Marketing Translation: 5 Important Things To Take Note
Translation shouldn’t be just translating your business documents, such as legal documents, contracts, or any internal memos for staff. Marketing translation should be part of your business as it can help drive the growth of your business.
Marketing plays an important role in growing your business. When planning your marketing strategy, you will need to use a language that your target audience understands. Adding another language helps to expand your business. This is where marketing translation comes in.
Effective marketing translation is not just translating the marketing material. You need to ensure the marketing content is translated in a way that resonates with the target audience. In this article, you will get to know more about marketing translation and what you should bear in mind when implementing marketing translation into your business.
What Is Marketing Translation?
Marketing translation is basically translating online and offline marketing content, including website, social media, brochures, and any hard-copy materials, to appeal to the audience that you are targeting.
When doing marketing translation, it is not just about translating the material copy in an understandable way in another language but also maintaining your brand voice and message. Your target audience has many choices in the market to choose from, you need to communicate in a way that they understand.
Tips To Implement Marketing Translation
1. Analyze Target Market
You will need to analyze the market you intend to sell your services or products. There are many things you can look into, including competitors, business data, cultural preferance and many other factors.
You can start by analyzing your competitors, who are already successfully done in your target area. See what strategies they are using. It helps you to collect valuable insights and help to position your brand more effectively.
Also, read market surveys to learn more about market trends, which will help you improve your marketing translation more effectively. You will also need to understand your target audience’s buying behavior. Know how they make purchasing decisions, such as whether they rely on online reviews or word-of-mouth. When translating your marketing materials, align your marketing content with their behavior to enhance its effectiveness.
2. Assess Your Needs
Translation takes time. Before you get your marketing content translated, ask yourself why you need marketing translation. Whether it is to provide additional language for your existing audience or you want to enter a new market.
Also consider how you are going to translate your marketing. For example, are you going to hire a translator and copywriter to help you with your marketing translation? Can you translate your own, or use a translation tool, which may be a bit of risk if you don’t have the experience to translate? You may even consider hiring an in-house translator, but consider if it is necessary.
Consider setting measurable goals to help you assess if your marketing translation project is reaching your target audience. For example, check if your sales increase after releasing your translated marketing materials. You can also ask for feedback.
3. Decide What You Want To Translate
There are many tools you can use in a marketing campaign, such as a website, brouchers, social media content, press release, and other marketing materials. One thing to take note when translating website is that it should include the slogan, pages, taglines, popups, and SEO. It helps your target audience to understand more.
You can translate all the marketing material, but ask yourself if it is necessary. Consider which marketing materials may reach out to your target audience more. You don’t have to translate all of your marketing materials, especially if you have a budget.
Also, Consider the need for brand consistency when deciding what marketing materials to translate. It should always remain consistent.
4. Maintain Consistent Brand Voice
When translating your marketing materials, it is important to maintain consistent with your brand voice. It helps you to build a strong and recognizable brand as you expand your business to a new market and avoid confusing your current audience.
Communicate with the translator that you engage. Ensure that your translator understands what your brand wants to tell the audience, including the tone and style. There may be a slight adjustment due to cultural differences, but it still stays true to your brand’s personality.
Besides, ensure that it looks good physically. Sometimes, the sentence that is translated into the target language may be longer than the original text. If you are translating product descriptions for your packaging, you may want to consider if it fits into the designated space, or you may need to redesign your packaging.
5. Align With Local Market's Cultural Preference
It is important to align your marketing translation with the local market’s cultural preference. This is because every culture has its own set of values, beliefs, and traditions. Understanding the cultural of your target audience helps to tailor your message more effectively.
For example, a joke that resonates with American audiences may lead to confusion in another country. Another example will be white color may be associated with weddings in Western cultures, but may be linked to mourning in Asian cultures. Ensure that your marketing translation is culturally appropriate.
Slogans and taglines are often used in marketing content. But it may not translate well into another language. You may need to create a new version in the targeted language but retain the meaning of the original text. You may also create a new slogan to align with the local market’s culture.
Challenges Of Marketing Translation
Marketing translation is a great way to enter a new market and expand your business, but there are some challenges that you may facing when implementing marketing translation.
Increase in cost is one of the challenges. You will need to engage a translator to do the translation and even may need to print more pages if you are translating marketing content such as brochure and flyers. There will also be delays in time-to market as you will need time to translate the document.
Another challenge will be maintaining consistency in branding. The translator may not understand your brand voice, and you will face issues with maintaining consistency in branding.
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