As more multinational companies are haunted by the above case or by other cases like General Motors' Nova in Puerto Rico or McDonald's take-out bags displaying the Saudi Arabian flag (more on these later), the focus on being politically, socially and culturally correct in other countries has never been more important. Thus, it is not surprising that more and more translators are now finding themselves under the gun to perform cross-cultural analysis and customization: the analysis and process of customizing a product, documentation or advertising to suit the language, conventions and market requirements of the target country. The computer industry likes to use the localization or l-10-n jargon (ten is for the 10 characters between the "l" and the "n"). Whether the game is cross-cultural analysis, customization or localization, it is more than simply translation -- it is the key to unlock doors to target countries.

With the world shrinking to one global village, translators have simultaneously seen the scope of their job expand significantly. And with instant global communication over the Internet, it is not enough for translators to deal only with grammatical, stylistic and syntactical issues from the safety of their linguistic ivory towers. The translation of a client's homepage may cause ripples in the most remote corners of the world. More than ever, translators have to dirty their hands by juggling with political, social, cultural and economic issues of their native countries as well.

Metaphorically, a cross-cultural analyst is expected to hear, smell, see, taste and touch any product, service or message content prior to its being exported to, or published in, a specific target market. Note the specific target market term instead of country, since a country with a multicultural and heterogenous society may have several different target market characteristics. At the very least, a cross-cultural analyst has to ensure that the product or service or message is culturally acceptable, politically correct and socially suitable for the specific target market of the product or service. The cross-cultural analyst's unique perspective should filter any exporters' and advertisers' nightmares, be they social taboos, political offenses, cultural bloopers or phonetical awkwardness.

Without a doubt, there are linguistic and non-linguistic aspects which need to be analyzed and scrutinized in depth when conducting a cross-cultural analysis or customization process -- all are equally important. Any professional linguist may be trained to filter the linguistic blunders. But in the final analysis, only a native linguist in touch with his/her roots possesses the insight, perspective and street-smart intuition to navigate his/her way through the political, cultural, social, religious and economic land mines.

The following description is by no means a complete checklist; rather it is a brief summary of actual cases in the annals of business translation. As with many things in life, there is not always a clear distinction between one aspect and another -- the borders may blur.

Linguistic Differences:
The most common problem occurs when the source document is embedded with the cultural and geographical context of its author. An open letter from a multinational company's CEO who happens to be a baseball enthusiast was peppered with his favorite buzzwords like "first base," "home run," "ballpark" and even a reference to the "Midwest." The CEO's message got across to the company's American employees all right, but his translated letter confused his non-American employees in Southeast Asia, many of whom are strangers to baseball and have very different orientations as to where "Midwest" is. This situation requires an internationalization (or i-18-n) process, the opposite of customization, to weed out the jargon and make the source document generic enough to accept local variations and cultural contexts.

Another common problem is the simplistic "one-country-one-culture" approach. The next case happened in a country no other than the United States, as outlined by Leon Wynter in The Wall Street Journal of March 6, 1996. It involved the California Milk Processor Board and the board's famous slogan "Got Milk?" which seemed to appeal to every major demographic group except to Hispanics whose dominant language is Spanish, and who make up a third of California's population. Only after the board hired a Hispanic ad agency, they found out that the "Got Milk?" punch line was translated roughly to "Are you lactating?" Moo ... the board had to come up with a more refined and less offensive punch line to appeal to the Hispanics.

Sometimes a cross-cultural analysis is performed, but often not in depth due to penny-wise and pound-foolish consideration. A superficial cross-cultural analysis is as bad, if not worse than nothing, because of the false security it generates. In the mid 1980's, General Motors faced a problem resulting from the lack of enthusiasm among Puerto Rican car dealers for its well made Chevrolet Nova. Unfortunately, in Spanish Nova sounds like "no va" which means "(it does) not go" and nobody was going to buy a car that "does not go"! Had the Nova name been x-rayed through a radical cross-cultural analysis, the potential blunder would have been discovered. A radical analysis goes beyond the issues of association, connotation and ease of pronunciation of the analyzed word alone.

Political Differences:
The form and structure of government of the target market is certainly one of the main issues -- is it autocratic or democratic? Is the country a federation of independent states or a unitary republic of provinces under a centralized government? Something as simple as the corporate titles of "President" and "Vice President" on business cards, for example, when translated literally and carelessly into Indonesian as "Presiden" and "Wakil Presiden" will raise the eyebrows of perplexed Indonesian government officials. In Indonesia, these titles are exclusively reserved for the president and vice president of the country. Period.

Furthermore, does the content refer to any unsettled territorial claims by the target country? As reported in The Wall Street Journal of April 8, 1996, irate Chinese government officials once forced Compaq Computer Corporation to redo an ad campaign because the map on its posters did not show Hong Kong and Taiwan as part of China. The headline of another article about the Windows 95's launch in the same newspaper of August 24, 1996 says it succinctly: "A Dispute Over India's Borders Had Microsoft Mapping a Retreat."

Religious Differences:
One fact can never be over-emphasized: what is acceptable here may be a taboo there. One of the latest (by no means the last) bloopers happened when McDonald's produced take-out bags with a number of flags including that of Saudi Arabia to emphasize the international image of the chain. Consider the uproar among Moslems all over the world because the Saudi Arabia's flag contains a holy script from the sacred Koran and a take-out bag will most likely end up in a trash can. Instead of an international image, McDonald's ended up with a hot potato and had to swallow misprinted take-out bags.

Social Differences:
How different is the social structure in the target country? In the U.S., only the rich and famous live with in-house servants, but in Indonesia, the presence of in-house servants in middle-class households is nothing unusual. One needs to understand the delicate nuances in the master-servant relationship, language use and social-class positioning for even the simplest exchange of communication; e.g. relaying an incoming collect call from the U.S. An American copywriter hired by a long-distance telephone company to conceptualize an international operator's script may not be aware of these nuances at all.

Economic Differences:
Is the economy in the target country regulated by the government or is there a free market? Is it private- or public-sector oriented? As economic differences go beyond currency symbols, more consideration and sensitivity are required to understand the underlying social philosophy of the economy in the target country. In the U.S., for example, "capitalist" seems to be an acceptable word, even a way of life. Forbes magazine promotes its "Capitalist Tool" credit cards. The translation of "capitalist" in Indonesian, "kapitalis" is a taboo.