December 2007

Localizing Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. Everywhere around the World people are preparing for this holiday - even in countries where there aren't too many Christians. Lots of websites have been updated just for this event. Nice images with Christmas decorations, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, people skating on ice, red and white everywhere. However, some of the designers have been forgotten an important detail: not everybody celebrates Christmas and Christmas doesn’t always fall in the winter season.

When you have your web site available in many languages and the same image is used for all the language versions, you may need to think twice about all the Christmas related graphics. Some people may be offended by them.

One of our Turkish translators told us why Christmas images don’t go well in Turkey. Here is her email response to our question about Christmas in Turkey:

“This is an interesting social issue for Turkey. Although Christmas is not forbidden in the country, there is indeed some sensitivity on the part of a large segment of the society. Christmas is not celebrated. Many people celebrate the New Year, but a small section of the society also shun the New Year as they are disturbed by the inevitable cross-over between the celebrations of Christmas and New Year. 

I would say visuals narrowly referring to the New Year and carefully avoiding any similarity with Christmas imagery are relatively safe. 

Examples would include: 
- Decorative typographical treatment of the New Year '2008'. 
- A clear statement of 'Happy New Year' in Turkish. 
- Gift packages showing local style of wrapping (e.g. with a flowery ribbon on top), that avoid Christmas colors and cross-shaped ribbons. 
- Balloons, party hats. 
- Winter scenes that avoid Santa, Christmas trees (and related decorations), deer and anything else that might invoke Christmas.”

In countries like Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, Christmas comes in the middle of the summer. In Australia people have barbeques for Christmas and some say that Santa comes on a surfboard, and that sometimes his sled is driven by 8 kangaroos.

It will be a little amusing to have images on the websites with mountains full of snow and people wearing gloves and bootsin counties where it is summer during Christmas time.

Starbucks invites Australians to their annual Christmas Cheer party in stores across Australia.

Possible that's why these people from the Starbucks website in New Zealand are wearing winter clothes… they are preparing to go and sing carols in the snow… in New Zealand… in 45 ° Celsius temperatures.

I actually heard that even Santa wears silk clothing due to the summer heat in these countries.

Small details like these can make your customer to abandon your website right away without checking your product or services. So, do a little research before throwing an image to your website. Check with your translators; have them do a quality assurance verification of your website before going live. Even if you don't change the content of the website and only change some images or some colours, make sure that these small changes won't affect your audience.

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