Microsoft learns from its past: Localization matters
Many businesses have learned the hard way the high price of mistranslation and poor intercultural communication. One software giant, Microsoft, managed to get their software banned in several countries, and as a result lost millions of dollars in recalls. Imagine the amounts that could have been saved had they implemented appropriate linguistic and cultural strategies into their marketing.
During an International Geographical Union congress meeting in 2004, the head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team, Tom Edwards, revealed how the company managed to offend several countries because of their failure to understand the importance of political geography, cultural landscape, and accurate language translation:
• Microsoft colored 800,000 pixels on a map of India, but made eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in color represented Kashmir as non-Indian, resulting in a ban of the product in India. As a result, Microsoft had to recall all 200,000 copies of Windows 95 operating system software.
• Microsoft included chanting of the Koran as a soundtrack for a computer game. Needless to say there was a strong negative reaction from many Islamic countries, and the government of Saudi Arabia emphatically denounced the product.
• Microsoft managed to offend women in several Spanish-speaking countries with their Spanish version of Windows XP. Although the translated software was designed for Latin American markets, it prompted users to select their gender from the following three choices: "not specified," "male" or "bitch".
Such costly mistakes have forced many companies to improve their global marketing skills. Having learned from their past, Microsoft currently employs linguistic and localization experts to help market their international products.