3 signs that you need to implement a Copyedit process in your Localization strategy

The other day I was playing golf for a while, I had not played for a long time, but the truth is that it is one of the best sports you can practice in these times of pandemic. Outdoors and playing in small groups of people is quite COVID-free!

I have never been a good golfer. In the end, like so many other things in life, to improve your skills comes a time when you have to dedicate time to it. And in golf, which is such a technical sport, you need to shoot a lot of balls on the driving range so that things might go reasonably well when you play a game.

The other day from Hole 1, when I already lost two balls off the tee, I realized that it didn't start well at all. There were signs that I perceived that did not bode well. My golf club was slipping, my golf shoes, which I hadn't worn for a long time, were giving me a little blister, my glasses were fogging up... signs that in a way indicated to me that the game might not be going in the right direction.

The localization world is sometimes similar to golf because we perceive signs that indicate that the localization process is not going the right way, yet we often ignore them.

In this post, I want to share 3 signals that suggest that it may be convenient to include the copyedit process in your Localization strategy.

But first, let's go with a Copyedit definition since sometimes copyediting is called proofreading or copywriting.

In this post, I refer to copyedit as the process executed by a professional in the localization industry in which the editor looks for gross errors in the content they review.

A copyeditor looks at the document through their expert lens.

One of the first things the copyeditor will do is create a style guide (if one does not already exist) that reflects the areas that will be evaluated and reviewed.

Once you have created the style guide, these are some of the signals you may receive that may be significant that your Localization strategy needs a copy edit phase

Click HERE to download the infographic

1.- There are several stakeholders creating content

This is probably the most powerful signal you can find. Suppose a Localization team detects that content is being created in different parts of the organization without clear ownership of who is writing each of the different product features. In that case, it will undoubtedly affect the consistency of the content you are creating on your website or digital product.

Different content creators will surely increase the chances of inconsistency in using glossary terms or general tone and style.

2.-The person creating the content is native.

If you have ever gotten that response when you have suggested introducing a copyedit process in your localization activities, that is a very powerful signal that the copyediting process is necessary!

Just because a person is native doesn't mean they are going to be a great content writer. It is pretty typical to have software developers writing app content. But if you stop and think about it, that person was hired for their coding skills, for their technical expertise, not for their language skills or for their content writing ability. In many cases, it is difficult to explain the different reasons that make a content well written, but it shows when we read something very well written. This is something that the great Ernest Hemingway summed up to perfection in one of his immortal quotes

“In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues, and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new”

— Ernest Hemingway

3.- The number of cosmetic bugs reported during the Localization QA phase is high.

By a cosmetic bug, we mean all those errors found during the linguistic testing phase that has to do with truncated texts or with the UI in general. And the truth is that many of these truncated text errors can be detected at the beginning of the Localization process, where the copyedit phase takes place instead of at the end of the Localization process, which is where the LQA phase takes place.

When you copy edit at the beginning, in the design phase, you have a chance to verify the localizability readiness of the original content (which in most cases is English).

But the English language is shorter than most other languages. It is not uncommon to find short words in English that are much longer in different languages, which will unquestionably lead to truncations of content if you do not have a process of detection of these cases in place. If you pay attention to how the content might look in other languages when you copy edit, you avoid many LQA errors that will appear later on. Once again, the expression "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is applicable.

In summary

The copyedit phase is a tremendously helpful process to include in your Localization strategy as it helps to eliminate parts that are incorrect, ambiguous, or simply sound inappropriate.

But in many cases we ignore the signals we receive in our day-to-day Localization activities... and ignoring signs does not usually help to avoid that what starts badly ends badly (like my golf game that finished many points over par)

Until next time!

@yolocalizo