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Remember when did you first build your brand? And how long you spent pondering about a befitting name for your business and what it says about you?

If your company wants to expand into international markets, it's self-evident that you'll need a way to inform potential clients about what you have to offer, and marketing translation is exactly what you need!

Are you just getting started? Don’t worry. We'll go over all you need to know about marketing translation in this article.

What is Marketing Translation?

Marketing translation, as the name suggests, is the act of changing marketing materials like your website, brochures, and social media into a new language for a new target audience.

The point here is that the words you use to convey your brand are carefully chosen. It is not just information you want to get across, but also a feeling that will hopefully create an emotional connection with your target audience.

When translating your marketing material into a new language, you want to make sure that same feeling gets into the hearts and minds of your new target audience as well. And that is why marketing translation is not quite as simple as it first sounds.

What Type of Translation You will Need

In general, there are three sorts of translation services. If you're investing in translation services for marketing (or any other reason), knowing the differences between them might be helpful, so here's a quick rundown.

Standard Translation

This is the most literal type of translation, in which a document is copied word for word into another language. It's ideal for items like instruction manuals, technical publications, and any other content where brand voice and cultural considerations aren't as vital.

This style of literal, conventional translation, on the other hand, isn't usually acceptable for marketing translation materials. The words will, at best, fail to connect with your target audience on the same level.

As such, you'll need a more sophisticated, creative approach to the translation process to avoid cultural missteps with your translated marketing material. This is when services like localisation and transcreation come in.

Localisation

When translating source material, a translator examines both linguistic and cultural features of the target language and changes the copy or design components accordingly. This could entail anything from altering cultural references so that they 'hit' with the target audience and create original content.

Transcreation

Even with proper localisation, the language-specific wordplay and nuance of advertising and marketing content will not always translate into another language. This is where transcreation becomes necessary.

Based on the original brand standards from the original language, a copywriter in the target language will design a new tag line, advertisement, or other content.

This ensures that nothing is "lost in translation" and that your marketing reaches your new target demographic with the same emotional appeal.

This, of course, necessitates a thorough awareness of the new target market's culture, as well as expert copywriting and advertising skills.

The Marketing Translation Process

It’s clear that effective marketing translation requires either localisation or transcreation processes, rather than standard translation so that your marketing material connects with your audience in the right way.

Now that you have a sense of which services you may need, let’s take a look at how you should go about preparing for a marketing translation project.

Have the Global Market in Mind

We know that planning for the future is hard and business can be unpredictable. But if you have an inkling that you might expand into international markets at some point, then it may be useful to create your marketing content accordingly, avoiding things like idioms or any gestures that might not translate.

Of course, this should be balanced with bringing the required personality and emotive elements into your communications, but it can make the process of translation a lot easier in the future if you design materials with this in mind.

Give it Time

Effective translation of marketing content takes time. One mistake we see companies make is to assume that marketing content can be turned around in a similar timeframe to standard materials such as technical documents.

The detailed consideration of the nuances and the number of revisions often required to create effective marketing translations means that you should be thinking in weeks, not days, for a completed marketing translation project.

Review

Once the first draft of your marketing translation is ready, it is vital to get feedback from other translators (working as reviewers) who speak the target language to make sure the intended message comes across.

Know that feedback may often be diverse. Everyone will have their own unique opinion on marketing materials, and this type of non-literal translation can be more open to interpretation.

But a thorough review process like this will help ensure that marketing translation is as effective as it can be.

Launch

This is the exciting part!

Once you have ticked all the boxes above, it’s time to start spreading the word in your new target market(s).

Marketing Channels

Having covered the type of translation you are likely to require, and the process this may follow, we will finish by looking at the different types of content you may translate, and some key considerations for each of these.

Website

Your website is often the first port of call for many customers wanting to find out more about your brand, so it is a good place to start when translating marketing materials for a new audience.

It might be tempting to opt for a free machine translation tool such as Google Translate, or one of the many translation plugins available to translate your website copy.

However, while these automated translation tools are improving all the time, they have a long way to go before they can pick up the same nuances as a human can.

There may also be inaccuracies in word choice and grammar. If you have ever struggled to understand a website after clicking the “Translate this Page” option, you’ll know what we mean.

To showcase your business in the best possible light in your new target market, we recommend you get a human translator for your website copy.

Besides having a more nuanced understanding of the language you have used, there will be able to localise your content to the new target audience.

Multilingual SEO

SEO, of course, is the process of optimising your website and online content so that you are found for the key search terms relating to your business.

If you can incorporate the right words into your online marketing materials in a natural, reader-friendly way, the search engines will notice and rank you well.

While you may be well enough established in your own country that your business ranks well in key search terms, in your new target market, you are an unknown entity to both your customers and the Internet search engines they will use to find you.

If the Internet is going to be an avenue for your customers to find you, then investing in multilingual SEO will almost certainly be worth doing.

Domain Names

Another way to increase your visibility and trust to potential customers in this new market is to structure your domain so, it has a country-specific version of your website.

This is simple enough to do, and most domain management platforms will have an option to do this.

There are three options available to you:

1. In-country domain, e.g., <a href="https://www.wolfestone.fr

">www.wolfestone.fr

<a href="https://www.wolfestone.fr

">

2. Subdomain, e.g., <a href="https://www.fr.wolfestone.com

">www.fr.wolfestone.com

<a href="https://www.fr.wolfestone.com

">

3. Subdirectories, e.g.,?www.wolfestone.com/fr/

Layout

One final consideration regarding your website copy translation is the layout of your site.

It might not always seem like it, but English is actually one of the most efficient languages in terms of word usage, and other languages will very often use more space to say the same thing.

French, for example, takes up about 15% more space on the page when translated from English.

This is worth considering if the copy on your site is placed in a very tight space; you may need to reconsider the design to make it easier to convert to other languages.

Printed Material

It’s not just your digital marketing translation that you need to consider. More traditional, hard copy materials will need translating as well, especially if you are considering attending trade shows, contacting customers using direct mail campaigns, or creating brochures in your target language.

For any brochure translation or other printed marketing materials, we would use much the same approach as with your website copy.

The content should be appropriately localised with both the languages and the images reflecting the local culture.

If transcreation is required for headings or other creative elements of the text, then this would be carried out as well, to ensure all material has the required impact on the intended audience.

As with website copy, the layout should be considered as well, especially for brochure translations with a lot of copy.

Hope this guide has given you a few ideas to think about when designing your marketing strategy for a new, international audience!

If you need assistance implementing an effective marketing translation strategy, reach out to us for a free consultation.

Victor Heredia

Bilingual Copywriter & English to Spanish Marketing Translator

2 年

Hey MOUNIR LOUKOUMANOU. Transcreation is so important and not all marketers understand it. You broke it down nicely.

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Mounir L.

French Transcreator/Copywriter/Localization Specialist/Business Developer/Growth Hacker/Digital Marketing Specialist

2 年

Whether you want to get known locally or globally? You need digital communication and digital marketing is the key in this process...??????

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Mounir L.

French Transcreator/Copywriter/Localization Specialist/Business Developer/Growth Hacker/Digital Marketing Specialist

2 年

Share ! !!

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