Localization is the process of adapting the linguistic and cultural methods of a particular community to make education more accessible to them. The adoption of different educational policies and practices that revolve around the cultural and linguistic needs of a particular group or community allows us to shape the curriculum to suit individual needs.
The process aims to establish an educational framework that allows every community at the global level to receive education unique to their needs and with conditions that meet at the local levels.
The localization part of teaching is to ensure education with the local resources present, whereas contextualization, which is another part of the process, aims to educate students based on their common experiences, which allows them to relate more.
Since experiences are unique to different cultures and communities, this method of teaching and educating aims to enable them to understand the lessons, with the resources around them. It is a flexible mode of teaching that makes learning relevant and easily accessible.
Importance of Localization
Localization is a meticulous process of translating educational materials into the local languages of a community and making sure the curriculum matches the regional educational standards and reaches the community.
There Are Multiple Benefits To This Process:
1. Increased Accessibility: Localization aims at overcoming hurdles owing to language barriers and making education accessible to all sectors in a language that they understand, increasing the reach of different educational institutions.
2. Better Understanding: Localization allows students to understand better and retain that knowledge for longer periods by breaking the concepts in a way that is relatable to them, by making use of their experiences.
3. Sense of Culture: As localizations allow education by connecting their cultural and linguistic roots, it allows the students to connect with and internalize the reading materials and the concept better, rather than feeling alienated which is a result of a generic method of teaching, with no sense of identity to their roots.
4. Flexible Method: This process makes use of the best of both worlds by allowing communities to thrive using their unique resources in educating their students.
5. Form of Collaboration: It allows educational institutes to collaborate with members of different communities and reach them linguistically and culturally.
Localization was introduced globally by the governments of respective countries and regions, aiming at increasing the use of local language and implementing cultural roots in educating students. This would boost not only the ethnic communities and their languages but also increase the number of children getting an education as they will be able to relate to the educational content and internalize it.
Localization ensures a sense of community and culture among the students, while also enabling education to be widely accessible on all frontiers.
Localization testing also ensures the documents and the multimedia generated meet the requirements of the local markets and are in sync with the regional regulations, language, and cultural norms. To carry this out, we need to know and analyze our target clients and their preferences before venturing out into their respective markets.
Methods of Implementing Localization:
1. Connecting with Local Educators: discussing methods of increasing reach to the local students of different communities can be achieved through collaboration and discussion with the local educators, as they would be best able to make sure the curriculum resonates with the students.
2. Cultural Sensitivity: ensuring that the study materials and the content being taught are culturally relevant and relatable, for better understanding and revising them periodically to keep up with the cultural changes and removal of any outdated references.
3. Quality Checks: routine checks need to be carried out to make sure the content is culturally significant and appropriate and does not contain any offensive or misleading information.
4. Funding: the government and local NGOs could allocate funds for the widespread implementation of this process in their respective regions.
Localization of documents can be done by utilizing translation services or translating tools. The multimedia content can be dubbed over in the regional languages or by adding subtitles in their preferred language. The text in the images can be edited out to include the regional versions.
Quality testing has to be done to maintain the consistency and accuracy of the translated contents, so quality checks need to be carried out regularly.
Localization ensures that the people struggling with different problems and those who have dropped out of school are still able to receive education and turn themselves around.
Conclusion
Localization is the process of introducing reforms in the framework of education and ensuring access to education on a global scale to different communities and cultures. It involves reforming pre-existing modules and adapting different methods to modify the study materials into languages and customize them according to the unique needs of each culture.
It also involved the integration of teaching techniques and study content that is relevant and easily relatable by the students of that particular community.
Localization develops a sense of pride and individualism in one’s own community and also creates avenues for collaboration between local educators and various institutes and educational groups through their programs.
It enables better accessibility of education to people who have dropped out of school or couldn’t receive proper education due to multiple factors. They are global programs and groups that carry out these processes and enrich the different communities and their respective cultures and languages.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The process of localization ensures that higher education is received by all the students and breaks down the barriers caused by language and cultural differences. Receiving higher education and proper training ensures better job availability in the future. Localization makes sure that the educational framework is inclusive and allows everyone equal opportunities.
Both localization and contextualization are part of the same process of making education accessible to different communities and cultures by customizing the framework and curriculum to suit individual requirements.
Localization is the process of making sure the subjects and curriculum follow the language of a particular community and contain their respective cultural elements to develop a sense of belonging and better learning, whereas contextualization is the process of implementing relevant and relatable context cues while teaching for better retention and understanding of concepts by the students.
The teaching materials include textbooks that have been specifically tailored according to the linguistic and cultural requirements of that particular community, video or audio tapes, containing lectures in the local tongue and explanations, studying aids catered to the needs of the students, etc.
Localization aims to make education accessible to everyone, so students who didn’t have a chance to have formal education or had to drop out from schools or other educational institutes are benefitted from this process. Less privileged people who couldn’t get an education are also benefitted.
Organizations and renowned institutions from all across the globe are involved in shaping the curriculum and imparting education to different parts of the world. The government provides funds to the different groups who locally carry out these processes.