Localisation

This is a vital requirement for products and services that are provided for a foreign market you may not be familiar with or that you know has a significantly different ethnic.

Localisation is defined as the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language or culture.  When localizing a product, information such as national holidays, currencies, local colour relevance, use of certain images, product or service names and geographic references must be taken into account.

A successfully localized service or product is one that looks as though it was developed locally.

Localising software and documentation for different countries involves the translation of menus and messages into the language locally spoken . This also includes changes in the user interface to take into account different language scripts and cultures.

An obvious example would be the inappropriate use of images of women that would be acceptable in Western culture yet would be seen as a sign of disrespect in other cultures. The layout of the pages may be quite different or a word translated directly (or sometimes left in English if a brand name) may have a quite unexpected meaning in another language.

Our localisation service will provide you with an assessment of what needs to be adapted, along with proposed changes, in your documents or on your website for the language and area concerned.