Here are two things to get you started:
76% of online shoppers buy products in their native language, and 40% don’t purchase any product from a foreign website that doesn’t provide information in their mother tongue (according to CSA Research).
Covid-19 wasn’t all bad news, at least not for online businesses, namely eCommerce platforms.
The pandemic that shut down the whole globe has increased the demand for a more digital world. According to a survey conducted on 3,700 people from nine countries (Brazil, Germany, China, The Republic of Korea, Italy, South Africa, Turkey, Switzerland, and Russia), it has been proved that online shopping behavior has been changed permanently. More than half of the survey’s consumers depend on the internet frequently when reading daily and health-related news as well as shopping regularly.
As a result, digitalization has opened new opportunities for businesses to approach and enter new markets internationally. And that international ambition essentially requires that businesses integrate professional digital translation services into their expansion strategy.
So, in this post, we’ll discuss the importance and types of digital translation services that any business will need on its way to new foreign markets. Also, we will broach the machine translation subject to shed light on the need for human translation services to get reliable language translation results.
Why Do You Need Digital Translation Services?
In this day and age, no way you’ll grow as a business without going online and approaching other markets with different languages. Globalizing your brand has become a must in such a demanding world, which points to the need for professional translation services to communicate with international users. Here are the reasons behind the need for digital translation services:
Standing Out From the Crowd
Making your website accessible is a great strategy to stand out among your competitors in your business industry. That’s because most businesses, in any sector, work solely on their local market, overlooking other markets’ possibilities. Consequently, digital translation services, especially website translation services, will allow you to seize new opportunities by building a solid online presence.
Increasing Visibility
As you already know, investing in multilingual digital translation approaches will pay off, leading to an absolute increase in your reach and online visibility. And that will, indeed, drive more revenue. It’s important not to forget SEO translation services that can break through any barriers to the top, positively affecting your brand visibility directly. That’s why when entering a new market, SEO translation services of the highest quality are of indispensable benefit for your business. In SEO translations, translators work mainly on translating the source language words or phrases into culturally-appropriate ones in the target language to resonate with the target audience. That’s why a word can make all the difference between a successful attempt and a flop.
Earning Your Customers’ Trust
As a general rule, customers have trust issues. As stated above, most consumers trust the brand that speaks their own language and can mirror their culture and achieve a personalized experience. They’re willing to pay money for products and services that show respect for their language and culture. So, tapping into a new market requires investing in high-quality online translation and localization services.
Increasing Revenue
Initiating to talk to other markets means an open opportunity to attain broader outreach and win over new customers, consequently leading to sales increase and revenue growth. That’s because multilingual digital translation services will help you sell your product or service according to the prospectives’ linguistic norms and cultural preferences. Moreover, if you decide to translate your digital platforms into wide-spoken languages, you’ll get an idea of what step you should take after. You’ll get the chance to unlock new markets. How? By measuring the engagement and visits metrics on your business’s platforms, such as your website or social media platforms.
Machine Translation vs. Human Translation for Accurate Translations
In any business niche, digital content should persuade people to take action to buy your products or use your services. A word-for-word translation then won’t do; it’s essential that the translation considers the habits and psychology of users to resonate with them and motivate them to make a purchase.
And while this makes a compelling case against Machine Translation (MT), in 2022, MT is transforming eCommerce.
Shocking, right?
However, MT seems to offer a great opportunity for businesses to provide multilingual content for their users across the globe. Speed and cost-efficiency are two things that MT has to offer to expanding eCommerce businesses. However, the ability to translate a huge amount of content that is regularly updated and published, such as service and product descriptions as well as customer reviews, is the reason why eCommerce businesses are relying on machine translation.
With MT, your website content is automatically translated into as many languages as you need and instantly imported to your Content Management System (CMS), with no hassle no sweat, and without much overhead.
But, you are probably right. There’s a catch. It’s not all sunshine and roses. Machine Translation may provide good translation suggestions linguistically, but still, it’s not capable of delivering accurate, smart translation that takes into account linguistic and cultural nuances as well as audience preferences. MT delivers raw translations with no guarantee of quality, which makes it almost impossible to use single-handedly. So, while machine translation can be way too affordable compared to human translators, more times than not, this backfires. With the awfully low quality that MT may deliver, you end up paying more in the long run to clean up machine translation’s mess.
On the other hand, human translation is the only guarantee for high-quality, fluent, and natural-sounding translations. And despite it being relatively time-consuming, it’s always the ideal option, recommended by industry experts.
But if you think those are your only options, if you think it’s either this or that, here is the good news: Machine Translation Post Editing.
If you believe that Machine Translation is the ideal option, then you should integrate Machine Translation Post Editing (MTPE) services, which ensures that your raw MT output is reviewed, fine-tuned, and polished by a trained human linguist, making sure that the output is up to the highest standard, i.e. flawless human-like quality.
What Are the Commonly Required Types of Digital Content Translation Services?
So, we settled that in today’s internet era, shifting to have a digital presence is a must, and incorporating digital translation services into your business strategy is highly recommended, especially if you’re planning to expand globally. In this section, we’ll list down the most required digital translation services that you may need on the way to globalize your brand.
Website Translation Services
To convert a website from one language to another, you should know that the localization and translation process is a lot more complicated than it seems. It’s not about translating a text to another linguistically; cultural and contextual aspects should be taken into consideration as well. The aim is to have a website that looks and feels natural to your target audience. That’s why it’s crucial to choose a localization and translation agency that has a wide range of native translators in your industry. Also, don’t overlook the marketing and branding aspect of it. Translating to engage and convert isn’t the same as translating a technical document or any other straightforward type of content. A reputable language translation services provider understands that website localization services should be entrusted to translators and multilingual copywriters with a marketing background to ensure that your translated content doesn’t only convey your message clearly but also motivates and inspires users to act.
App Translation Services
The number of mobile users has surpassed all expectations to reach 6.648 Billion worldwide, emphasizing the importance of mobile apps and app translation services for businesses. Obviously, as can be seen, smartphones have already tipped the scale against the desktop, making it impossible for any business to survive in the international competition without app translation services. From increasing conversion rates and gaining a competitive edge to boosting your brand reach and increasing sales, these and beyond are the benefits of app translation services. Facebook and Twitter can show you what professional localization and translation services can do for a brand. They are a few notable examples of localized apps that gained success by catering to non-natives English speakers.
Important Statistics about Mobile App Localization
International SEO Translation Services
As mentioned earlier, search engine optimization opens the floodgates for businesses to increase their search engine rankings to be found quickly by their customers. That all depends on how successfully you embrace the target customers’ search habits and preferences through keyword-based customization into the website in question. That’s why most businesses opt for the best SEO services so as to get the maximum out of the digital advantages. International SEO translation services play a far more prominent role in the expansion approach in any company’s journey, bringing traffic to its website and creating an opportunity to convert new customers. However, gaining a foothold in a foreign market will require precise multilingual SEO translation services, since imprecise keywords that don’t resonate with the target audience won’t get you anywhere.
Social Media Translation Services
Nowadays, social media platforms have become an indispensable tool for businesses to communicate with customers around the world. With 2,910 million Facebook users and 1,478 million Instagram users (according to Statista,) you can consider them more than just advertising tools; they are an integral part of any respectable business strategy. 90% of big business players and 50% of the small and medium business players are already present on social media, reaping the multitude of benefits of social media and setting large budgets for social media campaigns to increase their ROI. So, don’t underestimate the power of social media and overlook its great potential that can elevate your game, especially when setting up in a new foreign market. As noted before, speaking to different audiences requires different approaches since each locale has its own linguistic and cultural preferences. Accordingly, getting professional social media translation services is vital to produce translations that fit in with local cultural sensitives and linguistic norms. After all, with such nowadays’ conscious customers, you’ll have to create a customized experience that translates their minds, not only their language but also their culture, customs, and unique preferences. And that is precisely what digital marketing services target and fulfill.
