The business world is becoming more interconnected as businesses increasingly look for ways to expand their footprint into new markets. Opening up new markets, however, is not a guarantee of success. Global growth is about connecting with a broader market, and to achieve this, a business needs to understand the subtleties of culture and language and learn how to tailor what it sells to local tastes. This is where a localization company can serve as an invaluable asset, helping businesses tap into the potential of international markets.
A great localization strategy involves more than translation: it involves graphics, colors, logos, money symbols, and cultural context, and it makes users worldwide feel more at home and more understood. Companies that have achieved this globalization of their brands generally do so through well-thought-out internationalization and localization strategies targeted to the needs of each market.
Airbnb: Embracing Cultural Diversity
One of the best examples of a company adapting to globalization is Airbnb, a vacation-rental online marketplace. Airbnb is now available in more than 220 countries and territories, and soon after it launched, it started offering its service in 62 languages.
Their localization approach involved close collaboration between design and globalization teams to ensure that every visual detail resonated with local users, from the language chosen to the layout of a user experience. Airbnb’s globalization efforts also involved creating design systems that could quickly adapt to local cultural cues.
Another challenge was to shift from a language-based support model, catering to specific languages, to a locale-based approach, considering dialects, spelling, currencies, formats, and even cultural references – giving the impression that Airbnb is part of the local experience, regardless of where in the world a user is located.
Workday: Cultivating a Globalization Mindset
One of the most interesting case studies for developing a globalization mindset in an organization is Workday, a provider of enterprise cloud applications that offers services in 37 languages. Its localization infrastructure continuously collaborates with localization quality assurance teams.
Their approach was to begin their localization initiative with teams already working on globalization projects and use their energy and passion to infect others. Globalyzer, the only internationalization tool developers love, became central to Workday’s localization plan because it could be plugged into the workflow and made part of the architecture.
As a result, Workday developed detailed internationalization resources and training programs for all new hires, especially engineers, to ensure that everyone understood the issues involved. This, in turn, not only standardized product localization processes but also helped embed a globalization mindset throughout the company.
Playrix: Mastering the Art of Culturalization
Localization for games, which must capture both culture and the characters’ development and interactions, is much more complex. Playrix, whose games Homescapes and Gardenscapes are among the top three highest-grossing titles in the world, has brought culturalization to a whole new level, connecting emotionally with players worldwide.
Playrix’s Culturalization team has pioneered a proactive model that works closely with developers from the initial stages of game design, helping to shape characters, landscapes, and storylines that will resonate with local audiences. They foster constant learning, educating developers about the necessity of naturalization and establishing direct communication channels for sharing ideas and resources.
It helps Playrix to develop games with great immersion that can transcend cultures and speak to players worldwide, building an emotional response through empathetic characters and storylines. Playrix’s approach of empowering teams to think proactively about empathy has created games with powerful stories and characters that are accessible to players all over the world.
Roblox: Breaking Language Barriers with AI
For online gamers, being able to communicate with each other is essential. You want to do that with other people when trying to build a highway or shoot down some zombies. If you can’t converse with them, it affects your engagement in the game. Without understanding one another, it’s tough to deliver that sense of escapism that makes online gaming so popular. Roblox Corporation, one of the world’s largest social gaming platforms, has realized it needed a solution to help cross language barriers.
Through AI and real-time chat translation, Roblox brought users chatting in different languages closer together. This was made possible by developing a custom multilingual model that allows direct translation across 16 languages.
By optimizing its translation model for speed and efficiency without compromising quality, Roblox broke from a common industry practice of using machine translation for user-generated content. That led to a 6 percent boost in user engagement. Roblox shows that localization builds bridges between people around the world.
Uber: Tailoring the User Experience
The ride-hail giant Uber has shown that sound localization involves far more than translation. The firm is now active in more than 10,000 cities worldwide, and in markets such as Japan – where taxis lack a tipping culture – its user interface and experience have been adapted to local norms.
For example, the visual design of the Uber app in Ireland features a color palette that references Georgian architecture and the local greens, while Uber’s car icons in China – where red symbolizes luck – are bright red, not black or gray like in other markets.
It’s not just the visuals – Uber has developed services specific to the needs of local markets, including motorbike taxi services in Thailand and UberBOAT to hail boats for river or sea transport in Egypt and Greece.
Coca-Cola: Transcreating Marketing Messages
The success of Coca-Cola’s localization efforts, for example, via its #ShareACoke campaign, is a good illustration of the value of transcreation inappropriate marketing messages to different cultural contexts in a way that makes the content relevant while retaining its essence.
Transcreation, which departs from literal translation, entails changing a message to fit a different language and still be understood without sacrificing the original’s style and mood.
After the campaign succeeded in Australia, Coca-Cola brought it to the UK, including popularly named bottles; in Ireland, they included traditional Irish names such as Aoife, Cathal, Gráinne, Áine, and Eimear.
However, Coke’s localization campaign in India went much further than that. Instead of using names, which the company’s marketers felt wouldn’t resonate with the Indian audience, they replaced names with relationships: ‘Bhai,’ ‘Didi,’ ‘Ma,’ and ‘Papa,’ each matched with a unique descriptor. Coca‑Cola’s ads in India also contained labels in 12 languages to fit with the country’s linguistic diversity.
The Role of a Localization Company
But while there are undoubtedly inspirational entrepreneurial success stories from these firms, it would be shortsighted to overlook the tremendous value that localization companies add to the equation, working with businesses on the strategic and logistical needs of the globalizing product and content experiences. It stands to reason that globalization, localization, and internationalization – or GLI – are core parts of the internationalization process. GLI companies offer specialized services and expertise to businesses as part of their internationalization strategy, helping them define the right strategy for their development activities and content.
Whether carrying out detailed market research and cultural analysis or adjusting the content, products, and user experience for local markets, a sound localization company can be an invaluable sidekick on your company’s scale-up adventure.
By partnering with a localization company, businesses can benefit from:
- Detailed Market Research: By engaging localization companies, brands can leverage their research capabilities to understand the cultural nuances, language choices, and consumer behaviors from within the target markets. This knowledge is invaluable in tweaking offerings and messaging to become more contextual and authentic.
- Linguistic Expertise: Localization companies employ teams of professional translators and linguists proficient in multiple languages to ensure cultural and linguistic accuracy of content, marketing collateral, and product information.
- Cultural Adaptation: Localization companies are not just about language translation; they also adapt visuals, user interfaces, and product design to the local culture, making it feel as natural as a product from home.
- Scalability and Efficiency: Localization companies help businesses scale their efforts thanks to modern technologies and lean processes that make localization more efficient and affordable.
- Ongoing Support and Maintenance: As markets and culture change over time, localization companies provide ongoing support and maintenance services to ensure businesses remain culturally relevant and engaged with global audiences.
Working with a certified localization company can help any business expand its reach globally, build lasting connections with customers worldwide, and ensure long-term success in foreign markets.
Conclusion
In the age of globalization, the road to world success involves localization. The success stories in this article illustrate how companies in several industries have leveraged localization companies to conquer cultural and linguistic barriers, connect with their target audiences, and fuel their global expansion.
Despite their ability to focus solely on localization, from Airbnb’s hyperlocalization to Workday’s globalization muscle to Playrix’s naturalization to Roblox’s AI, these companies represent the potential of export design, born of localization to build deep and realistic user experiences across the globe.
Furthermore, Uber and Coca-Cola’s examples illustrate the different ways in which companies are adapting their products, services, and user experiences to the cultural nuances and tastes of local markets.
While the road to scaling globally may be steep and challenging, partnering with a trustworthy localization company will provide the needed expertise, resources, and support to help businesses globally successfully. Com and insights, linguistic expertise, cultural adaptation, scalability, and post-localization support will help a company to connect with customers on a long-term basis not only in Europe but also in the Asia-Pacific region, North and South America, and Africa.
The world is becoming smaller, making the need for localization more critical than ever. Companies that recognize this and approach localization with the necessary investment and know-how will profit from it, reaching the hearts of their diverse audiences and impacting the world.
