Why marketing specialist translators can help boost your global engagement

When creating a marketing campaign, teams can often spend hours perfecting the copy so that it resonates effectively with their target audience and drives the required action. When translating a marketing campaign into other markets, many fail to realise that the same care and attention need to go into the translated copy and overlook the need for marketing specialist translators.

This week’s blog explains why marketing specialist translators are so important when creating global campaigns and how they can be the difference in boosting your global engagement or seeing your campaign flop!

Why high-quality translation is essential in global marketing

It is widely recognised that consumers prefer to buy from brands that communicate in their native language. This element of personalisation helps the consumer to feel their needs will be met and builds trust.

Millions of brands recognise this fact and translate their website into one or more languages. For example, Samsung and Apple are in the top five most translated websites, with 166 and 125 languages, respectively. Perhaps a little surprisingly, the most translated website is that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

However, a successful website translation is not achieved by simply running your content through a machine translation tool. Machine translation is well-known for producing content that is inaccurate or doesn’t make sense due to its failure to understand context.

Imagine if you clicked on a site whose content was gibberish. You wouldn’t stay there long, and it would be doubtful that you would interact with any of its content.

To engage your global audiences, you need to put the same effort into the translated content as the native material. Producing this high-quality content requires not only a native, qualified translator but a marketing specialist translator.

What’s different about marketing content?

Marketing copy is quite different from most other types of content. Significant time and thought goes into how the words will instigate a reaction from the reader.

Often copywriters will play around with literary devices, such as alliteration, metaphors, onomatopoeia or symbolism, to create an effect. Or perhaps they’ll use rhythm, slang or colloquialisms to make a phrase more memorable or relatable.

This way of writing presents a massive challenge for brands, as wordplay like this does not transfer easily across the language barrier.

A good example is the Haribo jingle. It was originally created in German as “Haribo macht Kinder froh, und Erwachsene ebenso.” Translate this phrase directly into English, and you get, “Haribo makes children happy, and grown-ups too.” The playful rhythm is lost and the jingle instantly becomes less interesting and memorable.

These challenges are why marketing-specialist translators are needed.

What’s special about marketing-specialist translators?

Marketing-specialist translators, also known as transcreators, possess both the skills of expert translators and creative copywriters. They are talented in getting more inventive with their translation to mirror the impact of the original work.

This process, known as transcreation, keeps the heart and soul of the original copy (i.e., the brand style and intention) but ensures the translated material is appropriate, relevant and engaging for the new audience.

So, in the Haribo example above, the marketing-specialist translators came up with the version we all know and love – “Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo.”

How marketing-specialist translation services can drive your global sales

When working with a marketing-specialist translation service, they bring the knowledge and expertise to ensure better results for your global campaigns.

For example, at Mission Translate, we only work with native, marketing-specialist translators when delivering translations (or, more specifically, transcreations) of your copy. As native linguists, they have complete and up-to-date knowledge of the local market, its trends and expectations.

Equally, as marketing-specialist translators, they understand how to work to a brief and have the proven creativity to adapt your copy to engage your audiences and drive the required action from them.

A high-quality marketing-specialist translation service provider will also provide an end-to-end service for adapting your campaigns for your new target market.

For example, as well as providing transcreation services, which include editing, proofreading and quality control measures, Mission Translate can support you with any multilingual audio-visual requirements, such as subtitling or dubbing. We also offer digital services, such as desktop publishers, to provide a ready-to-use, professionally polished file for your campaigns.

How to ensure the best results for the translation of your marketing copy

Translating marketing copy is more complex than regular documents. Therefore, it requires closer collaboration to ensure the best results.

Briefing your marketing-specialist translation service is a critical stage in the process. The more information you can provide on aspects, such as your target market, brand guidelines and objectives, the more successful the output will be.

At Mission Translate, we adopt the approach of working like part of your in-house team, taking the time and care to understand every aspect of your brand, its target markets and campaigns to deliver the best ROI for your business.

You can read more about our marketing-specialist translation services here, or please get in contact with our team with any questions you may have.