Localization is the Way to Become Global

American companies are outplaying their European counterparts in the business of website translation and localization with almost fifty percent of the market.

With a gloomy outlook for the domestic economy, more and more US-based companies are looking to expand their business operations in overseas markets. Translation and localization services have always been essential to global commerce, branding, and other types of communication. But now, languages are also relevant to have online presence on social media platforms.

Why are American companies leading in the web localization and translation business?

In the US, translation has become a $10 billion industry and the biggest translation companies in the world, including L-3 Communications, Lionbridge Technologies and Language Line are American companies.

The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter. The spread of the Internet, the globalization of national economies, and the growth of job outsourcing have stimulated demand for professional translation services. To succeed in foreign markets, businesses are forced to adapt your product to the target locale.

Having multilingual websites and multilingual social media content increase the chances of engaging with language-specific internet users. US companies that have made that connection, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Mozilla, were the top five of 100 websites ranked for their multilingual and global traffic by the research firm Common Sense Advisory.

Americans are very aware of the advantages of connecting their businesses with local consumers. Big companies such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have demonstrated that using well-localized marketing campaigns is easier to engage local customers and the website concept and message is a relevant element of the general marketing strategy.

The new technologies have easier the internationalization process for American SMEs and they are following that path of well-established global companies.

The concept of localization is not only limited to the language industry providing. A comprehensive localization strategy implies providing different types of products, pricing, marketing and even customer service strategies.

Maybe it is time for British SMEs to expand their business horizons and start looking to the Asian, China and South American markets to recalibrate their performances in the years to come. We shouldn’t ask our prospective customers to speak our language; we should speak theirs