Last week we heard the story of our very own Chiara Conte, her experiences with CSOFT, and her journey that in turn led to Huawei. This week, we have her views on working with the networking and telecommunications giant, as well as some telling insights into the globalization and localization industry.
My family back in Europe contacts me every week now, all crazy about the P8 smartphones, to which I reply that Huawei does not only make phones; look further and you see a company that builds infrastructure, makes international agreements, and implements technology in countries where, for many reasons, these technologies are not yet available. This makes Huawei one of the brightest examples of globalization.
Huawei prides itself on making technology available in everyday life to the users in Tibet, Laos, Myanmar, etc., helping them reach their ultimate goal of success as a company and build up a truly great brand. A Tibetan linguist explained to us that the Tibetan language lacks virtually all terminology related to IT and Science. This makes translation in these fields a tough task as you have to get the literal meaning of the IT terms in English, and then look for the most comfortable Tibetan wording. Achieving this while still making it comprehendible to the final users is extremely complicated.
There is no secret as to how Huawei has positioned their products to the extremely high level they are at today; it is simply hard work and expertise. There is an incredible drive to improve the way things are done, an effort that is alive with every trend they set. This energy is what kills the traditional way of thinking and stops the “it is too hard, where do I find linguists for these languages?” attitude.
The Huawei team’s organized, candid approach to globalization allows them to target more unknown and unexplored languages as opposed to just localizing in the well-known traditional language pairs. They maintain focus on the main languages as well as localizing towards a series of a lot more obscure variants. This perspective is one of a seriously mature company, one that is able to not only provide the speakers of these languages with the information needed to use the technology, but also give access to see it live for the first time.
If you enjoyed reading the story of Huawei’s rise to the top, stay tuned for the 3rd and final blog post in this series. Next week we will tell the story of CSOFT’s ever-growing relationship with the telecommunications giant.