Localisation is...
(All options are clickable. If you can’t choose one, keep scrolling.)
A. What will help us expand and grow internationally​
B. Something to do with translation
​C. The process of adapting a product or service to make it suitable for a new area
D. The process of making a product or service more suitable for a particular country
E. Best defined by experts in localisation
If localisation should help you expand and grow internationally...
If localisation has something to do with translation...
Would you like every team to…?
A. Depend on another team for doing their job
B. Have what they need for achieving their objectives
​
If it’s a process that makes a product or service suitable for a new area...
What happens to your marketing?
A. It gets replicated in every language
B. It gets adapted for each market
​
If it makes a product or service more suitable for a particular country...
Would you like every employee who doesn’t speak the language to...?
A. Ask someone who does to change whatever they see fit
B. Know how to tell what is and isn’t suitable for any country
Who decides whether
the adapted product is suitable for a country?
Wrong question.
What determines whether an offering is suitable for a market
is the proportion of purchases relative to sales expectations.
It doesn’t matter whether or not the product has been adapted.
A story from my global expansion experience
Picture a scale-up preparing for a launch in yet another country, led by a manager from there. Localisation team is adapting the product.
To see how many people would buy it, marketing team launches the usual waitlist campaign. Alarmingly few compared to previous launches. The launch is cancelled.
Not because someone decides that the product isn’t suitable for the market. Given the mismatch between the likely number of future purchases and the expected number of sales, the decision not to enter the market yet makes business sense.
Which experts in localisation should define what it is
for a business?
If localisation managers define localisation for you...
If localisation services providers define localisation for you...
Would you like to enter new markets…?
A. Based on how much of what they offer you can afford
B. Knowing what you should and shouldn’t change, where, when, and why
If localisation software providers define localisation for you...
Do you need a way to create and deliver…?
A. More content to more customers, cheaper and faster
B. More value at scale, which no machine can do
​
(I find ways to have both, because the choice is not binary.)