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What is it?

The art of optimizing a website so search results for the site appear in search engines regardless of language or region.

Why is it important?

Allows content to be found and consumed by more people than the nearest competitor by increasing findability in search engines result pages regardless of the language of search.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

The investment in great online content will offer a superior return on investment (ROI) only if that content is available to consumers regardless of language or location. However, simply translating your content isn’t enough. People can’t engage with your content if they can’t find it. As Willy Brandt said, “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying from you, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.”

Copy, localized or otherwise, starts with keywords. Using the right metadata, you can gain insights into what is being searched, where it’s being searched, the frequency of searches, and the level of competition. The Google Keyword Tool provides a wealth of information for free. Armed with this information, you can ensure that your content has a greater chance of being relevant and useful in the regions you’re targeting.

Also consider where you host your content; hosting on a local domain, for example domain.de, can signify trust. However, this will increase the workload; select a content management system carefully.

Once the content is in place, the process of reaching out to local bloggers and social media magnates in their own language can begin. Manually adding your site to local respected business directories will gain trust, as will carefully constructing local social media pages for your company.

Over time, localized pages will appear in the search engines. Using your measurements and feedback loops, determine the strategies that work best in each region to help you to gain prominent placement in search engine results across multiple languages.

About Richard Brooks

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Richard Brooks is CEO of K International. His company provides world-class language translation services. He volunteers as co-chair of the marketing task force for the Association of Language Companies. He holds an Exec MBA from Cranfield University, and his academic studies center around international brand development and B2B sales processes.

Term:

Email: mailto:Richard.Brooks@k-international.com

Website: k-international.com

Twitter: @RichardMBrooks

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardbrooks

Facebook: facebook.com/richard.brooks.378

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What is it?

The practice of actively maintaining monolingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries. Terms are organized and controlled, with a clear set of guidelines dictating their use.

Why is it important?

Enables correct and consistent use of terms throughout the translation process or any other effort requiring accurate vocabulary usage.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Words (or phrases) are used to tag content or communicate an organization’s offerings, such as products, services, or industry insights. They are incorporated into language used in a variety of content types, including: marketing collateral, legal documentation, user manuals, product information, informational videos, and the like. These terms are consciously chosen by content creators and, therefore, reflect the creator’s perspective and that of a specific organizational business unit as well as geographical region. As globalization increases, communication of a consistent message in one or more languages is vital. Inconsistent use of terminology can, at the very least, cause confusion or, more seriously, result in legal problems.

There are many advantages to carefully controlling term use: consistency of voice and tone, linguistic quality, uniform word usage across an entire organization (including branded and company-specific terms), conformance to specific legal requirements, and protection of trademarked and registered product names. Careful terminology management can facilitate translation reuse, reduce errors during authoring or translation, shorten revision time, and help streamline the content creation process.

Terminology management systems maintain terms in a central repository and allow for the organization of approved (and unapproved) terms in one or more languages. They define terms when needed and provide editorial usage guidelines based on pre-established rules. Governance over terms is based both on these rules and on governance committee decisions. Implementation of a metrics strategy can also help identify opportunities to improve terminology usage and overall productivity.

About Rebecca Schneider

Photo of Rebecca Schneider

Rebecca Schneider has extensive experience in librarianship, knowledge management, and information technology. She formed Azzard Consulting, a content strategy services and staffing firm, with the conviction that there are better ways to manage content. Rebecca has worked in a variety of industries including retail, education, international development, and financial services.

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Email: mailto:rschneider@azzardconsulting.com

Website: azzardconsulting.com

Twitter: @azzardconsult

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebeccaschneider/

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What is it?

A repository that contains translated source and destination language pairs.

Why is it important?

Reduces translation time and cost by reusing translated content from the repository.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Professional human translators use specialized tools to translate content. These tools are called Computer Aided Translation tools (CATs). A CAT tool consists of a translation memory, a terminology database, and an editor to translate virtually any kind of content.

During translation, the source language content is segmented by the CAT tool into small logical units. Such a unit is usually a full sentence (or heading, list item, table cell, etc.) in your content. This unit is called a segment. These segments are translated into the target language by a machine translation engine, a human translator, or both. Together, a source and target segment form a translation unit (TU). These TUs are stored in a linguistic database called translation memory (TM).

Modern translation memory systems enrich these database entries with additional metadata. Perhaps the most important is metadata that defines the semantic context. Other metadata types include content domain, date and time, translator, quality score, data source, and data type.

When new content is translated, the CAT tool analyzes each segment and tries to find a match in the TM. Matches can range from “no match” to “fuzzy matches” to 100%, or exact, matches. Modern CAT tools add context matches on top of that: “101% matches” that help eliminate false positives due to ambiguities or different context.

With every translation, the TM grows. The bigger the TM is, the more previous translations can be recycled. This dramatically speeds up translation and improves the quality and consistency of new content.

About Stefan Gentz

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Stefan Gentz is a business consultant, trainer, and speaker with a focus on technical documentation, marketing, and translation. A certified Quality Management professional, ISO 9001 / EN 15038 auditor, and Six Sigma (6σ) Champion, Stefan has over 15 years of content management, authoring and translation tools, techniques, processes, and strategies experience.

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Email: mailto:stefan.gentz@tracom.de

Website: tracom.de

Twitter: @stefangentz

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stefangentz

Facebook: fb.com/stefan.gentz

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What is it?

A software-based process that translates content from one language to another.

Why is it important?

Accelerates the process, and reduces the cost, of translating content and increases the availability of translated content. Linguistic quality and accuracy levels vary depending on how well the software is tuned and whether the content is post-edited by humans.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Why a content strategist should care about machine translation (MT) is simply a matter of numbers. There is far too much content being created and far too few translators or money to translate it all—or even a small fraction of it—into the dozens of languages that are required to address global markets.

Translation automation tools such as MT promise to increase the volume and accelerate the pace of words rendered into other languages. Content strategists who understand this dynamic will be in a better position to take advantage of what’s happening with this core technology.

Translation strategies that rely on human output alone have already been overwhelmed by the explosion in content and the imperative to rapidly enter new markets. If translation managers are going to meet the needs of their many users, they will have to evaluate how to integrate MT into their global content strategies—regardless of the type or size of their organization.

About Don DePalma

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Don DePalma is an industry analyst, author, and corporate strategist with expertise in business- and marketing-focused application of technology. Don regularly publishes syndicated research, authors articles, and contributes to a blog at http://www.globalwatchtower.com.
 He lectures and writes on the topics of global business, cross-border marketing, application and content management, global customer experience, and globalization.

Term:

Email: mailto:don@commonsenseadvisory.com

Website: commonsenseadvisory.com

Twitter: @CSA_Research

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/profile/view?id=67402

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What is it?

A process by which content—online, in print, or in software—is made world ready so it may be localized with minimal rewriting, redesigning, or reengineering.

Why is it important?

Helps organizations save significant time and resources by creating content that is global by design before moving on to localization and translation.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Internationalization, sometimes abbreviated as i18n, is the first stage towards taking content global. Before localizing content, it’s important to first take a step back and ask: Is it world ready?

Internationalizing text content means creating universal English source text in which sentences are optimized for translation. Edits may include removing culturally specific metaphors (for example, A home run offer!), removing humor (which rarely translates well), and keeping sentences short and declarative.

When designing for the web and software, internationalization entails creating templates that can be supported across all locales with no engineering changes. Requirements may include support for the world’s many scripts, currencies, date and measurement display formats, and address formats. The most efficient global templates often avoid embedding text within images because such images must be manually edited for each language supported.

Templates must be flexible enough to allow for text expansion—text strings often double in length when translating from English into languages such as Dutch or German. Also, images and icons intended for the global templates must be carefully reviewed to ensure they are globally relevant and usable.

Internationalization is often overlooked by companies in their rush to go global. But when overlooked, a company may discover, after creating a website or app for one locale, that its design must be redesigned in order to support a different locale. Internationalization ensures that companies can avoid that extra work.

About John Yunker

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John Yunker of Byte Level Research has helped hundreds of companies improve their global websites and software, providing benchmark and training services. He authored nine editions of The Web Globalization Report Card and is author of The Art of the Global Gateway and The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies.

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Email: mailto:jyunker@bytelevel.com

Website: bytelevel.com

Twitter: @johnyunker

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnyunker

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What is it?

The analysis of, and planning for, the development, delivery, and consumption of global content; in essence, it is the analysis which forms a global content strategy.

Why is it important?

Reveals the benefits, risks, needs, and demands of content among all target consumers and influences better decision-making for global information exchange.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Globalization, sometimes abbreviated as g11n, is a term traditionally grounded in economics. As we continue to reach across geographic and cultural boundaries, we need to be increasingly mindful of how other cultures affect, and are affected by, our efforts. Intended or not, cross-cultural exchange is a mutual integration into a much larger system of both mutual and conflicting ideas, beliefs, expectations, and demands. In the case of content, globalization is the study of these factors for the betterment of information exchange.

Content globalization looks at the entire lifecycle of content, from inception to destruction, with heavy consideration for multicultural needs and demands. When performing this analysis, it is best to work backwards from the consumption of content, considering the audience and its needs.

From there, similarities and differences can be drawn based on appropriateness (both cultural and legal), necessity, form, and timeliness. These form the necessary requirements that inform the strategic engineering of the entire content development process, from style to technology to methodology to even who the writers are.

While globalization is traditionally regarded as an effect to be measured and studied, the proliferation of buzzwords in the global content arena (translation, localization, and internationalization, for example) indirectly suggests that globalization is an act or process. We can certainly approach it as such, so long as we are using the analysis of the effect (whether actual within existing contexts or theoretical when considering new ones) to influence positive changes in, and outcomes from, our global content strategy.

About Bill Swallow

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Bill Swallow has two decades of experience in technical communication, including content development, localization, and management. At Scriptorium, Bill specializes in content strategy with an emphasis on handling challenging localization and terminology scenarios. He also supports technology implementation projects and provides customer training.

Term:

Email: mailto:techcommdood@gmail.com

Website: techcommdood.com

Twitter: @billswallow

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/techcommdood

Facebook: facebook.com/techcommdood

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What is it?

Adaptation of content to make it more meaningful, appropriate, and effective for a particular culture, locale, or market.

Why is it important?

Increases the relevance of the content for a particular target audience.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Localization, sometimes abbreviated as l10n, is an essential process in the content strategist’s toolkit. More than just an add-on at the end of the content development cycle, localization requires careful planning and strategy right from the start.

To be effective, content must be relevant and meaningful to the target audience. Localization is the process by which content is made more appropriate and more meaningful for a particular culture. Without localization, content developers would be spinning generic pablum in the hope that users (near or far) will recognize a scintilla of meaning, latch on, and perhaps buy the product, heed the warning, or swallow the pitch.

Localization is strategic: it requires a comprehensive, planned approach in which all parts of the content system—the messaging, technologies, audience—come together in a dynamic, creative process, producing what can best be described as an “aha moment.” Localized content taps into the power of local culture and uses it to project and amplify its message to create a deeper, more resonant message.

Localization is about producing aha in any language, culture, or medium. A content strategy that doesn’t lead to an aha falls flat. On the other hand, a localization-driven content strategy is capable of producing meaningful content experiences for its audience(s), creating ahas in Anchorage, Andorra, and Anhui.

In sum, content strategists need to know how to leverage the power of culture to create successful content experiences, and localization is the means by which they can harness that power.

About James V. Romano

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What is it?

Conversion of content from one language to another.

Why is it important?

Makes content accessible to people who speak a different language.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Translation, sometimes abbreviated as t9n, is the window that opens up your content to a wider audience. Translation multiplies the impact of your content by allowing audiences to connect more deeply with it. As Nelson Mandela famously said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

Connecting deeply with your audience by presenting content in their language is very effective when influencing behavior. A study by the Common Sense Advisory found that customers were six times more likely to buy a product or service when addressed in their own language.

There’s a myth that translation always needs to be of the highest quality to be effective. While translation must always accurately reflect the message, your content strategy will determine the quality needed. Two technologies in particular, translation memory and machine translation, help you reduce costs and leverage human effort.

For example, an eBook or your customer-facing website will require a publication-quality translation. On the other hand, a customer support site needs to effectively inform, and customers will willingly accept imperfect translation in exchange for useful information. A study by the Consortium for Service Innovation showed that when people need customer support for their product or service, what matters least is perfect spelling and complete sentences.

To open up your content to people who speak other languages, technology is your friend. What matters most is providing access to content in the consumer’s preferred language—his or her own.

About Lori Thicke

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Lori Thicke founded the language services provider Lexcelera as well as the machine translation innovator, LexWorks. Lori also founded the world’s largest humanitarian translation organization, Translators without Borders. Lori, who holds an MFA, lives in Vancouver and Paris, and is a frequent speaker and blogger on bridging the language divide.

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Email: mailto:lori@lexworks.com

Website: lexworks.com

Twitter: @lorithicke

LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/in/lorithicke/

Facebook: facebook.com/lori.thicke

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What is it?

The mental model, or classification system, of a taxonomy of content or concepts in the minds of content consumers. Includes vocabulary, organization, relationships, and interactions.

Why is it important?

To understand content consumers, you must know how they mentally structure the topics your content covers.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

A classic taxonomy is a formal description of relationships, whereas a folksonomy is crowd-sourced, based on the content consumer’s ideas of how concepts and ideas fit together. This classification system depends on variables such as education, experience, and culture of the content consumer. A folksonomy is important because we gain insights into how content consumers think about the structure and relationships of content. This allows us to understand how to talk about and structure our information in a way that is more natural to content consumers.

There are many ways to find out about a folksonomy. You can do ethnographic work, studying the vocabulary and relationships of speech and concepts. You can also ask content consumers to help index content by allowing them to freely add terms and categories. For example, on Amazon.com, people are able to assign keywords and categories to items, which builds a folksonomy over time. This results in better searches and better results over time for content consumers.

Folksonomies are not limited to search results. Folksonomies can also help define how marketing might want to talk about products. Understanding how a product fits into other categories of products, from a consumer point of view, prevents wasted time and money educating consumers.

Additionally, content developers use folksonomies to understand appropriate language and to create examples that have deeper meaning for content consumers. This results in content that can profoundly resonate with content consumers and reflect their world view.

About Sharon Burton

Photo of Sharon Burton

Sharon Burton helps companies get the most value out of content and content development processes. Towards this end, she consults, teaches, and writes for companies and organizations large and small. Her graduate training is as a cultural anthropologist, where she worked with hammock vendors in rural Mexico.

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Email: mailto:sharon@sharonburton.com

Website: sharonburton.com

Twitter: @sharonburton

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sharonvburton/

Facebook: facebook.com/sharonvburton

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What is it?

Guidelines that determine who has ownership and responsibility for various aspects of an organization.

Why is it important?

Makes it clear who has authority to make which decisions about content and contributes to smooth operational decisions and processes.

Why does a content strategist need to know this?

Having a governance model is a critical aspect of implementing a successful content strategy. It is important to have a clear chain of command and a clear understanding about who is responsible for which decisions.

Often, organizations leave the task of determining the governance model until the very end of the process—almost after the strategy is complete. People in the organization assume that everyone knows who the decision makers are along the content lifecycle. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

When the governance model is not clearly defined, even the most well-thought-out content strategy will become stuck, unable to move forward, because the decision maker(s) are either unaware of the decisions that need to be made, think that someone else is responsible for making the decisions, or do not understand the urgency of their role.

By determining the governance model early in the development of a content strategy, organizations can ensure that workflows and decision trees are clearly delineated, agreed to by all parties, and strictly adhered to as the strategy is put into action.

About Val Swisher

Photo of Val Swisher

Val Swisher founded Content Rules in 1994, an end-to-end content services provider that helps customers plan their global content strategy, create content in structured and non-structured environments, and work with their source content to prepare it for translation. Content Rules is the exclusive provider of The Rockley Strategic Method™ and a certified service provider for the Acrolinx optimization software. Val is the author of Global Content Strategy: A Primer (XML Press, Summer 2014).

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Email: mailto:vals@contentrules.com

Website: contentrules.com

Twitter: @contentrulesinc

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/valswisher