Maps: they seem straightforward, but make one wrong move, and you might find yourself in hot water. Microsoft lost millions because it colored 8 pixels a different color on a map, and in this video, localization expert Robert Derf mentions how executives at his company’s Argentina office were arrested because their map was a few pixels off.
Me and a team of project management learners recently tried our hand at simulating localization project management for a company called Hipcamp, and one of the more fun and creative elements involved adapting maps for different markets. I carried out this proof-of-concept desktop publishing experiment in Photoshop, utilizing content aware fill to supplement missing elements of the image and sourcing replacement maps from the public domain.
Please note: These maps are proof-of-concept only.
The text is a machine translation.
Source
Hipcamp About Us, Accessed November 3rd, 2020, https://www.hipcamp.com/about#our-story
Spanish: US
For a Spanish speaking, US locale, I added Puerto Rico to the map and the text. We would also likely recommend that the client add Puerto Rico to the English version of their map.
German
The map I created for Western audiences like German speaking locales features an Atlantic-centric map with modified text. Though the source text had borders for states, I decided not to include borders to avoid territorial dispute issues.
Japanese
The Japanese locale map is customized with a Pacific-centric map. Some localizers skip this step and use the same Atlantic-centric map for all their global locales, but Asian audiences will notice if you forget!
It was enjoyable to discuss the potential pros and cons of different internationalization strategies with my team. Plus I got to brush up on my Photoshop skills.