Language Translation: What Global Companies Should Know

Why are businesses translating content?

Businesses have many different motivations for translating content. It may be to facilitate an overseas business partnership or to expand their market reach and sell to consumers in other areas of the world. Regardless of the reason, businesses are becoming more intentional about their content strategy, which information they translate and for whom they translate it.

“People are moving away from taking a [piece of content] and making 19 or 20 different quick translations,” said Dougal Cameron, a director at investment company Golden Section and former chief operating officer of a publishing company. “There’s more of a focus on why it’s translated for a specific audience. A good translation can make a huge difference in how content is received.”

Ian Henderson, co-founder and director of global language services provider Rubric, noted that a low-quality translation can give a bad impression of your business.

“Poor quality negatively impacts your branding,” Henderson told Business News Daily. “If you’re an overseas hotel and [a native speaker] reads your description online, [they] may seriously question your reputation based on a bad translation.”

What are your business translation options?

When a business wants to translate content, there are three main options: machine translation, professional translators and crowdsourced translation. Each method has costs and benefits, and each serves a specific purpose.

• Machine translation tools, such as Google Translate, are usually free to use and give you an instant translation when you copy and paste text into them. Keep in mind that these tools provide basic translations and are often not completely accurate.
• Professional translators are native or fluent speakers who will provide a high-quality translation of your content for a fee. Unlike machine translators, a professional can take common usage and colloquial phrases into account to make the content flow more naturally. [Read related article: Study Finds Spelling Mishaps Can Cause Problems in the Office]
• Crowdsourced translation may take some time to complete because it uses volunteers who likely have little formal translation experience. However, crowdsourcing is less expensive than professional translation and may still result in a high-quality translation.

>> Check out our roundup of the best business translation services.

Which business translation option should you use?

The translation tool you use may depend on the type of content and the trade-off between cost and quality.

“You might use high-end translation for your advertising or creative copy, machine translation for internal use and crowdsourced translation for user-generated content,” said Robert Laing, founder of the translation service Gengo. “The main trend is getting smarter about your content and choosing the right quality appropriately.”

Cameron agreed. He advised businesses to determine whether a professional translation is worth the investment based on the nature of the content. For example, instructive how-to content with simple language may not require much more than a free machine translation. An engaging article or book, on the other hand, should be professionally translated to preserve the meaning and linguistic elements.

How should you execute a translation project?

Here are five overarching steps for taking a translation project from start to finish:

1. Hold an initial meeting to get everyone on the same page.

Invite everyone who will take part in the translation project to a meeting in which you discuss the initiative’s goals. Enter this meeting with a clear agenda that you’ve shared with everyone a day or so beforehand. To start the meeting, make introductions among any people who don’t yet know each other, and then dive into the agenda.

Your agenda should reflect the meeting’s main objectives. Spell out your translation project’s target audience, tasks, methods, timelines, goals, and team members’ roles and responsibilities. Structure your agenda so you can cover all of these elements in half an hour; long meetings lose their benefits with every passing minute. 

2. Delegate translation tasks and other responsibilities.

Translating just one piece of content can be difficult enough, so managing multiple pieces and ongoing translation efforts can be a massive undertaking. Delegating work to different parties might be the best option for large-scale translation projects. At the end of your kickoff meeting, everyone should walk away knowing what’s on the whole group’s to-do list and when it’s due. Each person should have their own to-do list with clear tasks and deadlines. 

The assignments should dovetail with each team member’s skills and strengths. They should also go beyond translation. For example, some translators may be better equipped to edit, proofread and otherwise review others’ work. Give these translators review tasks as part of your project plans.

You should also appoint a project manager who regularly checks in with every participant and keeps them moving toward the finish line. Your project manager should report back to you so you know whether things are on track or adjustments might be needed. Both you and the project manager should encourage every person to report potential challenges or delays proactively instead of waiting for someone to ask.

3. Use project management software.

Every task you assign should be part of a project you create within a project management software platform. Each task should have a clear assignee and due date, as well as (if necessary) instructions for how to complete it. Within this digital project board, your entire team can share resources, provide updates and ask questions. The result is a bird’s-eye view of the whole translation project for everyone involved.

“Companies don’t realize that the bulk of [business] translation is cutting and pasting all that translated text back into your website,” said Francoise Henderson, director at Rubric and Ian Henderson’s business partner. “Split the project up into pieces, and ask multiple translators. A good project management system will make the difference.”

4. Keep moving, but check in regularly.

A clearly defined task list with well-assigned roles and responsibilities is a starting point, but as in any process, bottlenecks might arise. That’s why you should check in on your translation team’s processes and review each task’s status throughout the initiative. Consider holding daily or weekly meetings to facilitate these check-ins. When you spot problems, address them immediately instead of letting them grow more severe. 

Check-ins can also come from your whole team via peer feedback. Encourage project participants to ask one another for help and input, share progress updates and give their thoughts on each other’s work. This way, you’re all more likely to spot any mistakes or inconsistencies. 

Give your team the power to make fixes immediately as long as they log changes and create separate files for older versions of your translations. With this independence, plus a well-defined task list and great project management software, your translation goals are all the more likely to come to fruition.

No more getting lost in translation

If you follow the above steps for executing a business translation project, you’ll reach your target audience in words and ways they’ll know well. You’ll appear credible while expanding your potential customer base both at home and abroad and while seeking potential client partnerships. The best part? You can replicate your methods for delegating tasks, tracking progress and building team communication on virtually any other project.

Nicole Fallon contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.