Why translating your content is not the same as localizing it

Translation is getting the words right. Localization is making the culture fit. In this episode of Content Amplified, Lina Tonk, three-time SaaS CMO and current CMO at Smartling, breaks down why "just translate the website" is the mistake almost every team makes when expanding globally. Lina shares the moment a customer presentation in EMEA lost her completely because the deck used US spelling, and why German buyers take entirely different steps to reach a click than independent, skip-the-meeting US buyers do. She explains how OpenAI's localization team lifted click-through conversion just by reviewing what their buttons said in each region, why localization teams are increasingly landing under marketing and struggling to speak CMO language, and what "true localization" looks like when AI makes it possible to localize down to the individual, not just the region. If global expansion is anywhere on your roadmap, this conversation will change how you think about every word on your website.

About Lina

Lina Tonk is the CMO of Smartling, a localization software company whose customers include OpenAI. She has spent her entire career in B2B SaaS, much of it in PE-backed companies, and has now been a CMO three times at three different SaaS companies. Originally from Colombia, Lina started out as a graphic designer before realizing she was a marketer and storyteller at heart, and she has built marketing teams from a team of one to more than seventy. She measures her legacy by the growth of the people on her teams.

Show Notes

• Connect with Lina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linamtonk/