Advertising Translation and Localization

Everybody likes a good laugh, but I doubt it is pleasant when it comes to business, for these multinational, multimillionaire companies, if your advertising content is riddled with erroneous messages. 

The world is an amazing melange of diverse people with flamboyant cultures and dialects. The global business market might need to take this into consideration, with plenty of urgency to spare.  Globalisation of trade and economies has companies communicating with customers in parallel to the respective assorted cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

From Adaptation to Localisation

The question is; how can we sell a standardised product to local and different consumers?

There is an advantage in standardizing the strategy of commination in all targeted countries and it lies mainly in the economies of scale. Looking at it in that angle also lays ahead long term demise for your market. 

In a matter of speaking, God is in the details, and in this situation, it should be done thoroughly. It’s like having a friend you look out for but he is less inclined to do the same for you, it’s imprinted at the back of your mind to move on and find what suites you because he cared less if not at all. Same idea goes when establishing or launching your company’s presence and products in a new country. If less thought is put into reaching out to your clients through localisation of your communication tools such as websites, brochures, social media, public relations and news, the company will be known as none existent in these parts, I know because as people take pride in which they are, we appreciate being acknowledged.

Never Get Lost In Translation

Setting up promotional advertisement, cars and trucks printed and painted with company logo and slogan; the catch phrase meant to be translated in the target geography of your business could cause your company to be a laughing stock or notoriety might as well result, and over time you will lose customers. 

It’s important to invest in quality advertising translation services from a professional translation company because advertising forms a core part of marketing which is a base line for any business. Once your advertising material is poorly translated, it simply means a misrepresentation of your business. Imagine operating a business with no clients, a hospital with no doctors or patients, you just have a big clog of concrete. 

It would be worth your while to cogitate when scaling your business to different geographies and cultures and consider a localisation of your brand as a company. People prefer buying commodities which they which are localized in their language because they can be sure of what they are buying. It is therefore your obligation to ensure that you put all your marketing materials into the language of the target market. This is pretty fantastic.

Advertise and Localize

It is important to take time, appreciate and cultivating your target audience because if you have an amazing product and you would like to share the experience, you have come thus far, to pack up with a tainted name and lose out on a virgin market.

LOCALISATION

Localisation involves adapting a product or service to a specific local market.  Translation is one of the several elements of the localisation process.

An example is the Baidu search engine that has taken over the Chinese market because of the interaction and experience that feels fully local to the Chinese market.

Localisation process may involve

-          Converting units of measure, currencies etc., to local requirements

-          Modifying content to suite consumption habits of other markets

-          Adapting visuals to target markets

The aim of localisation is to give a product the look and feel of having been created for the target market and to eliminate, or at least minimize, local sensitivities.

Advertising

Advertising is the communication relayed from companies to persuade an audience to purchase their products. It is a form of marketing that relies on persuasion, and it’s how a marketing campaign can help a brand break through into new markets, for example through:

-          A locally translated website

-          Localise experience through conversion of currencies and units of measurement that suite your target market.

-          Email campaigns

-          etc.

Scenarios Where Companies Get Lost in Translation-Call It Advertising Blunders!

There is no room for one-size-fits all in today’s global marketing strategy. Translation is effortless and a relentless persuasion. Localising your slogan and text context to the target diverse market begets positive feedback.

A trickle of companies like Pepsi Cola, Coca-Cola, has written history of unintentional translation fails with their slogans. KFC mistranslated “finger-lickin’ good” to something that identified with cannibalism in Chinese- “We will eat your fingers off”.

Another example is the American Dairy Association Original: “Got Milk” in translation is “Are you lactating” in Mexico.

Perdue Chicken original tagline “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” and translated into “it takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused” and ”it takes a virile man to make a chicken pregnant ” in Mexico.

The most popular one is the Pepsi erroneous slogan in China. Its original is “Come alive with Pepsi!” and its Chinese translation was “Pepsi bring your ancestors back from the dead!”

So to speak, success lies in going very local. From personal experience in marketing, tours around the region and target market location, deep into the heart of some of these towns and areas granted my former company a chance to localise itself with the locals. With the brand translated into the major local spoken languages in Uganda, that aspect guaranteed a vantage point for the company.

Language services are critical to any company’s growth. The real challenge is how to establish a personalised connection with these foreign audiences.

When launching a product or a campaign in a new country, it’s no longer enough to just translate the brand or the user manual, more thought has to be taken into localised brand and product experience engaging with the customer.

Many companies prefer to use low cost machine translations to develop a connection with their prospectus buyers in other countries. It is risky because a campaign with a sentiment message and a syntax analysed through a machine translation will give you the gist of the campaign but the semantics of the message is lost in the translation.

Machine translation does word to word without conception of the information and cannot solve ambiguities. It’s only a human mind that is able to decode such vagueness in an originally human composed message.

A recommendation for an expanding company or business is, communication is like seeing and having an opening to the world through one window. It is that, that gives you access to achieving your goal. A translation company will help you and your business communicate effectively to global audiences. Translation companies do this by making sure the content of their client companies’ communications is culturally sensitive and presented in languages that their audiences understand, it lies in the human capacity to decode a message and bestows its message intact even after conversion.