Lessons learned from Marriott’s PR crisis in mainland China
Since I started my translation and localization program at MIIS, I found that we put so much emphasis in technical side: we’ve learned how to do localization project management by using tools like XTRF, we’ve learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for localizing a website, we’ve also learned how to use various CAT tools. We pay attention to details like concatenation of strings, setting language pickers while abandoning using flags, distributing tasks through automation… All these techniques can help us deliver a localized product in a more efficient way. And we all know the importance of the quality of translation. But what else? Are the accurate translation, perfect product design, and bug-zero UI enough for a safe landing of a product in another culture? Probably not. Culture awareness or even political awareness could play a big role.
Recently, the Marriott International was reprimanded by China for calling its territories independent in a questionnaire for members of its rewards program on its Chinese website. (For details, click here)
Chinese government has requested the deletion of related contents, suspended Marriott International’s Chinese website for a week, and started reviewing all the contents released on Marriott’s APPs and webpages. According to the government, Marriott was involved in the violation against China’s Cyber Security Law and Advertising Law.
Marriott Rewards has published a statement confirming its stand of not supporting separatists, and made an apology on Weibo, one of the most popular SNS in China. However, at the same time, it liked a tweet published by a political group about thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as a country together with Hongkong and Taiwan. This has made its previous public apology a joke and further negatively impacted its corporation image in mainland China.
I don’t want to go further in explaining the Chinese territory or talk about the cross-trait relation between Beijing and Taipei, but I need to say that when it comes to localization, the ignorance of local culture, law, and history is a taboo for companies that are going global. Obviously, the localization of Marriott’s website and APPs in China is a failure. What leads to this?
Thinking from a localization related prospective, maybe the translators or LSPs hired by Marriott are not qualified enough, or maybe they used machine translation. Localization is not about translating a word into a word, it’s about adapting a word according to the local culture and market. At least, these people have paid little attention to local culture and have no idea of what it means to Chinese people when it comes to territorial integrity. But it is unfair just criticizing the localization team, since they are not responsible for liking a tweet. Probably the bad localization itself was just an extension of Marriott’s political ideas.
How to avoid similar incidents from happening again? I’d like to share some ideas from a localization practitioner’s view.
- When hiring translators for localizing contents targeted at a specific market, remember:
Native speakers with living experience in that country > native speakers; non-native speakers with living experience in that country > non-native speakers without living experience in that country.
2. When applying machine translation, always involve a human translator who can do proofreading.
3. Some companies completely outsource their localization work, some companies have their own localization teams. For companies with localization teams, hiring project managers with multi-culture background and objective political views is essential. For LSPs, diversifying the knowledge background of your vendors can sometimes save your clients from getting involved in big trouble.
4. Experienced translators are usually very sensitive with cultural differences and they can handle them by using flexible translation tricks. For example, when translating the word “country” into Chinese, instead of using the word “国家”, we can use “国家或地区”, meaning a country or a region.
Every country has its own culture, law or regulation, it is always safe to double check if any of your contents have conflicts with them before final shipment.