Impressed by the level of inadequacy shared around the world these days, we have taken it upon ourselves to make our very own collection of myths and beliefs about the translation and localization industry.
In the following illustration, common misconceptions about translation and the language industry at large are rated from ‘speculation’ to ‘detached from reality’ — in a similar vein to this recently published chart by Abbie Richards.
Nimdzi’s own experts together with external, conservative commentators have put together a collection of well-known theories and beliefs about our industry — and we’ve attempted to ground them in reality.
The result is called the “The Language Industry Conspiracy Chart.” The cited conspiracy theories are based on notes, thoughts and statements shared publicly by industry figures and a variety of companies over the past several years about the world of translation. Most of them, especially those about the machines taking over, have been percolating for some time already and yet still continue to grab headlines.
The chart is broken down into several sections, beginning with those facts that are true and actually happening. Those are different from conspiracy theories as they are grounded in reality. Further up the pyramid, the statements become “fact” no longer, distancing themselves further and further from the realm of reality. On the very top can be found ideas that are nothing less than “reality denial.”
As you begin to expand your target audience to include speakers of languages other than just English, you may quickly find the road ahead of you is much rockier than you had originally anticipated. But don’t fret: creating impactful, lasting multilingual content is a long game, which requires developing the right strategy.
It’s already been six years now since Google revealed that Google Translate processes 146 billion words a day — three times more than what all the professional translators in the world combined can do in a month. That was 2016 and things haven’t really slowed down in the machine translation (MT) universe since.
Deep down, every business person in the world knows it: localizing a company’s content and products can boost revenue — enormously. But how can globalization experts persuade the C-suite — and other stakeholders — to greenlight a localization program? In other words, how do you pitch a localization program? Answer: you create a business case.