Leading Product Edition 五
Leading Product Edition 五
Countdown | Interview! Going global through localisation | Strategy translation | Design thinking research | Context switching | Contemplation = 11.5 minutes
1, 2, 3, 4…
Edition 5️⃣ feels special. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed thus far. I welcome all feedback on how to make this newsletter more practical / valuable / useful.
That interview about localisation I alluded to? It’s here. And I’m so thankful to Ms. Shinoh Lee for her insights and time.
💬 Interview with Shinoh Lee 💬
Localisation, or “the adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market,” is a critical consideration for any type of product that has the potential to span borders. It might be important to think of a single market early on, and then plan to scale, which means appealing to people in different countries with different customs speaking different languages.
To shed light on this complex process, I spoke with Shinoh Lee, a survey localisation specialist with cApStAn and a localisation expert. Keep her practical observations in mind for marketing copy, working with partners, user documentation, and UI updates. Some of the automatic translation plugins might change an important meaning you’re attempting to get across to prospective customers. Localisation is a deliberate, and iterative, effort. On to the interview.
Leading Product: For the uninitiated, what's localisation?
Shinoh Lee: The common definition is: the entire process of adapting a product or content to a specific location or market. Or the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language, culture, and desired local look-and-feel.
Imagine an international student assessment. You want to measure the numeracy level of 8-year old students in several countries. A math question asks “How many pies did Jenny buy?”. “Pie” may not be a very common product one can buy in local markets in some countries. “Jenny” may not be a common name. Those will need to be adapted to conform to the local usage and to sound plausible and familiar to the target group of that assessment. In other words, that question needs to be “localised”.
An interesting example:
There was a question about a science experiment where one puts the celery stalks in coloured water. One country replaced “celery” as “green plant”, commenting “Celery” is not common in our country (Steppe climate). We will adapt it to “a green plant”.
Or consider a more delicate, and subtle case:
A question was about the eye colour of biological parents and the probability of a child having a certain colour of eyes. The translation guideline was: Make sure “biological” in “biological parents” is not omitted in the target.
L.P.: What is something that might appear easy, but is actually really hard to do?
Shinoh: At times, developers who are native English speakers use idioms that could give the translators and adapters a headache. 😵
There are many countries that have English as a language of instruction that participate in international surveys. Canada, Cyprus, Malaysia, Singapore, Lebanon, Qatar, South Africa, etc. As the source version is English, one might think that those countries can use the source version as such without going through the localisation process.
Well, they also need to go through the process. At times, we still find surprisingly a large number of issues in the already localised English target versions.
Here are some categories of terms that often pose a challenge for translators, and may lead to confusion among readers or users:
Words that are too abstract and tend to be approximations (and inaccurate).
E.G. fun
The term “to have fun”, “to be fun” is difficult to translate in a number of languages.
Idiomatic expressions that have no direct equivalent in a number of languages
E.G. trade-off
Describes a situation in which one must lose some quality in exchange for another quality.
Recent words that are widely used in English and have no direct equivalent in a number of languages.
E.G. to network
The verb “to network” as “to interact or engage in informal communication with others for mutual assistance or support.” does not always have an equivalent in other languages.
L.P.: How can a team for a new product / startup keep localisation in mind?
Shinoh: Some guidelines or best practices to ensure that a source wording is optimally formed prior translation:
Try to minimise the risk at the production of the source version, i.e. optimize the source version
Provide translation/localisation guidelines, glossary or/and style guide as applicable
Conduct quality check after the translation/localisation
L.P.: What's your advice for someone wanting to specialise in localization?
Shinoh: The world is evolving at an incredible speed. Like in many other domains, I think we localisation specialists should constantly be learning.
Localisers will need to embrace machine translation technology and learn about translation memories and term bases.
L.P.: What are you working on right now?
Shinoh: For cApStAn I’m involved in the preparation for the 8th Cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment. I’m in charge of coordination of the contextual questionnaire pre- and post-localisation. I collaborate with psychometricians, data analysts and national project coordinators of about 80 countries (often ministries of education).
For UQalify, I’m currently involved in the development of a job-skill matching platform. I will soon start developing microlearning contents for a maritime catering company. The learning courses will be developed in English and then will be localised for the Philippines. It is also highly multidisciplinary work, as I collaborate with instructional designers, data architects, programmers and graphic designers.
On the development side, there are deliberate choices that a product owner can make to ensure the offering is ‘localisation-ready’ including the structure of language files and adopting standard formats that make alternate languages easily referenceable. W3C has a lot more on that subject, and is the source for the definition above. (This is often referred to as internationalisation).
Bottom line: when it comes to localisation, think of it early, and often. It’s part of an overall strategy, and not something left just to the product team. Localisation is a business requirement that sprouts from a drive to enter new markets, which is a multi-pronged and coordinated effort.
Have any localisation stories to share?
🉑 Translate business strategy into product strategy
A job skill or something found in a PM job advert, usually.
Speaking of translating things, product owners are interpreters, always. My sister’s company, SomaDetect, is hiring a PM (remote!). One of the responsibilities is to “translate business strategy into product strategy - own and execute all aspects of product strategy.” Seems pretty routine. And totally non-trivial.
Consider this the beginning of a much longer article about deriving product strategy from the business’ priorities. To start with, what is strategy? Definitions abound, so let me offer something a bit different: Strategy is the sum of the why and the what. What is the reason for doing something? It should lend itself to a well formulated objective from which you can derive some key results.
The how and who and where and when come later; those are operational and tactical considerations, when you graft the strategy on particular contexts over particular time horizons.
What? Expand our product to 20,000 users in 5 countries to [why?] drive revenue growth by/to x%.
As a product leader, you have some inputs from the business, like this one ☝🏼. There are goals set to be relevant and grow in a given market. You need to take these goals and weave them into the product strategy and roadmap, and remain accountable for those deliverables.
👂 Further listening
Ibrahim Bashir - Strategy Sophistication in Run the Business (my favourite product newsletter)
📒 Design Thinking First and Always
Found in scholarship highlights recent academic articles of interest to product people. 🔓 As much as possible, I try to cite articles that are openly available.
In “The contribution of Design Thinking to the R of R&D in technological innovation” Stefano Magistretti et al explore how design thinking applies to new innovations, and also works for long-term technology-oriented research projects. Design Thinking has a huge role to play in the Research phase of R&D, though it tends to be ‘reserved’ for the latter Development phase.
At the same time, the authors warn that applying design thinking too early “might also constrain envisioning future realities.” (Thus, it’s important to ensure the team is primed to consider any biases, and to perhaps employ alternative hypotheses and counter-narratives to challenge conclusions.)
They studied a real company, and refer to it as TechInteract Company in the article.
TDC research projects have a dual nature: developing a core annual research project on advanced physical interactions aimed at scouting new technologies able to support novel interaction modes, and discovering emerging human lifestyles that represent weak signals about future behaviors.
The research projects surveyed tended to adhere to a five-step process:
The authors then deep dive into proxemics - “how objects and spaces can interact with humans” - a must-know realm for owners of physical products, including CPG.
Check out the article in full for more about the process and the importance of proxemics.
〰️ Switch Contexts - Ride the Wave
Found online: usually a video, sometimes more reading :).
Short article about context switching deliberately, and in a way that harnesses higher order thinking: “SINUSOIDAL THINKING” by Kevin Yien.
🚜 Contemplation
Something (else) to think about
Someone who was a product manager and has since transitioned to academia told me that he had viewed himself as a plow, clearing things out of the way and making the ground easier to traverse for the development team. He also had to keep them on the right path, and not veer off into unknown territory… or over a cliff.
A great analogy that’s stuck with me.
❤️ Au Revoir
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