Hire The Best Translation Services To Unlock Global Success

“To know two languages is to possess a second soul.”

-Charlemagne, Charles The Great, Emperor Of The Romans 

“Je mehr Sprachen du kanst, desto mehr Mensch du bist”, is a German proverb translating to: the more languages you know, the more you are a human being. 

Interestingly, neither of these two quotes are English, but I am sure you must have heard similar variations of these in the languages that you speak. You know how I know? Because as knowledge and important information is traded and flows across the 7 seas, it gets translated into native languages to be more far-spread amongst the people. 

In simple business terms this means that, to grow your business globally, you need to start localizing it. 

Let’s assume that your business is doing wonders locally, does that not incite the need for growth in your mind? And expanding your business without the help of proper translation services is a recipe for disaster. This holds exceptionally true in the case of expanding to international markets. 

Therefore, in this blog we will discuss how businesses can hire translators and interpreters to unlock their global success. 

However, before diving into the How to hire a translator part, it is essential to understand the Why to hire a translator part. 

Don’t Let Your Business Get Lost In Translation

At the end of 2022, the global language services market size reached a value of about USD 56.43 billion. This comes as no surprise as another data report highlights that about 75% of consumers prefer to buy products in their native language.

Given these stats it is quite clear that marketers and global brands are now choosing to localize not only their marketing campaigns but also their products to stay competitive in their respective markets. 

If you are a professional, working in a diverse community space you must have come across people that speak different languages. There must have been times when you required a translator to act as a mediator between you and the other person and translate for efficient communication. And if you happen to speak 2 languages, then it should be very obvious that translating between 2 languages is no easy feat. 

Given the difficulty of the task and the accuracy as well as quality required for good translation, there are dozens of marketing disasters that have occurred in the past just because big brands failed to hire good translators. Let’s check a few of them out to realize how these mistakes could have been avoided by hiring professional translators.

1. Ford in Belgium: During one of its car promotion campaigns in Belgium, the American car company created a slogan that it thought meant - “Every car has a high-quality body”, but instead it got translated to the European language as “Every car has a high-quality corpse.”

2. Pepsi in China: Although the team was not following a Halloween theme, the famous Pepsi slogan - “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi generation” got mistranslated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave” in China. 

3. Mercedes Benz in China: The German car company was quick to correct a mistranslation before it got too big in China during one promotional campaign where its slogan “Bensi” meant “Rush to your death” in Chinese and was quickly changed to “Ben Chi” meaning “Rushing speed”. 

I am sure these silly goof-ups put a smile on your face, but it also reminds you of the importance of literal translation, and translation with proper nuance and context. So, here are a few reasons why businesses should hire translation services for global expansion.

1. Connect With International Customers

For international customers to buy your products, they need to be aware of your brand, and trust your products. You need to convince them about the quality of your products, as well as the credibility of your brand, and in order to do that, you need to speak in their language. Your brand needs to speak in the language that the target audience is familiar with, because no matter how globalized the English language is, it only covers a small percentage of the bigger pie. Therefore, it is important to hire translators to help your customers get to know your brand and to communicate with your customers more effectively. 

Insight: 59% of consumers indicated that they would never or only rarely use a product that did not provide information in their language. (Common Sense Advisory Research)

2. Boost Your Brand Value

In today’s age of internet and information, no one buys a product or service before doing their fair share of research. So by localizing your business and connecting with your international customers in their native language, you are boosting your brand value and building loyalty and awareness in a new market. As you are expanding your business in international markets, you need to stay competitive with not only other global brands, but also the local brands and through translation and localization, you gain the advantage of portraying a reliable image to your customers. 

Insight: Businesses that invested in translation were 1.5 times more likely to observe an increase in revenue. (Localize)

3. Save Yourself From Goofy Marketing Blunders 

As mentioned above, many global brands have made silly blunders in their global marketing campaigns simply because they didn’t hire good translators. You can avoid this mistake by thoroughly researching the credentials of your translators before hiring them. This also highlights why you can’t simply rely on online translators like Google translate to translate your brand slogan into another language. Context and nuance are extremely important in business translation. Therefore, if you don’t want to end up making the mistake that Ford, Pepsi, and Mercedes Benz made, you better hire translation services from a reliable source. 

4. Save Yourself From Future Legal Complications 

This is about the page that most customers often just skip ahead of while purchasing products and services. The ‘terms and conditions’ part of a business transaction. It is often neglected by the consumers unless there is a defect in the product or some issue arises later with the data and security of the transaction and they don’t even realize what they have already consented to. To avoid getting sued by your customers in the future, it is beneficial to hire professional translators and translate all your business terms, conditions, and policies. 

Now that we are aware about the importance and impact of hiring translation services for global businesses, let us move onto the next most important part of the blog, How to hire a good translator. 

How to Hire Translation Services 

It is difficult to judge the competency of the translators that you come across because you lack knowledge about one-half of the communication transaction. Meaning that while you may understand that they are fluent in your language, you have no idea how fluent they are in the other language that they are supposed to be translating in or to. 

Given such a significant roadblock, how should one go about hiring good translators? By following this simple process that we have broken down in 6 easy steps. 

1. Understand Your Translation Requirements

The first and foremost step is to understand your translation requirements. It is just like defining your goal before starting any project. Without defining your requirements from the translation project, you can easily lose sight of your goals while hiring translators and end up making a mistake in your translation project. 

You need to be clear of your requirements from the translation services professionals, like the documents that need to be translated, whether they are legal, technical, or literary in nature as each comes with its own specifications and specialization, the languages that the translations are required in, the timeframe for the delivery of the translated documents, scope of revisions, and the budget that you have allocated for the translation project. 

2. Important Factors To Consider Before Hiring a Translator

After understanding your translation requirements, you need to make a checklist of the important factors that you need to consider before hiring a translator for your project. This checklist will help you during the search and selection process of hiring the best translators for the job. A few general factors that you can consider before hiring a translator are:

• Cultural Knowledge of the languages in question, as nuance and context is extremely important in translation.
• Work Experience of the translator and the type of work they have done, since business translation will be very different from technical translation, etc. 
• Expertise in the language that you require translation in. The best way to check this is through government recognized and internationally recognised language level certifications. 
• Turnaround time, speed and quality are two sides of the coin in this profession.
• Cost, how much do they charge for each project, as translation rates depending on the languages and the content. 

3. Online Websites and Client Reviews 

When hiring a translator or translation services, which online source do you trust? A reliable option is to hire from trusted online B2B review and rating portals such as GoodFirms.

You can visit the translation services listing page on the GoodFirms website and find the most reliable and trusted translation services companies listed on the page. Not only that, the directory acts as a one-stop-shop for your translation needs by giving you an overview of multiple companies that you can filter according to your preferences such as country, region, etc. 

You can easily click on the company profile to check out their client reviews and ratings, and accordingly shortlist the most suitable companies for your project. Then you can view their websites, check their client portfolio, the services they offer, and reach out to them to further discuss the project terms and conditions. 

4. Confidentiality Factors

Another important thing to note while hiring a translator is the confidentiality factor. Since the translator will be translating a business document, it is highly recommended to hire a reputable translator to avoid any leaks of information in the future. 

You need to have some security measures in place to ensure the confidentiality of the content that you outsource to the translator to translate. Usually the most common method to impose this is to draft and sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with your hired translator or translation company. The legal contract ensures that any breach of confidentiality will not be tolerated or taken lightly and penalized. Since any leak of business information may cause considerable damage to the brand or upcoming campaigns, this confidentiality clause is paramount while hiring a translator for your company. 

5. Cost Of Hiring A Translator

There is always a tricky balance between cost and quality of things. It is a general assumption that superior quality costs higher, and in many cases such as in technical fields and even in the field of translation it holds quite true. 

Unlike writers, translators often avoid charging on a word-to-word basis. There are many instances where a word in one language will not have its literal counterpart in another language, then how is the translation to be charged for? 

Additionally there are some languages that are more niche than others, and thus more expensive to be translated. Contrastingly some languages that are in high demand are also expensive to be translated. 

Therefore there are many factors that come into play when the cost of translation is considered, the specialization factors as mentioned above, the niche, the turnaround time, etc. 

However, here is an average cost of translation that you can use as your reference:
 

*Reflect rates charged by contractors on Upwork in North America with over 1,000 hours and 90% success rate.

6. Contracts and Timelines

Lastly, after you are done finalizing your translator and negotiating the cost of the project with them, you need to draft the hiring contract that will include the hiring clauses, the terms of employment, the confidentiality agreement, and the deliverables along with the final delivery date. 

Once you have signed the contract with your desired translator, you can finally begin your global expansion mission with a reliable translator at your side to guide you through the hearts of the international audience. 

Final Thoughts

Mariko Amekodommo, CEO of international marketing and consulting agency Mariko Communications, said in one of her interviews that one of the most common marketing mistakes businesses make when taking their company international is not understanding their market and audience. She further explained that, “There can be a cultural gap from one country to the next where campaigns, slogans and initiatives don’t resonate or make sense to the end user,” Amekodommo told Business News Daily. “Companies can avoid basic marketing mistakes, like slogans that don’t translate appropriately, by putting in the due diligence to research and understand the new market.” 

What we learn from this is that conveying the intent of your brand and business to international customers is not as simple as literally translating your taglines, slogans, and product details into their native language. It goes deeper than that, in order to truly understand and capture international audiences, you must understand the nuances of their language and culture and who better to help you in this journey than a qualified professional translator!