By Kyle Chow
As linguistic and cultural experts, translators often recognize there are major design differences between the same content in different languages. Although this may be quite obvious to some, many don’t recognize the importance of adaptation beyond the linguistic text.
I just watched through the recording of a virtual event held by btrax on how design approach differs between US and Japanese clients. There were a lot of great takeaways surrounding the overall experience of designers who work with clients in both regions, but one specific aspect that stood out to me near the 31 minute mark in the video is how different the foundational design of US/Japanese websites and marketing materials can be. For example, in the video, the Japanese and US versions of the Yahoo homepage are shown side by side:
This was quite striking to me, since these bear zero resemblance to each other (even the logos are completely different). It makes sense considering that the sites are essentially run by different companies now, but what does this tell us about design in the US vs. Japan?
In the video, Jonathan gives the explanation that too many graphics can get in the way of the text for Japanese people, noting they “have to understand the whole entire page, and they take that information and make a decision on it,” as opposed to the site’s US counterpart, where the audience is more likely to put different pieces of info together to make quicker decisions (Jonathan also mentions an article he wrote on this topic which I loved reading through).
The implication of this is that if you had something similar to the US Yahoo site and wanted to localize into Japanese (or vice versa), you could hire the very best translators and put tons of effort into accommodating the site layout for the target text, but you still might not find much success because the fundamental design doesn’t resonate as much with the target audience.
Let’s look at another example from the video, this time from Sony:
We can notice similar trends, with the Japanese version putting much more emphasis on stylizing the text versus the US version drawing more attention to the visuals surrounding the products. So, if a company knows it’s going to develop content similar to this that needs localizing, when should the localization team be consulted to create a truly adapted user experience in both regions? Ideally, from the beginning.
Imagine this:
- Japanese marketing materials are developed for a campaign (similar to what’s on the left half of the Sony screenshot).
- Only after the Japanese materials are finalized are they then handed off to the localization team for localization into English.
Again, the best translators could be hired to produce superior translations. Lots of time could be spent choosing amazing replacement fonts and stylizing the English text to make it just as polished as the Japanese versions. But in the end, a company still might find their US target audience isn’t clicking on the ads very much because the amount of text on the graphics is “too much” to be appealing for many people in their audience. To truly adapt these materials to the US market, a different design would’ve needed to be created earlier on.
This is why localization should not just be a process that only happens after the original content has been finished. Localizing content means thinking about not just the translation of the text, but also adapting the underlying design in a way that makes the content feel like it was made for a target audience, which a lot of the time can only happen if localization is incorporated throughout the entire development process.
Bonus: Comparison of US and Japanese TV Network Sites
After seeing the stark differences between the US/Japan Yahoo websites, I decided to look at other sites to see if I could spot the same design trends. As many of my personal localization projects will tell you, I am a huge fan of Japanese TV, so out of curiosity, I compared the sites of one of the top Japanese TV networks (Nippon TV) and one of the top US TV networks (CBS).
Here’s what each of their homepages look like:
The Nippon TV site is very clearly more text heavy, but perhaps to a slightly lesser degree than the Yahoo site. It’s worth noting that even beyond there being more text in show descriptions, the tiles for the shows themselves tend to have the text as more of the “main feature” (a couple are actually only text), whereas the vast majority of the show tiles for the CBS site have the text at the bottom, with the non-text graphics capturing more of the reader’s attention.
I was also interested in seeing what the TV schedule page looked like on each site. Here’s a comparison of both that you can switch between by dragging the cursor:
And I thought the Yahoo comparison was extreme! This one pretty much speaks for itself. Granted, there are other US TV networks that are more text-heavy than CBS on their schedule pages, but nothing to the extent of Japanese TV network sites with their paragraphs of descriptions for each show listed. However, I will say that as someone who keeps up with several of these Japanese shows myself every week, I do actually find the Japanese TV schedule useful in being able to get a better idea of what the next episode of a show is about without leaving the page.
Anyway, quite interesting to see just how different design can be! All this is very useful to keep in mind as localizers, since not taking this into account could lead to a failed launch in a target market for an otherwise spectacular site or product. Thank you to btrax for holding such an insightful event!