Fine-tuning websites lost in translation

SARAH DOUGHERTY, Special to the Gazette

Published: Monday, November 19 2007 The Gazette

The Entrepreneurs. Huiping Iler's firm helps companies trolling global markets for customers adapt their sites to other cultures

A few years ago, emissaries from the California winery Kendall-Jackson met with restaurateurs in China.

Pouring a glass of pinot noir, the Kendall representative described the wine as having hints of strawberry. He was met with blank looks; no one in his audience had ever tasted the fruit. The company went back to the drawing board to adapt its descriptors to the Chinese palate.

The strawberry analogy is one a myriad of missteps companies can make when they troll international markets for customers.

With more and more North American businesses expanding their reach using websites, Huiping Iler saw a niche waiting to be filled. She started Ottawa-based Wintranslation.com to not only translate corporate websites, but also adapt them to other cultures.

Now a decade old, her company has done work for heavyweight clients like Maple Leaf Foods and Caterpillar, and Iler is a sought-after speaker.

Iler, 33, learned about cultural adaptation first-hand.

After growing up near Heng Yang, an industrial city in southern China, she left on a scholarship to study communications at the University of Windsor in Ontario.

At the top of her class in China, Iler had a tough time at Windsor; she had never used a computer, didn't grasp Canadian cultural references and had to learn a different style of reasoning and writing.

"It was a huge struggle," she said.

But the transition gave Iler a leg-up when it came to understanding cross-cultural differences. So after graduation and working at a few clerical jobs,

Iler launched her own translation business from home.

Her first clients included people who needed to translate official documents like marriage certificates. The immigration section of the Canadian Consulate General in Detroit was her first important corporate client.

While Iler did some Chinese-to-English translation, she hired freelance translators for most of the work.

"My goal was not to become a great translator myself, although I do translation," she said. "I was more interested in the business side."

But Iler admits it took her time to master some business skills and she finally farmed some out, like accounting. Employee turnover was also a problem until she figured out what qualities to look for.

"I realized it wasn't necessary to have a superb-looking resumé," she said.

In 1999, Iler's business took a turn when she won a contract from Planet Intra Inc. (now called Vialect) to translate and adapt the documentation and user interface for a software program for the company's office in Germany.

From then on, Iler grew her expertise in "localization," or adapting websites for foreign markets or users from different cultures.

"A lot of firms have the chance to use the Internet to go global, to get international customers." Iler said. "Sometimes translation is not enough, you have to culturally adapt the content."

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wintranslation.com in the press:
Multilingual by Multilingual Computing (No. 1 trade publication in the translation industry):
Business metrics for language companies

Business Edge:
Expertise maximizes global web presence- High ranking on search engines can pay big dividends (pdf)

CBC Radio Canada International “The Link”
Profile of WTB Language Group Inc. (click to listen)