The Dos & Don'ts of Globalization

by Penny Lunt

"The attitude that America is the center of the universe is not the right one," says Ruth Chambers, senior IT manager at JD Edwards. This Denver-based ERP vendor does business in 80 countries, has 18 international Web sites and is adding new sites aimed at foreign countries every day.

"We're very sensitive about looking regional when we're [doing business] in other countries," Chambers says.

For many companies, using the local language and recognizing local culture isn't just a matter of sensitivity, it's a business necessity. This was the case for PTC, an engineering software supplier based in Needham, MA; the company gets 62 percent of its revenue from outside the U.S.

"We have to act globally as well as think locally, and that's been a challenge for us on the Web," says Dan Starr, vice president of e-business at PTC. "The Web is the primary source of information for a lot of customers. Most people will go and check a company's Web site five minutes before the rep calls on them."

Chicago-based insurance giant Aon has offices in 120 countries, and the company is now delivering localized content within a global framework.

"Our global site represents products and services that are offered internationally," says Chris Strout, site manager for Aon.com. "However, because insurance, human resources consulting and reinsurance — our major areas of business — are so heavily regulated and have so many flavors in each country, we've adopted a very focused, country-specific Web strategy."

What these companies have learned is that it's not enough to simply translate content into the world's leading languages. Localization starts with translation, but you also have to recognize cultural and legal differences on a country-by-country basis. At the same time, your brand and corporate identity should not be reinterpreted at the local level, so it's important to strike a balance between local and central control.

Taking on Translation

When U.S. companies first started globalizing their content en masse some three years ago, the biggest challenge was a very basic one: Web content management software didn't support Cyrillic and Asian characters. Most vendors have since added support for Unicode and multibyte databases to their systems, which means they can store and display ISO standard languages.

The bigger challenge today, according to Chris Harris-Jones, principal analyst at London-based Ovum, is large-scale translation. "The big issue is that when you create a new piece of content in English, that then has to be translated into multiple languages," he says. "You need to coordinate that to make sure that whenever you update the master English version, you also update all the translations."

The content management system needs to create placeholders for all the language translations and trigger workflows to get those translations done, approved and posted to the Web. Many Web content management systems are capable of supporting batch translation. Yet companies with high volumes of translation work often turn to globalization management systems such as those offered by GlobalSight of San Jose, CA, Uniscape of Sunnyvale, CA, or Idiom of Waltham, MA.

For PTC, getting new product descriptions out into nine languages on 19 different sites was a real challenge. Last fall the company purchased Idiom software to automate this task, and it plans to be using it to manage the translation process by June. If an English product description is posted to the corporate site, the system will determine which languages it needs to be translated into and will route it to in-country translators. Next, the software will route the translated descriptions to in-country Web editors who will review and revise cultural references. Finally, once translated content is approved, it will be posted to the site automatically.

"For a large company like ours to put lots of people on managing the translation process would have been very expensive," Starr says. "Without the software, we would have added four or five people. With the software, we added one person."

Even with supporting technology, errors in translation can and do occur, especially when large volumes of content are being translated quickly. As JD Edwards reformatted its corporate graphics to go on its Chinese Web site, a phrase on one of the graphics was accidentally translated "Big Chicken."

"One of our salespeople from China called and said, 'Hey, what's the Big Chicken?'" recalls Chambers of JD Edwards.

Chambers says that translation is still a major challenge. "There are no automated tools yet, as much as people would like to tell you that there are," she says.

So what can companies do if they don't have translators on staff? Many turn to globalization outsourcing agencies that accept English documents by e-mail and send back translations. One such service is provided by SDL of Plano, TX, and GlobalSight, the software supplier mentioned earlier, also has a translation service. Harris-Jones at Ovum says such services can be quite effective.

"Say you want content in a huge range of languages," says Harris-Jones. "Your chances of having in-house people who are not only good in the languages but who are actually good translators are slim; being able to speak a language does not necessarily make you a good translator."

Cutting Translation Costs

Translation can be expensive. Starr at PTC estimates that it costs 20 to 40 cents a word. Rather than translating its entire 5,000-page Web site into nine different languages, PTC translates selected pages based on local interest and ROI.

Rochester, NY-based Eastman Kodak, which sells its products in almost every country in the world, has reduced its translation costs by thinking globally when it produces product documentation.

"When we create our copy, we need to recognize that phrases such as 'Groundhog Day' have no meaning outside the U.S.," says John Bustard, manager of technical knowledge management. Kodak technical writers now either replace U.S.-centric terms with more globally acceptable ones or flag them for the translators. The company has trained its 100 writers to simplify their writing for product manuals and brochures. For example, using different terms that mean the same thing, such as "lamp" and "illumination source," adds to the translators' burden, whereas using the same terms consistently minimizes labor.

"In some cases, we could take 30 percent of the words out of a document and say the same thing," Bustard says.

In an effort to cut costs, the company made an assessment of its translation process in late 2000. One finding was that 42 percent of the phrases in use had previously been translated; translation work was being duplicated when it could have been reused.

In the wake of the study, Kodak bought translation memory software that maintains a database of translated phrases. This software reads incoming documents and matches known phrases with approved translations. Bustard says this has eliminated about 56 percent of translation effort and has saved Kodak millions of dollars.

Kodak also saved money by discouraging technical writers from rewriting their copy. "When we upgraded a product from one version to the next, the writers would decide they didn't like the way they worded the product manual the first time, and the next thing you know they were changing everything," Bustard explains.

Now the writers only update manuals to reflect product changes, and thus only small portions need to be translated.

Translations can also have an impact on document and Web site layouts. "Japanese text takes up less space on the screen than German text, so you may not be able to get away with exactly the same design," points out Harris-Jones of Ovum. "Arabic runs from right to left instead of left to right. You need to be aware of what the language looks like and how much of it there is before you can finalize a design."

Kodak learned not to draw lines on diagrams between components and component descriptions because translated text takes up different amounts of space. French, for example, takes up 30 percent more space than English. These days, Kodak numbers each component in a diagram and provides a separate numbered list of the parts.

Avoiding Cultural Faux Pas

Even when all the words have been translated correctly, you can still make mistakes by not respecting local culture. For example, only showing images of Caucasian people would not go over well in a site intended for Asia or the South Pacific.

At PTC, in-country field marketing people create local content that constitutes about 30 percent of the local site content, and they make changes to the remaining 70 percent as necessary. "In-country marketing people will only flag things they feel strongly about," Starr says.

When PTC first developed its Web site for Japan, the site would revert to English if page translations were not yet available. The user experience needed improvement. "To the Japanese, it's offensive to just dump someone in a different language," Starr says. "When we did usability tests, Japanese people asked if we could be a bit more polite."

PTC added an intermediary page that explained, "We apologize, this page is not available in your local language. However, you can click here to view it in English." This approach has gone over well.

In some countries, using English isn't necessarily a problem, but you still have to respect the local culture. In Holland, Portugal and Scandinavia, for example, English is widely understood, but you still need to understand the tax laws, eliminate unworkable promotional ideas and respect the local holidays.

Choosing Central vs. Local Control

One issue that crops up in globalization initiatives is whether text and graphics should be generated centrally or locally. On the one hand, most companies want to maintain a consistent look and feel. On the other hand, companies want to appeal to local residents with content that is relevant to them. If you do generate content centrally, how do you keep the support of local translators?

Korean Air started out with separate U.S. and Korean Web sites. "One year later, we found out that our sites were too different; customers would actually call in and ask why the two sites were so different," says Inkee Lee, vice president and deputy director for the Information Technology and Marketing Development Center at Korean Air.

Today, Korean Air generates 90 percent of its content centrally, and local employees handle translations. The remaining 10 percent of content is developed by local marketing employees and approved by regional content managers. All the sites are managed with VIP Enterprise content management software from Gauss, Irvine, CA.

In Japan, local Web site managers for Korean Air control about 30 percent of their own content, including animations and colorful graphics. This is enough to provide a local experience without diminishing the Korean Air brand.

Consistency was also a problem for JD Edwards, which until last year was using outside marketing agencies in foreign countries to translate corporate content and create original local content. While there were no "incidents" with these agencies, the company's branding wasn't getting across. "People were modifying logos," says Chambers of JD Edwards. "We'd ask them not to and they'd still do it."

Today, JD Edwards' product information is generated at corporate, sent to local translators and routed back to Denver for review before it's posted. The global brand has been strengthened, though at a slight cost to morale, says Chambers.

"The reason we set up the workflow this way was that we were afraid local webmasters wouldn't understand the system and perhaps some [translated] content would pop up on the U.S. site by mistake," she says. "It turned out to be an insult to the international webmasters, who felt that we didn't trust them any more."

One effort that won local support for JD Edwards' centralization project was an effort to translate all metatags for the content templates used by local webmasters. "When [the templates are] in their native language, not only does it impress them that we think that much of them to have done that, but also it's much easier for them to understand where we're going with this project," Chambers says.

Aon, which centralized 50 local Web sites in one year, won over local webmasters by assuming the role (and the costs) of hosting all the local sites. "That's a real cost savings that we spread to these countries," says Strout. Also, although the central Web site managers created global presentation templates specifying colors, fonts, typefaces, spacing, logo placements and image treatments, "those templates were not developed in a vacuum," Strout says. "We sent out prototypes and asked the international webmasters for their feedback. There was an eagerness to help us build the templates."

Aon's local webmasters can choose their own images to display on their home pages and they do their own content translations; however, they are asked to follow a style guide.

The Payoff

The return on investment for globalization may come from a number of places. "You may actually cut costs [with a centralized approach] if you're already doing this on an ad hoc basis — letting different business units in different countries employ their own agencies to set up Web sites and employ translators," notes Nikos Drakos, research director at Stamford, CT-based Gartner. "You may want to get back some control over the look and feel of your corporate Web sites and reduce the potential of damaging your brand identity."

At PTC, ROI partly comes from customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention, but a localized Web site is also a basic cost of entry. "We're an international company, and a cost of doing business in other countries is being able to communicate with people who don't speak English," says Starr. "The cost of retaining customers is about a third of the cost of acquiring new customers. The Web site is a great and cheap way to build communications with existing customers."

Sites also create that crucial first impression; if a site is not localized, then the impression might be that the company isn't interested in doing business in that country.

There are other payoffs, such as opportunities to win new international customers that won't do business with you unless you operate locally. Competitive pressure may cause a company to create a Web presence in a country in which a competitor may be gaining inroads.

"Whatever your reasons, it's important to understand what those reasons are and not just do it because everybody else is doing it," Drakos warns.

What to Look For in Global-Savvy CM Software

It's possible to take an ordinary content management system and use it to create and maintain global Web sites, says Nikos Drakos, research director at Stamford, CT-based Gartner, but he identifies three key features the system must have to be useful internationally. One feature is a version control mechanism that allows multiple language versions of content to coexist. Second is a strong, yet flexible templating mechanism that can carry changes from one template to another. A company may want all the iterations of its Web site to have the same look and feel or it may want to be able to build different Web sites with unique presentation styles and colors for each particular country.

The third feature that Drakos looks for is workflow that can manage the process of sending English copy to translators, getting the translations back, reviewing them and passing them along to webmasters. The workflow should accommodate users outside the company (such as employees of translation or marketing agencies). It should also provide the necessary granular access control and security to let specified users receive alerts to modify content.

When Denver-based JD Edwards centralized its global Web sites late last year, it chose the V6 content management system from Vignette, Austin, TX, for its "universal templates" feature. "We're taking the same templates that we designed for the English site and using them for our Mexico and Brazilian sites," says Ruth Chambers, senior IT manager. Before using Vignette, she says, "we had the problem that many companies have today — freewheeling webmasters who choose their own colors and graphics."

Chicago-based Aon found Interwoven's (Sunnyvale, CA) TeamSite software to be effective at letting the company set up 50 new global Web sites in one year, using one instance of TeamSite — the software's branching structure let Aon set up branches for each country. It also let developers create very straightforward templates that business users use to write and publish content.

Ease of use also attracted Korean Air to VIP Enterprise from Gauss, Irvine, CA. "People from our regional sites are not IT people, they're marketing people who don't know how to handle HTML source code," points out Inkee Lee, vice president and deputy director for the Information Technology and Marketing Development Center. "For the local content they contribute we've created a very user friendly form."

Kodak, based in Rochester, NY, liked Documentum 4i's ability to work with documents as well as SGML and XML content, particularly as the Kodak.com Web site is migrating to XML. Over time, Kodak will replace its methods of sending content to translators, to reviewers, back to translators, and to the Web site managers via CDs and FTPing files, with Documentum workflow. 4i will also become Kodak's corporate repository for all documents, Web site content and rich media assets.

Five Lessons in Globalization

1.Understand why you're globalizing and develop testable assumptions about what constitutes success. "Globalization can quickly get out of hand, even with the best technology to support it, and the cost can be very high," says Nikos Drakos, a research director at Gartner, Stamford, CT. "Establish a framework in advance that will tell you whether or not you're doing well from a business perspective. Have a clear understanding of your priorities and strategies."

2.Don't go into it lightly. "It's not a matter of translating a few pages," Drakos says. Think long-term. Right now the Web site may contain corporate brochures, but in the next few years you may be hosting deeper applications, such as transactional self-service. Will those applications be extensible globally?

If customers start coming in through your French Web site but you lack the resources to keep that site up to date, will you upset those customers more than help them by having a shallow French entry point?

3.Know the local laws and regulations. "Just because you can do something in one country doesn't mean you can do it elsewhere," says Chris Harris-Jones at London-based analyst firm Ovum. "Across Europe, for example, there are different regulations for how products can be advertised for sale."

4.Don't try to do everything at once. "Do it bit by bit, it's a lot to bite off at once," advises Dan Starr, vice president of e-business at PTC, a software supplier in Needham, MA. Look at the key markets you want to reach, look at the languages across those markets and then consider the depth and breadth of content you have in English that you could translate.

5.Cleanse the master site. "Thin it down," advises Kevin Perry, senior manager, marketing Web operations at PTC. "You don't want to have to start translating content that's out of date or not applicable. We spent about three or four months cleansing and rearchitecting our English site before we started any translations."