Opening the Black Box, Part I: Demystifying the process of localzation and translation

Opening the Black Box, Part I

Demystifying the Processes of Localization and Translation

Introduction

 

"Why is localization so expensive?!"

We hear this question a lot from our clients, and at one time we had a short answer for it:

Words.

 

Our clients usually just scowled at us when we gave that answer, and so we elaborated a bit:

The expense-perspective: You paid to create your English-language product, but because your engineers and writers use English words, it looked to you as though you didn’t pay anything to create it. Now you need to write a fat check to somebody in order to create other versions, and you’re annoyed because "all they’re doing is translating," which feels like child’s play compared to the work you’ve done.

The revenue-perspective: Your investment in the English-language product will be returned by lots and lots of English-speaking people who will give you money because you solved their problems. Similarly, localization is an investment in a [German/Japanese/Korean/Russian/ French/...] product, and this investment will be returned by lots and lots of non-English-speaking people who will give you money for solving their problems.

In other words, there is an expense-side and a revenue-side to the coin of localization. We also hear that many people in technology consider the process of delivering international products a “black box”. Accordingly, Part I of this paper explains the terms and steps in “Internationalization” and “Localization,” with a few grisly details that are second nature to translation professionals, but which look like a black box to most of their clients.

Original URL:http://www.1-for-all.com/papers-read.asp