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Localization in UX: way beyond text translation
UX design helps companies to deliver the best solutions for their business while being respectful of users, not only with regards to their needs but also to their mindset and culture. That’s why every product and service needs to go through a UX design localization process to be successfully adopted in different countries.
My professor of Russian language used to say that translations are like women: if they are beautiful they are not likely to be faithful. I know, it sounds extremely sexist but it was a long time ago and it just sounded like a joke. I was studying to be a translator and this analogy was effective as it is still ringing in my ears. I’m a UX designer and this piece of advice is still precious to me when we talk about product internationalization. A beautiful (i.e. effective) product, as for UX design, is not likely to be faithful to its original version when it becomes available to a different country.
The most common use of the term “localization” is related to the translation of a text in different languages that must sound natural as made by native speakers. The localization process of product and service includes much more than a mere (but proper) text translation.
When a product or service is intended to go global, some internationalization strategies are put in place at a business level, but a UX design team must take action to align the experience delivered to different cultures, tastes, and styles.
Not to get lost in translation, you need to use as a stepstone all those elements that users have in common through different countries and communities and, then, add some value by leveraging those aspects that are remarkable to celebrate diversity. The final version of a product or a service can have the look and feel of something locally-tailored, but still globally consistent when in times of globalization the trend is to go glocal.
For a quick and straight-forward reference, I have collected the main UX design actions applied to the localization of product and service and split them up into two groups: the…
