Localization

Focus
area that your nonnative speakers are engaging with the
most — this could perhaps include marketing materials, or
could be the user interface (UI). Carefully store your buttons
and pop-up text in a database that is easily extracted
for translation. To start off with, you could even provide
them with a gist translation by offering an option for
machine translation (MT) on your site — just make sure
to admit this to your customers! Adding a button to the UI
to report errors and suggest improved translations can be
easily integrated. One option is to use the Google Website
Translator plugin for the site. This is a useful way to engage
new customers while you test the waters in new markets.
It should only ever be a temporary measure, though, as
customers will always want a seamless experience in their
own language. Please don’t turn this on automatically —
customers will prefer to opt in and opt out.
By creating a useful product, you will invariably attract
customers who speak a lot of languages. To adopt the
fairly tired concept of community, treat your users like a
community and you can reap the benefits from a crowdsourced
translation — regular communication, interesting
articles, jokes on a Friday. These can all be used to
tap in to your customer base. Not only will they be more
likely to recommend you to other users, it will make them
more likely to help you in the future. Everyone likes showing
off their skills, and everyone is an expert in their own
language. A crowd sourcing platform can be set up easily
with Mechanical Turk. You can incentivize this with
competitions, leader boards and badges. To kick-start the
process of crowdsourcing translation, you may even like
to adopt an open source MT system, and ask your community
to edit, not translate.
No doubt there are many heads shaking and mouths
agape at the suggestion of crowdsourcing MT content
— the inconsistencies, the errors, the flagrant violation
of translation norms and rules! Despite the audible gasps
from linguists reading this, there is also an automatic
solution to this. Try using quality assurance tools such
as Verifika or Xbench to ensure translation consistency,
number handling, spell checking and to point out any
potential terminological issues. While crowdsourcing
will get you 90% of the way there, its highly advisable to
have at least one professional linguist take a look. Their
trained eye will see things that even a native speaker will
overlook.
Lastly, each translation should be viewed as an investment.
Look after your linguistic assets. At the beginning,
this can be stored in a simple spreadsheet. As you move
on to translate greater volumes with translators, always
ask for the translation back in TMX format. This can be
used across all platforms. Consider also separating your
translation memories as they build — keep your marketing
content separate from your help user assistance
materials. This kind of meta-information on a segment
is invaluable for developing accurate statistical machine
translation — and for making the choice of which computer-aided
translation tool to buy when you do choose to
invest. Take advice on the various features and make your
selection based on what suits your content type the best.
Running a startup is an exciting and challenging business.
The days can often lurch from highs to lows. Some
days are a huge success, perhaps from recognition within
the startup community or from landing new customers,
yet other days may come with crushing panic, when you
see your competitor take a leap forward or find your
bank balance is once again hammered by an unforeseen
circumstance. It is definitely an uncertain and thankless
industry, which is perhaps why people who work in
startups are so good at building alliances, relying on each
other and connecting with their customers. Localization
unlocks new markets and multiplies these connections.
While it isn’t possible for all startups to be a success, those
that form bonds beyond the English-speaking world will
have a better chance at it. [M]
36 April/May 2016