Efficient translation and localisation

We wish you a wonderfully relaxing weekend! Till next time! Considering the overly saturated Western market (the US and Europe), and the exponential Asian market growth, companies are beginning to realise the need to adapt to local tastes, preferences and languages.

It is estimated that, by 2030, every person will have Internet access (if we trust Google's strategy). And this means that activity will become online and that all companies will be forced to change the way they do business and the way they sell their products and services online.

A study conducted by Common Sense Advisory in 2014 concluded that:

- 55% of the participants admitted to purchasing products from websites containing information in their native language

- 30% of the participants never buy products from websites in English; only 29% rarely do so.

- 56% of the interviewees spend more time on native language websites than on those in English - or they never visit the latter.

This study was conducted in 10 countries (Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Spain and Turkey) on a sample of 3,000 consumers.

This means that localisation is more and more frequent, and will be developing rapidly over the next few years. As we discussed in our first blog post, localisation is much more than just a simple translation.

For companies, there are several issues that should be considered when translating and localising a website or a web application:

- there must be a clear vision pertaining to the company's strategy and the feedback received from its clients in a certain country,

-identifying the most profitable markets and the impact on the company's image,

- the study and the evolution of the market segment that the company wants to target with its services and products

-it is not sufficientfor you to have a web page or a localised product for a certain market,

- in order to benefit from a higher quality traffic on the localised page, our recommendation is that you plan a marketing budget, including SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services performed by web design and development companies to help you organise online campaigns, such as Adwords, track the results with Google Analytics, become visible on social media platforms such as Facebook and Linkedin, as well as assist you with the creation of communities which appreciate and recommend your company's products.

- to have more traffic on the localised page you need to have a starting budget in order to optimise search engines and for online promotion campaigns,

- the translation of dynamic content (video, audio, blog posts), establishing a long-term strategy to update it,

- a close collaboration between the sales, marketing and IT teams,

- a thorough analysis of the target public's online behaviour (the social networking behaviour is essential), and of their habits and traditions.

Moreover, for a smoother localisation at a lower cost, there is a need to:

- to focus on the target languages in the selected markets –to choose the markets with the least competition, but with a higher receptivity and purchasing power

- to have a fruitful partnership with a linguistic services provider that understands the industry and the localisation strategy to offer you accurate translations in the appropriate format.

It is considered that, in the not so distant future, all translations will be performed by computers (Star Trek, we're catching up!) with a minimum human input. But until then, the one essential thing we can recommend in order for you to extend your business is to hire a professional translation agency to relieve you of this burden and cover several of the aforementioned issues.