Why engineering firms need to prioritize localization and translation as a key business imperative for production adoption.
Communication in multiple languages is essential in today’s global economy because it acts as a gateway to multinational sales profiles and worldwide brand recognition. The availability of materials in the purchaser’s native language is becoming an increasingly important criteria for sales transactions in all sizes of countries. According to McKinsey & Co., new product introductions that are deferred by six months or more spur a 33% reduction in long-term profitability over the life of the product. This loss of profitability occurs over the course of the product’s entire lifespan. Even though the vast majority of companies are aware of the importance of addressing content development and management in conjunction with localization and translation, they frequently find themselves at a loss for how to actually accomplish this goal. However, ad hoc and compartmentalized approaches are the norm, and democratic accountability is the means by which the global goal can be achieved. In addition to this, many businesses do not consider the processes of localization and translation to be an essential part of the content lifecycle. Instead, they view these activities as incidental black boxes into which “source content is placed, and translated content is extracted.” Despite shifts toward providing information in the customer’s native language as a way to improve the overall customer experience and gain a competitive advantage, content globalization is still typically left until the very end of the product delivery process. Even though a great number of companies are now producing content in a very wide variety of languages, discussions regarding the enhancement of technologies and processes have not yet moved up from the level of individual departments and regions to the level of the entire enterprise.