General Motors

Background

General Motors (GM) has again outrun the competition and continues to remain the world's leading manufacturer of cars and trucks, having sold 9.17 million automobiles in 2005 under their many brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn. Featuring such models as the Corvette, Malibu, Tahoe, and TrailBlazer, Chevrolet boasts the best customer retention rates in the automobile industry, and had four models named highest quality in their categories by JD Power & Associates in 2005.

Challenge

Chevrolet sought to target the US Hispanic and US Chinese markets via the Internet. The release of their Spanish site needed to correspond with the launch of their redesigned English site, to be followed closely by a version in Chinese. Furthermore, all Spanish content had to incorporate previously approved language and taglines developed by Chevy's multicultural advertising agencies.

• Needed to adapt the English source for two prominent segments of the US population, while upholding the integrity of one of the most well known global corporations.
• Past translations and Chevrolet-accepted localized slogans had to be utilized, and glossaries and style guides were to be designed to maintain consistency throughout future localization projects.
• The turnaround time would be short and needed to culminate in the synchronization of numerous individual projects with the launch of the redesigned English site.
• Required an array of technical services, including desktop publishing, graphic editing, and thorough functional and linguistic testing as well as QA.

Solution

Due to our impressive portfolio of clients in the automotive industry, as well as our experience with virtually all of the Fortune 500, Translations.com was selected as the vendor for Chevrolet's website globalization. Backed by a team of localization experts and highly-trained linguists, Translations.com quickly came up with a plan to meet all of Chevrolet's needs.

• Selected a dedicated localization team, complete with committed project managers and linguists, to ensure consistency of all localized materials.
• Installed GlobalLink, Translations.com's premier globalization management system, to seamlessly transfer files between sites for quick localization and an easily monitored workflow.
• Worked closely with Chevy's design team and advertising agencies to begin Spanish translation immediately upon completion of the first draft of English content, and reacted quickly to any changed or updated materials.
• Formatted the sites and ran extensive linguistic and functional QA to ensure that the sites registered in a culturally appropriate fashion, with proper line breaks and organization.

Through a tremendous effort and considerable teamwork, both the Spanish and Chinese sites have gone live, helping to drive home brand recognition for two of the largest and fastest-growing consumer market segments in the United States, which account for more than $1.1 trillion dollars per year. By localizing its website into these languages, Chevrolet allows its customers to take the wheel with just the click of a mouse.