS that could handle many languages and

its different brands. Additionally, localization was important in

the seven European countries where it operates. Using EPi-

Server CMS it was able to present its country sites and indi-

vidual store sites under one domain. The corporate site sits

at the top with its different brands, countries and individual

stores in lower hierarchies.

The company has a consistent look and feel at every level of

its site. Editors can keep control of the brand estate centrally

but pages can be localized where stores update news, promo-

tions and job offers in local languages.

“Managing three brands across seven European countries in as

many languages is a breeze now that we have EPiServer CMS. Our

website has a consistent look and feel and our users get the infor-

mation they need under the brand they know, in the language they

speak.” - Jeroen Diderik, eBusiness Manager, Fleura

2. Mazda Mazda needed a scalable pan-European website platform that

allows localization under a consistent visual identity. EPiServer

CMS lets central content roll out across 26 sites as well as

upload of content by the local markets. Vers 1 April 2011, EPiServer cannot be held responsible for any typographical errors. EPiServer

reserves the right to make changes to this brochure. EPiServer is a registered trademark of EPiServer

AB. All other trademarks mentioned herein may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their

respective owners. ©Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.

5 Globalization Success Stories

Content can be created once then localized in an efficient way

to maximize the benefit. The websites are now more engaging

and focused on local market needs and cultural expectations

while consistently branded.

3. Le Creuset This is a great example of localization as well as translation.

Pages for Hong Kong, South Africa, UK and Ireland, USA,

Canada and Australia are all in English. However depending

on which country site you visit there will be different infor-

mation, such as a local store locator and different promo-

tions.

www.LeCreuset.co.uk

www.Fleura.com

www.mazda.com/d-list/europe.html

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