The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) teams up with iLanguage to localize Biodiversity Manuals in Spanish

One of the world's largest independent conservation organizations, WWF has more than 1 million members in the U.S. alone. Since its inception in 1961, WWF has invested in over 13,100 projects in 157 countries.

The Challenge
In order to raise environmental awareness among students from Grades 7, 8 and 9 and to provide the best educational resource for teachers in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, WWF needed to localize into Spanish a course offering: an extensive book of more than 250,000 words called "Windows on the Wild, Biodiversity Basics". In localizing a book that would serve as a student manual as well as an educator's guide, the main challenge was in juggling the exactitude of translation while at the same time keeping it entertaining, easily readable and appropriate for the students who will ultimately use it as a textbook, and for the teacher who will use it as a an effective educational resource. Another challenge was the very content of the material itself, which varied from the scientific to the speculative, the fictional and the humorous.

WWF called upon iLanguage to assist in meeting the two principal challenges that the task entailed. Given its potential impact on education and the environment, the entire iLanguage team found the project to be especially meaningful.

The Solution
What was at stake was more than the mere translation of content from English to Spanish. How do you translate poems, activities and titles to make them as culturally appropriate in Mexico as they would be in Colombia, Argentina and a dozen other countries, while maintaining the style and readability of the English language original? iLanguage followed through with a rigorous localization process, paying careful attention to nuances in order to keep the book more locale-neutral.

To provide the highest quality for such a rich and elaborate project, the iLanguage in-house Spanish localization and project management team - composed of natives of Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Spain - met, discussed and agreed on the style to adopt and on the translations of all titles before the work actually started. They meticulously searched for the Spanish translations for the names of rare plants and animals that are mentioned in the manual. In addition, maintaining consistency in a project of this magnitude is another challenge in itself. The team solved this complexity and saved precious time by using Translation Memory tools for the entire project.

Meeting the tight deadlines of WWF and simultaneously keeping up with other projects meant that many times the whole team had to work entire weekends, going the extra mile to fulfill its commitment to customer satisfaction.

The Result
WWF has expressed its high degree of satisfaction with the level of translation and overall iLanguage quality and results.
Jeffrey England, Education Coordinator says: "We chose iLanguage because it was the only company that had translators with the combination of skills needed to translate such an important book: excellent feel for Latin American Spanish, a good understanding of environmental issues and most importantly, great writing skills in prose and poetry. We are extremely pleased with the results; Windows on the Wild reads as if it was initially written in Spanish."