Both inside and outside the translation industry, confusion often abounds about the difference between the terms translation and localization. Some clarity is therefore in order: the two words are indeed different, though far from being so distinct in all situations that they could occupy different sectors of the industry. In fact, it’s just the opposite: they are closely related—so close, to our collective chagrin, that we find ourselves in a little translator tizzy. Let’s get to it.
For the purposes of this industry-related context, translation is the transfer of meaning from one language to another. This transfer usually occurs between two texts belonging to the source and target languages. Here’s the kicker: there is almost never an instance where that transfer of meaning from the source to the target language—which is the process of translation itself—is not also localization, which can be defined as adapting the meaning of a message to a given locale or culture.
In some sense, the idea that translation is almost always localization is difficult to deny because the transfer of meaning between languages, which again is translation in a nutshell, almost always has to account for the locale and culture of the target text (even if this implies multiple locales or cultures, as is often the case with multinational languages such as English, Spanish, and French). And if a translation fails to account for these elements—if a translation is carried out without a knowledge of the linguistically embedded culture of the target language—then it is either a failure as a translation or an exception to the general rule. The central assertion here is that, loosely defined, all translation can be considered localization.
But here’s where the difference comes in: not all localization is translation. The former term is broader and more encompassing than the latter. While translation is definable as the transfer of meaning between two languages, localization can encompass other, extra-linguistic elements that can come about in the process of adapting meaning to a given locale or culture. For instance, images, signs, and symbols—semiotic meaning, in so many words—have to be accounted for in the localization of a message. It could even be argued that the extra-linguistic aspects of a message are more important than the linguistic because humans infer an immense amount about their environment from visual and non-verbal cues, extracting meaning from a world that very often defies the limitations of language.
There are two corollaries to this last paragraph: one is that if all translation is localization according to the explanations in the foregoing, the converse cannot be true; not all localization is translation. Two, because localization is more encompassing and multi-modal than translation itself, it is arguably more important than the latter. The two don’t need to compete, of course, and on many projects localization and translation might be one and the same. But it pays to be aware of these distinctions, if only because the feathers of the world’s localizers can get ruffled if we assume that these distinctions don’t matter to the industry or the general public or, what’s worse, that they don’t exist.
They exist, all right, and I’m all for an occasional détente for the greater good of a multilingual world, whether that be for a freelance project, an in-house team, or a merger between companies—as long as we can resume hostilities, by all means, upon returning to battle.
