This graphic novel project is part a type of new media, a pioneering effort by a handful of creators in search of a new medium for presenting art, story, voice, and music. A pool of talents was gathered for an old-fashioned romantic adventure with elements of Arabian Nights, Cinderella, and the Shangri-la myth. The story depicts a romantic adventure that spans modern-day New York City and the ancient, fictional country of Gao in China. In the midst of modern and old, fiction and non-fiction, West and East, English and Mandarin, romance and mystery, the graphic novel indeed is exotic to watch.

The work has been produced into ten video chapters. To give you a glimpse of our translation work, among what has been published: Chapter 3 has the most translation voices so far. The significant amount of Mandarin presented among English voices indeed makes the graphic novel stand out as a unique and interesting entertainment piece!

Monterey Language Services took extra time to polish the translations into Simplified Chinese to ensure not only accuracy, but an enjoyable and colloquial read for native speakers. Some of the challenges for this project were derived from cultural differences in how to translate certain phrases created specifically for the graphic novel.

For example, we have the “golden doom,” which refers to a specific event in the story. Because the event transports people similarly to the Christian idea of the rapture, our translation was “极乐升天,” which means “bliss ascension” in Chinese language.

One more example of the cultural challenge is rooted in English homonyms. The sentence: “They follow the standard of Lord Kang and swear on his eyes.” In this sentence, what does “standard” mean? If we suggested “average or normal requirement,” it actually would be incorrect! “Standard” in this instance means a battle flag—something ancient soldiers would follow on the battlefield.

Another difficulty was dealing with the ambiguity of written words. In spoken English, a person’s tone can very easily denote sincerity or sarcasm — consider the phrase “good job” being spoken sincerely and being spoken sarcastically, and their meanings become very different. While the context and illustrations in graphic novels can alleviate this confusion in text, sometimes the tone could be just missed. One such problem occurred in our initial translation of “What a stunt,” a line which our translator took be said in admiration, when in actuality, it was an insult. Through our editing/reviewing process we discovered the issue, and the translation was changed from “真是好身手” (really good) to “真有一套,” which has a similar meaning in a more sarcastic tone.

We are incredibly proud of the work we were able to provide for this project, and would like to add more viewing pleasure and excitement by sharing the above behind-the-scenes glimpses to our translation work. We wish all the success to the audience and contributors to the graphic novel. The chapters will be published in video format weekly on YouTube until the tenth and final one is uploaded.

What is hyperlocalization? Hyperlocalization aims to identify, understand, and target unique micro-segments and to then localize product/service, communications, and business models in order to deliver customized solutions to meet hyper-local needs. In essence, hyperlocalization is a super focused localization process that aims to make sure that they are meeting the needs of a specific demographic by making hyperlocal content. Hyperlocal content is targeted to country-specific or locale-specific and even global-specific micro-segments within specific demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioral, cultural or other segmentation groups. Below are some examples of hyperlocalization.

For hyperlocalization based on geographies, you might see companies changing how they localize content for a specific region or country so that it is specific to what users for that area might expect. On the other hand, hyperlocalization based on demographics focus much more on finding micro segments based on unique demographic combinations or emergent micro-trends related to age, gender, income, or education. So focusing on specific groups like millenial foodies or centennials craving brand authenticity and trying to appeal to them through targeted language and advertisements is how you might get their business.

So why is hyperlocalization so important to understand and know how to implement? Well, when localizing something, even though it is different than translation in the sense that you are tailoring the words you use to reflect the audience you are translating for, still it will be more of a shotgun approach than a targeted approach. It might sound perfectly and linguistically alright in the area you are localizing for, but that will not matter if you are not making sure you reach the group of people that would make up your core audience or consumers. Hyperlocalization achieves this by making sure that you are specifically focusing your efforts on the people who will have most interaction with the product you are localizing.

With hyperlocalization, you are getting the maximum amount of connectivity with the audience that you are trying to target with. Also, just like with localization, what you are localizing sounds natural to the target audience. The only difference is that you are making as much of the content that sound pertinent to them as possible. Hyperlocalization may not be something that you will be expected to do in the localization industry, but it is something that you should know about, so you know what is expected of you when you are asked to do it.

First, let us define what localization is. Broadly, localization is taking one material and transforming it into something that is understandable and relatable in a different culture or region. This means that localization is all about adaptation. When localizing something, you will be looking out for concepts, symbols, and words that would not fit into the target culture or region. This means adapting the original product into something that looks as if it was not created in a different country entirely.

For example, this can be something as simple as general design. When looking at an ad or commercial, for it to be successfully localized, you will have to make sure that the info displayed (i.e. numbers, date, time, etc.) are all changed into the appropriate format. If you kept the dollar sign when changing an advertisement for your product for an audience that does not use USD, they would be confused about how much the product actually costs and if it is even sold in the country that they’re in.

Internationalization is different than localization in that it focuses more on trying to universalize settings. Internationalization can be thought of as a typically more “under the hood” kind of process, where you will focus more on the coding side of things. This means focusing on hard-coded strings, concatenation, and finding out what is supported in Non-English input and output. If this is not taken into account, anything that is displayed is at risk to not display correctly. Internationalization is therefore more of a system focused on making sure that the software itself has no problem being used in different languages and thus focuses a lot less on linguistic errors like localization is.

There are more subtle nuances between internationalization, but it will be easy to remember the overarching difference between the two if you just remember that localization focuses more on the linguistic aspects of things while internationalization focuses more on the software that the localization will use to display or function.

So what do you need to know about localization? Here are some of the highlights of what you need to be aware of when you begin localization. This will mainly focus on both the language aspect of the localization process as well as the marketing strategy of localization.

The first thing is that you know who you are marketing to. Not every product perfectly appeals to everyone in the same way. Some people will be much more interested in your product and some will not. You have to thus really know who you want to focus on. The language that you use to market your product to your potential customers is also very important, and you should thus make sure that any translation that is produced is reviewed by someone who is either a native of the country, or native currently living in the country. This will ensure that they are caught up with all current trends and know what can and cannot be included to avoid any unnaturalness or offensive language.

On the topic of using a native who is currently living in the target country, it is also important to note that they will be able to help to discern any cultural taboos such as design choices (i.e. colors, placement of letters, layout of advertisements, etc).  When they are reviewing the translation, they not only provide a fresh set of eyes with which to see the translation work, but they are basically acting as if they were a consumer seeing your product for the first time in the region you are trying to expand into. This will help to provide invaluable insight into what can be improved or fixed upon and help to develop strategies for the future.

Another thing that is important to take note of is making sure that the native speaker you ultimately choose is well vetted. Some companies might outsource this to other companies that have reviewers as to avoid some of the cost of vetting and hiring, but it is important to ultimately make sure that the reviewer who is chosen is not only proficient in the language that they speak, but also that they are able to understand the goal of your company as well as its culture so that it can properly be conveyed to the new market.

These are just a few of the things to know when starting localization of a product for a new region. Even for regions with similar cultures to your own, it is important to make sure that you have a native review whatever you have before releasing it. Doing so will save you a headache and possibly a fortune in potential legal fees or redesign fees.

But translating a CMS-based site requires a special approach. The content of modern dynamic websites is not stored in a single file, and it cannot be simply downloaded and sent over to a translator. Thus, an entire localization engineering process is required to first extract the source text, then reintegrate it back in after the translation is complete.

Plug-ins do exist within some CMS platforms to assist with this process. They allow pages to be linked together as multilingual equivalents. However, full integration requires extensive engineering work. While most translation companies do not have this capability, Monterey Language Services does. Monterey Language Services’ localization technology and global localization platform streamline the integration process to ensure that our translation is properly applied within your site.

Furthermore, we can translate not only the surface content, but also the meta data of your site. That will ensure your site’s SEO (search engine optimization) functions in all of its intended languages, serving to attract new visitors and help your site succeed in international markets. That’s right – We translate and localize your SEO content so that your website will rank high in other countries and markets!

We can also monitor the updates you make to your site and update our translations to match, so that all of your customers are presented with the most current information.

With our skilled and experienced team, we guarantee the successful translation and implementation of your website, no matter the content or language, with no extra hassle or effort on your end. Just leave everything to us.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

To assure this, we have developed a rigorous management process, starting with choosing the best translators from our translator database. We always select translators with the subject matter knowledge and experience necessary for the project at hand, using translators who specialize in marketing for marketing translations, medical translators for medical translations, legal translators for legal translations, and technical translators for technical translations.

Using translators unsuited to the subject matter leads to mistakes, and it is the most common problem in translation projects. That is why selecting the right translators is a fundamentally important step in our process.

We don’t rely on just a handful of translators. We have a huge database and network of linguists, many of them accredited and certified, and we are continually expanding it, always looking for the best translation professionals in their fields. We start by screening our translators and testing them to make sure they are able to perform to our standards. We also build and maintain a professional working relationship with them, to make sure they understand our standards and our clients’ needs.

Even after the translation is complete, we further review our translators’ work to make sure they meet our quality requirements. We find, isolate, verify and resolve any issues. With the multi-stage quality assurance process, which uses at least two linguists for every translation, followed by an extra round of QA and Verification, we ensure that no mistakes slip past us into the final product.

Doing the job right the first time is utterly important. It saves time and avoids extra cost. Best yet, it helps our clients increase communication success and business growth. This is our mission every day and we are loving it!

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.