It’s surprising, but here in 2019, our industry professionals are still fighting US-Centric perspectives that see software globalization as a low priority. There are still attitudes that US English is fine for expanding to global customers.
The battle has certainly gotten easier, but it still remains. There’s also tactical friction, in that localization can seem expensive and to get in the way.
There are many globalization objections and conditions I have heard in the last couple of years.
Globalization Objections and Conditions
- Our customers are technical and need to learn English anyway.
- Our distributor says that if we give them our source code, they can just replace the strings with Chinese (what is this, 1995?).
- We are already selling in these countries without doing anything new.
- Localization is expensive.
- We’ve already internationalized, but we’ve never tested that out and never translated.
- We just don’t have time for that, we’re under a lot of release time pressure.
- That’s a just translation.
These issues and judgements are a symptom of misunderstandings and limited mindsets.
There are organizational objections and impediments to globalization success that start with broad cultural mindset shortcomings, and then there are those that ultimately deal with day to day points of friction. As localization leaders, we need to consider both.
Localization is much more than a project management exercise, even if that is a person’s literal job title.
Webinar
In our webinar, we address cultural and tactical directives toward building more globally aware and responsive teams. We cite examples from experience, plus we’ve polled a few known industry experts.
And if you want to share your own success story, let us know and we can include it in the webinar.
Date/Time
Date: August 22, 2019
Time: 9am PT | 12pm ET | 18:00 CET
Duration: 45 minutes, plus audience Q&A
