Managing your organization's collective voice: just like visual identity, verbal identity is crucial to building a global brand.

I define verbal identity as the accumulated collection of words and phrases that defines the business culture of a global organization. Marketing slogans, advertisements and trademarks are part of a company's verbal identity. But there's more to verbal identity than that.

When I was working for a multinational firm in Europe, it struck me how thick the company's handbook on its visual identity was, and how non-existent the one dealing with its verbal identity was. There was plenty of guidance on how to use the company logo, but very little on the norms of consistent use of terminology in corporate communication.

I was in Nice, France, earlier this year and was surprised to learn that the first Worldwide Globalization Summit was being held nearby. The summit was sponsored by TRADOS, a global solutions firm, and attended by executives of companies such as FedEx, Glaxo-SmithKline, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems. Conference participants stated that two of the top three insights they took away from the conference were that "successful global business requires brand consistency across markets ... and enterprisewide terminology is essential for corporate communications."

"No variations are permitted"

Not surprisingly, it seems that the importance of verbal identity is gaining recognition. Today, any company with a web site is already a global business, so what you write has to be readily understood even if you haven't gotten around to translating your site into multiple languages. Before going to Nice, I looked for some up-to-date metrics on visual identity by looking at how companies handle visual and verbal identities. Here are some examples from software developer Macromedia's visual style guide, which is similar to the style guides of many Fortune 1000 firms:

Colors: The corporate logo is a Macromedia blue, black and white. No variations are permitted.

Shapes : The oblongs are outlined in white; all text is white. No variations are permitted.

And so on. Visually, no variations are permitted.

In the verbal identity sphere, there is usually little consistency in how terms are used. This becomes more problematic when you translate willy-nilly into other languages. To put it another way, where verbal identity is concerned, variations are permitted. This seems ironic, given that mare firms depend extensively on international sales.

"Visual identity can set an emotional tone for a company, but verbal identity is more important for every business--every multinational business--because verbal identity persuades a customer to take action," says Bill Seawick, chief marketing officer of TRADOS. "We'll all eventually learn that unless we speak with one voice across world markets, inconsistent verbal identity will confuse customers and hurt the bottom line."

Companies like Microsoft fully understand this. Its international sales represent 60 percent of total sales. It maintains a web site called Dr. International (www.microsoft.com/globaldev /DrIntl) to coach developers, web designers and corporate communicators on how to write for the international marketplace. Industrial controls manufacturer Allen-Bradley takes a technical term such as key switch and then finds the corresponding term in German (Schalter) or French (commutateur a cle). Its glossary provides a usage example translated into each language: "A three-position key switch on the front panel of the processor module lets you select one of the three modes of the operation."

Even with that simple example, think of all the corporate agreements or buy-ins that are needed before content can be translated. For example, whose French, Spanish or Chinese should be used? Inna Geller, the longtime translation manager at Medtronic, a medical-device manufacturer, recalls having to convince management of the value of consistent terminology in the first place. It is hard to get management to sit in on a talk about glossaries. Can you imagine anything less exciting?

Geller then had to deal with "linguistic turf battles." For example, the company's Canadian and French offices almost brought the localization efforts to a halt because they couldn't agree on the terminology to use to describe certain items. Medtronic's core glossary includes more than 2,000 English words and more than 12,000 in other languages. Geller has informally tracked responses from different corporate departments in the hopes of seeing that a side effect of her effort will be the use of the glossary as a training tool for new employees.

Creating a glossary of this kind can be expensive, costing up to US$10 a word. Not only does each term need to be selected and researched, but it must also be put into its proper context. Only then do we get to the translation issue. FedEx, through its ad agency, once came to me with a project to translate the phrase "It's not just a package, it's your business!" The account manager said, "That's eight words, and you charge 25 cents a word, so 25 times 8 times 16 languages is $32. But to be nice, I'll give you $100 for all 16." I calmly asked how much the company had paid to have that tagline developed in American English. "Lots" came the answer. Then I told her you cannot just translate literally into other languages. We agreed on a substantially higher price for each language.

Controlled English

I wrote my master's thesis on a military topic, which required me to spend a lot of time at the Pentagon. Under the glass-top table in the library was a list of words you should and shouldn't use in communications. Military communication is often stilted, incomprehensible and made fun of by outsiders, but the purpose is to make sure that everybody understands the same thing. Thus, 0400 hours is 4 in the morning and 1600 hours is 4 in the afternoon. Just saying "Let's attack at 4 o'clock" leaves too much doubt.

But in many corporations, you learn the corporate lingo informally when you are hired and then operate on faith. The company issues a press release or a white paper to the world in English and then has different PR agencies in a number of countries translate it, without any guidance. Jim Ferro, who once ran Merrill Lynch's Beirut office, recalls that an Egyptian PR firm came up with the word for one of the positions in the company: simsar. This means broker in Egyptian Arabic, but in Lebanese Arabic it means a procurer of women.

To avoid this type of misunderstanding, companies such as heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar have attempted to regulate the terms they use most often. Caterpillar developed something called Controlled English, a glossary of 7,000 English words, for use in its technical communications. In Controlled English, some words are approved for use only by themselves. For example, about may be assigned only the meaning "concerned with." For its other meanings, the words approximately or around would be used. Procedural sentences are kept short. Pronoun use is limited to avoid confusion. Many of the rules that organizations develop are rules of communication that also make their text more understandable in their original English documents. In other words, budding novelists need not apply for writing positions in companies practicing Controlled English.

Kara Warburton is IBM's chief terminologist and the chair of the Localization Industry Standards Association's terminology group. She says that most companies are still unaware of the need to invest in verbal identity, or terminology management, to use her term, and that it can deliver a tangible return on investment.

"Managing terminology supports your corporate brand image and makes your products easier to use, easier to translate and easier to adapt to global markets," Warburton says, pointing out that perhaps the best way to convince management to fund a verbal identity program is to examine what happens when you don't control your verbal identity.

Paolo Vanni, translation manager for PeopleSoft, notes that the inconsistent use of terms in software user interfaces, online and printed documentation, marketing collateral, and web content usually only comes to light during translation--when it is too late to correct the problem. A more effective solution would be to start the verbal identity process during the software application development phase. This means working closely with everyone involved in the process to define a set of core terms and phrases (long form, abbreviations, acronyms, trademarks, etc.) to be researched, pre-translated and documented in an enterprisewide database.

Developing a verbal identity program

There are several basic steps to getting a verbal identity program under way.

* Stop thinking about verbal identity or terminology definition as a translation problem. It is a globalization challenge that starts the moment an idea to create a product or service is hatched.

* Identify' the benefits of developing a program.

* Determine who is responsible for the verbal identity program and how it should be updated.

* Determine what words and phrases are the linguistic "crown jewels" of the company. (In my work I have tried to identify 500 of these terms.)

* Determine which of these terms should be translated and into how many languages.

* Determine which need to be translated. For example, General Electric doesn't translate the term Six Sigma into other languages.

* Determine the budget for such a program.

If these steps are taken, your organization will be understood not only by your own employees, but also by your customers, wherever they are in the world.

Whose English is it, anyway?

I have often heard the argument that a verbal identity effort is useless because everyone around the world speaks and understands English. So why bother with this nonsense?

Lest we forget, Noah Webster first published his American English dictionary in 1828 to illustrate that American English was substantially different from its British mother tongue. The gap has widened further over the years, and today smart global communicators write and speak English for specific markets. Still not convinced? My Firefox browser gives you the option of running a spell-check in American English, Canadian English, New Zealand English, Australian English and British English.

To make the point, I developed this little quiz of American and British automotive terms and then asked people to correctly match them up. See how well you do.

British English        American English

1. overridder          a. sedan
2. cubby locker        b. defroster
3. nave plates         c. hood
4. dynamo              d. battery
5. wings               e. fenders
6. bonnet              f. hub caps
7. demister            g. glove compartment
8. saloon              h. bumper guards
9. accumulator         i. oil pan
10. sump               j. accelerator

Answers: 1-h, 2-g, 3-f, 4-j, 5-e, 6-c, 7-b, 8-a, 9-d, 10-i

John Freivalds is managing director of JFA, an international marketing communication firm in Lexington, Virginia.