As companies are faced with the international expansion of the markets that they have access to thanks to the Internet, the translation of commercial, promotional and legal materials becomes a requirement- one that many companies have never had to deal with before today. Orienting oneself in the choices related to this activity can however be difficult for those who have never had to deal with decisions of this type: in this series of two articles relating to the expansion of companies on world markets, and the translation needs that derive from it, we will try to provide some useful information on how to organize this aspect of your communication.
Translating your company texts (https://www.bantelmann-translate.de/en/translation) into the languages spoken by the customers with whom you want to create a relationship is essential: foreign customers want to be able to read your brochures, find out about your services, and discover the characteristics of your products in a language that they know well, that they can interpret, and that does not expose them to the risk of misunderstanding essential details. In addition to this, finding materials written in their own language immediately improves a customer's predisposition to read them with interest and attention, and makes them feel considered and important; and finally, many markets have specific legal requirements that require company materials to be presented in the local language.
Once the essential importance of translating their materials has been recognized, however, each company is faced with a specific limitation, the same that applies to any business decision: we are of course talking about the budget that can be allocated to such operation.
Even considering that it is a strategic action, which certainly represents an investment that will have positive repercussions on turnover - and not simply a fruitless expense - the fact remains that the available funds are limited, and choices need to be made.
There are two common mistakes that companies often make when the need for translations clashes with allocated budgets:
- Working amateurishly, entrusting the translation work to an internal employee who "knows the language quite well" or who has approached another foreign language in his course of study. With all due exceptions, usually the linguistic competence of those involved in any other job may be sufficient to understand - even in an excellent way - a text or a foreign speaker, and also to converse or produce short texts, but hardly anyone who is not a professional translator is able to render a text in a foreign language in a complete, thorough, totally correct way, calibrated on the local communication style, and free from the risk of misunderstanding;
- Relying entirely and uncritically on automated translation software, especially free applications. Despite the undeniable evolution that this sector has seen in recent years, and the marked improvement in the results that can be obtained with this software, these are not yet tools to which one can entrust the unsupervised translation of company copy, let alone of any text that is required to have a persuasive, informative, or even legal value.
But then, if the solutions that we’ve set out above present such significant problems, how can a company make reconcile its translation needs with its budget?
No rule states that a translation job, especially a multilingual one, must immediately and simultaneously cover all of a company’s copy, which often includes very large quantities of material. On the contrary, strategic choices are required: what are the products and services that can really take hold on the new market we are approaching? What materials do we really need to be able to effectively present them? Will the foreign visitor really need access to a translated version of all the pages of our site, or will it be possible to create a limited version which includes only those pages that are really of interest to them? All these choices can contribute to seriously reduce the required expenditure: translation work will be completed as it becomes necessary - and further expenses will now be justified by previous results.
Before carrying out a translation, we must ask ourselves if the market we are approaching is ready; if we want to approach two different areas, it might be worth deciding which one can give us results in a shorter time and invest in that first, to use the turnover deriving from the operation to finance entry into the second market. In addition to this, it is very important to evaluate what to translate and when on the basis of seasonality, if there are precise cycles; it is a waste today to translate materials related to a product that is normally searched for in another period of the year.
Fully cooperate with the translator Full cooperation with the translator is carried out by supplying complete, accurate and up-to-date materials, so as to avoid delays in correcting errors and inaccuracies. Investing twice as much time in preparing the original material to be translated can save many more hours of work - and therefore reduce costs - which would otherwise be spent on clarifications, confirmations, alternative proposals and their approval.
There is still a strategic choice to be made, perhaps the most important: the one relating to the languages in which to translate company materials (https://www.bantelmann-translate.de/en/blog/post/126/international-markets-special-feature-which-languages-should-corporate-materials-be-translated-into). We will discuss this in a future article.
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