Companies increasingly understand the important role played by localisation in the expansion of their business. While many have fully embraced the trend of going local to become global, there are a number of cases where poor attempts at localisation have created disastrous situations. These 4 localisation pitfalls are common, and should by all means be avoided.

1. Confusing Localisation with mere translation: Localisation and translation do not mean the same thing. Localisation mainly involves translation, but goes a long way beyond simply changing words. It means adapting your content to a certain market, with due consideration of its geographic, demographic, religious, cultural and political contexts.
2. Ignoring the cultural context: You cannot do business with someone you don’t understand. That’s why you cannot ignore the cultural context of a market when localising for that audience. In this regard, the CEO of Lenovo said that the company follows different business models in different countries, as demanded by their cultural differences.
3. Not updating content once it is localised: The market is a dynamic place which changes rapidly. To be in the game, your communication needs to keep pace. Your localised content needs to be reviewed, checked and updated regularly - to make sure that your business stays ahead of the competition.
4. Not considering language-specific SEO for localised contents: In order to have more exposure and traffic, your localised content needs to be optimised for specific keywords in the target language(s). In fact, for some country-specific Google search engines, it is relatively easy to rank your content in top positions. You can only experience the benefit of this when your content has been optimised using the right keywords in the right context.

You need the help of a professional language services provider to avoid these fatal mistakes. For help with your localisation project or perhaps just some advice and tips, feel free to contact the Vocabridge Localisation team.