Marketing a product on a global platform for the first time sounds exciting. If your product is a good match for the global customer you should find that you will increase your revenue and provide an enviable presence in the global market. However, the steps to establishing a global presence aren’t necessarily that easy and specific tactics are required to meet this goal.
Most companies don’t know how to market their product to a customer that doesn’t speak their language. There are specific ways of doing this which involve translating and localizing the product. These skills are typically found in the translation industry. A company doesn’t usually employ people directly, but outsources to a translation service that has the skills to accurately translate and localise a product so it matches the language of the new market.
If as a business you wish to generate a global brand, the language used when marketing the product needs to be accurate and culturally appropriate for the particular targeted market. This means ensuring the logo matches the style and colour of the targeted group and the font used matches your brand and is consistent throughout your marketing campaign. The brand must be recognizable throughout all the targeted countries.
☞ Uniformity Is Essential For Success In Global Marketing
A well established global translation service will determine what is the appropriate language to use that accurately identifies your brand but will be easily understood and recognized by your intended global customer. Developing this will take some study to begin with but once the best information about your brand has been developed and a
language style has been standardized this means you will have the marketing material ready to use and adapt to different languages and audiences.
☞ Transcreation Is More Important Than Translation
You can’t expect your brand description,logo and message to be directly translated into a new language. A lot of brand advertising is composed of language nuances and idioms which aren’t directly translatable into other languages. This is when transcreation, or what’s sometime called creative adaptation, is used in order to make the brand message much more accessible to the targeted markets. The message is modified in a way that’s not the same as a translation but has gone a step further. For example, if your brand message and logo is written in red, the Chinese will love it as they see red as a lucky colour.
☞ Video Goes Down Well As A Brand Marketing Strategy
Many businesses market their product by using short videos in their native language. These need a special type of localisation for a foreign language market. A specialized translation services needs to translate scripts, create subtitles, record voice-overs in the new language spoken by the targeted native speaker, and finally ensure the localised video flows well and makes sense to the new audience.
☞ Style Guides Set The Standards For Global Translation Services
A style guide brings together all the rules by which a business will present all its marketing both in text and visually. It contains business and language guidelines. Some of the more common examples would be how the business’s name is presented such as the use of capitalization. Other aspects of a specific business’s style guide are as follows:
• The translation of product names and any categories,
• What measurements are used such as imperial or metric depending on the country targeted
• Outlining language-specific rules, like the use of modes of personal and impersonal address in a particular country
• The style guide is coupled together with the appropriate glossary and translation memory(TM) to ensure language consistency and the highest quality of translation is maintained.
Because a translation service has a stock of translators, these can be used interchangeably for the same business’s translation needs. This is because the style guide provides all the translation services translators with a standard to work by when doing a translation. This could include the preferred punctuation method and a specific way in which grammar is used. The style guide also alludes to potential errors and pitfalls that translators should try and avoid when doing a translation for a specific company.
How A Glossary Is Used By A Translation Service
A glossary is a tool used that eliminates unnecessary uncertainty for a translation services translators for a specific business. The key features of a glossary are:
1. An effective glossary only catalogues each term once.
2. All terms that need specific definitions are found in a business’s glossary.
3. Glossaries only include terms that are relevant to a single business’s product.
4. Glossaries are as short as possible otherwise it takes far too long to complete a translation.
5. Glossaries must provide a context and a definition.
6. A useful glossary acts as a true guide for the translator.
7. Each term should include a definition and a translation and also the context where the term is found. This ensures the right term is used in the right context.
8. A glossary should contain a list terms that shouldn’t be translated, for example the name of a product isn’t usually translated.
Overall, a glossary is an assurance that each translator makes sure that when a key term appears in a piece of text, its translation is used correctly and consistently. For example, the terms for ‘notebook computer’ or’ laptop’ are usually synonymous, but the translator should select which is best to use and stick with that word throughout the translation of the whole document. This ensures that there is consistency in the use of the language which can’t be questioned.
How A Glossary Is Created
Most businesses depend on a translation service which uses automated tools and processes and experience in order to create and manage glossaries. The translation service will study style guides and forms of formal communication used by the business before creating a glossary. Sometimes, terms are automated so that when a translator needs a translation he or she will quickly be able to access the best words. Once the translation has been completed the business will need to check if the terminology has been used correctly in the targeted language. Once the glossary has been approved it will be used by the translators as required. When the translator works through the material, the translation services translation memory suggests automatically phrases and sentences for the translator to use.
Reasons Why Translation Services Are Important For Businesses
Even if your business has a good local profile and sales this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of marketing your product to global markets. In fact, if it’s doing well it will probably bring even better returns if it is marketed to the global customer community. It’s not necessarily a given that your revenue will increase, but if your business communication strategies match your market you can’t go wrong. Communicating with different countries requires not only a certain type of expertise but you have to get your marketing tone just right. Multiple countries demand expertise and precision. For this you will need a special translation service for a number of reasons which include the following:
☞ The communication with customers will be much improved if your product information and communication is translated by a translation service which knows the language to use with your targeted customer.
☞ Improving your brand’s visibility and reaching out to as many customers as possible can only take place if the language barriers are crossed successfully. It’s only an experienced global translation service that will be able to achieve this objective.
☞ Avoiding a bad reputation is crucial to successful global marketing. If the translation doesn’t match the intended audience’s language nuances the whole marketing campaign could be a total failure. Kentucky Fried chicken went in for a bit of bashing not too long ago with its famous slogan “Finger-Lickin’ Good”. This is okay in English but when translated into Chinese languages gave the wrong message completely. It meant “We will eat off your fingers”.
Similarly, when Pepsi’s slogan “Come alive while drinking Pepsi” was put into Chinese languages, it meant “Pepsi can bring the ancestors from the dead back to life!” Avoiding these slip ups is only possible if you use an experienced translation service which has done plenty of research into the nuances of both source and targeted languages and will never make any crucial mistakes.
☞ Drafting a variety of legal documents is all part of marketing overseas. You will need warranty documents in all your targeted languages and supply contracts with businesses overseas. Some may understand English but you will get treated a whole lot better if you provide accurate translations of all the necessary legal documents. One slip-up in a legal document could spell disaster for your business’s reputation. You will need a professional legal document’s translator to translate your legal documents into the languages of the countries you intend to target. A professional translator guarantees to provide easy and accurate translations of all legal documents.
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