PHYSICAL manpower need not limit a company's business, says Nickson Cheng, managing director of Lingua Tech Singapore. "In the Internet age, scalability is limited only by your network," he says. Lingua Tech has just 30 staff - but its network lets it tap the talent of more than 1,000 others. The company's business is 'localisation'. Which is translation - and much more. The translation industry has been around a long time, but localisation goes back maybe 20 years worldwide and 15 years at most in Singapore.
So what's the difference between localisation and translation? The latter is chiefly about communication, Mr Cheng says. "Localisation goes a step beyond that - it has the target audience in mind."
Unlike with translation, it is not enough to convey meaning. With localisation, the text must appear to have been originally written in that language. Because this way, people feel at home with what they are reading, and no one's sensibilities are inadvertently offended.
Lingua Tech is not a consultancy, says Mr Cheng. "But sometimes we advise our clients on certain sensibilities." This is especially so in advertising, where clients may not be sensitive to cultural taboos.
Mr Cheng and his business partner Ng Chui Hoon founded the company in 1996 when they were in their early twenties.
"We thought, we've just graduated, we've got nothing to lose - so let's try it and if it doesn't work out, we can still go back to the job market," Mr Cheng recalls.
Despite its small workforce, Lingua Tech provides localisation services in many languages. It does this by working with more than 1,000 'single-language vendors' - in a sense, outsourcing. "We're like what we call a post-processing hub," says Mr Cheng.
Lingua Tech also works with freelancers, but many of them are essentially resident translators, since they only take jobs from Lingua Tech. Mr Cheng is quick to point out that quality is not compromised. Lingua Tech works only with native speakers who are based in their own countries - and it counter-checks translations with third parties.
It even visits partners' offices or conducts training for partners to ensure the overall work process is standardised.
In-house, Lingua Tech translates the many variations of Chinese and does proof-reading for Japanese, Malay and Bahasa Indonesia translations. Clients that have been with the company from the start include Philips, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, Singapore Airlines, and GlaxoSmithKline.
As this list suggests, Lingua Tech is 'very strong in telecoms'. The company began by working on user guides, which may be in as few as four languages or as many as 30.
"We don't just do translation for Asian languages," says Mr Cheng. Lingua Tech also handles languages as specific - and relatively obscure - as Canadian French.
User documentation - which includes manuals for medical devices, mechanical devices, consumer electronics - is still a good part of the business. Other areas are advertising, and hospitality and tourism.
Lingua Tech also provides localisation for software interfaces and websites, as well as some graphic editing services. "We don't restrict ourselves to just one industry," says Mr Cheng. "The one thing good about our industry is that we can work with any industry."
This has worked to Lingua Tech's advantage. For instance, the Asian financial crisis hit soon after the company was founded, but it rode out the downturn because of the diversity of its clients.
Although its business model means that having relatively few staff does not hinder work, being small has brought some difficulties.
Lingua Tech was among 20 short-listed firms for a job in Amsterdam - the only Asian firm placed in the top five. But the contract went to a higher-placed firm. "I think one of the reasons we didn't get it was because of our size," says Mr Cheng.
After missing out in Amsterdam, Lingua Tech has looked at working with other small companies to compete together for large projects. It has also realised the value of brand awareness to give itself a competitive edge.
One step it has taken to build its brand was to be a gold sponsor of the International Enterprise Forum 2007, held last month.
The forum was a chance not just to raise awareness of localisation but to raise Lingua Tech's profile among potential clients. "We want to be at the top of their recall," says Mr Cheng.
Initially, Lingua Tech focused on multinational clients, since only companies with a global market needed localisation. "But we're seeing quite a huge increase in SMEs requesting localisation," notes Mr Cheng.
Even so, he adds, localisation is still an afterthought for many SMEs, which 'never think of localisation as an inseparable part of going global'.
Localisation is not necessarily cheap, and if it is not budgeted into a company's overseas plans from the start, the company may stumble when its product fails to succeed abroad, says Mr Cheng. "That's why we want to educate potential clients that localisation is a very critical process."
One might think that in a shrinking world where English is the lingua franca, localisation seems unnecessary. But Mr Cheng says increasing globalisation is making countries hold on to their cultural identity more than ever.
"They want to state their individuality," he says, giving the example of Spanish-speaking communities in the US, who prefer products with instructions in Spanish rather than English only.
Businesses need to realise the importance of using their customers' own language, he believes. "It shows that you respect their language, that you respect their culture."
