by Shane Grevin

I’m at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, in a picturesque field surrounded by a group of forty kindergarteners.  The business world of multiple languages is the furthest thing from my mind, for about two minutes that is… until my girl finishes her snack and we head to the basura to drop our non-recyclables.  I stop in my tracks.  Basura?  Even before my daughter and I enter the Discovery Museum, I have learned something.  This is an English/Spanish bilingual Touch, Play, Learn & Say museum.

At first I think it is neat…  The teléfono is next to the baño and exposición de peces, etc.  Later, as my six year old studies a mariposa, I get to thinking harder about it – is the Museum catering to enough languages or too many?  What made them think, “We need to label everything in Spanish and English,” and not, say, Simplified Chinese or Japanese?  I mean, we are 15 minutes away from Chinatown and at least that far from any primarily Spanish-speaking areas of San Francisco or Marin Counties.

Of course, a day later a client asks me, “How should I set my team up for success to localize our application and support documentation for the first time?  What should I translate? What can I get away without translating? Who might buy an English-only version?” Typically, I have an easy answer – and it starts with questions – Who do you want to reach?  What market do you want to penetrate? How will you measure success? What is your budget? I advise… know your reason for doing it and how/what to do it will come easily.

And that brings me full circle: I wonder if the Discovery Museum went through these or a similar set of questions?  I can tell you the only ones speaking Spanish this day were my pack of kids, clearly not the intended audience as English is their first language and they just happen to take Spanish classes because Dad is pushing them toward being bilingual.

Come to think of it, by the time they are grown will bilingual be enough?

How do you or company go about making decisions about what & how much to translate?

Please leave a comment and let us know!