The Importance of In‐Country Review

Information From ‘Behind the Scenes’ With In-Country Review

Professional localization processes should incorporate a validation step whenever possible. The in‐country review (ICR) enables the end customer to provide input on company‐specific terminology, target audience, technical specifications of products in the target market, ensuring compliance with local regulations, as well as to share their profound product knowledge. An ICR step provides translators with information from ‘behind the scenes’ which helps them to produce a tailor‐made translation.

Setting the Stage

The biggest pitfalls of the ICR step happen when its objectives are not clear. Some reviewers develop resentment to the work performed by the localization service provider as they were not given the opportunity to localize the product themselves. Such behavior is human; however, a biased review may produce results that can substantially hinder the success of the project. Gain the reviewer’s buy‐in early, and clearly define each person’s involvement in the process. The goal is to have the translators and reviewers work as a team, helping each other to produce the best quality product.

Engaging a reviewer at the beginning of the project will allow them to set expectations and guidelines for the translations and will help minimize the amount of changes needed later in the project. Such involvement gives the reviewer buy‐in to the final localized product. Reviewers should, nonetheless, remember that language is subjective. There are many ways of expressing a concept, and being open to differing styles and vocabulary choices is crucial – why hire a professional translator if the reviewer is going to rewrite everything in a preferential manner?

Often, existing employees of the company are selected to perform the ICR, in addition to their full‐time duties. Typically, a reviewer can process about 2,000 words an hour. So depending upon the size of the project, the reviewer may need to allocate significant portions of the day to work through the content and meet the scheduled project milestones.

Selecting Reviewers

The best candidate for the ICR role is a professional reviewer who has a translation background, experience in your industry and experience with your specific product or service. Qualified resources can be found in the form of a distributor, product manager, customer service representative, marketing professional or another representative familiar with the local product. Candidates should have a practical knowledge of the product from a technical perspective. Such familiarity with the product and experience in its marketing yields an optimally translated deliverable.

Qualities of Good In‐Country Review Candidates

• Buy‐in to source materials – accepts the source materials to be translated and ensures that it meets the requirements of his or her local environment. This buy‐in reduces the amount of copy‐writing needed after translation has been completed.

• Fluent in both source and target languages – has native understanding of the original language of the source content as well as the target language translation.

• Familiar with terminology – subject matter experts in the existing terminology for the target locale.

• Technically capable – able to use glossary and review tools.

• Available – able to include and prioritize localization review in their workload.

• Familiar with localization process – understands the role of the reviewer versus translation team.

• Answerable – able to be consistent with quality standards and specified direction from customer localization manager.

The optimal solution is to identify a single candidate who meets each of the qualifications listed above. However, there are times when multiple resources must be assigned to meet internal needs. To avoid contradictory feedback, the reviewers’ duties should be compartmentalized. For example, one reviewer may be placed in charge of technical accuracy while another confirms adherence to linguistic style guides. A cautionary note — while the use of multiple reviewers per language can often expedite the process, it can also have the opposite effect creating discourse amongst reviewers over the use of local language nuances.

If internal resources are not available, another option would be to include a third‐party review step through another localization vendor. They can provide objective feedback and serve as a final quality assurance step for your deliverable. Make sure that they are provided with any glossaries or style guides which have been created for your project.