Report by Gabriel Karandysovsky.
Events dedicated to localization, such as the 40th edition of Localization World held in Estoril, are a good way to take the pulse of our industry. While most of the discussions inevitably center around the usual suspects – machine translation or globalization, to name just a couple – every once in a full moon, a hidden, wholly unexpected gem makes an appearance on center stage.
Such was the case for Giulia Tarditi, Head of Localization at Monese, who took the spoils during the Process Innovation Challenge (PIC) at LocWorld. Giulia presented the different approach they took to localizing the Monese app, which does away with source text altogether. She aptly named it “Goodbye, Source Text!”
Giulia receiving the award for the PIC at LocWorld. Image courtesy of the official LocWorld Twitter feed.
You might rightfully wonder, what this is about. We did too and decided to follow up with Giulia. However, we ended up not only discussing the project itself and how it came about, but we also found ourselves interviewing one of the brightest minds in the language industry. Giulia, as it turns out, is a woman on a mission. The “Goodbye, source text!” innovation is really just its latest manifestation.
Goodbye, source text: boosting user conversion & localization ROI
The “Goodbye, Source Text!” innovation contradicts the traditional way you imagine translation. Under regular circumstances, you would start with existing source content, which a linguist then translates into the desired target language. Giulia and her team ended up scrapping the whole idea of having source text to begin with.
Instead, the content design team at Monese creates a brief, which describes the functionality of a button or a screen within the app. From there, it is the linguists’ responsibility to imagine what the best translation would be. The critical point behind this idea is that the linguists’ imagination is not hindered by the original source text. Essentially, they are the end-users of the app.
The Bulgarian landing page of Monese. Illustrative image only.
This has been a preview. The full report can be accessed online by Nimdzi Partners.
Special thanks go to Giulia Tarditi, Head of localization at Monese, for her contribution to the language industry and responding to Nimdzi Insights call for an interview.
This report was researched and written by Nimdzi's Managing Editor, Gabriel Karandysovsky. If you wish to find out more about this topic, please reach out to Gabriel at [email protected].
