Netflix localisation plans hint at expansion

Netflix is hiring language specialists to adapt the service into a number of new European and Asian languages, sparking rumours about where the video-on-demand service plans to launch next.

In a posting on its official jobs page, Netflix said it was looking for “highly motivated individuals with the right mix of technical, organisational and communication skills to provide localisation for the Netflix experience in the following languages: Turkish, Dutch, Hindi, French, and Korean.”

Netflix said the candidates would translate and customise marketing, user interface and content materials for the target market, and said native fluency was essential. Prior knowledge of the film and entertainment business was also listed as a plus.

In January, Netflix said in a letter to shareholders to accompany its fourth quarter 2012 earnings that it didn’t plan to launch in any additional markets in 2013 but was “evaluating several expansion markets for late 2013 or 2014.” However at the time added it had not made any decisions.

Netflix has advertised a number of times in the past for language specialists, most recently in October last year, when it called for Turkish, Dutch, Hindi, German, Italian, Norwegian, Korean, and Japanese speakers.

Netflix said at the time that there were many other reasons for it to hire language specialists including quality control on translations of movies and TV shows, relationships with content creators and with manufacturers of consumer electronics around the world.

The US-based firm has already expanded into Canada, Latin America, the UK and Ireland and, most recently, the Nordic markets, demonstrating its global ambitions.