Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill is commonly associated with the phrase: “all politics is local,” while fans of the English black comedy The League of Gentlemen may chuckle at the line: “this is a local shop for local people, there’s nothing for you here.” Whether you live in Nashville, New York, or Nottingham and whether or not any of us want to admit it, it is human nature to accept and associate with the local and be somewhat sceptical of the non-local. Definitions of what specifically makes something “local” are as individual as each destination, but the idea of defining things by their locality is the basis of today’s word – localisation.
Starting with the word itself, which, at the root of it all, comes to us from the Old French local, which originated as the Late Latin localis, meaning ‘pertaining to a position,’ a derivative of the Latin locus, meaning ‘place.’ So, building up to our word, if the word “local” means “a particular position” or “relating to a particular place,” adding the suffix -ise means “making something relate to a particular place,” and our full word, localisation, becomes the noun form of this process.
If the concept of the compounded meaning of the word seems difficult, take comfort in knowing that the attempt of localisation (or lack of such) has been the subject of many international pitfalls, especially in business.
Example 1: Long before iPhones and iPads, when Apple first decided to start selling internationally in the early 1980’s, an international keyboard was designed for sales in Europe, but the design used only characters from American English. Considering the special characters needed for individual European languages, the computers were woefully inadequate, which led to Apple halting production of the European model in 1983.
Example 2: With its eyes fixed internationally, Starbucks decided to establish and grow its presence in Europe’s largest economy, Germany; however, the coffee giant was unaware that one of their standard drinks, the Latte, translates to, when using slang German, a male erection. Thankfully for German coffee lovers, this story has a happier ending, as Germans found the association to be humorous, and Starbucks avoided what could have been a PR disaster.
To avoid such pitfalls and significantly broaden the reach of your products in global markets, consult a provider of professional localisation services.
The first known use of our word in English comes from the 27 May, 1812 edition of The Bury and Norwich Post, where it is written that: “Henry Thornton.., after explaining..the solid and permanent benefits connected with this system of localization, concluded..by representing the several Auxiliary Societies as possessing claims to the warmest gratitude of the Meeting.” While, the proceeding decade saw (and still sees) the word additionally used in the physiological sense via the medical journal Lancet in 1826, it seems as if most still consider the term in a more purely physical, geographic sense.
