Misconceptions about Localization Costs for Companies (I). Deciding what Needs to be Translated

For any company, an exhaustive analysis of the costs and ROI of any activity is crucial in their decision making process. Localization is not an exception.

However, companies have a wrong idea of the costs of a localization project. I very often talk with companies that want to go global and they always ask the same questions about the text to be translated and the costs. In this post, you will learn how to select the content you need to translate in order to save costs.

Scenario: We are going to imagine that you are a company manufacturing consumer electronic products.

Have a look at what you would tell us and how we would help you.

My website is very big, it will be expensive to translate everything

Have another look at your products catalogue. According to your market research and your entry modes (see our article Market Strategies and Localization for further reference), you have seen that your target markets for TV sets and DVD players are the US, Canada and Italy. However, you have seen that you will have much more market share in the Nordic countries for sound systems. Therefore, what is the point of translating the whole catalogue in all languages?

If I am targeting 5 different countries, I need customer support in 5 languages, and I cannot afford that

That would be the ideal yes, and instead of having in-house staff you can outsource this task to professional contact centres in your target markets.

However, if you are still in the first stages of your international market strategy, you can reduce customer support calls by providing information in the target languages. Again, making the right choice of documents you will need to translate will help you to keep costs balanced. Among these texts you can translate we have the following:

• FAQs
• Product reviews
• Customer support tickets (in our next article we will explain more about this)

Together with your marketing advisors, you will know which are the best ways to approach your clients.

Once you know them, you have to decide in which of these steps you should introduce translation and localization services, and when that happens, Jensen Localization will be there to help you. Do not hesitate to contact us to learn more about how to make the most of your translation budget.