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A. Blum Localization Services
Phone: +1 (650) 427-9358
A French-language service page may be read by someone in California, Quebec, France, or Switzerland. The language alone tells the business little about where that person lives, which service they can receive, or how an appointment will be arranged. Before commissioning another version of a website, the business needs to decide whom it intends to serve and what it can offer them.
A. Blum Localization Services, based in Palo Alto, helps businesses make those decisions and prepare the material that follows from them. We define the intended audience, examine the source pages, and organize the work into a written localization brief. The brief gives writers, translators, reviewers, and your website provider a clear account of what needs to be published and which questions still need your approval.
The assignment can begin with one service and a small group of pages. It can also address existing language versions whose descriptions, contact arrangements, or updates have become inconsistent. The scope follows the decision you need to make and the resources available to carry it through.
A useful brief makes the next stage possible to assign. Depending on the agreed work, it can include:
An audience and service brief. Who the version is for, what those readers can receive, and which delivery or language limits need explaining.
A prioritized page inventory. The pages and messages needed for the first release, with source text marked as ready, needing revision, or awaiting a business decision.
A terminology record. Important service terms, their intended meaning, approved translations where available, and unresolved questions for the appropriate reviewer.
A page and publication plan. Relationships between versions, requirements for navigation and forms, review responsibilities, and arrangements for later updates.
For each unresolved item, the brief can identify the affected passage, the decision required, and who can approve it. A translator should be able to distinguish wording that needs adaptation from a service detail the business has not yet settled. Your website provider should be able to identify the relevant pages and the behavior a change is intended to produce.
The written scope establishes whether the assignment also includes revised source copy, translation coordination, implementation support, or review after publication. Where translators or specialist reviewers are needed, the scope identifies who appoints them, who approves their work, and whether their fees are included or arranged separately. Continuing coordination and maintenance are included when agreed.
W3C describes localization as adapting content or a product to the language, cultural expectations, and other requirements of a particular market. It can involve dates, currencies, contact formats, and presentation as well as translation.1 For a service business, these details have to reflect the arrangements under which the work will be done.
French-language information for California customers may describe exactly the same local service as the English page. A version intended for customers in France could require a different explanation of availability, delivery, and contact hours. Two English-language versions can also need different content when the service differs between markets. We establish these distinctions before deciding which material can be shared.
Consider a hypothetical training business that delivers workshops at clients' premises in California. It wants to offer remote workshops in French and has confirmed that it can handle inquiries, teaching, and follow-up in that language. The new page needs to describe the remote service, its intended participants, and the scheduling arrangements. Translating the existing on-site workshop page would carry over travel and venue instructions that do not describe the new offer.
For this hypothetical business, an entry in the brief might identify the remote workshop page, link it to the English source, and mark the travel and venue passages for replacement. It could record session length as awaiting the business owner's approval, assign the French text to a language reviewer, and list the inquiry confirmation as a related item to check. The next contributor can then see what to prepare and which decisions are still outstanding.
If geographic coverage itself is uncertain, our local and regional search work can help clarify how it is described. The localization plan carries the confirmed arrangements into the relevant version. Language preference and service availability remain separate decisions.
A limited first release can be a sensible choice when time, budget, or access to reviewers is constrained. The important question is whether its pages let someone understand the offer and make an informed inquiry. A translated overview may need a service explanation, relevant evidence, contact instructions, and a confirmation message to complete that route.
For the workshop business, the first release might cover the remote session's purpose, participant requirements, agreed deliverable, and inquiry process. An example from an earlier in-person workshop could demonstrate the teaching approach if its original setting is explained. Detailed travel arrangements would have no place in this release unless they served another stated purpose.
We also identify where readers will encounter material in another language. If a linked document or later discussion is available only in English, that condition belongs where it affects the customer's decision. The business can then choose whether to provide further adaptation, explain the limit, or delay that part of the release.
A translator needs an accurate account of the service to preserve. If one source page promises a written assessment while another describes a discussion, the business must decide what the customer actually receives. Fluent wording cannot settle that commercial question. We identify the conflict and, where source-copy revision is included, prepare the wording around the approved answer.
Terminology records help preserve distinctions that matter to the offer. A business may use “assessment,” “recommendations,” and “implementation” for different stages, each with its own deliverable. The record explains those meanings and gives language reviewers the context to choose suitable expressions. It also records intentional differences between versions so that a later editor does not mistakenly remove them.
Search research, where included, examines how the intended audience describes its questions and the services it needs. A translated English keyword is a candidate to investigate. Available query records, relevant search results, and language review can help establish whether it expresses the intended meaning; the findings should identify their evidence and limits. A frequently used phrase is unsuitable if it suggests work the business does not offer.
Where the source material needs substantial revision, content strategy and website organization can establish what each page should explain. If the concern is the performance of an existing language version, website reviews and search consulting can define that investigation. These findings can guide the localization assignment.
The reader's understanding depends on the whole sequence from description to response. Navigation, form labels, required fields, error messages, and confirmations need to support the same arrangement. A page that welcomes international inquiries may lead to a form requiring information those customers cannot supply. The brief identifies the field and the reason it needs attention.
Names and dates show why this work reaches beyond replacing words. W3C documents naming practices that do not fit a compulsory given-name and family-name structure.2 It also explains how numeric dates can be ambiguous and recommends making the month and year explicit where confusion is likely.3 A clear label cannot compensate for a form that still rejects the required information.
For the remote workshop, the inquiry might ask for preferred dates and the customer's time zone. Its confirmation would explain that the request has been received and that scheduling still requires agreement.
Someone changing language while reading a service page should be able to understand where the choice will take them. We map corresponding pages and identify content that has no equivalent. If the available alternative is a broader overview, its label should make that clear. A regional choice that changes the service also needs an explanation.
Google recommends separate URLs for language versions and advises against automatically redirecting visitors on the basis of an assumed language preference.4 Readers need a usable choice between the available versions. W3C's navigation guidance recommends presenting language names in the relevant language, such as “français,” so people can recognize the option they need.5
The page map also informs instructions for your website provider. Google's hreflang annotations identify language or regional alternatives to a page. Google's guidance calls for references to the page itself and its alternatives, with return references between the linked versions.6 The brief identifies genuine counterparts before anyone implements these annotations.
Canonical settings require a separate decision. They express a preferred representative of duplicate or very similar pages, while Google ultimately selects its canonical URL. Google's guidance calls for a canonical in the same language when one exists and hreflang is used.7 A translated page should therefore not automatically designate its source-language page as the preferred version.
These requirements must be checked against the publishing system. The handoff distinguishes changes available through its settings, work requiring a technical contributor, and limitations still to resolve. Correct annotations do not establish demand for a service or promise a search position. They help search engines understand how the published versions relate to one another.
Google's data centers support its own services, including Search.8 The hosting arrangements for your website are a separate consideration. Google says your server's location can indicate an intended audience, but it is not definitive because websites may use distributed content delivery networks or hosting in another country.4 For the localization plan, the practical task is to establish whether your hosting and publishing system support the proposed versions and identify any limitations your technical provider needs to resolve.
Approval involves several kinds of judgment. The business confirms the offer and delivery arrangements; language reviewers examine meaning and expression; subject specialists check details within their expertise. Functional review checks that the pages, links, forms, and messages behave as described. The scope identifies who performs each part and who approves publication.
Approved text needs to be checked in its actual page layout. W3C documents how translation can change text length and space requirements, particularly in short labels and confined areas.9 A language control or form instruction that reads clearly in a document may become difficult to use on a phone. Review findings should identify the element, the needed correction, and responsibility for resolving it.
The maintenance record connects each version to the source material and approvals behind it. It distinguishes shared facts from deliberate differences and identifies who arranges later review. If the workshop business changes its session length or stops offering a particular format, the record should point to the affected descriptions, inquiry instructions, and confirmations. The update needs to reach every place where the changed arrangement is described.
Send your website address, the audience or languages you have in mind, and the service you want those readers to understand. If you already have several versions, identify the inconsistency or decision that concerns you. You do not need to have resolved the page list, terminology, or review arrangements before contacting us; defining that work can be part of the assignment.
Discuss website localization planning with Ardan Michael Blum or call +1 (650) 427-9358. The initial inquiry establishes fit. Paid work begins after you approve a written scope confirming fees, timing, deliverables, and responsibilities.
Read SEO Thoughts From Palo Alto.
World Wide Web Consortium: Localization vs. Internationalization. Explains localization and the adaptations it can involve beyond translation.
World Wide Web Consortium: Personal names around the world. Describes naming practices and their implications for form design.
World Wide Web Consortium: Date formats. Explains ambiguity in numeric dates and ways to make their meaning explicit.
Google Search Central: Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites. Guidance on language versions, separate URLs, reader choice, and the limits of server location as an audience signal.
World Wide Web Consortium: Using select to link to localized content. Guidance on recognizable language labels and navigation choices.
Google Search Central: Tell Google about localized versions of your page. Explains alternate-page annotations and the relationships they identify.
Google Search Central: How to specify a canonical URL. Explains canonical preferences and their relationship to language alternatives.
Google Data Centers: Frequently asked questions. Explains what Google's data centers do and which services they support.
World Wide Web Consortium: Text size in translation. Describes changes in text length and space requirements across languages.
Read SEO Thoughts From Palo Alto
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Disclosure: AI tools assist with research, summaries, drafting, and editorial review. Their use varies by article and stage of the writing process. Ardan Michael Blum writes, revises, and updates the content, shapes its arguments and interpretations, and makes the final editorial decisions.
© 2026 Ardan Michael Blum.