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Localisation and Translation
Translation and localisation of Web sites and other advertising and promotional materials is a key strategy in opening foreign markets, especially when you‘re selling products or services:
- to precisely-targeted market segments, and/or
- for which customer relationship management is important.
Your Web site is a 24-hour-a-day salesperson for the services you're offering. It must be able to explain your offerings to cross-border prospects, and convince them to buy from you instead of one of your many competitors. To be effective, translation and localisation needs to be undertaken in close coordination with affiliates "on the ground" in the target location.
At this time, ACRO is localizing Web sites for the following markets: United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany.
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Localisation and branding
- Products/services are branded for differentiation from competitors.
- Copy, images and colours create the brand.
- No one single choice of copy, images and colours is universally optimal; the cultural preferences of each target export market must be recognized and accommodated.
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Cultural considerations
- In many markets, local models and surroundings in images are viewed much more favourably than non-native models and surroundings.
- Colours provoke differing reactions in different cultures.
- Navigation conventions differ from market to market e.g., should the "NEXT" arrow point to the right or to the left?
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Technical considerations
- Local phone calls are billed by the minute in many countries; fast downloads and offline browsing are the norm.
- Different countries have different technology-level distributions among Internet users; e.g., not everyone has 3GHz processors, 32-bit color and DSL.
- Localised copy is not always of the same length as the original version; this can affect page layout and require changes in font sizes.
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Legal considerations
- Tax laws differ among markets.
- Some countries have enacted privacy legislation more stringent than that of others.
- Each country has its own laws with regard to marketing, advertising, credit, etc.
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Standards considerations
- 46% of orders placed with e-commerce sites go unfilled as a result of order-processing failures (payment methods, currency conversions, fulfilment problems, etc.)
- Date and time conventions vary.
- Currencies and payment methods vary from country to country.
- Currency exchange rates are ever-changing.
- Differing moral standards affect the acceptability of content and advertising.
Political considerations
- Firms based in any given country may not be highly esteemed in all export markets.
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| Linguistic considerations |
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- There are significant common-usage and idiomatic differences between English as spoken in Ireland and English as spoken in the USA and Canada.
- Idioms and metaphors have to be rephrased to make sense in the target culture.
- You need to be prepared to be contacted by prospects and customers in overseas markets.
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