India has 22 official languages and 637 million Internet users, according to a report from KPMG. You can’t expect to dominate the Indian market with English and Hindi localization only. Learn about the 4 digital user-profiles and their language preferences. How to start testing the waters of Tamil, Bengali or Telugu? Listen NOW at 08:59.
More topics:
- the next level of localization in consumer markets, an article from Harvard Business Review
- a new startup Lang, coming straight out of Y Combinator, is here to make continuous localization easy for engineers
- are we going to start localizing podcasts?
This is episode #10 of my speaking practice, also known as the Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization and #translation news across social media delivered to you by the power of my voice.
Timestamps:
08:59 – Learn the language preferences of the Indian market
27:28 – How Walmart and other retailers localize their stores, products and pricing
47:19 – Y Combinator funds Lang, a new localization startup
1:01:51 – Localizing a podcast?
Andrej Zito
This is episode number 10. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. This is the localization podcast. This is the second one that I’m recording here in Philippines. I moved from Makati where I did the last part, which is like the central financial district in Philippines. So there are like a lot of skyscrapers and it’s a lot more modern. Right now I picked a very nice Airbnb in a city that is called Monday you long. So it’s a little bit further away from Makati. So it really looks like the like a third world country here. And this is like one of the main things that I don’t like both Philippines is that like the lack of sidewalks. So like whenever I go out like I pretty much have to walk right next to the cars and also crossing the street is very, very unorganized here, you basically just have to squeeze in, or just grow your balls and try to hope that the cars will stop.
Andrej Zito
But otherwise the Airbnb super great. I’m happy that I finally recorded the footage for my second educational middle video, which will be kind of like a book review of the power of now. So I already have all the footage, I share a lot of experience from landmark forum. So many of you that know me, you have been exposed to the immediate transformation that I got right after doing landmark. So I will be releasing that video. Hopefully, this week soon. I have most of the edits done. So it should be ready pretty much soon. So that just like a quick heads up. I don’t think the usual standard disclaimer is for those of you who are listening, for the first time, this is my solo podcast that I started. One of the reasons why I started doing it, it’s so that I can practice speaking my thoughts without a lot of preparation.
Andrej Zito
So there’s no script for this podcast. And what I do is I go look at Slater slater.com, pretty much the only website that does decent articles and coverage of the localization industry. And I try to pick something that’s that I find interesting that that teaches me something new, or something where I can provide a lot of extra comment for you guys. And then I also do the same thing with Twitter and LinkedIn. So I try to cover social media as well and see what people are posting what kind of content usually it’s lsps, the lsps create. And again, I pick something interesting and share with you. Another thing that I started doing only last time was that I’m also recording myself on video, which is something new that I wasn’t doing before. So this episode will also be available on YouTube for those of you who are listening.
Andrej Zito
And you can see actually me speaking right now, so And also, another important thing is that I’m also recording my screen, my laptop screen. So the articles that I will be covering. It might be helpful to you. If you want to see some stuff for example, like if I go like to a website of a certain LSP or like new new tool or new platform. So you will find that there. Okay. Is there anything else that I wanted to say? I think Oh, yeah. Another experiment that I’m doing right now is that I was just thinking Hmm, so today I was thinking like, how to how to explain this. So long time ago, I had this idea because I was I was like a huge twitch fan. When I was working on my startup and I thought like maybe I want to livestream my startup journey. And I wasn’t doing it then back then. Because in Thailand, my internet wasn’t that great.
Andrej Zito
So at least I tried to kind of like, record myself and then put the stuff on YouTube. But of course, like it’s not good content for YouTube, if you don’t entertain the audience, pretty much every second of the video. So, so now I’m just testing, and I’m live on Twitter. So this whole episode is also live streaming on Twitter. And currently I have zero, people watching because I have like, I don’t know, seven or six followers on Twitter. It’s not huge. But the reason why I did this is that I, I still think and I still want to do it. And I still want to be the first one in the localization industry, that would be kind of like live streaming, whether it’s project management, or whatever, related to to, to localization. So I started with a podcast, there are a couple of people doing podcasts in localization, I don’t think there are a lot of people doing a lot of video content when it comes to localization.
Andrej Zito
But to me, the ultimate goal is live streaming, pretty much like if I woke up, I really want to livestream pretty much my whole day and show you like, in real practice, like how, how I work, or hopefully, like the company and the team that I work with how we work and how localization is done and engaged with the people right there, like, on Livestream. And maybe I was just delaying this, because this is kind of like a landmark thing. out there always, like try to like build things slowly. And I know it’s kind of it’s like, like taking slow steps is one recommended, like a business practice, not even business practice. It’s kind of like it kind of makes common sense. But to me, it’s always like I have I think like, I have to do this, this and this and this to get myself in a position to start talking about what I really want to do, you know, so this is me kind of like trying to skip those steps.
Andrej Zito
And I think me trying to do think step by step is actually something that has been limiting me. And I only realized this when I assisted with landmark forum. That was shortly before I went away to the Philippines where I am right now. And and yeah, I think that sums up some time, somehow I just need to find the courage to to push the the final goals that I want to achieve, versus of I don’t know, like slowly, slowly climbing the corporate ladder, and then maybe working on something that I really want to do. But I don’t want to bore you with this thing because this podcast is not about me. Well. It is with me, but it is not. I don’t want to talk too much into talk too much about these topics. Maybe I should start a different podcast, which would be about landmark. But anyway, let’s get into it.
Andrej Zito
So for this one I prepared. I selected a couple of articles. To be specific is 123. I think it’s only three main articles, but I still think it will take me a lot of time to go through them. So the first one is from Slater and it’s a report from KPMG. Which exam is examines Indians online language and content preferences. The most striking thing about India’s internet users is their sheer number. even lower data costs and increased mobile phone use Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Marathi to name just a few of the country’s 22 official languages have entered the digital space in a big way. There is strength in numbers and such a big and largely untapped group of internet users is, in a sense digital marketers dream. Yet a recent report into the nuances of India’s digital landscape pointed out the pitfalls of failing to distinguish between distinct groups of online users in India.
Andrej Zito
The KPMG report makes the case that taking a one size fits all approach to the country’s internet users would be overlooking the preferences of different user groups, thus missing the opportunity to offer a truly tailored online experience. So the reason one of the reasons that the reason why I picked this article to be the first and I was actually reading it when I was taking the grab two days ago, I think, yeah, I think it was two days ago, is that this is this article again plays to what I was talking about. In the last episode, in the second part where I was talking about Facebook’s payment to to measure machine translation quality. And that’s where I was talking about cohorts, like having smaller cohorts like more customized, more specific. And that may be we as localization should determine quality for each cohort, rather than just having like some vanilla quality or vanilla translated content for the whole market.
Andrej Zito
And so this article really plays into that because you shouldn’t be tackling the Indian market like with one translation. And that’s not only talking about the different languages that are used there, but maybe that might be the first starting point. So let’s continue with the article. According to the KPMG report, published on August 23 2019, there were 637 million internet users in India, as of March 2019, an increase of 29% from March 2018, the majority 614 million. So that’s pretty much everyone access to internet through their mobile phones. So that’s one important thing that if you go to India, you have to make sure that your website and content is optimized for mobiles. And this is where it gets interesting. The report splits out Indian internet users into Ford this thing profiles analyzing traits like their online habits and linguistic preferences.
Andrej Zito
Regional audiences and local language demand is one of the defining trends of India’s digital landscape report set, not news per se, since local languages have been at the center of India’s digital growth story for some time now KPMG, segmented the country’s internet users along income lines into digital sophisticated digital enthusiasts, digital mainstream and fringe users. And there’s a very small table here, which if you’re just listening to this, I’ll try to I’ll try to voice this for you guys. The people on YouTube will be able to see this. So the first group is digitalist, sophisticates, and this are people whose annual household income is over 70,000 USD. And the user base as of 2018, is 18 million, it’s 18 million. The second or much larger group is digital enthusiasts, whose household household income is 8500 to 70,000 USD, and there’s 190 million of them.
Andrej Zito
The third group, the largest one is the digital mainstream, which earns 4000 to 8000 USD annually, that’s really low. And there’s 310 million of them. And the last group is fringe users who probably earn less than 4000 USD a year, and there’s 10 million of them. So the two biggest groups are the digital enthusiasts and the mainstream. And together they compose over 500 million of users as of 2018. So and here’s, here’s where it gets to the language part. So the two middle income groups, that’s digital enthusiasts and digital mainstream, comprise users who predominantly consume Indian languages online, although digital enthusiasts also use pockets of English to report set. These language preferences signals significant opportunity for language service providers.
Andrej Zito
Since the number of users in both middle income groups is projected to grow considerably in the next six years, by 2025, the report estimated that another 300 million users will go online, and most will fall into the digital mainstream category. That is people who primarily speak at least one Indian language. While the report stated that English will retain its position as an aspirational language in India, and remain in use in professional and social circles, there is still a big opportunity to be found in the Indian languages, companies attempting to enter India or strengthen their position in the Indian market should be aware of the language preferences of the country’s digital user groups, particularly given the increasing appetite for online spending. KPMG noted that both digital sophisticates and digital enthusiasts display an increasing propensity towards spending money online for such services as over the top Ott streaming.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so let me first start, my experience is that when we were localizing anything into for India, we always used Hindi. I think, like, given the size of the market, I think many companies probably don’t even do that. Maybe they stick to English, the majority of all the internet users in India actually speak at least one Indian language. And as it’s like, you know, like, when you trying to tell someone like why localization is important, you always tell them that, hey, like people prefer to consume and buy products or services there are in their local language. So even though people in India might understand English, if you need like a competitive advantage, or you want to have like a better entry to the market, or like a better reputation, if you speak the, their own language, then you would be doing a lot better. It sounds so bad.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, and that’s, that’s the only that, you know, select, as I was saying, like, my experience was that we only localized stuff into Hindi. But we learned from the beginning of the article that there are actually 22 official languages, you probably wouldn’t do the best job, you would have the best ROI if you just localize your content into Hindi, and then you would apply it into old readers regions in India. So the question is, who is actually doing a lot more targeted localization, which would include more Indian languages than just Hindi? I don’t know. Okay, let’s continue with the article. Rise of video video consumption is one of the main drivers of India’s digital growth, with Indians reportedly spending nearly 75% of their online time watching video content. This growth in video consumption is being turbocharged by the increasing availability of videos in local languages.
Andrej Zito
For example, YouTube in the video streaming app has seen a phenomenal increase in the consumption of regional content. And Indians themselves are also creating more local language content on YouTube. A growing number of Indians have also started to pay for the content they consume online with the number of Ott video and audio subscriptions climbing by 43% in the 2019. financial year, according to KPMG. That’s good news for India’s media localizers who provide a range of dubbing and subtitling services for pan Indian audience. The fastest growing group digital enthusiasts will be the most responsive to Indian language content. KPMG said that predominantly it will be Indian narratives that will be popular among this group, which is set to reach half a billion people by 2030.
Andrej Zito
Although KPMG profiles, the Typical Indian digital consumer as being non English speaking and increasingly willing to spend money online, there are still some online markets that remain dominated by English English language content. According to KPMG, there is progress to be made in the 2 billion US the Indian digital advertising market, which remains heavily English language centric, here too, there is likely to be a shift towards using Indian languages, as advertisers realize the importance of catering to their targets language preferences. So that is exactly what I was saying before, people like in India might understand when you promote to them or when you offer services or when you like your website is in English. But you will be doing a lot better job.
Andrej Zito
If you if you basically talk to them in their own language, you know, that’s what localization is about, right? Of course, we need to always consider the ROI. But again, let’s go back to another point that I was using in a lot of the episodes before and this pretty much experimenting. And the easiest way to start experiment use with with marketing, or social media localization. Because if for now, for example, like right now, maybe if you just using marketing in English, or maybe in Hindu, maybe what you might want to do is just try to translate the same. I don’t know social media posts or your ads and try more Indian languages and see how they perform. Tackling such a huge market that speaks so many languages, just with like the most popular languages, probably isn’t the most effective way to reach most of the Indian customers.
Andrej Zito
This is basically just doing the cohorts based on the language and experiment within that. What I was saying in the last episode was that there should be also specific messaging based on for example, age groups or, or interests or whatever, you know, the, the contextual. The contextual, actual messaging that Gary Vee is talking about a lot. We have India, there are a lot of people in India. Let’s say that right now you’re doing just English, and maybe Hindi, or maybe you just using Hindi, whatever. But I think you should do, if you wanna see if there’s a better way, in getting more specific and tailored to different people in India, you could add, let’s say, Tamil, or telugu, or Bengali. And just do like a very smaller, kind of like a test experiment, to see how people would react if they saw your message in these new languages.
Andrej Zito
And then what I was pointing out in the last episode is that you’re still trying to talk to everyone with the same message. So whether they’re teenagers, young people, I don’t know female, male, you know, all these different demographics. So a more advanced experiment with actually use all these new new Indian languages. But the message would be different based on different demographics, is it demographics or, I don’t know this marketing term. So we have five age groups, five Indian languages, so 25 different combinations. And then when we talk about translation quality, and what you would actually need to do is that you would probably need to have two different at least two different versions for each combinations. So technically, you would need like 5050 different translations and see how they perform.
Andrej Zito
So this would be more sophisticated and a more detailed experiment that I think would yield a lot of interesting data that you could analyze such a portion and talking such a bullshit. Yeah. Doesn’t make sense. Yeah. So I know what I need to do I know what I need to do, because like, I find it like very difficult to to narrate my fault right now about the experiment that I think we should be doing and testing. And that is when it comes to both having a more contextual and more specific messaging towards a smaller, more specified cohorts, rather than doing one big message to the whole Indian or Chinese market. And then we should also be experimenting with the translation quality because the translation quality, the person who does a very good job for translating message and and updating it and localizing it to a certain specific cohort doesn’t mean that he will do a job for different cohort.
Andrej Zito
So technically, you might be using a bunch of translators for the same English source. Well, the English shows will probably be different based on cohorts, as well. So okay, scratch that idea. Yeah, but within the within a certain campaign. Yeah. Let’s start with this within a certain campaign that would come with different English versions to experiment through throughout different cohorts. You might be using more translators. You might be using more translators? Just for one market. Okay, that was a very poor coverage of this article. But whatever I’ll have to do with it. Somehow, it just always ends up working. And anyway, okay, so that was article number one. And let’s go to article number two, which is from Harvard.
Andrej Zito
The article number two is from Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, how do you say it in English? How about what the article number two is from Harvard Business Review. And it’s called localization, the revolution in consumer markets. So this is a very, very long article that I found on I think somebody linked in on link, link hit linked it on LinkedIn. So this is localization, the revolution in consumer markets. Because the article is so long, I took a couple of paragraphs that I liked. And I’m just going to read them because I think that’s the only thing that I’m good at right now. It’s just reading, I cannot talk at all, the era of standardization is ending. Consumer communities are growing more diverse in ethnicity, wealth, lifestyle and values. Many areas, moreover, are now saturated with big box outlets, and customers are rebelling against cookie cutter chain stores that threaten the unique characteristics, such as architectural styles, and favorite brands of their neighborhoods.
Andrej Zito
When it comes to consumer markets, one size no longer fits all. In response, smart retailers and consumer goods companies are starting to customize their offerings to local markets, rolling out different types of stores, product lines, and alternative approaches to pricing, marketing, staffing and customer service. They’re moving from standardization, to localization. Standardized offerings discourage experimentation and are easy for competitors to copy. customization encourages local experimentation and is difficult for competitors to track let alone replicate when well executed, localization strategies can provide a durable competitive edge for retailers and product manufacturers alike. Okay. So this is kind of kind of related to what I was trying to propose for the previous article, which was about In the US market, and it’s again about experimenting.
Andrej Zito
So, as they said, customization encourages local experimentation. And it’s difficult for competitors to track. Okay. Measuring ethnicity, age, wealth, urbanization, housing styles, and even the family structures. The demographic, the demographic company claritas determine in the 1970s that 40 lifestyle segments were sufficient to define the US populace. today that number has grown to 66. Okay, so this is again about cohorts but I think in this article, they call it the coolant cluster yet cluster, okay, so they refer to it as a cluster, cluster, okay. The good news is that there’s a way out of standardizations that end that end, technological advances from checkout scanners and data mining software to internet stores and radio frequency identification, are providing retailers and their suppliers with deep insight into local preferences and buying behaviors.
Andrej Zito
For the first time. mismatches in supply and demand at individual stores can be pinpointed immediately. The new data make it possible to localize stores, products, and services with unprecedented precision. Through its retail link program, Walmart works with suppliers to clip tailor to tailor store mission merchandise with similar precision. Built on a vase database retail link provides both local Walmart managers and vendors with a two year history of every items daily sales in every Walmart store. Using the retail link web portal, Walmart and its suppliers can create maps of local customer demand, indicating which merchandise should be stocked when and where. For example, Walmart talks about 60 types of canned chili, but carries only three nationwide.
Andrej Zito
The rest are allocated according to local tastes, as Walmart and other leaders have discovered. Successful localization hinges on getting the balance right. Too much localization can corrupt the brand and lead to ballooning costs. Too much standardization can bring stagnation, dooming a company to dwindling market share and shrinking profits. For one retailer, it might make sense to have a highly localized staffing approach, but a standardized standardized product mix while another retailer may warrant the opposite. Similarly, a manufacturer might localize product features in one area and retailer incentives in another. While it may be prohibitively expensive to customize a product to many locations, it may be possible to gain similar benefits by tailoring the products packaging, packaging or promotions at a far lower cost.
Andrej Zito
Walmart found that while and and Roach killer sells well in the southeastern United States, consumers in the northern states are turned off by the word Roche after labeling the pesticide as an killer in northern states, the company has seen sales increase dramatically. According to journal wrestling, Senior Vice President now this is very interesting. This is this this is the this is the part of localization that and as I was reading this, like I was thinking like about like, if you’re a PM, like really like you really have to rely on the people that are in the local market. And they’re like either your translators or editors or even QA people. Like there’s no way like how someone from Europe would have ever thought that like the word Roach. turns off people in Norton, America. Like that’s crazy. Yeah, I think I’m so.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, anyway. What was I thinking about? Where are we? As big retailers shift away from standardization, the ripple effects will reshape the entire consumer supply chain. consumer goods, companies will need to introduce more variations into their lines. Collaborating closely with retailers to put the right products in the right places at the right times with the right pricing and promotion programs. manufacturers in general have been slow to make this change. Although they conduct extensive cost consumer research to develop specialized products for unique segments, they have little confidence that rigid retailers will sort merchandise and market custom products to the right customer clusters. A handful of consumer product companies are seizing the advantage by learning to localize when one food company introduced low calorie version of some of its snack foods.
Andrej Zito
It shipped additional cases stores near Weight Watchers clinics Cadbury edit Kiwi filled chocolate Cadbury Kiwi Royale in Zealand Okay, that’s fine because they’re referred to as Kiwis. Craft developed posts Fiesta Fruity Pebbles ready to eat cereal especially for Hispanics. Oh boy post yesterday okay. Coca Cola has developed before canned ready to drink coffees for Japan, each formulated for a specific region. Procter and Gamble introduced card Pringles in England and later Spanish salsa flavor in England and other parts of Europe and funky soy sauce Pringles in Asia Frito, lay developed nori seaweed, Lay’s potato chips for Thailand, and our torca, corn chips with poppy seeds and a dried tomato flavor for Turkey.
Andrej Zito
So as I’m reading this, I’m wondering if there actually any language service providers that would come with such ideas like introducing new products or changing like the ingredients or changing something because like, when when when we talk about localization, I always think about software, I always think about documentation, I think about marketing. I don’t know, we want to understand this, translate these legal documents and stuff like that. But this is really about changing, changing what you’re selling, right? And this is like localization, like and it’s the best. It’s kind of like, well, transcription is like the trust creation is like the most creative level of localization, where you have the freedom to change the messaging, but you’re still not totally changing the product for that market.
Andrej Zito
The product is still kind of like a vanilla, it’s global. So I’m only wondering if like any of like the big LSP companies actually are kind of like equal partner with their clients. And they really come up with like suggestions like this, because to me, this is more like, driven probably by the marketing people are people who develop businesses globally. They’re the ones that need to understand these preferences of local, local people. But wouldn’t they be like a huge added value if lsps also could offer this benefit? is it happening in the world? I don’t know. You tell me you tell me. Anyway, let’s continue. Almost there. One of the leading localizers is consumer products giant v f. 6 billion apparel maker that owns such popular jeans brands as Lee and Wrangler, as well as upscale labels, including Nautica and North Face.
Andrej Zito
Vf integrates many data sources to identify customization opportunities to the delight of retailers and consumers. It is not unusual for localization to improve sales by 40 to 50%, while simultaneously reducing store inventories and markdowns. We consider our localization capabilities to be one of our most powerful competitive advantages. Vf combines third party geo demographic and lifestyle data with daily store level sales and data, extensive consumer research and competitor analyzes to develop localization strategies with retailers such as Kohl’s, he has Vf has found, for instance, that while many buyers now desire lighter weight denim, male Hispanics still prefer heavier weights. Women in Southern California tend to buy shorter than in skirts than those in Northern California.
Andrej Zito
Even stores in the same metropolitan area can exhibit very different demand patterns for jeans and our clothes. A store in a community with a large immigrant population, for example, will tend to have greater demand for smaller size clothing than a store surrounded by non immigrant Americans. Sup top testament to America’s obesity problem. Ultimately, all companies serving consumers will face the challenge of local customization. It’s often been assumed that globalization implies ever greater homogenization of businesses and their products and services. The world in this view will be packed with indistinguishable big boxes selling the same goods and services to everyone. But a look at the emerging localization strategies of the leading companies in consumer markets.
Andrej Zito
Companies that once shunned customization, but now embrace it reveals how mistaken this assumption is, we’re advancing to a world where the strategies of the most successful businesses will be as diverse as the community communities they serve. Yep, so this is a very nice ending to this long article, which again, kind of like, promotes localization as a whole industry, that we are there to speak your customers language. But really, this article is about changing the language. No, sorry, not changing only the language, but it’s about changing the whole product. For example, right now I’m in Philippines. And when I go to McDonald’s, there’s a lot of rice. Of course, in America, you don’t get a lot of rice, because everything is with fries, or witches. I think like today, I’m not generating like a lot of ideas.
Andrej Zito
Is there something else that I wanted to say? What am I okay, so, so Okay, a new idea is, are there lsps that maybe provide like a local market research, like in certain countries? Would you still stick to your localization partner, because they’re the ones. I mean, it’s kind of it should be part of our job, right? If you if you have like a customer, that’s like, I don’t know, let’s, let’s stick to let’s say that they are somewhere in us. They dominate the market, and now they come to you. And they say that, hey, we want to go to Asia. So instead of just doing the stern thing that we do and say that, hey, yeah, we will we will use the local linguists and they will adapt your language to that. Shouldn’t we also, shouldn’t we also be providing the value of like being experts in those markets? When it comes to I don’t know, like doing business or something like that?
Andrej Zito
For example, I don’t know like, if you think about software, like maybe software is super standardized, I don’t know. But what if like the what if like, the what of like, the customer habits are different in I don’t know, let’s say in Asia, than they are in Europe, and then there are in us, should it be responsibility of lsps? Or should it be part of their offering to actually say that, hey, like, we need to adjust your product or service in a different way, instead of just doing the standard translation and localization? I don’t know. Those are the questions that I have actually asked I’m going to share this with you. When I was working alpha, I think it was around the time that I was already like working in my own startup. So I was like digging a lot of startup books and all the information about that.
Andrej Zito
I think that my idea that I pitched to my boss pitched, are no good at pitching. So the idea that they shared back then was that what if lsps should give you like, the full package of for the customers who are willing to enter a new market, because like, if you’re willing to enter a new market, you should maybe do some research, maybe you want to do the testing the right way, when it comes to like, I don’t know, testing, like on social media or your advertising? And also customer support. It’s something like, do you need to hire people? Or would the LSP be able to provide everything like this? You know, so it’s more like, especially like, these days, you know, like startups are all about experimenting, a B testing and seeing what works? What doesn’t?
Andrej Zito
Shouldn’t it be an offering all of the lsps to say like, Hey, your startup, like, Are you thinking of entering new markets, we can do it for you, we will train like, I don’t know, customer support, like our customer support person will learn about your product, and they will be able to support it, I don’t know. If needed, then we will set up like some office or whatever. And we will adapt your messaging, we will adapt the content and we see how it works. And then when the startup sees that, like it’s working, then maybe then they can kind of like move in. And they already know that that market has a certain potential. I don’t know that just an idea. I’m not sure if it’s practical or not. But that’s the idea that I had a long time ago. And so with that being said, audacity still working. I’m very happy. Please continue working Audacity.
Andrej Zito
So those were the two articles. And here is article number three. I have to be but I want to finish this. So this one is again from Slater. We’re going back to Slater. And this is a quick one. It’s app localization startup Lang is among Y Combinator is 2019. Summer batch. So Y Combinator is? What is that? It’s like a startup incubator. It’s probably the most famous one and the most successful one. They had Airbnb Dropbox, in their portfolio, and I think the guy who runs Y Combinator, I think his name is Paul Graham. He’s like the most one of the most successful, I don’t know, business people’s turn up people. And yeah, so I think this is the first localization startup that I’ve seen come out of Y Combinator.
Andrej Zito
Not that I know like the whole list of startups that came out of Y Combinator, but this is the one Okay, so among these years, Y Combinator summer batch is Lang, la n g, an early stage localization startup that launched earlier in 2019. Lang is specifically geared towards website and app localization and was founded by Yella graduate Peters you are be Siva prasat. And Eric you. So it’s a developer toolkit. Lang is essentially a developer toolkit that facilitates continuous translations for mobile or app. It currently supports seven frameworks and is live with a handful of customers. The three co founders are all computer science grads, with first hand experience in localizing apps and websites. Boo and you work at Facebook for a time. Siva prasat. Set and the first version of Lang was actually inspired by Facebook’s in house translation infrastructure he added.
Andrej Zito
Siva Prasad for his part work at a midsize company where localization was a painful, messy process with over seven engineers and a six month effort he said. So Siva prasat told Slater that most startups and mid sized companies ignore other languages due to the engineering resources. is required to build infrastructure. If and when such companies do get around to localizing their apps, it can divert engineers attention away from development work. The lanc team believes that engineers should be free to work on product instead of magic translations. That’s a pretty good point. But I’m not sure if I actually agree with like, like building the infrastructure for, for localizing your stuff, like there are already solutions for continuous localization that plug in to the, to the development cycles already not.
Andrej Zito
I think there are also like when it comes to like website translations, I don’t know like, if your websites are running on WordPress, you can just use like some blockings, or whatever. I don’t think like localizing websites does require a huge engineering effort to set it up. But maybe I’m wrong, because I could be wrong. Of course, Lang is not the only company focused on web and app localization. But Cyril claims that they are the first to eliminate the six to seven month engineering costs of building and maintaining internal tooling for localization. The solution takes just under 30 minutes to integrate lanc can automatically rewrite the code base so engineers don’t need to. Once installed it can detect changes in text and request translations automatically from professional human translators.
Andrej Zito
In roughly an hour, those translations can be pulled in and deployed. We offer our entire suite of developer tools with machine translations for free to try out the product and workflows. There is also a machine translation post editing option, where human translators are shown the machine translation, which they can edit, we found that no one is satisfied with the quality of machine translations and every single customer will eventually request professional human translations. Quality just isn’t there yet for machine translations. Okay, so they partnered with gingo for translation services. I think Ingo is probably a pretty good choice. Spending to hire in house translators is just one of the ways that Lange will use the funds raised from Y Combinator. The company also plans to hire more engineers to ramp up development efforts.
Andrej Zito
And so now, for those of you who are listening, I’m actually going to go to their website to see what it says. The website is pretty basic, but I really like it. It’s kind of like a clean startup site. So their unique value proposition is your app in any language. Lang allows you to effortlessly add multilingual capabilities to your app in minutes. Why lanc easy setup, your multilingual app is up and running in minutes with our easy integration process. It’s accurate, embedded translators added context and review pipeline provide the best translations for your content, fast. Add length to your continuous deployment process, receive translations in minutes. We put engineer’s First, we believe translations are a problem rooted in code. That’s why we’ve built a solution focused on engineers request and receive translations at build time without having to worry about maintaining external files.
Andrej Zito
Next, they show like how easy it is to to integrate Lang with your code. And it’s based on our example is based on a react project. I don’t know what react is. I haven’t used that. I don’t even know if it’s a language or whatever that is. So how does it work? So how does it work? They have a example here on react project that’s in English. So first, you install the Lang API module, and you sign up. Then you run the initialize script and the onboarding script. So the onboarding script generates a bunch of files that maintain translations for you. So you don’t have to. There’s a file called Lang API config dot Jason that has been created for you. This is where you enter target language code that you want your content translated into.
Andrej Zito
Okay. And now they’re showing a code how the code was changed after running the onboarding script, which modifying the React file by wrapping the front facing content with our translate function, and the Translate function is basically just tr, tr tag. And then you run a push function to request translations for all of your inapt content. So in the comment is slang API push. And when the translations are ready, run our poll function to receive all your completed translations. Now your app is ready to be displayed in multiple languages. So yeah, like the whole setup is very, very fast. It seems the way I have no idea how app localization actually works these days, like from the engineering perspective.
Andrej Zito
But yeah, this seems seems really, really fast. And then you probably just do push and pull all the time, whenever you want to request something, and I guess it extracts the new strings into I don’t they they’re not even showing how the interface for localization looks like, Yeah, but this looks pretty, pretty nice. So I’m checking their block, but they have no block yet. And let’s look at their pricing. So the pricing has three, how to call it three pricing isn’t what kit or tiers, three pricing tiers. And there’s one for enterprise, which is just a course. So the first one is free trial, you pay nothing. You get one seat for one project into one language. And you can translate 25 phrases, I think their definition of phrase in the FAQ is, phrases are the strings that are wrapped with our tr component.
Andrej Zito
Okay. Not sure if he just like, stream as like a sentence as we define it normally, or if it just the whole paragraph. I’m not sure about it, probably just the string. But it says unlimited machine translations and translation measurement. Okay, so that’s probably not very useful there just to give it a test, then the storage package is for $99 a month. And it offers you two seats, unlimited projects, unlimited languages, but it’s limited. It has only 100 phrases. You can you get unlimited machine translations, but you have to add the cost of translation per word per language. So this is where the post editing comes into play. But I still don’t understand how the phrases that you can only do 100 phrases. I don’t know how that limitation works if you’re basically paying them for if you if you are, if you shouldn’t be getting unlimited machine translations, and you pay for the post editing, then why would you be limited by the phrases?
Andrej Zito
I don’t know what it means. I’m confused. What are phrases, phrases or strings that are wrapped with our tr component? What happens when I go over my phrase limit, we will seamlessly upgrade you to the next tier plan, no service interruptions. So the third and biggest tier is a growth is called growth. And you pay 399 bucks a month and this one gives you 1000 phrases. But Huh, that’s kind of confusing. But maybe it’s just like is it like Like, if you have like more than 100 strings in your app, then you would need the highest tier. And even then you’re limited by 1000 phrases. I don’t know like what is like the average number of strings per like an app, or like website, my website probably could have more? Well, depends on how heavy it is. Yeah, so this is a new startup that went out. Maybe I should just contact them and see if they could do like a demo for my YouTube. Thank you.
Andrej Zito
It would be nice to see how it integrates. And yeah, like the whole integration and maybe maybe they actually they probably have a good point because like otherwise they wouldn’t be Part of Y Combinator. And yeah, like, even in my experience, we still I still saw examples in 2019, where we localize stuff in Excel strings are manually exported, copy Ctrl, C Ctrl. V into spreadsheet, and we translate that and then it has to be manually imported back into the app, or I think in this case, it was a website. So yeah, I guess maybe they have a point. So here, they also have some documentation for a for, for developers. So yeah, I guess their whole targeting is for engineers, not sure if engineers are actually the ones who usually make the decisions about localization. But maybe there are, maybe they are targeting like young startups that usually start with an engineer. I don’t know.
Andrej Zito
Okay. So I think what I need to do, I’m going to take a note of that. Find a blank founder, and ask them something. Okay, so that’s that. And the last thing that I have, and I want to mention this very briefly, it caught my attention. When I was looking at LinkedIn. Yeah. And it was from some lady who was talking about localizing, she was talking about localizing podcasts. So that’s kind of like, caught my attention. Because I never thought of localizing podcasts. And now that I do one, I was like, wondering like, how would you actually go about it? Like, would you just transcribe it and then translate it and then have somebody narrate it? or How else would you localize it? Like, for example, like I could localize my podcast that’s in a video form, because I could add subtitles on top of it. But podcasts in their nature are audio.
Andrej Zito
So if you’re localizing a podcast, it should I assume that you want to localize the audio, first of all, right? So and I know that audio when we were doing some video localization in the past that audio localization is actually quite expensive. So I’m wondering, actually, and I think I need to contact the lady that promoted this, I need to ask like if they actually did any localization of podcast and who will like was their customer. So going to their blog. Let’s see if there’s something so something interesting to share with you. So podcasts are becoming popular, blah, blah, blah. The International podcasts expansion is already happening. And you can choose from as many as 700,000 active podcasts in nearly 100 different languages. What does it mean for brands trying to grow their businesses with podcasts?
Andrej Zito
There’s a huge untapped, untapped market waiting to be utilized. Reaching out to the global users in their own language can help to explore this potential even further. But why exactly would you localize your branded podcast if your business already uses podcasts knowing? running out of battery? No, fuck me. If your business already uses podcast to generate interest in your brand, achieve better customer experience, build authority and eventually grow your bottom line you’re probably aware of the power of this medium. Why not take it one step further and truly cater for the multiplying multilingual and international audiences. Okay, it can help you boost your expansion in the long term.
Andrej Zito
Obviously, how can you know if podcast localization is the right choice for your business? Obviously, not all types of podcasts trying to speed this up because my battery is running out on the camera. Not every business will benefit from localizing this type of content. So what would be good one is podcasts that are based on stories or series, documentaries in the analyzes or talks presenting new bits of information are also suitable for localization. As such content might be appealing to the multilingual and multi cultural audiences. But that’s not all. localization involves some investment and not every business will be able to reach the break even point, it doesn’t necessarily mean that only big international brands could benefit from both cost localization. smaller businesses can use this strategy as well, but probably in a different way than the big players.
Andrej Zito
So how to approach the podcast if you’re on a tight budget. You can, for example, start from one or several episodes, preferably from the ones that have the biggest following in your home market. Make sense? Create a self or shorter version of the most successful episodes in a new language. Come up with a completely new content for your new market. Focus on the one or two main markets and localize your content only for the few selected languages and cultures. In any case, you’ll need to monitor and analyze your user engagement to see if your localized podcasts are visible for the right users in the right regions. And if your strategy brings the desired results, in a nutshell, if you played right localize podcasts can be an effective and unique element of your international marketing strategy. Are you ready for this steps? So another thing that comes to my mind is that podcasts usually have like hosts, which are like the main driving force of the podcast, and then it’s also the guests.
Andrej Zito
So I’m thinking like, if by like localizing it, and using different people and different voices, voices, if it actually is like still remains, if it still keeps the value as a bit originally. Because like, hmm, to me, it seems like Like, if you had like, I don’t know, let’s say we have Star Wars. And then you would adapt it by using local actors. Basically, you basically recreating the whole content when you’re localizing audio, because if you localize video, the actors are still the same, unless you like fully localized and adapted. But then it’s like, it’s not personal, what podcasts are personal. Because the people that make them make them personal, right? So and you cannot put subtitles on top of it, because that’s basically localizing video. So then you need to change the voices of the people. So I’m really wondering, like, the practicality of this.
Andrej Zito
So this is a block from a company called Polish localization. Which is funny because the company is based in Netherlands. But it is from a lady which is probably polish, and she’s the one that was promoting content. Yeah, it’s to polish lady’s daughter public. And Monica says that to me. So yeah, and, um, for those of you who are on YouTube, you can see that I’m just right now recording the website, and their website has like a lot of weird issues. I don’t know if it’s just me. But like, some of the things are like super clipped. And they’re basically not working. Why is a copyright here? That’s weird. Anyway, so I’m going to contact this lady. And let’s see what she says. Actually, this this, this article about the blog post about the podcasts is from September two, and their previous one is from March 11. So I don’t think they’re like very pushing their content creation.
Andrej Zito
But if it’s just like a small team, then I can understand that anyway. There’s going to be eat for Episode 10. It’s nice round number I should celebrate. But I think I did like a very poor job. For this one. I really struggled, expressing my thoughts, organizing what I wanted to say. So if you got to this point, thank you very much for dealing with the suffering. I’ll try to edit this probably as much as I can to make the experience much better. Anyway, thank you for listening. If you’re listening on audio platforms, thank you for watching. If you are on Youtube, look out for my new video that will be about the book The power of now. where I’ll be sharing my experience with from landmark forum. And that’s it. That’s it for the localization podcast. Bye
