Spanish localization: language peculiarities and challenges

Hola, dear readers!

Today, we overview the fourth most widespread language in the world — Spanish. This language has over 500 million speakers and is official in 20 countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and others. Additionally, Spanish is very popular in the USA. There are more than 33 million native speakers, and despite it not being an official language, more than 30% of Americans attempt to learn it as a second language.

Based on the statistics above, Spanish is an up-and-coming language for businesses looking to expand their market, especially if the company is interested in South and North American regions.

Spanish localization as a success factor in the Spanish market

If you're wondering whether to localize into Spanish when you have (or want to have) a Spanish-speaking audience, there can only be one answer — localize. Nowadays, language diversity on the internet is expanding to cater to different audiences, and to stay competitive, businesses must adjust to market demands. This process is extensively observed in the Spanish-speaking market, as at the beginning of this year, it was the second most frequently used language for web content.

Such a trend is explained by the high loyalty of customers to the content in their native language. Based on the ample CSA research Can't Read, Won't Buy, the communication with the audience in their mother tongue increases profit and brand success as:

• 65% of customers prefer the content in their native language;
• 40% of customers will not buy if the content is in other than their native language;
• 87% wouldn't buy on an English-only website;

Regarding localization, like any other language, Spanish has peculiarities that should be considered. Below, we overviewed their most essential and how to handle them during this process.

Spanish peculiarities during localization

Question and exclamation marks

Question and exclamation marks in Spanish have unique rules of use that distinguish it from other languages. The main difference is that interrogative sentences begin with an inverted question mark (¿) and end with a regular question mark (?). For example: ¿Cómo estás? Exclamatory sentences also begin with an inverted exclamation mark (¡) and end with a regular exclamation mark (!). For example: ¡Qué sorpresa!

Challenges The primary challenge of interrogative and exclamatory sentences relates to string splitting during localization because, working with Spanish, the translator should always know where the start and the end of the sentence are so that the marks are used correctly.

If the sentence is divided into parts, this nuance complicates the task:

• Correct: Juan, ¿que te apetecía hacer hoy?
• Incorrect: ¿Juan, que te apetecía hacer hoy?
• English: John, what would you like to do today?

To prevent possible issues with incorrect mark usage, the translating team should have as much context as possible and convenient tools to discuss controversial questions quickly. For example, in Lingohub, we provide a discussion feature to communicate about specific segments and projects in the same interface during translation.

Additionally, the translator can get the context information from segment description (this data can be added to the resource files) or glossary.

Length of texts in Spanish

Spanish is 20%- 30% longer than English due to additional prepositions, articles, and suffixes. The articles "a," "an," and "the" in Spanish can be definite (el, la, los, las) or indefinite (un, una, unos, unas).

For example, the "Error saving file" phrase requires the usage of the preposition "al" and the article "el," so the final translation will be "Error al guardar el archivo."

Challenges Ensuring the current design layouts work for the new version is crucial when localizing to languages with much longer phrases and sentences.

Sometimes, localization teams realize that the design should be fixed after the translation is ready, leading to additional time to market, postponement, and lost opportunities. To prevent such a failure, the Lingohub team suggests pre-translating the texts and "trying on" them at the first stages of localization.

There are two ways to do this with Lingohub in a short time:

• If you have your layouts inside Figma, you can upload them to Lingohub with a few clicks, translate them automatically with our AI pre-translation feature, and push them back to Figma. Read about the Figma plugin's abilities in a separate article.
• Suppose you want to check your translations on the test domain. In that case, you can integrate your repository with Lingohub, synchronize the resource files, and, after automatically pre-translation, push translated content back to it.

Regional differences

Spanish is a pluricentric language that differs depending on the distribution region. The two main areas for Spanish are Spain (Castilian Spanish) and Latin America (LATAM). The language there has differences in pronunciation, grammar, and even forms of politeness. Below you can see the examples of the vocabulary differences.

When talking about politeness, it is essential to understand the correct form for a specific Spanish-speaking country. For instance, for the plural translation of the word "you," there are two options: "ustedes" and "vosotros." The "ustedes" in Spain is used for formal communication, while in Latin American countries, it is used both for formal and informal.

In many Latin American countries, "tú" (singular "you") is used for informal communication. However, in countries like Argentina or Paraguay, the preferred word is "vos."

Challenges With such a broad variation of language, it is extremely important to maintain consistency throughout the entire project, which means that all the social media content, landing pages, applications, help centers, etc., should keep the same tone of voice and language form, mainly when you localize Spanish to different regions.

At Lingohub, we provide two options that prevent possible issues with the tone of voice and usage of terms. The first one is a style guide that is a single source of trust and affects machine translation results based on the chosen preferences, and the second is a term base that shows the preferred translation for terms speeds up the entire process and raises the quality.

Other peculiarities of Spanish localization that are important to notice

Subjuntivo

The subjunctive mood (subjuntivo) in Spanish significantly impacts localization, mainly when translating texts from other languages, such as English, where subjunctive mood usage is less common. You have to provide your translating team with enough context, as they must consider temporal consistency and context to select the correct form.

Letter "ñ"

This is an absolutely unique letter "ñ" (eñe) that represents a palatal nasal sound, similar to the "ny" in "canyon."

Gendered language

Unlike English, Spanish nouns and adjectives have gender, which leads to different endings. For instance, the plural form "friends" has the masculine term "amigos" and the feminine term "amigas." The same situation applies to adjectives such as "enfadado" (angry masculine) and "enfadada" for feminine.

To sum up

Spanish is a popular language, but mastering it requires deep knowledge of local culture, dialects, and customs. The best way to enter the Spanish-speaking market is to hire local experts and professional translators.

At Lingohub, we have a pool of translators, including native speakers, who will support your projects promptly. The best part is that all your translations will be housed in a single hub — our localization platform. Sign up for a free trial now or schedule a demo call with our team to learn more about the advantages of Lingohub, and let's grow together!