BENEFITS OF TRANSLATING CONTENT INTO A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE.

The internet has made it possible for businesses to reach global audiences through social media tools and digital assets such as websites, landing pages, and mobile applications.

However, businesses still face many obstacles as they try to win customers due to language barriers. It is no longer enough to run your text through Google Translate.

You need premium software tools to effectively communicate with people in their native language and a cost-effective manner, and that’s where translation and localization services come in.

Translating content into different languages has many benefits for businesses.

However, it’s not that simple as many people may think. Translating content into a different language requires an in-depth understanding of the many cultural nuances to get your message across the same way intended.

An excellent example of languages that require a high level of understanding of the cultural nuances is Asian languages such as Chinese.  The Chinese people are among the most spiritual countries globally and rely on Confucian teaching, which mainly revolves around the body and soul.  KFC’s famous English slogan “Finger-lickin’ Good” didn’t resonate well with the Chinese people, as it hinted at consuming one’s body parts, .i.e, ‘Eat Your Finger!’

Remember also the favourite Chinese dishes are bush meat and domestic animals such as dogs, rats, bats, etc., and therefore, many citizens of that country viewed it as a terrible joke.

Here are a couple of benefits of translating content into a different language:

Boosts Consumer Trust

Research has shown that people love consuming information in their language, which pushes businesses to translate their product or service messaging into the native languages of their target audience. This helps build trust with your products or services.

Generates a Positive, multilingual Experience for Users

Translating your content into a foreign language generates a positive, multilingual experience for users. Engaging users in their native language builds trust in your brand, which makes conversion easy.

Improves SEO and SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are powerful digital marketing strategies that, when implemented effectively, can position your brand in front of the right audience.  Multilingual SEO/SEM strategies take your brand to the next level by placing your brand in multiple target locations whose audiences speak different languages.

Increases Organic Traffic

After successfully translating his entire website content to 82 different languages, Neil Patel saw a 47% increase in web traffic to his website within three weeks. Translating your content into other languages gives you a wider audience reach, opens new leads, and helps you penetrate new markets.

Generates High Conversion Rates

A famous quote by Nelson Mandela states as follows “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head, but if you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart’ speaks volumes of the benefits of translating content into your target’s native language.

An excellent example of how translating your content into your target audience’s native language brings massive conversions is a case study of The Palladium Hotel Group’s popular Spanish resort chain of hotels. The marketing group that created the digital marketing strategies which brought in the massive growth had noticed the content wasn’t in the customer’s native language of their target audience.

They deployed a translation and localization strategy on the content in six priority languages (Most visitors weren’t from Spain), a couple of technical SEO improvements, and aligned with the level of quality and depth their users and consumers expected.

Factors to Consider When Translating Language to Increase Web Traffic

Identify the Source of the Traffic

The first step towards translating content to another language is to identify its origin. The best tool to use for this is Google Analytics. This is because it provides in-depth information regarding website traffic.

Translate Content In Segments

Start by translating the most significant segments of your website, then gradually translate the remaining parts of the site. Why is this a good idea? Well, translating everything at once may be too overwhelming and might compromise the quality of the translation.

Provide Customer Support and FAQs Localization

Providing customer support and localizing your product’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)s in the native languages of your target audience helps increase your customer retention rate. You’ll always get higher conversions when you communicate your message in the language of your ideal customer.

Social Media Translation

An excellent strategy to supercharge your content marketing is to create social media accounts for individual locations and post content that resonates with your target audiences in those local locations.

Identify Your Target Audience

To successfully translate content into another language, you need to identify your target audience. An excellent approach to this is creating a buyer persona that includes the characteristics of your ideal customer. This information will provide you with insights into which writing tone to use for your translation process.

Translation Team

You need translators who have native language writing skills and know-how to interweave the marketing message in the targeted language. Not all expert transcribers are excellent writers.

Outline Your Translation Process

Create a translation process that allows for the best possible language content translation. Empower your translation team by providing them with reference materials, translation software, among other tools.

Create a Glossary and Style Guide

From time to time, translators will be required to choose words and phrases from a pool of alternative words in communicating the same message. Therefore, consider working with your professional translation provider to develop a glossary and style guide to ensure the language translation goes as planned.

Perform Transcreation

Transcreation is generally translation on steroids.  Whereas translation is the verbatim transfer of text from one language to another, transcreation (translation + creation) is the process of changing text to make its meaning culturally appropriate for a target market while maintaining its intent, style, tone, and context.

Transcreation considers the slight subtleties and nuances that could go unnoticed and cause problems with the end product. Transcreation is usually used to translate the following content; idioms, taglines, branding materials, country-specific phrases, and wordplay.

Get a Review Team

Consider having an experienced transcriber tasked with reviewing other transcribers completed work. Having reviewers in your team increases the level of quality of your finished end product. Both the reviewer and translator should work as a team.

Tips on Sentence Structure

I have compiled a couple of tips on structuring your sentence and phrases to achieve the maximum possible quality of your translation project:

Keep Your Sentences Brief

For better comprehension of your translations, strive to use 20 words or less. The fewer words you can use to say the same thing, the better the completed translation copy.

Use Standard English Words and Phrases Whenever Possible

Avoid jargon and completed words and phrases when you can still use standard and straightforward English words. However, ensure you still use correct grammatical structure and proper punctuation. This requires checking the source language for errors and flagging them to avoid transferring them to the target copy.

Avoid Long Noun Strings

If you have to read a sentence several times to understand it, then chances are high that you’ll encounter further complications when it’s translated into multiple languages.

Use one term or phrase to describe a single concept

Synonyms get in the way of clarity. Therefore, strive to write the same thing the same way every time you write it. Representing a single idea in different ways affects the consistency of translation and results in decreased quality, more costs, and increased turnaround of the translation process.

Avoid Humor

The same goes for jargon, regional phrases, or metaphors. Here’s the thing: expressions are not always universally understood or appreciated; they just don’t translate. If you have to incorporate humour in your brand messaging, consider using transcreation services that communicate the same message and evoke the same feelings and tone as the source text.

Have Clarity on International Dates

Style guides should document the handling of large numbers,  measurements of currency, temperature, time, and dates. For example:  Which month is 09/08/2021? It depends where I am. In Switzerland, it reads as August, but in the U.S, it’s September. The safest approach will be to spell out the month’s name or use an abbreviation for the month.

Make Use of Relative Pronouns like “that” and “which”

These pronouns improve understanding. For example: “The software that we bought isn’t good enough” is more evident than “The software we bought isn’t good enough”. Always confirm that pronouns have been included in your text, don’t assume.

Factors to Consider When Translating a Website Into Multiple Languages

Translating your website into multiple languages opens up your products and services to new audiences. This requires careful planning to avoid rubbing your target audience the wrong way.

Here are a couple of factors to consider when translating a website into multiple languages.

• Identify the most appropriate translation process; manual or auto-translation.
• Website’s capability to handle multiple languages
• Translation scope of the website; wholly or partly
• Which and how many languages are required

Translating your content into different languages provides numerous benefits for businesses. However, this depends on the quality of the translated text. Kaziremote’s team of professional translators helps companies translate their content into multiple global languages. Click here to learn more about our translation services.