The 5 type of audiences we might find when talking about Localization

In my sessions at Toastmasters, the organization par excellence focused on improving the public speaking skills of its members, they used to explain to us that underestimating audiences in public speaking is a mistake.

That we should not focus on what we want to say but on what our audience needs to hear.

The focus should not be on us at all but on them.

Well, the same applies in the Localization industry.

We have to forget about what we want to tell and focus on what our stakeholders need to hear.

I often say that a localization team is the glue of a company, especially in those cases where the localization team acts within an organization as shared services offering localization solutions and services to different stakeholders; and the reason for that is that, sooner or later, everyone is going to need us to create or localize content to help the global expansion of the company.

That presents multiple challenges, one of the most important of which is the number of stakeholders we have to talk to.

That's why when preparing for a presentation, or a meeting, we have to make an effort to understand our stakeholders.

In the world of public speaking, this is known as audience analysis.

What's audience analysis?

Audience analysis is the process of collecting as much information as possible about your audience to better understand who they are and what they care about.

Adapting your Localization message to the types of audiences we are going to talk to is likely to generate a better response.

There are several factors that we must consider when "studying" the stakeholders to whom we are going to present about our Localization stuff, such as

• audience expectations about Localization,

• audience’s knowledge or familiarity with the Localization industry

• and audience’s attitude/approach

Why is important to analyze your Localization audience?

Audience analysis is important because you can't effectively communicate with an audience if you don't know what they want; or if you don't know what they know about the topic.

To take our Localization strategy to the next level reaching the right people and crafting a message that resonates with them is crucial for achieving our success.

What kind of audiences are we likely to meet when we talk about our Localization "stuff"?

Here is a summary of the 5 groups of stakeholders, audiences that I have encountered most frequently during my career. Learning to identify them, and learning the objective that we must achieve with each of these groups is crucial.

It's also very important to build alliances that allow us to achieve more things together. Often a localization team, compared to the total size of the organization, is very small!

Many companies have mini teams in which 1-2 people are responsible for leading the entire localization strategy. There are indeed companies with very large localization teams, Google, Apple, Microsoft these companies have very solid and large localization teams, still, generally speaking, the ratio of localizer vs non-localizer is very low as these companies have thousands of employees! 

In these situations understanding our stakeholders and knowing what they need is what will make the difference in executing the different Localization activities in a satisfactory way and with less friction. 

The 5 types of audiences that we may encounter when interacting with other people are the following

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1. Friendly Audiences

This group of stakeholders is those who for one reason or another are on your side.

In my career as a professional in the localization industry, I have learned to identify these groups. They are the:

• UX writers

• QA people

• Designers ... are usually crafts that are friendly for a localization professional.

When we have these people as an audience, the goal is to reinforce their beliefs that the work we do is important, worthwhile and helps them achieve their goals.

When this happens we have allies who will help us amplify the reach of our Localization program.

Learn to identify your friendly stakeholders as they will be your loyal allies!

Neutral Audience

These people... won't support you immediately, but they won't bother you either. Let's say they are on the fence.

When dealing with this type of audience our goal is to convince them that what we are telling them is going to affect them positively.

Make an effort to explain to them how the outcome of your localization activities helps them meet their objectives.

Hostile Audience

The name says it all. These are your stakeholders who for one reason or another do not support your idea, they may not like our idea, they may not like us.

For whatever reason, these are the people who are in strong disagreement with your idea.

But even though the term hostile sounds bad, let's not dramatize! not everybody will like us, not everybody will support us when we tackle localization tasks. Here the objective is to respect their point of view, try to think of reasons why they don't agree with your viewpoint, and introduce new information, new arguments that can make them rethink their position.

Uninformed Audience

These are people who are unfamiliar with the Localization activities.

Here our goal is to inform them only of what they need to know before asking them to "buy" our idea.

For an uninformed audience to become a friendly and supporting audience, we don't have to fill their heads with irrelevant data. Often those of us in the industry go overboard with details and give too much information, not everyone needs to know about our processes for aligning translation memory, or how we train our MT engine.

We need to figure out how much information to provide them depending upon their level of knowledge about the topic. 

Expert Audience

This audience may be colleagues from other companies to whom we give a presentation at Localization World, for example.

Or it could be an audience from a sister team in another part of the organization.

I work at King and an example of an expert audience is when I have a meeting with my Localization colleagues from Activision or Blizzard. All 3 companies we work for in the ABK conglomerate (Activision, Blizzard, and King) have Localization teams with very knowledgeable members.

The goal when we talk to an expert audience is to give them something new, either a new perspective on a common problem or to share with them the results of something new we have been working on.

Here the key is to avoid giving too much context or giving superfluous or generic information.

This audience is experts, let's give them something new! 

Business Audience

This type of audience will normally be the Senior Leaders of the company you work for, or investors you are going to pitch your idea to, or Product Owners of the product we are developing.

These types of stakeholders are usually very busy.

For them time is important, so avoid the detours and get to the point.

We need to be polite, be well prepared, and concise.

Make sure that the focus and the bulk of your presentation is about them and not about you or your localization program.

You have to empathize with them and make them see that what you are telling them is of value to them.

When interacting with these stakeholders, nurture your speech, your presentation with data and statistics that will help them understand the importance of what you are telling them. 

Conclusion

In summary, use your knowledge of the audience to adapt your Localization pitch accordingly. Adopt the perspective of the audience to identify with them, and find a way to match your goals with what they need to hear.

Doing so, helps us tremendously in explaining what we do, the importance of it, and how we help with our Localization tasks to contribute to the overall growth of the company.

@yolocalizo