May, 2010

Changes in recent years have made multilingual marketing easier and more affordable. Now you can support those far-flung offices and emerging markets with top-notch marketing that will give you an edge over your competitors. Years ago I used to dread hearing a customer tell me that they wanted web pages or media files in other languages. Many things about the process were hard. There weren’t as many translation service providers, and software-based translation wasn’t widely used like it is now for on-the-fly translation of web pages. The technical ability to intelligently deliver the content in different languages was also lacking.

If your impression is that it’s too hard or too expensive, I have good news for you. Now multilingual marketing is easier than you think and it may be just the time to take another look at how expanding your global reach could help your business.

Tapping into the global talent pool

Unless you sell exclusively to an English-speaking clientele, planning for multilanguage distribution at the outset of many projects makes marketing and economic sense. The global Internet lets you easily contract with translation professionals anywhere. For example, Presentek has contacts with a translation service provider based in Rome, and we hire local language voice-over talent from Europe, South America or wherever the right the professional for the job is located.

How much does it cost?

If you have marketing materials or websites in English, getting these re-purposed for use in other languages is surprisingly affordable. Let's use a starting benchmark of 500 English words -- that's about one single-spaced page in Microsoft Word using a 12pt. font. Translation from English to either French, German, Italian, Spanish (Latin America or Spain), Japanese or Chinese (simplified) by a professional translator is estimated to be under $80 for the page. These costs are for translation done by humans, not by machine (software). You can raise the communicative quality by opting for the service of two professional translators working in collaboration on the same document. For this, the cost is estimated to be under $120 for the page.

These costs are based on the Translated.net online cost estimator (Translated.net is one of Presentek’s service providers).

You can run your own instant online cost calculations on the Translated.net website. Translation can be performed on content that is in a language other than English and target languages are not limited to the common options. If you need Swedish, Hungarian, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Polish, or many other languages cost-effective translation is available.

I have language expertise on staff…why not use them?

In our experience, your internal staff should be editors, not translators. If a member of your staff is capable of translating your content into the desired language this can lower costs vs. paying an outside agency, but just because you have someone doesn’t mean they’re able do so in a timely manner. In all likelihood, other responsibilities and pressing issues will demand their attention, thus delaying the translation.  We’ve seen important marketing materials not get completed for a quarter or more while waiting for the task to bubble up to the top of someone’s “to do” list.

The answer – ask your local language experts to edit the content from a translation specialist. It’s almost always easier and faster to edit something that exists. The other hitch with relying on in-house staff is eventually as you reach into more markets, you run out of language expertise. Using the internet to tap the talent of native speakers in just about any language is an easy and affordable solution to this problem.

Isn’t software translation good enough?

It's pretty widely accepted that a human doing the translation is going to yield a better final product than machine (software) translation. There may be times however when using machine translation is an acceptable alternative (including web plug-ins).

The reality is that the rest of the world (if you’re in the US) is far more capable of handling data in English than the other way around. Still we all want to do business with companies who make an effort to connect with us on our terms.  Language of course plays a part in this, so just because your foreign audience is familiar with English doesn't mean you should force them to read it. Since just about everyone is suffering from information overload, if your customer can deal with your information more clearly in their mother tongue in less time – they’re going to grab that option if you give it to them.

Why not make your site or materials more compelling by catering to your target audience, starting with their language? In general machine translation is improving and its acceptance is increasing, making it easier to show your customers that you've made an effort.  Machine translation is certainly better than offering no language option at all, and for some applications it may be just the right balance of cost and communication.

I have the translated content…now what?

Depending on the language pairs you’re working with, you may have noticed that after translation your content has grown by 20% or more. This may be no big deal or it may require a little finessing to fit into your templates and styles. If you’re delivering information via a website, there are many technical delivery options to serve content to users in their preferred language.

Web content management features can be added to your site which intelligently deliver localized information based on criteria you establish. For example a user could be directed to a local language page automatically based on their default system language, the entry URL, or preferences stored in a cookie file from a previous visit.

Your English site can help spread the word that you have localized content. Users can choose which local language website they wish to access using the “flags across the top”, site pull-down list or other methods.

If you’re not ready to deal with your broader web site, there are simple first steps like offering a single page or a few pages — even a micro-site in other languages — then using web analytics to test the results and build upon what works.

What about images?

It’s easy to forget about images. Which images get translated is up to you. Photographs containing no text are usually not an issue, but some images or banners may need to be changed because they are less culturally appropriate. In this case, or if images contain English words that need translation, your site’s programming should be able to pair the translated content in German (for example) with the images you would like presented to your German-speaking web site visitors.

Multilingual multimedia also within reach

Our Flash-based Quicktours are popular and effective methods of communicating a product’s value visually with animation and audio narration. How much more so if the audio and on-screen content are in the viewer’s native language? Presentek has transformed English Flash-based product demos created for the North American market into: French, German, Spanish, Italian, English (UK), Portuguese, Japanese and more. We have developed and honed a proven process which takes into account differences in marketing terminology between regions, the impact of language length on synchronization, on-screen text, and product naming conventions and logo alternatives.
 

Ready to go Multilingual?

Whether you need to incorporate multilingual content throughout your entire web site or you are looking to start with targeted pages, documents or multimedia content – Presentek can help.  Please contact us to learn more or call 408-354-6051.