How Translation Agencies Can Benefit Your Business

Budgeting, marketing plans, sales strategies, and unwavering determination are essential to getting your business started.

But once your business takes off, there’s another ingredient you need to add to this concoction of entrepreneurial prosperity: translation services.

Globalisation has enabled even the smallest businesses to test international waters and access foreign markets. But no amount of technological advancements can overcome language and cultural barriers between you and your target market in a new country. And how can you capture the attention of foreign consumers if you don’t even speak their language?

It’s simple: you can’t— at least not, according to countless research emphasising the importance of translation for businesses to grow and thrive.

The Importance of Translation Services in International Markets

If you want to establish and consolidate a strong presence in the global market, multilingual marketing is essential. Even if you choose widely-spoken languages like English, Chinese, or Hindi, your consumer base would be much happier if you spoke their language.

Numerous studies support the importance of expert translation services within the global business market. The most telling of these studies is the one conducted by CSA Research, which surveyed 8,709 customers across 29 countries. The study revealed that 76% of customers prefer purchasing products with information in their own language, and 40% would never buy from websites in other languages.

Hence, it is essential to translate your website, product descriptions, blog articles, case studies, and other marketing literature. Not only that, but you will also have to accurately translate most, if not all, of your legal documents.

But translation is just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition to translating your content, you also need to localise it. Simply put, localisation is the process of tweaking and adapting your translations to the local culture, political climate, slang, and popular trends. This is a complex undertaking as only native speakers, or seasoned translators can help you adapt to local customs.

Thankfully, expert translation service agencies like Language Reach can help in this situation.

5 Important Reasons Why Your Business Needs Translation Services

Here are five principal reasons your business should partner with a translation agency.

1. Larger Consumer Base

The foremost benefit of partnering with a translation agency is expanding your consumer base outside national borders. And with a growing consumer base comes growing revenue and profit.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about the consumer journey. You see an ad on social media that strikes your fancy and proceed to the company’s website. From here, you navigate their website and go to the products page. Maybe you’ll filter your search, read about the shipping policies, and even skim through some reviews to confirm if they’re legit.

Satisfied, you place your order and wait for the package to arrive. But it’s taking longer than expected, so you email the company for assistance. They reassure you that your package has reached the courier and should be at your doorstep within 24 hours.

Now ask yourself this: would you, as a consumer, be able to do all of these things if everything from the website to the customer service was in, say, Portuguese? Definitely not, hence why you need translations.

2. Increased Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the extent to which customers can recall or recognise a brand. If your friend offers you a fizzy drink and you instinctively ask for Coca-Cola, it’s because the fizzy drink company has garnered massive brand awareness.

Brand awareness is difficult enough to achieve in your home country, let alone across borders where people are already happily accustomed to local brands.

Forget digital advertising and social media customer service. How can a customer, who speaks a different language, recognise or recall your brand if everything about it is in a foreign language? From slogans to campaigns and surveys to infographics, everything needs an appropriate translation if you hope to instill your brand’s name in the customer’s mind.

3. Localisation

As discussed, localisation is a step beyond basic translation and helps you blend in with local cultures and trends while maintaining your core message.

Think about it: how do you think multinational brands like Nestle and Coca-Cola have been selling their products globally for decades? It’s simple: they localise their content to help them communicate their message to people from different cultures.

For example, Coca-Cola has a long-standing marketing campaign called “Holidays are Coming,” forging an unwavering connection between the brand and Christmas. But the South Asian demographic won’t relate to this connection, as their festivities include Holi, Dashain, Eid, and epic weddings.

Hence, a good translation agency will help ensure that every last detail follows local cultures and market regulations and avoid politically or culturally insensitive texts and images.

4. Avoiding Offensive Messaging

Mistranslations can be just as bad, if not worse, than not translating your content at all. The worst thing that can happen with a lack of translations is low brand awareness. But with mistranslations and poor localisation, you can actually ruin your brand’s reputation.

Take Dolce and Gabbana’s infamous ad campaign, which tainted the multinational brand’s image for years to come. The ad depicted a young, ditzy, and “clueless” Chinese woman attempting to unsuccessfully eat pizza—an Italian dish— with chopsticks— a Chinese utensil.

Unsurprisingly, people did not take kindly to the racist overtones of the ad, and even the Chinese government condemned the brand.

5. Avoiding Legal Ramifications

Believe it or not, failing to translate your content accurately puts you at the risk of some severe legal ramifications. When entering new markets, businesses must translate all of their legal documentation. Some of these legal documents include patent issues, industrial and intellectual property, transaction records, litigation, insurance claims, and corporate contracts.

Moreover, cosmetic, medical, or food companies must provide additional medical information, nutritional information, or disclaimers. If your customer does not have access to this information in their native language, you might face a mountain of lawsuits in the future.

Failure to translate or produce mistranslations could snowball from simple misunderstandings to severe legal consequences. Even if you avoid multiple lawsuits, you’ll still risk delaying business negotiations and hindering new contracts.

Conclusion

Increasing globalisation is merely a stepping stone for your business to expand. The tricky part isn’t setting up your business in foreign markets but ensuring it sustains by appealing to local customers.

Hence, your business needs to partner with a certified translation services provider to thrive in unchartered waters.