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what are some examples of companies that have employed localization strategies successfully and why?

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Home » Translation » 3 Tech Brands with Exceptional Localization Strategies to Effectively Engage their Global Audience
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3 Tech Brands with Exceptional Localization Strategies to Effectively Engage their Global Audience
By Ulatus on February 20, 20190

Localization, as we know it today, has grown leaps and bounds to accommodate people from 190 countries with significant differences in dialects. The trend of adapting content or product to a region dates back to the 1980s when American software giants began deploying their software in countries outside the USA. Today, brands across the world not only translate their content to regional languages but also curate content specific to the likes and tastes of a region. Popular examples of well-crafted localization strategies are Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Nike.

At Ulatus, we track brands that do exceptional work with their content localization and shatter language barriers to increase their presence in global markets.

Here are 3 tech companies that have built an amazing connect with their global audience by implementing outstanding localization strategies:

Netflix
Netflix’s viewing data reveals that nine out of every ten people who watched the German TV series Dark lived outside of Germany.

In another report by Quartz India, the top shows watched by people in India are Narcos, Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, Riverdale, Black Mirror, and Chef’s Table, among others.

This is a classic example of a successful globalization & localization strategy. Netflix is able to capture such a vast global audience by allowing users worldwide to view subtitles in a language of their choice or choose a dubbed version of the show or movie.

But localization doesn’t end there for Netflix; they’ve even localized the app navigation and UI for different countries. They scale their UI design using a technique called Pseudo Localization to account for 25+ languages and scripts.

In Pseudo localization, the software assigns space for one, two or more words after the standard English text to account for increase in total characters required for a different language.

Slack
Slack, founded in 2012, is an app that aims at making communications faster, simpler and fun for work teams. They began operations by pitching the product to friends and contacts in American companies and got 8-10 firms to try the app and share feedback. Since then Slack has grown to include a large user base of 500K companies and 8 million daily active users of which 3 million pay for more features and benefits.

A Slack spokesperson told VentureBeat that more than half of its users are in more than 100 countries outside of the United States. The top five countries outside of North America who use Slack are United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, and India.

While countries like India and UK use English as the primary business language, Japan, Germany and France use their regional languages. To increase their user base and to build a stronger connect with users in other countries, Slack decided to localize it’s app for a number of different regions.

PUBG
Pubg, a game developed in Korea by Irish photographer and avid gamer Brendan Greene in partnership with Bluehole, Inc is 2017-18’s most popular game with more than 400 million players worldwide.
While it wasn’t easy, Pubg Corporation has been able to build such a massive player base by translating and localizing its content. The game is available in 11 languages apart from English helping players understand instructions and game hooks better while building a stronger connect with the game.

According to a study by USC Institute of Creative Technologies, California, players seek games for enjoyment and for emotional experiences.

The game has a bunch of instructions for players to follow. By restricting the language of the game of English or any other one language, players from different countries of the world won’t enjoy the experience as much as they would if the game was in a language they understood. And if players aren’t enjoying the game, there are high changes they abandon it and don’t come back.

Countries also differ in their likes, perceptions, and the extent of violence they can take. For a game like When Pubg was introduced in China, the Chinese government raised a concern that the game was too violent and inappropriate for release in the country. To counter this problem, Pubg offered to change characters and tone down the violence in the game for the Chinese audience. Two versions of the game, Army Attack (air, water and land battles) and Battlefield (similar to Pubg mobile) were released. Following NetEase’s strategy, Pubg also decided to include China’s socialist views in the game. This has moved China up to rank 2 as the country with most players with 19% of the world population playing the game from the country.

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