Delivering support content in a single language can be frustrating. Multiplying that by five or ten languages can be downright daunting and intimidating. However in today’s global business environment, delivering localized language support can be a significant differentiator if not an imperative.

This series of tips is designed to help you get started on the road to effective, efficient, multilingual, cross-cultural support. The tips are designed to help you save money, deliver information faster, and leave you with a happier multilingual user base.

Tip 1: Don’t try to localize everything!

As a vendor, we’re often approached by companies and asked to provide a quote for translating everything in their knowledge base. Broad initiatives like this most often don’t make it past the first quote. In general, translating everything in your knowledge base is too cost prohibitive. The good news is: You can provide world class support without translating everything!

Start with a content audit
Before you begin to consider translation costs, you should audit your support content. During the audit, you’re searching for two things. First, you want to find out what information exists and in what languages. Secondly you want to figure out how (and how often) it’s being used.

Some basic questions include:

• What material exists, in what languages?
  
• Is there redundant (similar answers to the same questions) material that can be removed?
  
• Which documents are accessed most frequently, does it vary by region?
  
• If you already provide multilingual support, are there specific documents that are requested more in one region than another?

Answers to these and similar questions are designed to help you prioritize solution categories and languages for your localization efforts. The idea is to target your translation efforts to get the right information to the users who need it, without having to translate the whole of your knowledge base.

Consider your business requirements
A second important step in understanding what information needs to be translated are your regional business requirements. Ask yourself:

• What countries do you do the most business in? The least?
  
• What is the relative maturity of your business in each of these regions/countries?
  
• What is the competitive landscape in each of these regions/countries?
  
• Are you expanding? Where?
  
• What geographies are more tolerant of working in a secondary language than others?
  
• What is the general skill level of the people who will be using support information?

These questions should help you build a roadmap for what information to translate and in what order.

Understand your process
The last thing to examine in an audit is the processes you use to create and distribute information.

• Who are the authors?
  
• How are requests for new FAQs or articles processed?
  
• How frequently do you update existing information and add new information?
  
• How quickly does new information need to be disseminated?

Strengths or deficiencies in one region or another may help you make some upfront decisions on how to tackle your translation. It will be far less expensive to start translating where you have existing processes or resources to take advantage of. Once you’ve gained experience in one region, you can replicate that model in others. You might also choose different translation strategies in different regions depending on your available resources.

Combining a content audit, a review of your business needs, and a review of your processes will help you build a solid foundation for making intelligent decisions about translation.

About the author
Michael Rosenblatt is an Enterprise Solution Director for Lionbridge Technologies. He is responsible for helping companies adapt existing processes and technology to deliver globalization solutions that meet specific goals. Lionbridge Technologies provides complete multicultural content creation, content management, and localization services for the Global 1000. You can reach Michael at Michael_rosenblatt@lionbridge.com.