What Is Localization? Culture, Language & Business Success with Julio Madrid | Nearshore Cafe

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**Brian:** Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Samson, your host, a Nearshore entrepreneur, and we bring light to all these amazing stories of people doing business in and around Latin America. If you’re interested in localization, wow, this is going to be a great episode for you! Before we get into that and meeting our guest, I want to give a shout-out to our sponsor, Plug Technologies, Plug.tech. Plug is a great way to connect all the amazing talent from Latin America to growing US companies. Without further ado, let’s meet our localization expert, Julio Madrid.

**Julio:** Julio, so nice to meet you.

**Brian:** Hi, Brian. Likewise. Thank you for having me.

**Julio:** Absolutely.

**Brian:** Julio, there’s a lot of people listening that know what localization is, but not everyone does. Some may just think it’s translation. What exactly is this industry? Can you share more for maybe a beginner, and then build into it a little bit?

**Julio:** Absolutely, yes. Actually, the first time I heard “localization,” I thought it had something to do with GPS and finding and searching for things. But basically, what it is, to put it in a simplified way, I call it enhanced translation. So, the definition or textbook definition would be to adapt a product, service, software, or any content from one language into a different language, and adapt it to a specific culture or region. So, basically, it’s putting, let’s say, an application or a software in English that you create probably in the US, adapted to Mexican Spanish, which is in my case what I work with the most. Or you can have, let’s say, a Chinese soap opera or TV series, and then you want to adapt it to English or Mexican Spanish. That is the localized process: to adapt it in a way that makes sense culturally. This allows companies to actually create a closer connection and develop more customer satisfaction or consumer satisfaction when you’re speaking the language on a more personal level to the consumer.

**Brian:** Interesting. So, let’s maybe take an example. Amazon works in Mexico. How might Amazon think about their web app and their mobile app? If someone’s using it in the States and then they use it for Mexico City, or a Mexican is using it versus someone in the States, how might a company like Amazon think about it?

**Julio:** It’s funny that you mentioned Amazon because that was like my first experience in a big company or in a big project working on localization. Back then, and I’m talking about this project I did with Amazon, it was 2013. Back then, we had only machine translations; we didn’t have neural machine translations. So, it was basically more handwork, not so much optimization as we have now with large language models. So, the aspect of what Amazon would do for localization, let’s say you sell avocados, right? And you’re in California, and you know Amazon is a platform for small sellers and small companies that you put your product up in their catalog. It’s the Amazon website, but you’re selling as a small company your avocados, and you want to sell it in Mexico, and you want to sell it in Chile as well. So, the localization process for your small store on the Amazon platform would be to actually adapt the product and the service that you offer to that particular locale. We call it locale, which is Mexico and Chile. And you know, in Mexico and Chile, we speak Spanish, but we use different Spanish for different words. As you well know, in Latin America, it’s a whole variety of words that we have for the same thing. So, for instance, “avocado” in Mexican Spanish is “aguacate,” but in Chile, you might say “palta.” Pardon, “palta.” And then there are so many other regions within Chile that name it differently. So, you’re in California, you know avocados are avocados, and you want to sell guacamole. So, what the Amazon platform does with the localization department is to take your product and adapt it to that particular region. And now you’re selling “aguacates” in Mexico, and when I in Mexico go into the store at Amazon for your product, I see the content in Spanish, in Mexican Spanish. And at the same time, another person in Chile might be opening that same website, but they are seeing different content for the same product. So, that would be the localization and the process, a little bit of what Amazon would do for their products. Now, they also have Prime Video, which is in itself a whole industry for localization because they have to localize the dialogues, they have to localize the content of the films and movies and TV series, and they also do the subtitles, which in itself is a whole industry. So, localization is, I would say, one of the main pillars of the success that Amazon has had globally.

**Brian:** Yeah, sounds complicated. And maybe, you know, Amazon, I’m sure people are listening, maybe they’re small business owners. Amazon, you know, trillion-dollar business, as you know, enormous resources. What if you’re a small business? How should they think about localization?

**Julio:** It all depends what your product, service, or content is and who your audience is. If you are in California, you want to sell it in California, you can just have it in English. And you know, the region adapts to the product usually as you are in the US. But as you know, in California, there are about 200 different dialects and languages spoken in a small region, in the LA region. You can localize it to target a specific community. It can be the Latino community, it can be the Asian community, and then you would have to go about knowing a little bit about your audience and how your product can get adapted to it. It is really expensive if you want to do it as a small company or as a small, you know, business owner. But fortunately, there are so many tools and apps and already established processes that allow you to do this in such a deep way. Like for $30 a month, you can actually get an app that does your localization processes in a way that it’s like if you were in Amazon. You upload your product, but Amazon does the localization. So, it’s the same thing here. You can get, it’s like pretty much everything in life, you can get it cheaper or you can get it a lot more expensive. But the great thing about localization nowadays is that technology, as in everything in life, has allowed it to be cheaper and more democratic. Let’s say anyone can access localization tools. And if you now bring into the picture the artificial intelligence craze, well, you pretty much get unlimited resources, as let’s say you get a ChatGPT model and you can actually train it for it to localize the products for you. So, there are many options. It’s so funny because you might be, let’s say, a small two-employee company against Amazon, but the website and the content are going to look exactly the same. Amazon is investing billions, but you’re just going to be investing a little bit, and that’s the beauty of it.

**Brian:** Yeah. Are there any apps or tools, maybe AI tools, that you find to be better than others?

**Julio:** Jesus, AI, it’s a whole phenomenon. When I started working in localization, we didn’t have large language models per se, but we were developing them, creating this machine translation and deep learning. And then these large language models came to be, and the GPT, not to get too technical, but the GPT, it’s sort of like a transformer, let’s say. It’s an intelligent database that knows what to take from that particular database depending on what you request. So, if I see it in a technical aspect, pretty much all the large language models that we have today are basically the same, but it would all depend on how you train it, which is the beauty of AI, that you can personalize it. If you’re a small business, for instance, and you don’t want to put your personal or private information out there to the cloud and the databases that large language models use, you can actually download it locally and train it. And to do that, they are all based on the same data. They basically scraped all the same data from the internet. So, in the end, they are the same. But what’s going to make the difference is the prompt or the request that you make on this particular GPT. And I would say, you know, there are so many apps that are based on AI, but they are giving you the user experience; that’s what they’re selling because the content and the process is the same. So, I don’t personally have a favorite one. I work on a daily basis, training AI and neural networks to do specifically in the project that I am right now, it’s to do retail and e-commerce in the localization aspect. So, it doesn’t matter what you decide to use as long as you know what you need it for and you tune it to that particular objective.

**Brian:** Interesting, interesting. Can you maybe help us understand just the history of this world of localization? Is there a period of time that you can look at, like, “Okay, this is when it started, this is when it really took off,” and if there was any catalyst of why?

**Julio:** Well, if I get inspired here, I can go back to the Babylonians and Egypt for localization and how they were localizing content back then. And with the Rosetta Stone, basically, it’s sort of like the localization foundation. As I mentioned earlier, localization for me is enhanced translation. So, I can say that it’s been around forever as long as translation has existed. But the need develops when the demand for a more personal product that appeals to you personally is there. Let’s say, competition drove localization and its refinement. For instance, the globalization and democratization that technology allows us to have access to content in a matter of seconds anywhere in the world, that’s what catalyzed, you know, was like a catalyst to impulse this trajectory or this positioning that localization has nowadays. But basically, the principle is, you want to offer a personalized experience to the user. So, what you do, you just don’t translate content to Spanish. Because if you use a standard Spanish, you can use it in Spain, you can use it in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia. But when you want to compete with the competition and other products and other services that are going the extra mile by being more personal and having a closer relationship with the consumer, then that forces you to actually adapt your product so you speak to your consumer, or your patient, your buyer, your client, whatever it is that you provide services or products. So, I don’t see a particular era and time where localization rocketed. I would say it came together with the internet, and it came together with globalization. When content started being globalized, then the need for localization came, and it was bigger. So now, companies are really thinking about using and applying localization because, fortunately, as consumers, we are smarter every day. And we just don’t want a product that we go around it, or it’s like, “Well, it’s what we got, we got to deal with it.” No, we are demanding, and we are very, very picky when it comes to options that we have. So, companies know this, and that’s why they’re investing a lot of money in localization. And I would add to that, Brian, that for me, nearshoring and localization are like a synonym. They come together; they’re joined at the hip. Because I was just talking to a Chinese company that is actually moving to Mexico, and they said, “For us,” I mean, this Chinese company said, “for us, there is no nearshoring without localization.” They wanted first to localize the content to then move the company to Mexico from China. So, I thought it was an interesting approach because now they’re giving more importance to the content and how the employees in Mexico are going to perceive this Chinese company, not as foreign, but as a different company from outside that is actually speaking to themselves in their own language. So, I thought it was a great approach. So, I’d say they come joined at the hip: nearshoring and localization.

**Brian:** Yeah, I’m sure the way, you know, with all your localization training, I’m sure you can just in your daily life you see something and like, “Oh, you know, that company really didn’t have their localization strategy together.” Without naming any company, anything on the spot, are there maybe an example or two that you could point to of like, “Wow, they really botched that”?

**Julio:** Oh God. I actually have a folder in my computer of all those because there are so, they’re like meme material. You can make so many memes with that. I was like last week in a meeting for this project that I was telling you about, and one of my colleagues, she’s in California, and then she sends me a photo. She walked into this supermarket in the US and sends me a picture. She took a picture of the aisle for dog treats, you know, when you go to the store, for the pet section, they have some dog treats, like the treats that you reward your dog with. They actually translated it into Spanish, and the translation was really bad because that meant that you were trafficking with dogs. That meant “perros.” So, “perros” is actually like in Spanish, human trafficking is “personas.” So, “perros” that meant, it’s a terrible literal translation of “dog treats.” So, when she sent me the picture, I’m like, “Dear God, we’re gonna have PETA all over this store and they’re going to close this store because they’re trafficking with dogs.” This is so, oh my gosh, it is terrible because 10 years ago, you had to excuse as a company that you don’t speak the language and that you were using Google Translate.

**Brian:** Yeah.

**Julio:** But today, if you go to Google Translate, if you go to DeepL, or if you go to any online translator, you will not get that translation because they are so advanced that they know the difference now between “dog treats” and “trafficking with dogs.” So, I think the person that did that in some department in that store, they actually themselves translated the two words separately. So, that’s how they put them together, and they said, “Oh, there we go.” And it was printed. They had to go through proofing, but they printed it. And like that, I have so many stories, especially from South America.

**Brian:** Oh my gosh. You hit on something interesting earlier about even a region like Los Angeles, it’s not a one-size-fits-all. There are different languages, cultures. This podcast is about nearshoring. As a company, you know, looking to labor in Latin America, maybe even just take Mexico for example, what should a company think about? Or maybe let’s apply it directly to localization of labor. You’re trying to attract talent, you’re trying to recruit talent from the States in Latin America, we’ll say Mexico. Are there things that they should be thinking about from a localization perspective of trying to recruit somebody in Mexico City versus somebody in more of a rural region? How should they think about that?

**Julio:** I think that’s a great question, Brian. I’ve seen these processes a few times in the last 10 years. I have a small LSP, a Language Service Provider based in Mexico City, and I’ve had the opportunity to subcontract or outsource Human Resources specifically for linguists based in Mexico and Latin America for US companies. And what I’ve seen in the process is that although Mexico and the US, we share the time zones and a lot of culture, and the US, specifically the LA area, is the second city where most Mexicans live besides Mexico metropolitan area in Mexico City. So, we share a lot in common. But one of those processes, if we want to apply the localization process not just for language, but considering the adaptation to the culture, it’s corny, but I say that localization specialists, we are ambassadors for cultures. So, we actually link cultures together. And one of the challenges that I’ve seen in companies in the US trying to recruit human resources in Latin America is that they speak the corporate US language that we do not speak in Latin America. We don’t speak it in Mexico, and that is a barrier. And you know, sometimes it can be a big issue or it can be a small issue. But you know how we are in Latin America, we are very passionate, we’re very warm, we’re very casual, we’re very, we just want to give you a hug over the webcam. But Corporate America, they’re not like that. So, when their Human Resources specialists are trying to recruit people in Latin America, that is an opportunity that can be localized. How can you approach that? Well, you can try to recruit human resources to recruit human resources in Latin America that have a background, a Latin American cultural background. The US is in a very lucky position because as the melting pot, you have people from all over the place. And if you put the extra advantage of hiring someone that is specifically attuned to speak to the Latino community, that will make you take more advantage of the human resources Latin America has to offer. Because as you know, and you’ve mentioned it before here in the podcast, the talent that we have in Latin America is like none other, not like in Asia, not like in Europe. It’s unique, and the geography that we are in gives us this advantage. So, the US can take it, they can take advantage by localizing the processes for Human Resources recruitment. And I think the main perspective would be, as I mentioned earlier, get to know your audience and keep in mind that if you’re going to hire, let’s say, a software engineer in Colombia, it’s not going to be the same office policy or office culture as you are used to in the US. And that can actually be a great advantage because when you use that to the productivity, and you know, to enhance productivity in a Latin American talent, you get so much in return from Latin Americans. You know, we’re passionate.

**Brian:** Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely true. Oh, great, great insight. I wanted to dive into the organization of localization. So, let’s say you’re a software product company. Where does localization fit in? Are they usually working closely with the product manager? Are there ways you can measure effectiveness of localization? Are there certain KPIs? How are they maybe interacting with the engineers? Can you shed more light on that?

**Julio:** Absolutely. I can give you a before-COVID and post-COVID perspective because COVID pretty much came to change a lot of the aspects of these processes among the departments within a company. Unfortunately, before COVID, localization was an afterthought. It was like, “Oh, we already have the product. We launched it. It’s already in the market, but now we want to target this particular niche or market.” And when you take into consideration that the Spanish language in the US, by number of speakers, it’s huge. That is no longer an advantage; it’s a need and a requirement. And if you bring it to Latin America, it’s a must to have it localized in Spanish, at least a standard Spanish. So now, it’s not so much as an afterthought, like, “Oh, we already have the product, now let’s adapt it.” When you have a product and then you adapt it, that creates some, let’s say, barriers or areas of opportunity. Because when the product was developed, it was thought out to be in English. And sometimes, I can give you a practical example, like if it’s software or if it’s an app, it’s been developed for a particular keyboard in English. And they never thought about including the letter “ñ”, you know, the little “n” with a tilde on top. That “ñ” is in Spanish, but when it was developed, it was not thought out to be important. And then when you have to localize it, you have to go back to the code, to the core of the programming, if it’s an app, if it’s a software, and that gets expensive. So, we see a trend now. Companies are actually, as I mentioned, this Chinese company coming to Mexico, they’re already implementing localization as a first step. They want to localize the content first and then implement it. So now, we see a different approach. Companies are including the localization department together with the developers, front-end, back-end, and together with the marketing campaign guys and the designers, the user experience and user design. It’s all together, and they’re at the same level when before it was something that was outsourced when the product was out. So, that is great that it’s been implemented. Now, there are so many ways to keep track if your localization has been successful, the KPIs. And there are ways to measure how you impacted that particular language or that particular market. There are so many measurables or ways to track. And there’s also, I would say, there’s an area of opportunity, if I can give an advice to any CEO out there or any project manager out there, especially to you guys in design, when you make a software. Guys in localization, you know, there is a phenomenon in localization that’s called text augmentation. When you develop an app or a software or a user interface and let’s say you want to add some feature that says “on” or “off,” you want to click on and off an option on your phone. But “on” and “off,” “off” is just three letters, “on” is two letters. But in Spanish, you don’t have those options for just two letters. You need to say something like “activado” or “desactivado.” So, those are a lot more letters. That’s called text augmentation. So, the designers, they said, “Okay, it’s ‘on’ and ‘off,’ so this is how many characters I’m going to use in this particular interface.” But when we try to put it in Spanish, it doesn’t make sense. So, they don’t understand why it is that we need to change it. So, my advice would be, you need to keep an open mind and know that the whole process is actually part of a big thing that needs to be integrated altogether. And one of the reasons it’s not so much that the designers don’t want to be flexible, but one of the reasons is that the localization tools we use are already templates or pre-programmed software that doesn’t give you the option to change that particular field or design. So, one of the reasons why big companies are taking localization in-house and user experience design in-house as well, because that way they don’t depend on commercial software and they can change it. So, my advice would be, keep an open mind, give localization a chance, and you will definitely see the difference in revenue, in your KPIs, and especially in the brand recognition and the customer loyalty.

**Brian:** So, Julio, I’m really excited. I’m going to be visiting your home city, Mexico City, in a few weeks. Other listeners of the show, it might be their first time going. What should we be prepared for? What should we do? What should we try? Give us your first-timer guide to Mexico City.

**Julio:** Oh my God. I’m so excited for you because Mexico City is my favorite city in the whole world. I’ve been lucky enough to have lived and visited and stayed in 47 countries, and still, Mexico City is my favorite. My first and most important advice I can give you is whatever bookings and reservations you’ve made, go and change them so you can stay two extra weeks because you’re going to need a lot of time to do the main things to do around Mexico City. It’s huge, and there is always something going on. So, God, I would have to know a little bit of what it is that you prefer. Are you into art and history? Because Mexico City, it’s like history. Every corner around the corner, you can find something that’s been, you know, an ancient civilization. Or my favorite part: the food! It’s everywhere you go. The food is great. So, yeah, change your schedule and stay two more weeks because you’re going to need it. It doesn’t matter if you stay here for a month, after that you want to stay longer.

**Brian:** Yeah. Are there any particular restaurants that are top of mind for you, or people come to visit you and you always take them there?

**Julio:** Yes. Oh my God, the list is long, but try as much as you can the street food.

**Brian:** Hmm. Hmm.

**Julio:** It’s good, it’s great. It’s one, you know, it’s one of my favorites. I know you’ve been to the Philippines, and you spent time there, so multiply that by 10, and that’s how good it is. Also, I might be biased because right now I’m in Sonora, and I love the food here in Sonora, and it’s all about the meat. As you know, in Monterrey and the north of Mexico, it’s all about the meat and beef. So, there is a restaurant in Mexico City that opened from Sonora, it’s called Palominos. And whatever you pick from the menu, it’s a guarantee that you’re going to love it. Every day they fly in the beef from Sonora directly because it’s fresh and it’s really good. Palominos, that’s one. And you have to try the corn on a stick, on a cup, you know, the–

**Brian:** Have you tried that before?

**Julio:** Not in Mexico, so I’m excited for this. Oh, that’s one of my favorites. And if you see anything on the street, just go try it. It’s a whole treat.

**Brian:** Good, good. I love, I love the attitude. I love the energy. And oh, it’s because I’m thinking of it. I’m sure after this show, you’ll go and find some.

**Julio:** Oh, yes.

**Brian:** And, you know, last question for you, just as an expert linguist, someone who’s definitely had your share of US culture, are there any words or phrases that you particularly enjoy from English words or phrases?

**Julio:** Yes, quite a few. When I first came to the States, I was part of a scholarship to study college there, so I had not gone out of my small town in Sonora. So, I was growing up here, never been out of state, and all of a sudden, I’m there in Philadelphia, at UPenn, and encountering, you know, facing and immersed in all these idioms. So, for me, it was so fascinating that I actually filled a whole notebook with all the idioms that I could, you know, that I was being immersed into. There are so many, some of them are sort of dirty words, but one of my favorites are the pronunciations because back then it was so hard for me to pronounce because of my accent. So, one of my favorite words is “hypothesis.” I’m not sure if I’m getting that right because every now and then I have to check the pronunciation. Also, there is this, it’s a silly word, but it’s “unavailable.” Okay. If I go to the linguistic side of it and the linguistic part, the components for the pronunciation as a Mexican, it’s not easy. So, “unavailable” is one. And then “theater” means it’s so hard for us to pronounce a “th.”

**Brian:** Yes.

**Julio:** You know, in Spain, it’s a lot easier because of the lisp, but we don’t have it. So, “theater” is another word. And an idiom would be, I just was thinking about this idiom. I forgot what it was, but it’s very literal. I’m thinking in the one in Spanish, and I forgot the one in English. But yeah, there are so many, so many. And as I was saying earlier, I was part of the scholarship, and I was, which is a funny story, I’m not sure if, as a tangent here, I was recruited by a US pilot program they had back then after 9/11 with the UN to be trained as an intelligence officer. And one of my first assignments was to create a database of idioms in Spanish so the intelligence community could filter those in their databases and their intelligence gathering. And there are so many in Spanish that as an everyday speaker you don’t get to see. But something that people usually don’t know or are not aware of, for every idiom we have in Spanish, there are three in American English, not British English, three in American English. That’s… So, I always tell anyone who’s trying to learn English, start with the idioms. It’s going to get you there faster.

**Brian:** Good advice. I love it. Well, Julio, this has been a blast. I really, really enjoyed your energy, your passion for localization, and so much more in life. Thanks so much for coming on to the show. Let me thank our sponsor as well, Plug Technologies, that’s Plug.tech. Great way to connect talent like Julio to growing US companies. This is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Thanks again, Julio.

**Julio:** Thank you, Brian.

**Brian:** And we’ll see you next time.

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