Globally Speaking

Podcast 040

How to Be Globally Appropriate, Locally Relevant (and Avoid Cultural Mistakes)

M I’m Michael Stevens.

R I am Renato Beninatto

M And today on Globally Speaking, we’re trying to find out what happens

when you say something that offends people.

R Yeah. The cultural effect is very interesting because companies have

to put elements in their localization process to avoid mistakes.

M Right. So the burden isn’t just on translators getting the words right,

because sometimes words can be translated correct, but the concept

could be completely wrong.

R Absolutely. And in communication it’s not just only translation, and

we’re going to hear in the fantastic podcast stuff about music, stuff

about images and gestures and a bunch of other things that are also

part of the communication process, but they’re not necessarily

translated in the right way, translated in a script or in the strings or the

subtext.

M Companies have invested a lot of money to make sure that they are

not offending and are meeting the cultural appropriateness of their

audience. They’ve even created organizations within their company.

Our guest today is responsible for one of those organizations. She’s

here as a friend of the podcast, not necessarily representing her

company, but to talk to us about some of those issues.

R Yeah, and what we want to know is fun stories. So this is not an official

statement by the organization, but experiences that we have had in our

profession.

M And there are plenty of the fun stories. Enjoy.

MC My name is Michele Coady. I’m the Director of Global Readiness for

Microsoft. I have a degree in cultural geography, and I’ve worked at

Microsoft for 18 years. I started as an international tester. I moved to a

localization project management role for many years and then, a few

years ago, I started in my current job, which is the geopolitical

specialist for the company.

My job, basically, in 100 words or less is that my team and I make sure

that we have awareness of global geopolitical areas and issues, and

can analyze and communicate them effectively to the company so that

Microsoft products and communications are globally appropriate and

locally relevant.

M Wow!

MC That’s how I explain this to my parents.

R Very good! And do they understand that?

MC Parts of it!

R The “locally relevant” probably.

MC Yes!

R I think that one of the things that I find fascinating is that you were able

to put together a group of other companies that discussed these

issues. This is not a Microsoft initiative only; there are other companies

that address this problem. Tell us a little bit about this initiative.

MC About two years ago, one of the localization groups, industry groups

that I belong to, suggested that we start a sub-group that was focused

completely on geopolitical topics and issues. This has proved really

successful. We meet, conference call, every two weeks, and we talk

about anything that has happened in the last two weeks around the

world from a geopolitical perspective. It ranges from who showed the

wrong flag at the Olympics to who gave the wrong kind of hand gesture

at the Oscar awards; everything is fair game; it’s a great group; we

have somewhat of an agenda but we often go off topic.

M Was there anything two years ago that led to the forming of this group?

MC I think actually what kicked it off, the discussion of why this group

should be created was the Crimea incident, if I can call it an incident,

with Russia and Ukraine.

R Well, that’s a classic geopolitical issue because from our US

perspective it was an invasion. From the Russian perspective they

probably use a different word over there to describe what they did.

MC Exactly, and since maps are something that we are concerned with and

related geographical topics like time zones, we were involved from the

very beginning on how to handle this. It was a very interesting exercise.

R It’s so interesting that you mention the wrong flag at the Olympics

because it happened in Rio de Janeiro; I was recently in China, and the

moment our guide… we went to the Great Wall and the guide that took

us there, the moment she found out that I was Brazilian, the first thing

she talked about was how offended the Chinese were about the

Chinese flag that was wrong, that we used the wrong angle. And then

she gave me a lesson on how to design the stars, the four stars that

are around the big star in the Chinese flag. Amazing how these things

really affect cultural sensitivity, and this has nothing to do with the

United States, it’s China and Brazil, and it never appears in our news

there in the United States.

MC Flags are an emotional topic. Any image is an emotional topic because

everyone looks at an image and sees something different depending

on their environment, their cultural upbringing. Flags are typically a

very tough topic for my team because flags can change; new flags, if a

coup occurs, or as in the vote of New Zealand, we thought we were

going to have to change a flag there. If anything happens with

Scotland, with the UK, we might have to add the Scottish flag as one of

the national flags. So, this is something that we spend a lot of time on.

R How did the story in New Zealand end? I remember that they were

voting, there were five different finalist flags, and I haven’t heard a

follow-up on that.

MC I don’t know if they made the final decision. I think they did. I think it

was the one with the star, and I can’t remember the exact design, but I

think they did make that final decision.

R Okay, so they did change it?

MC I’d have to check on that, I don’t know for sure.

M These are very complex issues that you all get together and discuss

and talk about the business implications for. What are some of the

challenges on getting the different companies, perhaps in different

industries, on the same page? Do you use similar terminology; are

there different ways that companies talk about what’s happening

geopolitically?

MC That’s something we have struggled with because we do use different

terminology. For example, globalization is a very common word that we

use to describe something in a product that we want to make sure will

work anywhere in the world, even if it’s not translated, it doesn’t have

anything to do with localization.

M Can you give a specific example of that?

MC For example, if you have a product that is English only, but it’s still

going into most other markets, you want to make sure that the user can

still change settings like regional formats to reflect their own calendar,

their own currency, but it still may be all in English. That’s what we

consider as globalization. Other companies use different terms for that,

market customization, internationalization, and then there is the issue

that, of course, globalization has become sort of a dirty word around

the world. It means a completely different thing to governments, for

example.

M Yes, it’s tied to trade and tariffs and such things.

MC Yes, and what shouldn’t be happening.

R So, you mentioned that this group doesn’t include only technology

companies. So, who else and what kinds of issues do companies that

are not in the technology space have related to the cultural elements

that your group covers?

MC Well, I won’t mention companies, but we have sports companies, we

have quite a few tech companies, different kinds of technology, some

vendor companies, and if you look at something like a sports company,

they still, if they are a global company, have to think about translation,

how they make their resources ready for translation, the localizability

aspect of it. And then the geopolitical awareness part, and that’s why

we started the group.

Basically, you think about a sports company that is global, they still do

not want to offend anybody in the world if at all possible, so a lot of the

topics that we talk about, maybe not flags but a lot of other things,

would be applicable to any company in the world.

R Yes, but you bring up the flag story. I mean, I know, I lived in seven

countries so in some countries you don’t want to have your sports

shoes with the color of your flag. In the United States people wear the

flag colors all the time; in other countries it’s very normal. But, in some

countries it’s bad taste. So, is that something, do you have a map or a

list of the countries where, well, in Italy it’s fashionable to use the Italian

flag colors; in Azerbaijan it’s not. Or something like that?

MC Yes.

R Oh, you do?

MC Yes, that’s a good point. What we do is we keep track of where we

shouldn’t use the flag in any other way than how it should be displayed,

you know, especially certain direction. Saudi Arabia is a good example

that the flag of Saudi Arabia has text from the Qur’an on it; it’s very,

very important and could be illegal if that flag is hung in the wrong

direction. There’s a famous example of the United States Military

distributing soccer balls with flags all over them, in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, one of the flags on the soccer ball was the flag of Saudi

Arabia with that Qur’an text on it. It caused a huge uproar because it

was obviously to kick the flag that had Qur’an text on would be very

offensive.

M Mhm. And the flag flying in the wrong direction, I remember hearing a

story of exposing a Western power setting up a building, and they knew

that it was not a genuine local building because the flags were on the

wrong side of the building.

MC Exactly. Flags are… and any image. Saudi Arabia, to take another

example from that country because we do have a lot of examples of

ways we have to be very sensitive is any image that shows females,

we are very careful about how we do that. We try to be very respectful

in the clothing that females wear; things that would not only be

offensive but, again, could be illegal for content that we would display

in that country.

M How do companies in general, this isn’t specifically about any that

you’re on this group with or where you work, but what are some things

to think about and how much to push against cultural norms and how

much do you just sort of accept them because, hey, you’re trying to do

business in that locale?

MC That’s a great question because that’s the balance we have to figure

out. That’s the fine line we walk. So, it depends, of course, on a lot of

things. It depends on what the product is; if it’s an Xbox game that’s

rated mature, it’s going to have possibly a lot of violence, possibly

some sexual images that might not be appropriate in some places but,

depending on the rating, depending on what country it’s going into, we

decide if that’s going to be appropriate.

There are some countries that some games just can’t go into because

of content. So, we look at content, we look at what the product is, we

look at the market. We look at a lot of different things before we figure

out if it’s appropriate or not.

R We talk a lot and I think you mentioned a couple of times, Saudi

Arabia, must be one there at the top of the countries with lots of no-

nos. What are the countries where you don’t have to worry about

anything because anything goes? Let’s go to the other end of the

spectrum.

M Oh, it’s got to be Brazil!

MC Actually, in Brazil, I’m trying to think, we do have… well, current events

there, I have to say, Renato, we are very careful there with anything

that might be political in nature, I’ll go as far as that, I won’t go any

further.

R Yeah, yeah, well.

MC But, we certainly do not worry about clothing too much on females in

Brazil. But, United States, let’s take the United States, even in the

United States we have to be sensitive. We would not…we have a

rating system for games, obviously; we have to be sensitive and think

about what topics we might not want to display in any of our

communications, marketing campaigns. I think a good example right

now just for companies in general is that with all the natural disasters

that have hit the United States, there have been some companies that

have gotten negative publicity because they have accidentally shown

images of the Virgin Islands, for example, St Thomas, a beach picture,

where that beach is no longer there.

And of course, a campaign is planned months in advance and that

campaign all of a sudden showed up. The same thing has just

happened with companies with the Napa and Sonoma fires in the wine

country in California. Marketing campaigns were planned, they showed

up, they shouldn’t have showed up at that time but there was just no

way of knowing. Of course, natural disasters are unpredictable, and

you can’t always plan for something like that.

R It’s interesting. We were talking earlier about Brazil and the example of

the flag. The Brazilian flag is the only flag with Latin characters on it, so

if you put it upside down or you put it in the wrong direction you can’t

read it correctly. So there is that element too. There must be a place

where there is more freedom than that!

MC Well, the United States is another good example for the flag because if

you read the flag code you really shouldn’t be putting it on clothing or

putting it on hats or putting it on shoes or doing a lot of different things

with the flag. But, it happens all the time. Advertisers… I mean, you

can find flags, the United States flag, on any piece of clothing,

probably. It’s just not enforced but it is actually in the flag code of the

government.

M So, there are some instances where the actual formal code will vary

from the practice of what’s happening in the culture or companies who

are selling in that culture.

MC That doesn’t make it right. And you still have to be very sensitive to that

and think about what you’re doing before you do it, I think.

R So, is this group of companies that you lead just a group of American

companies that are concerned about geopolitical issues internationally

or is it an international group because you have sensitivities between

other geographies that are not involved in the main, let’s say, Northern

Atlantic area. So, you will have – I don’t know – conflicts between two

African countries or neighbors. Usually neighbors are very… there are

lots of idiosyncrasies between neighboring countries because they

have a very close relationship and there might be this love and hate

relationship. Is that something that you keep track of, also?

MC We do keep track of it. And the group is actually, all the companies are

headquartered in the United States but they are all global companies.

So, these kinds of topics, especially border disputes or questions about

how one country might be upset with another country is certainly

something we talk a lot about.

One of the things I do is spend the first one to two hours of every

morning just reading, researching what has happened around the world

in the last 24 hours, and when the group gets together we talk a lot

about current events.

R Where do you study…

M That was going to be my question too, what are your favorite resources

to pull on?

MC I have a lot of people asking me that. Everything; anything I can find.

Of course, the web just makes it so easy to be signed up to get instant

alerts for anything that happens around the world. I am signed up for

everything I can find besides the major newspapers around the world,

including China and Russia. I want to hear viewpoints, different

perspectives; I don’t just read the United States and the UK

newspapers, for example, I try and hit all around the world. I’m always

searching for more. I can never get enough information.

R And do you keep a database by country, by geography, by language,

by image? How do you sort this information, how do you search for

that?

MC Exactly, it’s a database. Obviously a very big one, and we throw as

much information in there as we can because you never know what

you will need. One of the things that we do also look at is history. It’s

not just current events. When we’re going into a new market or a new

campaign we want to make sure we have a good, solid understanding

of what’s happened in that country 100 years ago, 200 years ago,

because an image, and I’ve seen this happen in many companies, they

will display an image of a beautiful location, but it will turn out that

location has some geopolitical sensitivity for some reason, a border

dispute, or some massacre, you never know what’s happened, so it’s

just something you have to be very, very careful in how you research

before you present any, especially, images.

M Are you leveraging local professors, some subject matter experts in

that area; is that how you get that information?

MC We do a lot of subject matter expertise. Again, the web is a huge help.

You can find so much. You have to be careful but you can find a lot of

information. When necessary…

M It’s verifying the information is correct isn’t it!

MC You have to verify, that’s the secondary part of this, verifying that what

you’re saying, what you’ve found, is correct. And, yes, we go to local

people around the world, basically, Microsoft offices, to verify things,

whatever is necessary.

R So, one of the things that we love here is juicy stories, right? They don’t

need to be your story but tell us something great that happened, let’s

be positive. Then, tell us something horrible that you know about. We

can keep the players anonymous.

MC Okay, good! Well, actually, for a good, successful story I am going to

use Microsoft because I’m very pleased with this, and it’s a very recent

campaign. If you are familiar at all, if you’re a gamer, or you use

avatars in any shape or form, you may have seen that Microsoft

recently came out with diversity avatars, and they are inspiring. There

is a female that is missing an arm, has an artificial arm; there are

people in wheelchairs, just doing normal, everyday things. And we’ve

had … I think that’s been a very successful example of the company

working together to reflect our values of diversity and inclusion. So,

that’s just a success story.

We’ve also done a lot of things that we have found that it’s really, really

important to…talking about research and making sure that we validate

sources; games that might have characters from different ethnicities,

we have gone to great lengths to make sure that those… we have

gone to the people that are those ethnicities and checked out

costumes, symbolism, language, all sorts of things to make sure

they’re authentic.

R Gestures, also, right? I think that gestures is a big thing.

MC Gestures is a huge thing. I have, probably, four books in my office on

hand gestures, feet gestures, body parts, things that when you go to a

different market you need to think about. I try and make sure to never

do a hand gesture if I’m in a different country because I never can

remember what I should and shouldn’t do.

M Right. And when you have characters in games who are doing things

and responding, and all that, that can be very sensitive. I love the part

about the avatars and the accessibility and that being played out. I’m

giving a talk this week to people who are non-localization people about

the importance of linguistics and localization. And one of my final points

is it matters because this is an accessibility issue which then becomes

a justice issue at some point. And to see that reflected in large

companies, and playing out and products, that’s inspiring. It’s great. It’s

a great example.

MC It is. I’m very pleased with that. So, a juicy negative story...

M Yeah, now we’ve got all that positive stuff out!

MC Let’s see. There are several. We have so many examples of other

companies, and it will have to be anonymous, obviously. There’s a lot

right now with companies that are making mistakes, not using common

sense in my opinion, around racial topics, especially white and black.

Something happened in the last two weeks, if you have seen the white

and black, some of the white and black topics. So, the racial topics are

very, very tough and …

R There was a Volkswagen campaign that was launched in the United

States and was translated as “White Power”, and then they had to pull

it out because nobody had paid attention to the fact that it had a

completely different connotation than what they planned. They were

showing a white car that was very powerful.

MC Exactly. And there have been quite a few of those examples in the last

year, specifically white/black wordplay, and so this is just something

we’re very, very careful on how we use those two words, if we do, they

have to go through a lot of review.

R I love a story that I heard a few years ago that Hewlett Packard

received a complaint from a client because their ink cartridge had

written “negro”, which is black in Spanish, and somebody called

complaining that they were racist because they had negro there. No,

they had to explain, it’s in Spanish and that’s the right word. No! They

must have another word. No, they don’t, that’s the word. So, you can’t

be right all the time.

MC No, you can’t, and it is a balance. It’s everything we look at is the risk

that even if we are using something that might be a little edgy, we have

to balance out the risk and decide how far we want to go with things.

Other examples, there was a company that did a commercial about

eating meat, eating more meat and the graphic that they used was a

Hindu God that was vegetarian, so that was a great example. And,

again, it’s just someone didn’t do the research, didn’t think about it,

didn’t use common sense, and it’s just one of the reasons that it’s so

important to do all of those things.

The United States Military made another mistake recently where they

released—I think into Afghanistan—propaganda leaflets that had

Islamic text, maybe from the Qur’an, I can’t remember, that was

superimposed over an image of a dog. And dogs are a sensitive topic

in Islamic countries, and so it was taken as a very offensive act by the

United States Military, unfortunately.

R It’s hard for people to imagine because usually, we’re multicultural

here, we’re talking and our audience is very multicultural, but you have

your biases and you don’t realize. So, very often you will tell

somebody, using dogs in Islamic countries, or a cow, for the Hindus, is

offensive, it’s regarded as a negative thing. But, think about our culture,

I mean, imagine doing the same thing with a rat or with a spider which

are animals that usually cause some consternation and reaction from

people in our culture. So, it’s the same thing. It’s offensive, it can be

disgusting, there are many reactions that we cannot fathom because

we’re not in their place. But if you look at the things that are repulsive

for us or that are offensive for us, you can relate better to this.

MC That’s a great point. And the cultural bias, everybody has a different

cultural bias and I think that’s a large part of the world’s problems right

now is because people don’t do what you’ve just said, think about how

we would react to something that would be equally offensive for our

cultural bias.

M In a lot of companies, they are working to have a thoughtfulness about

how they’re engaging, and then when they make mistakes there has to

be a thoughtfulness in how they respond as well, that’s equal to the

mistake they made.

MC That’s very true.

R So Michele. Let’s transform this conversation into something practical

to our listeners. Many people in our community are translators,

individuals who are working on text. We have, also, project managers,

translation company owners, buyers of translation and localization

services; is this type of service something that is provided by third

parties, is this something that needs to be controlled in-house; what

kind of advice can you give to our listeners about the type of job that

you do?

MC Well, since I used to be a localization PM and worked a lot with

translation companies, I found that the companies I worked with were

very good about already having this kind of mindset, thinking about

geopolitical topics and in their own culture and in their own language.

So, when they were doing translation services, often, they would come

back to me and say “you know, this is not going to reflect well in our

language and in our market, could we work with you to come up with a

different kind of text?”

If they were working with an image with text in it, which, of course is not

a really good thing, sometimes they would say “you know, this image

isn’t going to work in our market; in fact it might be a problem.” So, they

already had such an open mindset and could, were very helpful and

supportive in this kind of work, and so I think my advice would be just

that’s great, that’s what you should be doing; listen to your translators

and don’t be afraid to have them give you that kind of guidance for their

market.

I have vendors right now, not for translation but just for other kinds of

things, and we do the same thing. I listen to them. If they come and say

“you know, this just isn’t going to resonate or be sensitive to our

market.” I listen.

M Yes, giving the voice of the translator, the people who are doing the

research on the end, is very important. And then other companies

develop guidelines from what they hear over the years and have those

that they are able to reference and publish.

And you mentioned a bit of a hack for companies that may be smaller

and not have the resources, at the moment, to be working with outside

vendors, and that is check with your employees who are from the

countries that you’re marketing to and get their feedback because that

could catch some of the more glaring, obvious offensive material that

would go out.

MC And that’s very important because our company, for example of

course, is very, very diverse from around the world, and we do take

advantage of that as well.

R And I think that one way that we could conclude this conversation is

you telling us how we can get listeners that are interested in joining this

group of companies that have these conversations, other big buyers of

localization services, if they want to join how can they reach you, do

you have a website or something like that for this group?

MC No, we’re not that formal. Actually, this is something we’ve been talking

about in the sub-group, and we’re thinking of expanding the way we

communicate so that other companies can. Right now it’s sort of a

closed group because it’s a sub-set of a bigger group that is a closed

group. So, this is something I think we’ll be thinking about, and we

could certainly come back to both of you and talk about it more.

M That would be great.

R Wonderful.

END OF CONVERSATION