Do you want your business to grow? Translating your website content, product descriptions or monthly newsletters can promote your brand and help you reach a wider audience.

Even so, many businesses are limited by a lack of knowledge of other languages. Can you imagine being able to avoid this problem?

Expanding to other markets can be easy if you have the right help. Stop using Google Translate and discover 5 reasons why a professional translator is the best marketing tool.

1. Translation encourages you to cross borders and embrace your brand’s essence

Each business has its own soul, its own history, and its own essence. Sometimes, transferring these selling points to other languages is extremely difficult because of the subtle differences that encompass each word and its meaning. It is important, therefore, not only to be able to translate a message, but to make the same impact with that message.

To do this, special care must be taken when choosing words, since every culture is a world in and of itself.

Professional translators are native speakers who are experts in the culture and history of a country. They are able to adapt the meaning of messages and achieve the desired results without losing sight of the objective. In short, they make every effort to engage the consumer with words.

2. Translation teaches you to find your way and stand out from the competition 

Once you know what markets you want to reach, translation is the next step in making yourself known and positioning yourself well in the search engines of different countries.  Because of this, you should be careful when looking for help, since SEO positioning is an important part of a business’ goals regarding online presence. If a translator does not have specific knowledge of SEO positioning, it may affect future sales.

Regardless of whether you are working with an English translator or a Chinese translator, make sure that your translators know what they are doing when they are translating your website content, articles, or services. Remember that multilingual SEO can give you an advantage and help you stand out from the rest of the competition.

3. Translation helps you to connect with your audience

Speaking the same language as your target audience is the foundation for being able to connect with them. Because of this, translations require the correct adaptation of the language and tone.

It is also necessary to bear other factors in mind, such as historical and cultural references, the way in which political or religious inferences are made, and even the symbolic meanings of colour in the sociocultural imaginary of a country.

Therefore, professionally translating your advertising campaigns, guides, brochures, social media content or blog publications is a difficult task for any translation agency since the translator will have to produce detailed and creative translations adapted to the target audience.

4. Translation helps minimise risks

I am going to tell you something that happened a couple of years ago to American Airlines when it decided to promote its new leather seats to the Mexican market by using a literal translation of the campaign. The campaign’s slogan in America was “Fly in Leather”, and the literal translation in Spanish is vuela en cuero. The word cuero has alternative connotations besides “leather”, and the phrase was consequently interpreted as “Fly Naked”. You can imagine the negative impression and commotion that this translation caused, since the double meaning seemed to permit passengers to “Fly Naked”.

Having someone to make sure that this type of misunderstanding does not occur can save you a lot of headaches and, above all, it can prevent you from tarnishing your brand’s corporate image in the blink of an eye. After all, words aren’t always carried away by the wind.

5. Translation strengthens your brand which maximises its impact

If you are looking to make a good impression on potential customers, imagine that the translation of the advertising content that you have created is your covering letter.

Working with the best professionals cannot only improve self-confidence, it can also bring about a big change. Expanding into the global market is a risk, but with the right advice to improve the quality of your content, you can expand your reach and go a long way.

The power of words

As you can see, having certain linguistic skills is not everything. It is also important to know how to use colloquial expressions or the metaphoric language within a particular culture, which encompasses a semantic richness of its own. Without this cultural knowledge, it is practically impossible to be able to connect with customers.

Another important aspect to consider is consumer behaviour. What do they do in their free time? Where do they work? What do they need? Developing a “robot portrait” of your customers will help you get to know them better and be able to attract them through language.

So, there is no shortage of reasons to conclude that a professional translation can boost your business. In the end, it is an essential marketing tool if you want to expand. Today, it is practically impossible to talk about business without talking about marketing, but you must know the key points in which to invest.

Not having a website translated into multiple languages will limit potential customers’ access to your content, which will cause you to lose money and the opportunity to expand into other markets.

Finally, we want to mention that we are very aware that machine translation has come a long way and can help with many tasks, but not all. For this reason, we discourage the use of free translation engines when something as important as your business and all the time and effort you have invested is at stake.

If you are looking for a safe bet, we recommend that you contact a specialised translation agency that offers a variety of languages, takes care of SEO positioning requirements, and the grammar and spelling of translations.

Because the use of words is an art.

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