Translating Marketing Messages: Key Tips and Techniques
No matter what kind of business you run, you need marketing materials to attract new audiences and plant the seed for lead generation. Marketing is the cornerstone of doing business in the B2B and B2C worlds and involves creating several content pieces, from email and social media posts to mailers and websites.
If you’re working internationally or considering having partners or clients that use other languages, your company needs to generate marketing content ready for a multilingual world. Once you embark on that worldwide journey, you must include marketing translation services in your marketing plan.
Generating content requires strategy and planning. Developing marketing content in several languages, in addition to the international strategy, demands understanding the challenges, following best practices, and having a language translation company to guide you in the process.
The Importance of Translation Services for Marketing Materials
The success of business campaigns and initiatives depends on marketing. Marketing collateral is brand-specific and needs to resonate with the audience to thrive. Successfully executing a global marketing campaign takes foresight and a lot of planning.
Marketing is an umbrella term covering many aspects of doing business, and many documents fall under marketing translation services. Below is a list of marketing documents to consider for international customers:
- Website content
- Online and print ads
- Social media posts
- Press releases
- Product packaging
- Product descriptions
- Posters and billboards
- Radio and TV commercials
- Marketing brochures
- Branded content banner ads
- Video content
Benefits of Translating Marketing Collateral
- Reach a wider audience with increased language access
- Increase brand awareness
- Enhance customer satisfaction
- Boosting SEO rankings
- Potential for new sales with the same products
Challenges of Marketing Translation Services
Marketing translators do more than swap out words – they must work as writers, problem solvers, and marketers to create a translated version that moves audiences in the right direction. Good marketing campaigns are often subtle, while a bad one can set a brand up for ridicule.
Marketing content is culturally specific – what resonates with audiences in the U.S. may not work in the U.K. or Canada. Because of this, most marketing campaigns don’t go through literal translations but are instead recreated for audiences in their language. Successful multilingual marketing campaigns are based on in-depth research and a deep understanding of cultural nuances.
Understanding Marketing Translation Terms
Experienced marketing translators use many terms when discussing marketing translation or advertising translation services. Here are the key terms you need to know.
- Translation. It is converting text from a source language to a different language. Translated documents deal with the written word, not the spoken.• Interpretation. It converts spoken words (or sign language) from a source language into a target language. Interpretation services do not deal with written work.
- Globalization. In the language industry, globalization involves all the processes and activities to introduce products and services internationally. From the planning phase to when they are offered to the public. It is extensive and includes areas like business development, market research, and compliance with local laws, among some of the most important ones. It also includes translating materials from a source language to all target languages required.
- Localization. Beyond globalization. Localization is adapting content, products, or services to a specific region or locale. Translation services are one of the activities of the localization process. The localization process also includes adapting the design, the alphabet, and display of the content, changing the date and time format, currency, cultural norms, and specific vocabulary. The objective is to achieve a final result that seems to have been created for the new target market. An example is the Spanish translation of a website selling products in Mexico. Another example is the Portuguese translation of a product manual for customers in Brazil.
- Transcreation. Comes from the combination of translation and creation since it involves creativity in professional translation services. In the translation services industry, it refers to creating or recreating content from one language to another to resonate with the target audience while keeping its style and intent. Changing content to adapt to the new language and culture, like examples, song lyrics in a commercial, advertisement for holidays, etc. Social post translation requires transcreation to adjust to the new audience; for example, the easter holiday might not resonate with all global cultures.
Plan for Marketing Translation Services from the Start
The smoothest marketing translation projects are those where translation has been planned for since the project’s inception. Suppose you’re working on a marketing campaign that you know will need to be translated into multiple languages. In that case, you can shorten the translation project timeline by incorporating several best practices into the campaign from the start.
- Clear and concise copy. Focus on precise copy; shorter sentences with simple ideas are easier to pass to another language. Avoid using double meanings. Understanding the audience will let you decide the tone for the translated copy. Will a casual tone work for the audience, or will the translated version need to be more formal?
- Free of humor, slang, and idioms. These don’t translate well. Humor, slang, and expressions are specific to cultures and languages; even within the same country, a slang word may not mean the same thing. Humor and slang words are particularly challenging to translate due to varying meanings, so the best-translated marketing copy is free of them, or the translators will need time for transcreation.
- Room for text expansion. Translation often comes with text expansion, mainly when the source language is English, which significantly impacts the design of documents. It’s not uncommon for text to expand by 20 – 30%, and designing with text expansion in mind makes the translation project move faster and smoother.
- Use the final document for translation. Any changes on marketing documents set the translation timeline back, so make sure you send the document’s final version. Also, send the source files to the translation company.
- Use universal symbols. Many countries have standard-approved symbols. The International Organization for Standardization has approved symbols to convey critical concepts globally outside of written language.
- Have a glossary of terms. A glossary of terms is a living document created in tandem by the client and language service provider that establishes approved translations and definitions for commonly used words.
But if you have yet to plan translation services from the beginning, be sure to partner with an experienced translation company that can guide you, suggest options, and create high-quality translation content for your company. The timeline of a marketing translation project changes based on how much analysis and work the translator team needs to do before starting.
Finding Global Success with Marketing Translation Services
Understanding your audience’s language is the first step in a successful marketing translation project. The next step is to decide how granular to get with the details of your translation. Details includes:
Deciding whether to globalize or localize
A globalized translation will be linguistically accurate while being generic enough to work in any country with your target language. A globalized Spanish translation would work just as well in Spain as in Mexico and Peru. A localized version will only work in specific locales like Puerto Rico.
Use appropriate videos and images
For marketing materials to succeed, people must see themselves in it. If you’re using a brochure depicting entirely white people in Asia, it may fall flat because your audience doesn’t see themselves represented. The visuals in your marketing materials need to match your market. It takes more effort, but you get closer to your subject.
Use the right colors
Colors can have specific cultural meanings, and it’s essential to consider these in your marketing. In English, people are green with envy, but in France and Germany, you can be yellow with envy. In many Western cultures, black is the color of mourning, but in many Eastern cultures, white is more appropriate.
Are you ready to reach a new market with a multilingual marketing strategy? Do you need marketing copy in another language? You need a partner with experience in marketing translation services. JR Language is a marketing translation company with years of experience helping businesses reach international markets using translation and localization services.
We go above and beyond for our customers with excellent service, affordable prices, and fast turnaround times. Contact us for a quote today— we’d love to learn about your needs and help you succeed in talking to international customers.
