This is an excerpt of the full article by Paula Shannon, Chief Sales Officer for Lionbridge, published in the 2015 Brand Quarterly & Brand2Global ‘Global Marketing’ Special Edition.
For global organisations, embracing market diversity, attitudes, and cultural preferences has long since ceased to be a ‘nice to have’ element that sat passively behind the global brand strategy; it is now an essential part of any brand program. The rise of ‘glocal’ (global vs local) campaign preparation and localisation has become the imperative. There are clear financial drivers, particularly with digital commerce. In 2014, the economic potential for online communication was in excess of $45 trillion.
However, it’s estimated that today roughly 90 per cent of all online business is done in English. The reason this figure should be causing some concern amongst global organisations is the fact over 70 per cent of web users are not native English speakers.
The obvious question is whether this apparent lack of localisation is having a noticeable impact? The simple answer is, yes. Nearly 75 per cent of non-native speakers will not buy from an English only platform, and only 20 per cent of non-native speakers even feel comfortable with an English-only platform.
Despite the effect that a lack of localisation could be having to businesses, only 10 per cent of all content is even being translated, and the process of true localisation and transcreation goes beyond just translation. For online content to be impactful it has to be locally relevant.
…….
You can read the full interview online at BrandQuarterly.com as an individual website article or check out this and much more great global branding and marketing content in the Brand Quarterly & Brand2Global ‘Global Marketing’ Special Edition.
