Peripheral constraints in the localization of online content

Abstract

In the globalized world we live in, a technology product designed in the US should work equally well in Germany or in Japan. Although English has become somehow the lingua franca of the Internet, people still wish to use products and services in their own languages, which are adapted to their local markets. When a new product is launched in the US, a smartphone for instance, it is expected to be available in other languages and countries almost at the same time as in the US. This requires a great localization and internationalization effort. Localization is therefore of paramount importance for the success of a technology product or service such as a website the core object analysed in this paper). However, website content finds obstacles to be properly localized due to reasons that are not necessarily related to the traditional problems which content adaptation raises. These underlying reasons are peripheral in the sense that non-linguistic, non strictly translational external factors are likely to have an undesired impact on the actual translation and adaptation processes. These constraints, although peripheral, are powerful and can leave very little room to the translator when it comes to culturalize contents. These extratextual factors include how the immediacy of the Internet impacts translation processes, the technical backend of the product, the influence of the technology slang on translation or the effects of the segmentation of markets. For example, due to the immediacy of the Internet, content travels very fast to the homes of different citizens of the world. If a product, e.g., Facebook, becomes very popular in the US, the word will spread fast and it will very likely become popular in other countries even when its content has not been localized yet. As a result, translators frequently have to cope with the fact that the user community is already familiar with the product they are translating. In many cases, English terminology has already settled as-is in a given country. When this happens, translators have to make a challenging decision: whether to adapt the content to the target culture or make the transition to the localized version as smooth as possible to users who already know the product in English. Sometimes they do not even have a choice, as companies want to make sure their brand is untouched, even if it means that its essence is lost in translation. Another peripheral problem to website content adaptation is concerned with the fact that localization is subordinated translation process. Content is subdued to its technical nature. This is a very common translation challenge as, for instance, translators may not have the power to influence the structure of a website and therefore their endeavor to localize it properly to the target locale might be diminished. In addition, translators frequently have to localize content that is tied to an image or a link which for different possible reasons cannot be modified. This obviously limits the job of the translators, who might have to maintain American references because they are linked to an image or a page that cannot be changed in the target context. Culture-marked elements are therefore hindered by these peripheral factors that become indeed so powerful that they can potentially prevent the translator from doing their job, that is, adequately rendering a message towards the target locale.