Overview

This best practice provides a set of recommendations for supporting local languages in your digital workplace. A successful digital workplace is one that appears to have been developed within the local culture. This is especially important for organizations with a highly distributed workforce world wide.

Recommendations

• Enable language translation within your solution. 
• Be sure to support all languages spoken within your organization.
• Translate key corporate content before publishing live to your digital workplace. 
• Set up moderation for approved translation of content. This can be done internally or outsourced to a translation firm. 
• Allow users to translate social content such as comments. 

Other considerations

In an effort to help drive your corporate culture, here are some other considerations you might want to try and incorporate in your digital workplace:

• Support local time zones
• Publish financial information in local currency
• Support and promote national holidays
• Think about any local color sensitivities
• Technical translations (e.g. product or service names)
• Perceived discrimination (e.g. by role, gender, culture)

The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) is comprised of members worldwide who specialize in localization, translation, internationalization, and globalization. Every day they help companies, non-profit organizations, and governments communicate effectively to global audiences. Visit their website to find a localization partner to assist you with your localization requirements.