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Cultured Localisation (Arrrrcamp)

Cultured Localisation (Arrrrcamp)

This talk isn’t really about localisation or internationalisation (add a ‘z’ if you prefer!) – it’s about culture and understanding. It’s about how we should all be approaching localisation challenges as people problems and to give good examples of how to get it right and where you can go so very wrong.

Your framework and tool of choice is the easy part – understanding the people you’re wanting to each out to is oh-so-very hard and too often seen as only just a translation problem – a simple matter of swapping one string for another.

I’ll talk about how people communicate across cultures, even when they are so different. Drawing on my experience as a teacher of english as a foreign language and my own travels and struggles to absorb another people’s language and culture, I hope I’ll change how you think about solving these problems in future.

Hell, I’ll even make you laugh. I hope. The most important thing though, I’ll provoke a discussion, given the diverse multilingual background of the attendees here; it could be a very good one.

Ryan Stenhouse

October 04, 2012
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  1. ®

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  2. How not to offend one billion people
    Cultured Localisation
    @ryanstenhouse

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  3. Story Time

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  4. ebay.com

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  5. travlang.com

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  6. taobao.com

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  7. • Design was ‘too
    foreign’ - wasn’t
    adapted to
    Chinese tastes.
    • Lack of local
    payment options
    • Poor interface
    localisation and
    mistranslation
    • Poor
    communication
    tools for buyers

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  8. Oh yeah...

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  9. business-in-guangzhou.com

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  10. ebay,com

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  11. How to WIN with one billion people
    Cultured Localisation

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  12. What do you see?

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  13. Good
    Passing Tests
    Money
    Bad
    Failing Tests
    Danger

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  14. Death
    Misfortune
    Sadness
    Wealth
    Good Luck
    Happiness

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  15. But... Localisation

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  19. The human touch

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  22. The human touch

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  23. Translation Tools

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  27. ‘What’ is only part

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  28. There’s the why

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  29. There’s the how

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  30. The how?

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  31. How do you say “please” to
    someone from a culture so
    alien to you that it doesn’t
    seem to have a concept of
    politeness?
    Question
    smosh.com

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  32. It’s a Trap!
    http://www.djstreetfighta.com

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  33. Protocol

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  34. Protocol

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  35. Protocol

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  36. Localisation

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  37. Language

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  38. Design?

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  39. Design!

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  40. Design!

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  41. The other side

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  45. Bad localisaiton

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  46. Looks ridiculous

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  47. It can amuse

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  48. But it can also offfend

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  49. Don’t just translate!

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  50. Questions?

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  51. Find me online:
    http://www.ryanstenhouse.eu
    @ryanstenhouse on Twitter
    I work for http://www.freeagent.com and
    we’re hiring. Come have a chat.
    Thanks!

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