Learning and development is the fulcrum of any well-oiled business. When you provide your clients, employees, and partners with the right education at the right time, you instill confidence in the next step in their journey—whether that’s trying a new feature, developing a new skill, or simply engaging with more of your content.
But there’s one element of L&D that’s often overlooked, much to the detriment of learners everywhere. It’s a key driver of your audience’s success, yet traditionally underfunded and deprioritized when the going gets tough.
Localization.
In an increasingly interconnected world, your audience is rarely monolingual. The U.S. alone is home to 500 spoken or signed languages, so even if your audience predominantly speaks English, it may not be their native or preferred language. To educate others effectively, it’s imperative to teach in the tongue each person knows best.
A content localization strategy is your greatest vehicle for educating at scale. Yet, many L&D experts struggle to get funding for localization, let alone deploy those funds effectively. In this piece, we’ll explore the importance of content localization and share tips to help you develop your localization strategy so you can deliver great education in any language.
What is Content Localization?
Content localization is the process of adapting content from its original language for a different region or culture. Localization is most commonly associated with translating text from one language to another, but that’s a narrow definition. Modern localization teams take into account not just words on a page, but videos, audio files, visuals, and other forms of eLearning.
It’s easy to picture content localization like Google Translate: words go in, translation comes out. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Great linguists understand that localization isn’t an exact science; they will often consider not just how to say something, but how to say it as naturally as possible. They will prioritize colloquialisms over stuffy, academic terms. They will also ensure their translations respect any cultural nuances or norms and avoid historical events or idiomatic expressions that their target audience won’t recognize.
Why Your Localization Strategy Matters
Localization is an inherently strategic process. High-quality translations are costly, requiring expertise from someone well-versed not just in the source language, but also in the language of the local market you’re trying to reach. Translations can cost anywhere from $0.10 to $0.50 or more per word, which quickly adds up depending on how much content you need to localize.
But the investment is often worth it—especially as part of a broader content strategy. By building a strong content localization strategy, you enable your L&D team to expand to more markets, reach more learners, and discover new potential customers for your product or service. It isn’t easy; localization is highly time-intensive work, and you’ll likely have to prioritize certain markets over others, at least in the short term. Do it well, however, and you’ll unearth a revenue stream your business might never have tapped otherwise.
Benefits of Content Localization
As an L&D expert, you likely know all too well the value localization can bring to your courses, certifications, and trainings. But advocating for a localization budget can be tough, especially if your employee or customer education program is already understaffed and underfunded.
Whether you’re still on the fence or you’re trying to make the case to senior leadership, here are three compelling reasons to pursue content localization:
1. Improved brand presence
Think of your favorite café or bakery. It’s your go-to pitstop in the morning, and you’ve recommended their coffee and pastries to any friends, family, and peers who will listen. Now imagine a new, competing coffee shop opens across the street. What would it take for you to take your business there?
According to the data, it would take a lot. Forty-six percent of consumers say they’re willing to pay more for a brand name they trust. That’s nearly half of consumers who aren’t just loyal to a brand they know, but also put a premium on it.
Brand consistency is everything in business. The more you invest in your organization’s image, the more likely you are to expand and retain customers. Localization has been instrumental in helping once-local brands, such as Starbucks or Dunkin’, become global brands with massive footprints. It can do the same for your business.
2. Expanded market reach
With a global brand comes access to global markets. By localizing content into the native languages that everyday learners speak, you can educate with confidence, knowing your materials—marketing collateral, sales enablement, etc.—won’t be lost in translation by the time they reach the end user.
Even if your organization is laser-focused on domestic clients, localization can still help with market penetration. Countries are becoming increasingly diverse, with globalization and immigration bringing new cultures and languages to even the most homogenous societies. By investing in content localization beyond the language your organization does business in, you’ll speak to learner personas you didn’t even realize you could reach.
3. Diversified revenue streams
No two local markets are quite alike. As mentioned before, each abides by different traditions, motivations, and cultural norms. What resonates in one market may flop in another—which presents an interesting opportunity for you and your business.
In a perfect world, all people would gravitate to your products and services. But friction happens. Certain countries may be experiencing economic or political turbulence. Others may place an emphasis on more tactile sectors—like manufacturing and construction—over digital ones such as technology and communications.
With that variance comes an opportunity to diversify your customer base and protect your business against potential market fluctuations. The more you invest in content localization, the more exposure you’ll have in foreign markets—and the easier it becomes to “rebalance” your book of business as the global economy evolves.
When to Invest in Content Localization
As important as content localization is, you never want to invest without a strategy. More than 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, yet the top 20 languages account for roughly half of the entire population. So, as tempting as it might sound to localize all your content for hundreds of markets, it’s important to consider what gets you the biggest bang for your budget.
In addition to English, the most spoken languages in the world include Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Japanese. Expand that shortlist to include popular business languages, and you’ll also want to consider Arabic, German (Standard), French, and Korean.
As an L&D team, work together with senior leadership to determine which markets are best positioned to help your current business goals, then invest in those languages accordingly.
Types of Content Worth Localizing
Equally important to the question of “when to localize” is “what to localize.” You might have your target audience solidified and know exactly which language pairings to prioritize, but you likely won’t want to localize every piece of content you’ve ever produced.
Much like a marketing team prunes old content in their content management system (CMS) to prioritize newer, more valuable content, you’ll want to identify pieces of content—whether eLearning or adjacent—that are critical to onboarding new users to your education program.
Here are some general content types to consider as part of your content localization process:
Courses and certifications
As an L&D team, you likely have extensive course materials that may resonate with new markets. Take inventory of your course library and prioritize newer content, as well as any established courses or certifications that are pivotal to understanding your core business, products, or services.
Brand content
Depending on how your L&D team operates, you may work closely with marketers who drive eyes and ears to your education program. It’s important not to work in silos; also consider any webpages, blog posts, videos, emails, and social media posts that contribute to your education goals and ensure they’re included on your localization roadmap.
Software UI and UX
Software localization is an entire process unto itself, requiring input from engineers, product managers, client success representatives, and more. It may be out of scope for your L&D team, but try to coordinate localization efforts with your product team so that any relevant education materials are translated alongside changes to your user interface and UX copy.
Knowledge bases
Help centers are another great opportunity to further the education of your products and services. Work with your support team and/or technical writers to determine which knowledge base articles are most critical to navigating your products successfully. Make sure translations of content are done in lockstep with any software updates, so your international clients feel properly supported.
Tips for Building Your Content Localization Strategy
The globe is massive, but developing a content localization strategy doesn’t have to be daunting. Whether you’re building from scratch or looking to improve your existing process, here are some tips to help improve your content localization efforts:
1. Take a holistic approach.
Localization isn’t the responsibility of any one person or team; it’s a process that involves all corners of your organization. When designing your content localization strategy, consider the full end-to-end learning experience—not just individual courses or assets.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are my organization’s ideal customer profiles (ICPs)?
- Which international markets contain the highest levels of those ICPs?
- How neatly does our content translate? What colloquialisms would we need to address?
- Will we need to redesign or reformat certain pages to fit the target languages?
- Does our learning management system (LMS) support the target languages?
- What sales and marketing implications should we consider before localizing?
The answers to these questions may change drastically depending on the exact language. For instance, German words tend to be longer than English ones and may require more space on the page. Likewise, Arabic is read from right to left, so you might consider redesigning the page so important functions (such as scroll bars) are located on the left, where the eye naturally rests.
2. Leverage the right translation tools.
Today’s tech world is filled with all types of “management systems.” In addition to traditional translation management systems (TMSes), there are plenty of other tools that can help you further your localization efforts.
Practically any organization uses a content management system. These platforms often support various localization plugins, allowing you to submit content for translation without ever needing to hop to another tool.
For an L&D team, the right tool may well be one step closer. If you use a learning management system like Intellum, you can design courses with localization in mind right from the very beginning. Consider not just how content will resonate with your native audience, but how other markets will receive it—and create a personalized learning experience fit to those specifications.
3. Scale with high-quality AI/ML automations.
Localization is a serious time investment. Traditionally, translations had to be done manually, either by employing on-staff linguists or by outsourcing the work to third-party vendors. But artificial intelligence is quickly transforming the landscape, with machine translation models that can significantly accelerate the time it takes to prepare content for other audiences.
As with anything AI-related, it’s important to ensure you’re always reviewing your content and holding it to the highest quality standards. But automations are only improving, and the sooner you explore what’s out there, the more of a competitive advantage you will have in the future.
4. Work smarter, not harder.
Regardless of which tools you use, it’s important to keep an open mind when localizing content. Challenge your existing notions, and always be on the lookout for ways to create efficiencies and avoid duplicative work.
Can your multimedia assets be repurposed across multiple languages? Try creating textless images and videos to get your message across in more universal ways. Likewise, prioritize topics or learning paths with broader cultural appeal—your future self will thank you.
Intellum Helps You Design With Localization in Mind
Intellum is the leading enterprise learning platform. Our LMS platform is trusted by the world’s biggest brands, including Google, Meta, Amazon, and Stripe. With Intellum, you can design courses to your exact specifications or leverage our AI creator agent to accelerate the process. Track success using our analytics dashboard, and prove the ROI of your content to leadership.
We’ve also built quality-of-life features with localization in mind. Export content as a XLIFF file for easy sending to your go-to translation company. For more complex courses, use our API to bulk export and import files. With our LMS, you can customize everything from navigation to segmentation—ensuring a personalized learning experience for any audience.
Learn more about Intellum, and see if it’s a fit for your localization needs.
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