The role of the localization company is more important than ever in today’s global marketplace. Localization is a significant value added to translating content. It adapts the content to suit your customers’ and markets’ regional culture and linguistic preferences. If done right, it allows a business to truly resonate with its online audience, no matter where it’s marketing its products and services. However, the process can also present several risk factors that could inadvertently keep your customers in the dark – and ultimately undermine your efforts entirely. Understanding these mistakes will prevent problems for companies wishing to enter new markets abroad without compromising the integrity of their original brand or alienating new customers from very different parts of the world.
In this piece, I discuss five potential errors in engaging a localization company by revealing the damaging effect of insufficient content/audience planning that cannot address a market-specific need. I also portray how poor selection of translators can put the quality and accuracy of the localized materials at risk unless the selection process is done correctly and explore how the neglect of cultural differences can render the content produced insensitive to the needs and expectations of the target audience. I also interpret why the over-reliance on machine translation can undermine all the linguistic flavors embedded in human speech and the importance of a thorough localization against a mere translation in global market strategy. All the issues I touch on in this piece help users use the full power of localization in planning global market strategies.
Insufficient Planning and Research
Some of the most common mistakes businesses make with localization companies are not planning or researching enough beforehand, which could have a big impact on whether the business is successful in new international markets.
- Understanding Target Markets
Therefore, the first step to avoiding this trap is for companies to profile their primary markets, qualifying their customer base and answering questions like ‘What is the potential of the marketplace?’ and ‘Do you really understand the market potential via website analytics, online sales, and other engagement metrics?’ How relevant is your product to the marketplace? Is there local competition? How do you operationalize your fitness in different marketplace parts (bringing a product to life in various cultural environments and across consumer sets)?
- Tailoring Content
Next, design the content with the intended local market in mind. Create marketing materials that use local languages, cultural references, and consumption practices. Use and develop a translation management system and a style guide that offer flexibility and control over the localization of the content. Engage local experts—for example, translators who understand aesthetic issues, make good mainstream marketing decisions, and know the linguistic and cultural nuances of the target interests.
Poor Translator Selection
- Importance of Expertise
If translators are not chosen correctly, significant translation errors can lead to a grave miscommunication with the target audience. In addition to having a solid command of the languages used, translators need to appreciate culture that goes beyond the written word. More specifically, they need a strong sense of the source culture and a thorough knowledge of their target audience. For example, for a localization to be effective, it cannot just be translated word for word. It must adjust to accommodate different slang, idioms, and cultural references specific to the local audience.
- Industry-Specific Knowledge
When dealing with work for the legal, medical, or any other technical field, the translator is dealing with specialized terms. These terms can not be translated correctly without precise knowledge of that industry. At worst, they can be misunderstood with catastrophic consequences. If a construction company is intending to build a massive freeway through the desert, they’d better ensure that the translated version of the documentation they are commissioned to provide is not going to be misinterpreted; a minor typo when rendered in Arabic could cost you millions – if not billions – as an example. It’s, therefore, not enough to have skilled linguists. They must also have the right amount of experience in that industry. This will ensure that the work they do fits the needs of the business and its target clientele.
Ignoring Cultural Differences
Disrespecting cultural differences in localization is a sure way to make mistakes that shouldn’t happen. Companies need to modify marketing materials to suit the local audience. Translation is one part of a much deeper globalization problem: cultural sensitivities and local preferences must be considered and changed.
- Local Preferences
Local taste is widely diverse, and everything from color symbolism to subject matter and layout can vary from one market to another. In Thai and Vietnamese cultures, green is associated with nature and life – a contrast with the use of green to symbolize mourning in the Keju Suiran map in Japan and the Fujian region of China. Such differences can significantly impact how a specific consumer perceives an image – another factor that must be recognized and considered to avoid offending the consumer entirely.
- Cultural Sensitivity
Cultural sensitivity goes beyond not being offensive; it means knowing the local culture and understanding long and short traditions, our values, our taboos, and jokes. Practical localization respects and considers local customs and how individuals communicate and show respect not just to each other but also to time, diners, space, and teaching. Those nuances require effort in English or any other language. A lot of long-term cultural learning is required to do localization right. The result is more than avoiding every cultural misunderstanding, faux pas, and inadvertent insult. It is not just about avoiding negative connotations and showing sensitivity. If done correctly, localization arms brands to be taken at their word and be welcome in the market.
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Over-reliance on Machine Translation
The chief drawback and the main risk involved in the widespread use of machine translation (MT) lies in the quality and potential mistranslation of content, particularly when it comes to complex or specialized subject matter. Human language is complex and full of idiomatic expressions and cultural references that are difficult for MT to translate correctly, leaving the output feeling inaccurate and culturally insensitive.
- Limitations of Machine Translation
MT struggles with context and nuance and tends to be grammatically shaky and very awkward – appropriate for a news headline but not for a legal document or medical information. MT is uniform and inhuman and can’t code for cultural understanding – a critical element for the brand across all markets.
- Advantages of Human Translators
By contrast, human translators have what machines can’t: experience and expertise. They can consider context, cultural nuance, and professional jargon and make translations sound right to the reader and listener. A human translator can seamlessly retain a text’s original tone and style, which is very important to branding. Machines are especially likely to go off track because they can’t adjust a translation – for example, if they’re translating something from Spanish to Vietnamese. A human translator with a detailed understanding of Spanish and Vietnamese would never make such an error.
Conclusion
Finally, the panel agrees that localization, not just translation, is needed for a successful campaign or product. Success depends upon planning and forethought, an appreciation of cultural nuance, and the apparent human factor that any machine translation cannot replicate. Businesses can improve their international reach by avoiding the pitfalls of localization, such as Poor research strategy, Poor choice of translator and translation, Missed cultural implications Poor integration of machine translation. The embodied approach ensures translation accuracy and allows for a certain level of cultural relevance and sensitivity critical for brand integrity and audience engagement in global markets.
Thinking about these ideas, it becomes clear that such a degree of localization investment is also tied to broader objectives of global market entry and customer connection. Just being converted to another language has meaning separate from products or websites coming across as valuable or relevant to international customers. In the increasingly complicated process of global expansion, detailed and culturally adapted localization practices are imperative to functioning successfully, requiring ongoing localized know-how to become globally adaptable.
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