Going glocal

Businesses can no longer be merely global. Now they must aspire to be 'glocal', combining the reach of the multinational corporation with the familiarity of the local family business. The web can help such businesses to establish their brands throughout the world, but to maintain the impression of a local presence in each country, a company has to get its message across in a variety of languages.

Manual translation can be time-consuming and expensive, so many large companies are turning to automated translation services. Most of us will be familiar with websites such as freetranslation.com, which offer rather rickety automated translations between a selection of languages. Businesses require a higher standard of prose, but the quality of automated systems is such that they can now produce a useful first draft.

"Automated, or machine, translation is increasingly becoming critical in enabling the delivery of foreign language content," Mark Lancaster, chief executive of SDL International, which provides translation services for Microsoft and Yahoo!, said during a Q&A with Times Online. "It will, however, never totally replace humans because machine translation will never deliver the high publishable quality required to deliver a company brand."

Q&A with Mark Lancaster, chief executive of SDL International

What does SDL International do?
We are in the business of helping companies go global. Through our software and services, organisations like Philips and Getty Images can communicate and compete internationally because their information and brand identity is delivered in a consistent way across the globe in local languages. Being first to market is pointless if you can’t communicate with your audience. Articulating your message in the local language is the only way to ensure success and must be at the heart of any global marketing strategy.

What does globalisation mean for branding and how are organisations addressing this?
The brand is the voice and identity that organisations rely on so heavily in today’s competitive globalised environment. By triggering an emotional response, the brand is also one of the most competitive and critical differentiators. Managing, protecting and communicating the brand identity and message centrally is a highly complex task which has do be done consistently across multiple languages.

Unfortunately, within many organisations, entrenched managers within regional groups or silo departments still act locally because they enjoy local autonomy. Consequently, managing the company brand centrally is not seen as a priority. The fact is that the business landscape is becoming increasingly global and companies must act global. There is no room for fragmented communications strategies with separate brand identities - failing to understand this is a serious mistake.

How about marketing over the Internet, especially the localisation of marketing on the web. What is your perspective?
The internet is the business tool of the 21st century, but its full potential won’t be achieved until global businesses realise the power of localisation. The irony is that despite its unrivalled power in making organisations global, the medium itself is far from being global in its nature.

For a long time, the Internet has primarily been an Anglo-Saxon tool of communication, but it is a mistake to assume that all internet users will use English, especially when you consider that Mandarin is more prevalent on the web. Communicating to all countries in one language is an outdated colonial approach with no place in today’s global business environment. Organisations have to adopt a tailored linguistic approach for different markets and cultures.

How important is consistency in language?
The internet has changed everything. It enables any company to open a shop-window to the world and its message to be delivered to a global audience instantaneously. But this is not enough, and organisations realise that. If a system is not in place to manage the thousands of web pages of an organisation’s content on a global scale, they will simply not be able to drive consistency of communication. This is not only damaging to brand and company reputation but also a threat to compliance. Consistent explanation of a battery disclaimer is not just a nice-to-have but a legal necessity.

Who are your biggest – and most interesting – clients?
We work with world leading brands across many sectors. Take Philips in the consumer electronics space. It used to take the company four months to launch a product into 30 languages simultaneously. They now do it in a week and have also reduced translation costs by 30 percent. Their market is one of the most competitive in the world, and this global information management strategy is imperative for getting ahead of the competition.

Another good example is Best Western in the travel sector for which we have synchronised its web sites across Europe and the Far East. As a company in the global travel and tourism sectors, it’s critical for it to communicate with its customers in local language to provide the ultimate customer experience. Sony is another interesting case where we have enabled them to communicate with a global audience by translating their websites into 20 languages.

How reliable is your technology – can it replace human translators?
Automated, or machine, translation is increasingly becoming critical in enabling the delivery of foreign language content. It will, however, never totally replace humans because machine translation will never deliver the high publishable quality required to deliver a company brand. Through our service offering knowledge-based translation, we lead the world in delivering publishable quality automated translation. We also add human editors to check and correct the output at the end.

What’s your position in the market for Global Information Management?
Any company aspiring to trade on the global stage must look at how they manage the delivery of information to global audiences. Through the use of technology, companies can drive significant efficiencies across their translation supply chain and re-use massive amounts of content. The winning formula for success in today’s global business environment is quick time-to-market while maintaining and driving brand consistency and company reputation. Global information management makes that happen.