Localization

What localisation actually means

Translation converts words. Localisation makes a piece of content work for an audience in another market, which involves the words and everything around them: timing, cultural references, on-screen text, currencies and units, legal requirements, and the voice that delivers it.

The reason to treat it as a programme rather than a set of separate jobs is coordination. A course localised into eight languages by four suppliers arrives with eight different interpretations of the glossary, eight different voice styles and eight different file structures. Someone has to reconcile all of it, and that someone is usually you.

What a localisation programme covers

• Translation and cultural adaptation of the script
• Native voice casting and recording per market
• Subtitles and captions where they are needed
• On-screen text and graphics adapted per language
• Timing and layout adjustments for text expansion
• A native QA pass in every language before delivery

Decisions that should happen first

Two choices shape everything downstream. The first is voice replacement versus dubbing versus subtitling, which is a budget and audience decision, not a quality one. The second is which language variants you need: European or Latin American Spanish, European or Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified or Traditional Chinese. Getting these wrong is expensive to unwind, so we settle them before any work starts.

One point of contact

You brief once and receive everything back in one structure, with consistent naming and consistent quality across every language. Where a market needs something different from the others, we raise it rather than quietly deciding for you.

Send the content and the target markets and we will scope the programme.