However, many companies make the mistake of thinking that, because the Nordic people are known for their good understanding of the English language, it is not necessary to localize products for these countries. This is a very wrong assumption. Customers in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark have many things in common, and one of these is that they are extremely quality-conscious. Consumers will not consider a product high quality unless it is localized into their language, and they expect the translations to be absolutely impeccable. A product that has not been localized, or that has been localized poorly, will find it hard to compete in these markets.
Nordic customers are very critical and they know exactly what they want.
SDL's Nordic Section SDL International recognizes the opportunities for its clients in these markets and therefore our Plantation House division in Sheffield has recently established a Nordic section. We can now offer high quality localization into Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Danish, carried out by our experienced in-house translators. This ability to carry out localization into all four languages in-house secures high quality and consistency between the languages. We believe that our Nordic section is unique in Britain and we are hopeful that it will encourage both existing and new clients to localize their product into the Nordic languages. The opportunities are there and we have the expertise in-house.