Rethinking the Intersection Between Localization and Content Design

Modern technology allows businesses to reach global audiences. Interacting with a worldwide audience takes more than simply reaching customers. Users want to work in familiar languages and environments, and companies need to localize their digital content to match the cultures and languages of different countries.

Localization is adapting your product, brand, or services to consider your audience's cultural background, norms, and expectations. However, this process is usually outside the content design process, and instead, it's a complete transformation after all content has been designed for a specific audience. 

This approach adds complications and delays to the localization process that could have been avoided with early preparation. With this in mind, content design could be approached with the expectation that localization will occur. By prioritizing localization needs in your design process, you can eliminate many difficulties of UX localization. 

This article explores the current relationship between localization and content design and how changing the intersection can provide businesses with new opportunities.

How Content Design Affects Localization

UX design requires web designers to make the most of minimal space. Every character, word, image, and even a bit of white space is integral to creating an attractive and user-friendly interface. Unfortunately, the coding requirements for these essential interactions can create barriers to effective translation and other changes required in localization. 

Localization in content design is more than a direct translation. Elena Dunne, terminologies and localization expert at Rockwell Automation, describes localization as "adapting a product so users experience it as if it had been designed in and for their language and culture." Localized content design shares a message, user interface, and appearance that feels natural to the user. Achieving these changes can mean altering terminology and wording along with translation. As a result, content designers can expect messages to expand or shrink after translation and localization. With proper preparations, text can get cut off, overlap, or lead to a better user experience.

What Is Internationalization?

Before localization occurs, specific groundwork must occur to ensure changes translate the content and intended message effectively. Internationalization is the process of preparing the design of a product, service, or application for localization. It includes building an application or product to support multiple languages and writing styles without changing usability.

Suppose teams create software with only one language in mind. Localizing it can become so complex that businesses must build separate iterations for different languages and cultures. Internationalization allows software developers to introduce specific changes to the software that make it more compatible with globalization efforts. 

When internationalization is performed after development, it's an extra process that must be completed before localization. However, if internationalization is incorporated into the development process, brands can build a solution that is easy to adapt to new regions and locations. 

Why Should Localization Accompany Design?

Introducing the concept of localization early in the design process can add additional requirements and nuances to the web design and content creation process. But these early efforts can pay off in the long run. 

Translation alone can create significant changes to a digital interface. Spoken and written languages can differ from one to the next. For example, alphabets require two characters to produce a sound made by a single letter in another language. Translated words and phrases can be shorter or longer than the source text. Orientation can be an even more significant challenge, especially when introducing languages that read right to left. 

The content design doesn't just apply to character limits and word counts. It includes the text and messages that compose the branding, product names, descriptions, etc., comprising digital and print content. To create engaging and informative content, marketing professionals often use slang, idioms, and terms that only make sense in certain cultures. Unfortunately, when such messages undergo direct translation, they fall flat — or worse, they can be offensive.

If content design occurs without localization in mind, businesses can face one of two major problems:

1. Localization that fails to delight the target audience

2. Requirements for significant content changes to present a consistent brand

UX content should always be ready for localization to avoid these issues. 

3 Ways You Can Connect Localization and Content Design

Much of the world has a solid online presence. However, when businesses skip or delay localization, they fail to reach a large percentage of their target audience. By prioritizing localization in content design, you can streamline the process and simplify localization to ensure brand consistency and improved communication. 

These transitions can easily be used during the content design process to create content design ripe for localization organically:

1. Make Room for Change

Regarding text boxes, CTA buttons, and even code, size does matter. Some languages are more verbose than others. By planning for these differences, you can develop content that can be translated without changing the digital interface. 

Many newer software development tools enable developers to create software that allows text expansion, resizing, Unicode, and bi-directionality. Expand your internationalization efforts by leaving open space around condensed UI components like buttons and tabs. 

2. Choose Your Words Carefully

Brand consistency gives your business a unique face recognizable in every culture. But if the words and phrases you choose for your brand message translate poorly, achieving effective localization and brand consistency will be impossible. When choosing words and images, eliminate jargon, slang, or language that a narrow or specialized group uses. Consider how taglines may not make sense in other cultures and how product names will sound and convey a meaning when translated. Consider using language that requires minimal modification to translate across multiple languages and cultures.

3. Investigate Icons

Visuals can be a great way to convey information and cross language barriers. Software developers frequently use icons in various software products to replace text in limited space. Without careful consideration, these elements may carry the right message. 

Icons, colors, and even emojis carry different meanings across cultures. When you choose icons, determine whether they have a universal meaning or only make sense to one nationality. While icons may be easily modified, it's vital to ensure the product is built in a way that accommodates modifications.

Localization is an essential part of reaching a wider audience for many businesses. Narrow content design that appeals to a specific audience may create significant barriers to expansion and globalization. By incorporating room for localization in content design, companies can eliminate complex tasks that might hurt their brand perception. Beneath the surface, content design and globalization have always had an interconnected relationship. 

When businesses change the point of intersection, localization, and globalization can occur more organically. Localization and globalization are more than marketing buzzwords; they're a way of conducting business with a broader audience.