As the European Union signs new trade agreements, businesses are looking towards new international markets. For many organisations, that means communicating with customers across languages, cultures and regulatory environments they haven't worked in before.
Entering these markets brings a familiar challenge back into focus: the relationship between technical documentation and localisation.
The two go hand in hand, but they are not always in sync. And while aligning TechDoc and localisation is nothing new, expanding into less familiar markets can expose gaps that were easier to manage before. Content needs to work across new languages and audiences, meet different regulatory requirements, and still be produced efficiently at scale.
So, what does this mean for the way organisations create and localise global content? Where do gaps between TechDoc and localisation tend to emerge? And what can teams do to address them?
This September at Nordic TechKomm, LanguageWire experts Lawson Stapleton and Jonas Steno Olsen explored exactly these questions, looking at how organisations can bring technical documentation and localisation closer together.
In this article, we unpack the key ideas from their presentation and explore what organisations should consider as they prepare their content for new markets.
Why you can’t treat an entire country as one market
Economic activity is growing across regions such as India, Oceania, Latin America and Africa. These markets offer opportunities, but they also introduce linguistic and cultural diversity that is important to keep in mind.
India is an interesting example.
While often discussed as a single market, it contains a handful of official languages, significant regional differences, and varying customer expectations. A localisation strategy that treats India as one audience risks missing many of the nuances that shape customer experience. The right approach depends on who you are trying to reach. Is the market B2B or B2C? Are your users individuals, wholesalers or employees? Which language(s) do they speak? What expectations might they have to format and communication style? Understanding the specific audience and context is essential to creating technical documentation that is genuinely usable.
If technical documentation does not give users the information they need to understand, implement, or operate a product effectively, they are less likely to realise its full value. As a result, users may not adopt the product or solution at the intended rate. The return on the product suffers.
Building localisation into your content strategy from the start
Technical documentation and localisation share the same goal: helping users understand, trust, and use a product. Users should be able to operate the product correctly and safely. They should understand it well enough to feel confident actually using it.
The mistake Lawson and Jonas often see is that localisation has not been considered from the beginning. Of course, translation itself often comes towards the end of the documentation process. That makes sense, since content needs to reach a certain level of maturity before it is ready to be translated. The problem happens when localisation has not been considered at all until that point.
Localisation should be part of the strategic conversation from the beginning. Which markets will the product enter? Who are the users? What languages, cultural expectations or regulatory requirements need to be considered? When these questions are addressed early, localisation can be built into the scope and the content can be created with those requirements in mind.
The localisation scope should include things like understanding when to launch a campaign in a specific market and how to name your products.
One example Lawson and Jonas shared during their Nordic TechKomm presentation involved a Finnish manufacturer of sewerage piping products. The company had named a patented product after a local slang word which they thought made sense in its local market but could be considered derogatory. The assumption was that the product name should stay the same across languages and markets, to maintain the brand.
But localisation (and transferring branding to other cultures) is about much more than translating words.
When the team looked at how the name would be perceived in other languages and cultures, they realised it carried unintended (and inappropriate) associations. Just translating it directly risked distracting customers or undermining the company's credibility. Translatability is another hurdle. How do you find an equivalent word in 10 or 20 other languages? Is it worth the effort?
You should have these conversations up front, not last minute when content is being translated.
8 factors to consider when entering a new market
Understanding the nuances of each market is the challenge for many companies. It can be difficult to find the resources and expertise to really understand a target market and how to best localise content to it.
Successful international launches also require organisations to think about the following eight aspects that are not just about translation:
Regional terminology and language variants.
Cultural expectations.
Product naming.
Gender and grammatical differences between languages.
Business calendars.
Religious holidays.
Local launch timing.
Regulatory requirements.
Launching a product during a major public holiday or at the wrong point in a country's business cycle can undermine months of planning, regardless of how accurate the translation may be.
This is why localisation specialists are such an important part of the localisation process. They can identify linguistic and cultural issues early, helping organisations avoid costly rework while ensuring products resonate naturally in every market.
Can AI help reach more markets? Only with the right expertise behind it
As organisations expand into new markets, they are increasingly navigating languages, audiences, cultural nuances and customer expectations they may have little previous experience with.
At the same time, the barriers to localisation are changing. Technologies such as AI have made it faster and more economically viable to translate content into languages that might previously have been difficult to justify. This creates an opportunity to reach more markets and make more content accessible.
However, being able to translate into a market does not necessarily mean you know how to approach it. AI can only take you so far. It can process language at scale, but it cannot replace the local knowledge needed to understand whether your content, assumptions and decisions are right for a particular audience.
Every market comes with its own context. Organisations need to understand who they are trying to reach, what those audiences expect, which linguistic and cultural nuances matter, and how their content and localisation strategy should adapt accordingly.
That makes access to local expertise increasingly valuable. People with knowledge of the market can challenge assumptions, identify nuances that may otherwise be missed and help organisations make informed decisions about how best to communicate with local audiences.
Ultimately, teams want to see a return on investment on the products and solutions they launch. The goal should be to make deliberate localisation decisions that help your content (and your product) succeed with the audiences that matter.
Ready to build documentation that's designed for global markets?
Whether you're creating technical documentation for five languages or fifty, the biggest gains often come before the first translation begins. Speak to our localisation and technical documentation specialists to discover how integrated workflows can help you reduce costs, accelerate launches and deliver a better customer experience worldwide.
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About the experts
Lawson Stapleton, Business Development Director
Lawson draws on experience as an interpreter, translator, consultant and advisor, with expertise in technical documentation, interpreting and AI. Outside work, he enjoys studying minority languages, experimenting with small language models and chopping timber.
Jonas Steno Olsen, Strategic Solution Consultant
Jonas is one of our keenest localisation minds, with more than 10 years of experience helping customers navigate localisation strategy and technology. With a background translating Japanese literature, he knows first-hand what it takes to navigate linguistic and cultural nuances. He has even helped coordinate communication for a royal visit to Japan!
This article is the September 2026 edition of Lost & found in translation, a monthly newsletter sharing insights, opinions, and reflections by real people who work in localisation. Subscribe here to get notified when the next edition comes out.
