What’s the biggest mistake many business people and entrepreneurs make? It’s simple: They assume because they are very well versed and skilled in one or more areas, they are skilled and knowledgeable in everything. The end result is often a business that has a great product or service – even an awesome product or service – but has trouble selling it because the people behind the business assume they can handle everything themselves, or simply don’t think they need to worry over ‘details’.
One of those details in this global, digital age is translation work. More and more businesses – even relatively small businesses – are realising that they can market themselves internationally and move into foreign markets. All it takes is web access, confidence – and professional localisation and translation services. This makes translation one of the most important services your business can hire – and yet it’s often treated as an afterthought, and many companies assume they can hire anyone who happens to speak two languages to be their translation vendor – or, worse, assume that a computer program can handle it for them cheaply or even for free.
Free? There’s a price to be paid – and it’s your company’s reputation.
What Makes a Translator?
Translation work is complex and time-consuming. A lot of people assume translation is just someone with a head for languages reading the original – say, your web content – and then writing it out with different words and grammar.
The fact is, an experienced, trained translator is a lot more than a walking dictionary: They know more than the language of your target market, they know the culture. They know the slang. They know who your customers are, and how to reach them specifically. Countries, after all, aren’t homogeneous groups of people who all think the same way, speak the same way, and share all opinions and desires – every foreign market is a sea of differences, and your translation professional knows not just how to translate, but how to reach that market, and how to bring the spirit of the message in your content and marketing to them.
Automation Fail
This is where automated and software-based translation fails you. While it is possible for a machine to translate simple and very, very ‘clean’ texts accurately between languages, it is impossible for a machine to know the way language is really used in your target market.
A simple example would be a company trying to sell athletic shoes to teenagers in the United States. If your translator or software refers to your product as ‘athletic shoes’ throughout the copy it is 100% correct and accurate, and it will not sell a single pair of sneakers or kicks to your target market.
This vast difference between accurate and effective is what makes a human translation professional so valuable. It’s not just slang and youth culture – it’s knowing the political, religious, and ethnic makeup of your audience and how to avoid giving offence or communicating in a stilted, unnatural way.
Native Speakers Only
Another trap many businesses fall into is hiring any ‘bilingual’ person to do their translation work. Much like a machine, a non-native speaker often has an ‘academic’ knowledge of the target or source language, and will make many poor assumptions and have a limited knowledge of vocabulary and local ‘color.’
True translators always work in a language pair that includes their native language as the target language. This gives them the special insight to not just translate the words, but the meaning and style of your materials.
Your Public Face
In the modern world, entering a foreign market isn’t just a matter of translating your home page. It’s a matter of localisation, which entails not only knowing the local ways and mores, but constant, agile translation of your content as it is added and altered. When you change a policy, it has to be translated accurately to every local language you’re currently represented in. When you update your blog, it has to be evaluated against local prejudices and attitudes and translated accurately to maintain your points and style.
The quality of the translation work has a direct impact on how your business is perceived. Customers reading a poor translation with awkward phrasing, incorrect vocabulary choices, and outdated grammar will not perceive the professional image you’re trying to convey – in fact, one of the main reasons globalisation efforts fail is because of poorly-translated marketing and web materials.
Don’t make the mistake of treating your translation project as an afterthought, or as a budget item you can short in order to save money. Translation ought to be one of the first priorities when it comes to your website, your marketing, and your product descriptions and other sales materials – you owe that much to yourself after the work you’ve put into your business.