At one point of running a business, you start considering whether it would be beneficial for you to enter foreign markets with you products and services. To do that you will ultimately have to translate your company content, such as a company website, brochures, folders, data sheets, manuals, etc. into a foreign language. As it is time-consuming and very often impossible to do on your own, you decide to contact a translator or translation agency to outsource translations, but as you are a first-timer, you don’t really know what to expect from them.
Expect quality!
It may sound pretty obvious, as quality is something that every consumer expects from the product or service. However, quality translations may really boost your business and prevent you from running into serious legal problems.
- For instance, a high-quality translation of a device manual will help users use it in an intended and safe way. If it contains mistakes, such as changed voltage values or incomprehensible instructions of use, using a particular device might be dangerous to the customer and cause some serious injuries or even death. As a manufacturer of the device, you might be held responsible for it.
- You certainly want your product or service to be credible. No one would buy your product, even if it outstanding, if its description is so badly translated that a customer doesn’t really know what it is for.
- Before placing some products and services on a foreign market, it is worth checking whether their names or descriptions are not offensive for the target audience. For example, Mitsubishi had to change the name of its car called Pajero for Spanish-speaking markets due to the fact that pajero in Spanish means wanker. Such translation service is very often described as localization and you can expect that a professional translator will take into account such considerations when producing a high-quality translation of your content.
- There is nothing worse for the seller than marketing content that is rather hilarious than appealing after translation. A potential customer may think: “Well, they have been cutting costs when translating the description of this product, so how can I be sure that this product will not be a cheap crap altogether?” If you were in a restaurant, would you order a Grilled Salmon with Green Fuck? Fuck is a common Polish mistranslation of pepper, as a Polish imperative verb form pieprz (fuck) looks exactly the same as a noun pieprz (pepper). Well, it is certainly funny to see such translations in a menu, but what impact does it have on the brand of the restaurant? Would you expect the dish to be really tasty and be ready to pay more for it?
As a translator and consumer, I honestly recommend focusing on high quality when ordering translations for your company. Although it may take a little more time to find someone trustworthy and appropriately skilled to translate your company documents and it may cost you a bit more to pay for such services, it really pays off by driving to you more clients, building your brand and boosting your sales.
If you would like to read more on translation, localization, running a small business and language learning, visit my blog – Translite
If you are looking for a trustworthy and skilled translator to handle your English-Polish or German-Polish translations, contact me: gabrielajaniszewska@translite.pl.
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