Have you ever wondered what Activision’s Call of Duty and fast-food franchise Dunkin donuts have in common?
In order not to turn this blog post into some trivia, we would just go ahead to answer the question.
The answer lies in the fact that both brands have been able to create successful global products.
Creating a successful global product involves many considerations, with marketing, branding, localization, etc., taking the front burner. But an aspect that does not get much coverage is how creating a culturally appropriate product for a target market is crucial to the product’s success.
Therefore, we would be looking at the concept of culturalization and how it plays a central role in a product’s user experience.
What is Culturalization?
Dictionary definition describes culturalization as the process of subjecting something to the influence of culture. In the language industry context, it involves adapting a product and its content to the cultural peculiarities of its target region.
When we talk about the culture of a region, we refer to its history, beliefs (traditional and religious), geography, and even going as far as straying into the domain of its political sentiments.
Although some people claim culturalization is a part of the localization process (a later stage), others argue that it is a standalone process that takes localization to the next level.
Irrespective of whichever side of the fence you belong to, it is still crucial to incorporate culturalization as part of your product development process.
How does culturalization work?
While culturalization has diverse applications across different segments like; Food, Movies, Gaming, and Software, the underlying principle of developing a culturally relevant product remains the same.
Functional knowledge of culturalization involves the understanding of what reactive and proactive culturalization means.
Reactive culturalization on one hand involves identifying elements that are culturally sensitive or controversial, which could subsequently negatively affect a product’s reception by its target audience. While on the other hand, proactive culturalization involves incorporating relevant elements that can endear the product to its desired users.
At the heart of effective culturalization lies extensive market research on the target market so that LSP’s can develop the right blend of appropriate reactive and proactive cultural elements for the product.
An example of culturalization is how Dunkin Donuts adapted its menu to suit its global consumers with custom offerings in China, Korea, Lebanon, and Russia.
In summary, culturalization involves many of the following;
- Adapting the product itself to suit the local market
- Translating the brand messaging and text to be culturally sensitive
- Redesigning visual elements to be culturally suitable
- Checking for legal and regulatory compliance
Culturalization and the gaming industry
One segment where culturalization is particularly relevant is in the gaming industry, particularly because there is often that clash between the cultural correctness of content and the developers’ creative vision.
But as long as regional sovereignty supersedes business interest, gaming companies must factor culturalization into game development in order to stay away from backlash associated with culturally insensitive content.
Another segment that requires attention in gaming is the aspect of user experience, culturalization plays a huge role in bridging gaming content inclusiveness, which helps to deliver a better overall end product for consumers.
The 2019 UX Game summit sheds more light in this regard.
It does not end there. Gaming entities must also factor in a rigorous quality assurance process that involves testing and other measures that make it easy to identify and remove aspects that may be controversial.
As the transition of gaming from consoles and PC mobile continues to pick up steam, effective culturalization provides gaming developers the opportunity to explore the potentials of emerging markets.
Conclusion
Creating a successful global product whether physical or digital now goes beyond translating and even localizing said product for its target market. The product must be culturally appropriate to its target audience, otherwise, it could result in some form of censorship which ultimately leads to a loss in revenue.
The key to global success oftentimes lies in ensuring that products pander to the cultural peculiarities of their target market.
If you are ever in need of specialists to help take your products global, the translation and localization experts at Translationsinlondon are one call away to deliver a seamless transition process.