5 Costly Ways Our Poor, Outdated Localization/Transcreation Practices Are Tanking Your Digital Marketing Efforts

Many marketers, CMOs, and marketeers often complain about localization/translation/transcreation industry not serving them correctly.

Poor translations, poorly optimized texts, long processes, and many others are common complaints about localization.

Actually, as pointed out, most marketers would rather not localized their products or services, if possible.

But why is it?

Let's start off with the facts: localization and translation are expensive. Period.

But even more so if you feel it is not giving enough value for money.

After 10 years in the trenches as a freelance marketing translator, and after two years as a digital marketer selling my own products and services (including my own translation business), I have identified 5 reasons why I think localization and transcreation industry are failing to digital marketing:

Members of the Marketing Transcreation Industry Are Selling Labor Only, not Strategy... Hence, There Is No ROI

This part is essential. Marketing localization is not a matter of words divinely written in other languages, or an SEO-optimized content.

Marketing localization is an overall product-to-market strategy.

Poor coordination between marketing teams and localization teams produce critical errors and major setbacks all along the workflow.

To make things worse, by selling labor only, localization and transcreation agencies and professionals are separating two intrinsically united processes.

Hence the commoditization and the downward pressure of prices.

And this is another fundamental issue affecting your digital marketing efforts.

More on that, later.

Keep reading :)

Members Of The Marketing Transcreation Industry Don’t Practice Digital Marketing

You can’t teach what you don’t preach, right?

Well, that’s what I have seen in this industry, at least among the members in the elder -or not so old- generations, who are the ones calling the shots in the industry.

With so many gurus out there, it seems this industry has an inherent abhorrence for marketing in general. Let alone digital marketing.

So much so that even some marketing translators I have talked to say they hate marketing.

Many of them go as far as to call it “sleazy” or “unnecessary” for their own businesses, even calling ones who practice it "Instagurus".

But the problem is not only for freelance translators: marketing transcreation agencies themselves don’t practice digital marketing either.

They don't have a strong online presence.

Let alone other more advanced parts of it…

Pixel? Retargeting? Social media? An automated funnel? Follow-up sequences? A lead gen process for cold traffic? No… SEO and word of mouth!

That’s right! In 2020, they are solely relying on a warm traffic-based SEO and word of mouth to attract and capture leads to a “Get a FREE quote” button (as if commoditization wasn't enough, now you are giving them a free budget to compare against your competition!).

So, how can you offer a service you don’t actively practice?

Given, probably you would rather have an operation by a doctor than by a medical translator. That's for sure!

However, even medical translators have hands-on experience in the field by interpreting at surgeries and other medical-related events, and networking with leaders in the area.

Members Of The Marketing Transcreation Industry Are Generally Confusing Copywriting with Content Writing, Encompassing It All Under The Umbrella of The Word “Transcreation”

When the word “transcreation” debuted in our industry 10-15 years ago, many would understand as a “creative translation”.

After all, it comes from a mix of creativity and translation.

It made sense at that time.

It was the times of blogging, SEO. Cold emailing was still on a hype.

But times have changed.

Copywriting has since evolved into two very distinctive areas: direct response copywriting and branded content writing.

However, come into 2020, “transcreation” is still being seen as just "translating marketing texts".

No mention anywhere of direct response or branded content, the market research you need to carry out, the psychological triggers.

All of it falls under the obscure category of "marketing texts".

So, while marketers and marketeers test hundreds of hooks, stories, and offers for their English-speaking audiences, marketing translation agencies and professionals just limit themselves to make it sound “cool” and “fluent”.

No real funnel optimization, no real A/B testing for their copy.

Actually, when you talk with many members of the industry, they go as far as to claim that the main job of a copywriter is to “write divinely” and “succulently”.

No mention to content for TOFU, MIDFU, BOFU.

Only "write divinely".

And so, you will end up with a landing page copy "divinely" written, but with not many clicks.

But, hey, at least it sounds "cool" and no typos, I guess. Cervantes would be jealous!

Your landing page may not be leveraging off the lower conversion rates for other non-English speaking markets, but it might have a Pulitzer nomination…

Members Of The Marketing Transcreation Industry Are Not Being Paid/Don’t Charge to Work Creatively

Marketing is all about messages, not about words.

A single word can be the difference between a 3% opt-in rate and a 40% rate on your landing page.

And words work differently in different languages.

Pain points are different.

Frustrations and dreams are different.

It is not a one-fits-all approach.

After all, they are different audiences all along!

Yet, most members of the marketing transcreation industry are still working with the broken per-word system.

So, while a copywriter gets paid by the hour for an 8-word slogan (and often times succulently well), a marketing translator is paid less than a fiver for such a work in their language.

That has led to what I call the typist translator syndrome or word-cruncher approach.

Basically, translators and transcreators try and translate as many words as possible per hour to earn more.

Actually, you see many colleagues brag about “translating fast” and looking down to “slow translators”.

I don’t blame them, though: who wouldn’t take a word-cruncher approach if the money you will receive for your hard work depends exclusively on the number of words you can puke every hour?

No wonder why a translator would type in 1 second your USD 60K/month tagline... to never look back!

I mean, how could it be otherwise if most agencies are paying them less than the cost of their PM’s cup of coffee for that work?

Honestly, no professional (or any human being, whatsoever) should be required to put out their best creative effort on a task that won’t even pay them for the Internet they are using for its completion.

Let alone the stupid belief by translation agencies that you should provide huge discounts for fuzzy matches and bulk amounts of work.

More on that aspect below.

Members Of The marketing Transcreation Industry Don’t Have Real Room For Copy Optimization

As said above, it is not unheard of localization and transcreation agencies to offer bulk discounts to clients.

But it doesn’t end there: oftentimes, they subject vendors to ridiculous discounts for fuzzies and repetitions in the copy.

*For those who are not translators, a fuzzy match and a repetition is a segment that is similar or identical to one that has been translated before. They are calculated in what we call Computer-Assisted Translation tools (CAT tools).

So, for agencies, all words are worth the same, even if in different contexts and with different intents.

No real analysis of their impact and sentiment generated.

Add to that the strict respect/fear of the source text and the source formatting in current segmentation-based CAT tools.

So, while the copywriter had all the room for creativity to add and remove copy, pain points, CTAs, headers, bullet points, change headlines and subheadlines, etcetera, translation agencies are telling their vendors that they need to respect those segments “as is” - even if they don’t make sense in the other language or market, even if they are not as engaging or if they are redundant for that market…

Let alone that they are being paid less for “repeated” copy or “fuzzy matches”.

Or the amazing flea market approach of offering huge discounts for bulk.

Never mind when translation agencies offer machine translation edition for marketing copy (which requires even more words per hour to make a living).

So, in the end you have extremely qualified creative professionals with no real motivation or incentive to improve the copy, improve conversions, optimize copy, etcetera (honestly, who would do it under those conditions?)

To put it in plain words for marketers and copywriters: the way marketing translation agencies are working in general is as if copywriting/marketing agencies offer your services at discount for the number of words you need to write, or offer discounts because they use FunnelScript or any other Sales Script Generator.

Or, even more ridiculous, it is as if they want to offer a discount to clients just because they own a swipe file library you can leverage to do your work.

Fortunately, Juan Pablo Sans, the Spanish Marketing Ninja, and his team at TradCreation are working for a solution to that problem by working exclusively with Spanish translators who have a real flair for marketing and who are more geared towards conversions and conversations.

Ready to join us? Apply for a free strategy call here: https://tradcreation.com/apply-for-a-quote-2/