Globally Speaking

Localization means rendering a text into a local culture's patterns of usage. For example, a training manual being shipped to Argentina might be published in a special Argentinean Spanish edition. A localized manual speaks to the audience in a familiar style, with local idioms.

The need for localization became apparent during the last half of the 20th century as manufacturers began to enjoy truly global markets, with the possibility of selling a single product to virtually every nation on earth.

But there's a limit to the number of markets for which you can localize a text, whether it's a multi-volume manual or a one-page press release. Even megacompanies such as IBM and Sony cannot localize their documents into all of the thousands of dialects that are spoken in our world.

The most cost-effective way to ensure that people from all linguistic backgrounds have a reasonable chance of comprehending your document is to write it in what we call Global English: smoother sentence structure, fewer idioms, and less jargon.

Simplifying your English will have minimal effect on your writing style, but it will maximize your potential readership by making your document more easily understood by people who do not know our language fluently.