U.S Region. Why do the USA companies need localization?

Table of contents

Localization is important. Why should U.S. tech companies care about content adaptation? China E.U. South Korea and Taiwan Learn from the best: how U.S. tech giants use localization in their global strategy. Top 8 languages for U.S. companies for the localization Spanish Chinese French German Portuguese Arabic Hindi Korean Сonclusion

Have you known that American businesses can get a double profit at once when translating their content? As a multilingual country, the USA united millions of people from different parts of the world. For example, 41 million people in the USA speak Spanish, 3.5 million speak Chinese, etc. Read more about USA language peculiarities in our blog: → USA: an unexpected treasure chamber in the translation market

Thus, translation to other languages and product localization can help go global and meet the requests of millions of users inside the U.S. to get content in their native language. By mistake, businesses can believe that English, an international language and official in many U.S. states, can cover the audience's needs. But this statement is wrong, and below, we will describe why.

This article will provide a thorough overview of U.S. companies' localization peculiarities and explain why U.S. companies must localize their products to stay in the top positions inside and outside the U.S. Scroll down and dive into the data.

Localization is important. Why should U.S. tech companies care about content adaptation?

As we mentioned above, the United States is a multicultural country with millions of speakers of native languages other than English. Even though the majority of people in the U.S. know and use English daily, the mother tongue plays a significant role in their lives, and the translated content provides the feeling of being valued. Adapted content helps directly tell users, "We see you, and we respect your culture." This strategy is particularly vital today due to intense industry competition, as the global web enables clients to find service providers in just a few clicks and choose the preferable options. Just a part of the statistic that proves all said above:

40% of online shoppers will never buy something on the resource without their native language;
66% use online machine translation to get content in their language.

When it comes to the advantages of localization in competing on the world stage, it is essential to look at this through the prism of the global players who vie with U.S. companies at the international and regional levels.

The U.S. manufacturers and service providers face intense global competition, especially from the following markets - China, the E.U., and Asia (South Korea, Taiwan).

China

China, the motherland of companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, is proceeding to increase its competitiveness. In the middle of 2024, China declared that the role of technology in its development would be quadrupled. In addition to the additional investments in innovations, this means exporting and establishing Chinese standards when selling technologies and equipment. Additionally, China shows significant leading positions in specific industries like IoT, and based on the research, in 10 years, it will have a third of the entire market. Also, it is worth remembering that giants like Huawei and Xiaomi and platforms like ByteDance (TikTok), one of the biggest Meta competitors, boost Chinese technologies by spreading worldwide, building the web of Chinese popularity, and growing their competitive abilities.

E.U.

The situation between the U.S. and E.U. technology firms differ greatly from China's example. American companies dominate the markets like cloud — AWS, Azure, Google — and the AI industry — OpenAI, NVIDIA. In its turn, the E.U. region focused more on developing specialized, narrow solutions. Applications like Spotify, Grammarly, and Booking.com confidently occupy their niche, while Ericson and Nokia are the 5g worldwide leaders. In addition, Europe is placing particular emphasis on its independence from foreign chips and has already announced a European Chip Act to address this issue.

South Korea and Taiwan

These countries have the leading stage in one of the most required fields — semiconductors. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the leader in producing (50% of all semiconductors value), while Samsung (South Korea) is second. With such intense competition with other world regions, U.S. tech companies must focus on adding technical improvements and localization to keep their positions and grow.

Here, it is essential to remember that localization is not about translation — it is about the process of adapting the product to the local needs by following actions:

content translation;
creating cultural-relevant design;
transcreation - adapting the slogans and unique selling points sometimes by their entirely changing;
development of the new marketing strategy;
implementing local-fit tools (for example, payment systems suitable for local customers, collaboration with local delivery companies, etc.). l- aunching the local features that can provide additional value for the specific regional audience.

By localizing their product, the U.S. tech companies will get the following advantages:

Increased influence in global competition: TikTok has been one of the best examples of localization in the entertainment industry in the last decade. The app has a version only for the Chinese market (Douyin) with other content, algorithms, and mostly Chinese-related topics that wouldn't fit the global audience. TikTok quite strongly differs from the Chinese version and nowadays has more than 1 billion users monthly. Deeper penetration into local markets. Cultural aspects and local language are crucial to local customers' brand perception. As a positive result of the localization, businesses get: Increased trust in the company's services; Free ads - the "Word-of-mouth." Raised customer loyalty and, as a result, increased revenue (localization can improve sales by 40% to 50%.)

Learn from the best: how U.S. tech giants use localization in their global strategy.

To illustrate the importance of localization, it is worth looking at U.S. tech leaders and their activities to see that even the best-in-area pay attention to this process. Here, we overview the first-glance details without a deep analysis of the localization strategy. Still, these minor things already show that companies can't ignore the localization process to stay on top.

Apple.com has website versions for over 100 countries in 5 regions, including separate subdomains for Canada (French and English), Latin America, and the Caribbean (English and Spanish). If we look at the versions for the UK and Ukraine, the company focuses on the different product promotions besides the differences in texts. On the homepage for the United Kingdom, we see the 16 iPhones from the start, while in the Ukraine version, it is a MacBook Pro. Also, HopePod and AirPods 4, present on the first page, are only in the UK version. This difference indicates that Apple splits its audiences and builds the content based on their preferences.

source: apple.com

Another example is Microsoft. For convenience, we overview the same countries: the UK and Ukraine. The screenshots below show that the UK version initially targets Black Friday and laptop advertising, while the UA version focuses on selling Microsoft 365. Even the color palette of the homepage is entirely different.

source: https://www.microsoft.com/

If you want to get more examples of the brand localization, we suggest to dive into our articles: → Famous product localization → Famous product localization part II

It seems that "to localize or not to localize" isn't a question anymore. Hence, the next step for U.S. businesses is to decide which regions and languages will provide the maximum profit. Choosing the right direction is the first stage for a successful localization strategy.

Top 8 languages for U.S. companies for the localization

Note: Localization means full cultural adaptation, so once translated, content cannot meet the needs of people with the same native language in different parts of the globe. However, translated content can be a great background for further adaptation to regional aspects.

Spanish

Spanish is the second most spoken language in the USA (42 million people). The latest statistic says that 13% of the population speaks Spanish at home, making it target number one for localization. Additionally, this language opens the door to the following markets: Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, and much of Central and South America.

Chinese

As the second most spoken language in the world and the third in the USA, with more than 3 million speakers, Chinese is a valuable target for U.S. companies. Such a move will open the global market and a massive consumer base and allow a "fight for" markets already using Chinese technologies. Localization to China, besides China, opens Hong Kong, Kazakhstan (one of China's biggest partners), and Taiwan (Traditional Chinese) regions.

French

Around 1 million people in the USA speak French at home, and over 320 million worldwide. With its official status in 29 countries, such as France, Canada, and the Caribbean, and constant growth in popularity, this language is one of the best decisions for anyone looking for a profitable language for localization. French localization can be the key to the following markets: France, Canada (especially Quebec), Belgium, Switzerland, and some African countries (e.g., Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Senegal, the Seychelles, etc.)

German

Localizing to Germany for U.S. companies means accessing the German-speaking part of Europe, which includes Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. Also, as the third-largest economy in the world, Germany itself is an exciting country for global growth.

Portuguese

It is one of the top 10 languages spoken worldwide and official in Portugal and Brazil (the largest economy in South America). Companies looking to expand in Latin America should add this language to their "wishlist.” By localizing to Portuguese, U.S. companies can work with Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, and Angola.

Arabic

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has become an attractive target for companies worldwide. One reason for this interest is the region's median age of 26, significantly lower than in the USA and European countries. The tech-savvy and digitally connected consumers in MENA act like a magnet for businesses. Thus Arabic localization became a trend, especially considering the growing consumer base in the Gulf countries, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Hindi

India is the second-most populous country, with over 1.4 billion people, and Hindi is spoken by around 41% of the population (more than 500 million people). This makes Hindi one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Additionally, around 5 million people of Indian origin reside in the United States today.

Korean

Localizing into the Korean language offers U.S. businesses access to South Korea, a dynamic market with 51 million people and one of the world's most advanced economies (<a href="txt" target="_blank" rel="noffolow">4th largest economy in Asia). South Korea presents unique opportunities across multiple industries as a tech-savvy market open to entertainment and innovation.

Сonclusion

The importance of localization can't be underrated when discussing the global growth of U.S. businesses. Despite the high popularity of English, customers want personalized experiences and content in their native language. In this article, we overviewed the main challenges that American companies face on the world stage and the benefits that translated content can provide to internal customers.

From our side, at Lingohub, we provide a pool of tools that make localization easier than ever and allow its simple launch and management, namely:

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