Translation of technical documentation needs localization, but why and what is it?

Why is localization necessary?

As more businesses expand into international markets, accurately translated content is important for success.

As a company grows, globalization, internationalization, translation and localization all impact its chances of market success and customer acceptance.

What is localization?

Localization is when a product or service needs to be adapted to a particular language or culture. But there may also be another need in the target market or 'locale'. In most cases, it involves translating content from one language to another.

However, localization is not just about translating text. Here are a few examples of variations in communication:

As a supplier of bottle washing machines, you have to pay close attention. Because you see that the US is a linguistically diverse country in itself. Take for example the term “soft drink“, and you will see that depending on the region, three different variations are used, pop, coke and soda .

In other English speaking countries other names are used such as: ⠀
Fizzy drink 🇬🇧 🇳🇿,soft drink  🇨🇦 🇦🇺, or cool drink  🇿🇦. ⠀

Data: month/day/year or day/month/year?

Time: 12 hours or 24 hours?

Measurement: Metric or Imperial?

Paper size, currency, phone number format

The list goes on and on.

The challenges of localization

Whether you choose to manage translations in-house or outsource them to an external vendor, localization is an expensive, unpredictable process. Why?

The average cost of translation in Europe is €0.20 per word. Translating a 500-word document with 200 words per page can start at €20,000.

Text expansion, right-to-left languages, and pagination require desktop publishing for proper layouts, adding 30-50% to the total localization cost. That’s $10,000 for that same document, bringing you to $30,000.

Regulatory changes or product updates may force you to change 5% of your content and add 20 pages. And this is all for one document, increasing that total by another $1000+.

Apart from the costs, localization is time-consuming and requires accuracy.

Localization made easy

What is the solution?

First, start at the source: your content. Just write less. Content that is written in a short, simple, concise, and informative way is easier to manage, edit, locate, and update.

Second, move documents from document-based systems, such as Word, to component-based systems. Components then become once created, localized, and then reused for any number of documents you want to publish.

Once information is componentized and localized, when you need to update your content, you only need to retranslate the changed information, not the entire document. This simplifies the entire process of creating, managing, localizing, and publishing your global content, saving time to delivery and exponentially reducing translation costs.

With a component authoring approach to localization, you have less to translate.

Translate content once at the beginning. Only the content that has changed or been updated will be translated, not the entire document.

Save money on translating content by reusing components. Fewer words = lower costs.

Reduce time to market. Translators don’t have to waste time checking content that has already been localized.

The solution

Managing your entire documentation process from start to finish on one platform saves time, money, resources, and errors. Author-it was built with the author in mind and understands the challenges of authoring in document-based solutions. Whether it’s technical documentation, eLearning course creation, or clinical and regulatory solutions, our solutions allow you to create, collaborate, manage, reuse, and publish content—with or without coding expertise. All on one platform.

Contact us today for more information.