Geoculturally speaking, how literate are you?

Useful tips on how to create appropriate educational content
Medialocate USA, Inc.

Understand your own product content from a geocultural perspective. The biggest communication blunder is to ignore the importance of culture in communications.

Cultural customization begins where basic “localization” ends. Localization refers to the adaptation of product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market—or locale. It is not only translation of source documentation, but also adaptation to the target locale including, but not exclusive to:

• Numeric, date and time formats
• Use of currency
• Symbols and icons: choose generic images and symbols
• Text and graphics containing references to objects, actions or ideas which, in a given culture, may be subject to misinterpretation or viewed as insensitive.
• Varying legal requirements

When producing content-intensive educational material rich in text, graphics, icons, maps, flags, colors, there are there are many globalization and localization challenges and complications to overcome. Knowing the geocultural aspects of your target market is absolutely crucial to the success of your product. The way your target audience reacts to your product is based on historically derived ideas and values resulting in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting. Some of these critical aspects remain beneath the surface and greatly affect local perceptions, such as: language and context, politics and regulation, social trends, cultural practices, religion and beliefs.

Remember: The more you know about your target audience, the greater your chances of proactively discerning, resolving and defining your geocultural content decision.

Plan for success: Think ahead.

In preparation for localizing your documentation, follow these simple rules:

• Reread your documentation, write global English and write in a simple, clear, concise and consistent manner
• Use a glossary for correctness and consistency
• Use a style guide: keep the form correct, so that the reader can focus on your content
• Use active voice and active verbs
• Avoid acronyms, idioms, and jargon
• Keep New York minutes, the Chicago Loop and ducks in a row out of your documentation
• Avoid puns, jokes, metaphors, slang, humor: they don’t work in other cultures
• Use industry-accepted symbols, if possible. Contact your vendor for assistance.
  • US symbols and icons don’t work elsewhere, e.g. US mail box, crosswalk signals (palm up), holidays and seasons
• Avoid historical references: interpretation of historical events causes great strife
• For graphics, avoid
  • Elements with text
  • Human body elements and body language
    • Smiling faces or open mouth smile showing teeth seems to be most acceptable only in the U.S.
    • Hand gestures are so very cultural—avoid
    • Exposed feet are taboo in several locales; exposing the bottom of the feet is considered a serious insult
  • Images of animals, in general
  • Women and animals—taboo in Arab cultures
  • Physical environments, maps
  • Ethnic, racial, political, religious and physical environments: no crosses or crescents, no flags or maps
  • Gender-specific elements
  • Sexual and violent elements
• Be aware of regional conventions—not only date/time and monetary elements, but also reading direction and text placement
  • For right-to-left languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, ensure that acceptable icons and images are positioned correctly and that the text is right justified
  • For Asian languages, text is vertical, read right to left
• COLOR: Be very aware of the power of colors
  • Color is considered one of the most useful and powerful design tools you have. People respond to different colors in different ways, and these responses take place on a subconscious, emotional level.
  • What signifies life and joy in one culture means death in another, joy in one, death in another. Check with your localization vendor for assistance in this very crucial area.

What takes precedence in your target locale?

Equally important and much less well known, are the underlying cultural values of each locale. Knowing these is imperative in presenting your material correctly, so that it is acceptable in your target locale. Contact your localization vendor for assistance with the target locales for greater clarification. Following is an overview of these cultural environments:

• Individualism-Collectivism
  • Priority given to the goals of the individual (individualism)
  • Priority given to the goals of the group (collectivism)
• Uncertainty Avoidance
  • Predictability, structure and order (high uncertainty avoidance)
  • Risk taking and an acceptance of ambiguity and limited structure (low uncertainty avoidance)
• Power Distance
  • Authority and hierarchy (high power distance)
  • Distribution of power (low power distance)
• Masculinity-Femininity
  • Achievement and ambition (masculine)—assertiveness, material possessions and success
  • Nurturing and caring for others (feminine)—helping others, preserving the environment, quality of life and nurturance
• High-Low Context
  • High context societies have close connections among group members, and everybody knows what every other person knows. Great use more symbols and nonverbal cues to communicate, with meanings embedded in the situational context.
  • Low context cultures are societies that are logical, linear, action oriented. The mass of the information is explicit and formalized; communication in such cultures takes place in a rational, verbal and explicit way conveying concrete meanings through rationality and languages.

In presenting educational material to your target culture, you must heed its cultural values: tailor text and examples to meet its need. (Do not encourage class discussion in a culture centered on authority and hierarchy: it won’t work.) Check with your localization provider to correctly identify the cultural definition of your chosen locale.

Know the cultural values of your target locale for successful implementation of your educational material.