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Chapter 25 ✦ Cataloging Audiences
So, for the purpose of a CMS, I define localization as follows:
An authoring process in which you make the communication conventions of your con-
tent optimally understandable in the various languages, regions, and affiliation groups
that you care to serve.
What are your localities?
A locality is a specific combination of language, region, and affiliations. Following are some
examples of localities that illustrate the concept:
✦ Turkey: You define this locality by a region (Turkey). Regardless of the language that
some inhabitants may speak, you use Turkish to communicate; and regardless of their
ethnic or religious affiliations (Kurds, Moslems, and so on), you speak to them as secu-
lar Moslems. You would create this locality if you were opening an office in Istanbul.
✦ Francophones: You define this locality by language (French). Regardless of location
(Africa, Europe, North America) and any other affiliations (citizenship, political persua-
sion, religion, and so on), you speak to this audience in French. You may create a local-
ity such as this one if you discover that 30 percent of your product inquiries come from
French-speaking people.
✦ Social conservatives: You define this locality by an affiliation. It includes people that
may be offended by words or images that depict the human body or allude to sex.
You may create this locality to acknowledge the fact that half the people who visit your
Web site come from regions or religions where conservative mores prevail. Regardless
of the language that they speak or the region where they live, you speak to these peo-
ple without sexual words or images.
I choose the preceding three examples not because they’re common ways that people localize,
but to make the point that a locality isn’t always a language. For you to consider it a locality, a
group of people must share a set of communication assumptions that you care to cater to.
Given the amount of work that catering to communication assumptions involves, you’re
unlikely to create a locality for every group that you may discover. Rather, you identify the
following types of localities:
✦ A primary locality: This type is the default locality for your content. The most popular
primary locality today is International English. This locality assumes a fluency in the
English language but tries to use no expressions or styles that are idiomatic to a partic-
ular region where English is spoken.
✦ Constituent localities: These types are all the localities where you expect people to use
your publications.
✦ Key localities: These types are the localities that you choose to actually serve.
To implement localization in a CMS, you group all the constituent localities into a few key
localities. You choose the key localities to cover the widest set of constituents possible. The
primary locality serves as the master content that you then localize into the assumptions of
the key localities.
I’m aware that the primary locality of this book is American Techno English. This locality
involves the set of communication assumptions common to educated middle- and upper-
class citizens of the United States who have a strong affiliation to the Web and electronic-
publication communities. If you’re not in this group, I apologize for making things easier for
me and harder for you by using words such as Techno English.
Note
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