We had the opportunity to sit down with Soeren Eberhardt, senior partner enablement PM at Microsoft, whose passion for languages and localization runs deep.
He is an advocate for global content optimization, and led the experimentation programs for all markets in optimizing sales pages for Microsoft products as a global site manager for four years. Beyond his professional responsibilities, Soeren is a dedicated family man and a seasoned traveler.
Our conversation with him uncovered many insights and real-world applications for marketing managers who are responsible for overseeing global translations.
We talk about how to do things efficiently, how to maintain accuracy and relevance across all languages, and lastly how to have fun with it.
Peek into the heart of Microsoft’s localization efforts
As we all know, Microsoft has a worldwide presence. Their localization process is a massive undertaking that involves 39 languages and various stakeholders in diverse markets.
Soeren and his team has worked on translating the sales and marketing pages for products like Microsoft 365. But the goal is more than just translating content to get the closest possible meaning in each language.
For Soeren, it’s also about optimizing the localized content to drive sales in each market. They would try different modifications on their marketing pages, see how people engage and whether they buy, and just keep experimenting. This calls for precision, nuance, and deeper consideration of cultural differences in selling and buying.
It’s a luxury, says Soeren, to be able to go the extra mile in adapting your content to make sure it’s really fit for the individual market beyond speaking the same language. However, he also notes that it’s absolutely possible to do what he did on a smaller scale.
Here are the key things we learned about effective localization from our chat with Soeren.
What’s the baseline? A translation pipeline you don’t have to think about
Creating multilingual content? Collaborating with others to get things done? The starting point is always having a seamless and automated translation pipeline — whether you’re a large corporation like Microsoft, or a mid-sized company.
According to Soeren, having this baseline efficiency can benefit both managers and translators in ways such as:
- Not having to think about handing over files to somebody for translation.
- Ensuring translators aren’t slowed down by tools they don’t know how to handle.
- Making sure everyone has all the information they need to produce content that uses the right terminology — and thus making their lives easier.
The more you don’t have to think about “how to do, what to do, what to send,” the more you can focus on your customers and showing up in the same world they live in through your content.
A seamless translation pipeline will create more time and freedom for your team to focus on the more strategic aspects of localization that requires the human touch. Like making market-specific content adaptations while ensuring translation accuracy.
That’s the fun part because you’ll have capacity to experiment and see the impact of your decisions in a copy.
For smaller organisations that don’t operate at the same scale or with similar resources as Microsoft, there are translation management systems like Redokun. These tools can help you move translation projects along more efficiently and automatically.
Once you nail down the process, you’re halfway there. Now you have to think about the people involved in the translation.
Tapping into your network to produce the best translations
So who’s going to translate the content? What’s the overhead costs? Do we have the budget for this?
These are the questions that managers and marketers face when their companies want to expand globally and start localizing for diverse audiences.
We asked Soeren to share some advice for teams that are just starting to translate their content, and thus have to the do everything from scratch.
He starts with a simple message:
Your team should be able to translate content with respect to your company’s terminology — while also catering to the humor, cultural sensitivities, and quirks of the people in each market. Sounds impossible? You may already have direct access to these “talents.”
It’s not always in professional translators or expensive agencies where you can find people who really understand the market you want to sell to, or people who are true experts in your niche.
The reality is that you already have a network of experts who can create, review, and adapt your content to fit the market. This could be your colleagues, subsidiaries, market partners, distributors, resellers, and many more.
In fact, throughout our conversation, Soeren mentions different types of people who has helped create and optimize the content, or serve as quality control. They are:
- Translators and proofreaders
- Volunteer reviewers from Microsoft’s subsidiaries
- Communities of native speakers
They can be brought into translation process at different stages to share feedback and shape the content so that it’s not only accurate but also culturally relevant.
Even Soeren himself is sometimes looped into the review process for languages he speaks:
Setting clear standards upfront to make the work easier
Soeren provides his translators as much information as possible upfront to simplify their work. Part of this is also ensuring they’re well informed about the Microsoft product they’re localizing for.
To do a good job, translators need to invest some upfront work of consuming content, understanding the brief, and knowing the product terminology. So Soeren believes in making their lives easier by making it concise. In his words:
Even for smaller scale marketing teams, giving timely product information or terminology guide can really help them avoid repeatedly go back to the review stage, which creates delays. And it’s a common scenario when you enlist external vendors who don’t necessarily have all the context they need to translate your content accurately.
Soeren also mentions that:
By establishing these standards early on through glossaries and other translation databases, managers can ensure higher quality translations and maintain brand consistency across all markets.
Leveraging AI in translations — the foundation for faster, better work
We’ve encountered two schools of people when it comes to AI: people who avoid it because it’s not good enough for producing good translations, and people who fear that AI may take over a translator’s job.
So we also asked Soeren for his thoughts on AI, especially being a language expert in a company that is at the forefront of AI technology. First of all, we confirmed the most important thing: He does have a ChatGPT subscription.
More than that, he finds it useful in different aspects of his personal and professional life. Whether he is writing emails or creating a plan, it’s helpful to have AI give him a structure that may not be perfect, but he can get started with.
And it’s the same with translating your content! Many companies rely on AI language models like Google Translate and DeepL to produce a first draft that people can then quickly build on, take what works, and create something great. As Soeren says:
AI has been in the language industry for a long time, and we’ve continue to see different and newer iterations being released. With every advancement, there has always been concerns about whether AI will replace translators, especially in a fast-paced environment.
To that, Soeren highlights that you always need a human in the loop to ensure the final output meets quality and cultural standards.
AI can handle repetitive and straightforward tasks, allowing the people who guide it to focus on more complex and nuanced aspects of the translation.
Conclusion
Soeren shares many more interesting insights and personal stories with us. Check out the full interview here if you’d like.
Here are our key takeaways for managers and marketers who are still trying to figure out this translation thing, or those who are just dipping their toes into it. To be fast, effective, and quality-foc in localizing your content, you need:
- To have a clear process to oversee and move projects along.
- To leverage your internal and external stakeholders to help with translations — they know your product and your market best.
- To provide timely information to your team so they can do a good job.
- To incorporate AI into the translation process for speed.
By adopting these best practices, you can ensure that your global communication assets are both accurate and culturally relevant, ultimately driving better engagement and success in international markets.
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