Localization For Local Markets (Why Spanish Matters in the US)
Localization is traditionally equated with international expansion, yet few companies recognize that it is equally important and profitable to make their products and services accessible to alternate languages in their home market, even if they never expand abroad. Localizing a product for local users is also a way to get systems and processes in place to support multilingual operation, minus the risk of prematurely expanding into new and unfamiliar territories.
Much of the software industry is centered in the United States, or at least that’s where a lot of the initial company formation and product development takes place. Most managers I deal with here seem to assume that the US is a monolingual country, when in fact, that’s not the case at all. They treat localization as something to be dealt with if they decide to expand into other countries, not an opportunity to address new and fast growing markets at home.
There are currently 35 million Spanish speakers in the United States (sources: Pew Research, US Census Bureau). That’s well over 10% of the population as a whole, and as anyone who lives in the Southwestern US can tell you, the percentage here is much higher than that. The Spanish speaking population is also the fastest growing demographic in the US. So you’d think that companies would be quick to make their products and services accessible in Spanish, but among earlier stage companies that’s largely not the case.
Top Ten Languages Spoken in the United States
1) English — 229 million
2) Spanish — 35 million
3) Chinese — 2.6 million
4) Tagalog — 1.5 million
5) French — 1.3 million
6) Vietnamese — 1.3 million
7) German — 1.1 million
8) Korean — 1.0 million
9) Russian — 880,000
10) Arabic — 840,000
It’s well known that people prefer to use products and services in their native tongue. English may be a lingua franca, especially for business transactions, but given the option of using a service in their native language or their second language, most users will opt for the former (and if given a choice of services, will opt for the service that is most welcoming to them).
Many of the more interesting services being developed today act as brokers for service providers (ride/car sharing services are an especially good example that most readers will be familiar with). It’s easy to see where adding options to match customers and workers by language makes sense. Someone looking to hire a taxi or a handyman will be more comfortable dealing with someone who speaks their primary language, especially if they are not especially fluent in English. The tendency to conduct business within an ethnic demographic is pretty strong, so this is also a way that service providers can differentiate themselves by building features to enable this option.
There are two reasons many companies should consider localizing for customers within their home country. The first is money, as the Spanish speaking population in general is an important and fast growing market in the US (in other countries there are usually one or two significant secondary languages, for example French in Canada). The second is to prepare for future international expansion by making your systems multilingual and by getting systems and vendors in place to support this. The process of upgrading to support multilingual operation is not easy, so by getting this out of the way while localizing for in country users, a company can prepare itself so that if it decides to enter a new market (Canada for example), adding the languages needed in that market can be done easily and quickly because all of the technical and logistical infrastructure needed is already in place.
This is also a good way to de-risk localization by separating the technical work of upgrading to multilingual operation from the operational and market risks associated with introducing a product into a new and unfamiliar market. For example, by localizing your ride sharing application in Spanish for US users, you don’t expose your system to new regulatory risks since you’re offering the same product in the same territory, just making it more user friendly for people who prefer to speak Spanish. So you can get all of the localization issues completely sorted out, then look at expanding into other Spanish speaking markets in Latin America.
The same systems and processes you use for localization, can also be used to streamline UI/UX improvements, a topic I covered in this article. (In this context, you can think about UI/UX staff as translators who translate functional English into highly polished English that is suitable for publication). That’s another reason to look at getting into localization earlier in your product’s development path.
In general, it’s a good idea to assume that at some point, your product will need to support users in other languages if it is successful, so it’s wise to start the process of preparing for multilingual operation well before the requirement is forced on you.
Brian McConnell is an engineer, inventor and author based in San Francisco. He is currently the director of localization for Insightly, one of the leading CRM services for small businesses.
