Geo Pulse #53 — One politeness level, +40% in Japan

Geo Pulse #53 — One politeness level, +40% in Japan
Theme: localization that a translator would miss.

— → SaaS onboarding case: a team running Japan kept its translated copy but rewrote CTAs from the casual form to keigo (formal register) and softened the urgency. Trial-to-paid rose from 2.1% to ~3.0% — roughly 40% relative. (Walked through in a Phrase localization case note)
— → The detail: machine translation produced grammatically correct but socially 'pushy' Japanese. Native review fixed register, not vocabulary.
— → Why it's worth your time: it puts a number on 'tone' — usually the fuzziest part of localization.

File under: language localization.