Localization/Multilingual

E4. Ways to Increase Reach and Collaboration

Sveta Kouznetsova: 8:30 – 9:00, Accessible Content: Quality Captioning and Transcription as Universal Design
To attract a wider audience, you need to make your aural information - audio, video, events - accessible via quality captioning and transcription. It is not necessarily for those with hearing difficulties. It also helps foreign language speakers, remedial readers, individuals with learning disabilities, those in noisy or quiet environments, and many more. Just being able to hear is not enough. Businesses would also benefit from captioning as it improves user experience and SEO of their aural information and attracts more loyal customers. Sveta will dispel common myths about deaf and hard of hearing people, share personal experiences, and discuss case studies of good quality captioning that goes beyond universal access and can be enjoyed by anyone and anywhere regardless of hearing abilities. Come and check the presentation signed by the deaf speaker, voiced by interpreters, and open captioned in real time. Let’s think outside of the ears! 

Donald DePalma: 9:00 – 9:30, Can't Read, Won't Buy: Why Language Matters on Global Websites
If you read English natively, you have enjoyed the best of the web since its creation. Content in this language has dominated the medium for nearly two decades while companies have catered to English-speaking markets and the enormous spending they generate. However, many corporations realize that billions of people don’t read English at all or well enough to make buying decisions, so they’re increasing the amount of information that they offer in other languages. As they reach out to global prospects, the big question is: If they localize their websites, will more buyers come? If they translate product literature, will they sell more? How much will localization help them grow? Common Sense Advisory surveyed consumers in 10 non-English-speaking countries to test the hypothesis that companies can increase their sales by localizing their products and websites. In this presentation, Dr. DePalma summarizes the results of this 2014 survey, analyzes the linguistic preferences of consumers, and discusses the impact on their online behavior.

C10. Globalization and Localization Panel

Organizations, at least of a certain size, are becoming more sophisticated and adept at creating, managing, and delivering multilingual and localized content. But needs are changing too. Social media, accelerated delivery expectations, and machine translation improvements, are just some of the issues that impact strategies as well as operations. This interactive panel of experts will be covering a range of topics and is suitable for attendees whether new or experienced with managing multilingual content.