How to Transform Your Business by Using Professional Translation Services

If you’re running a business, using professional translation services can feel like another huge undertaking for your already overloaded schedule. But finding the right translation agency can be well worth it. Working in another language can open up new customer bases and allow you to sell in new markets. Below we’ll look at how you can use translation services to grow your business.  

Why Work with Translation?

Many businesses opt to work with translation services or apps because they can help them meet customers on a more comfortable footing. A survey of 2,430 web consumers reported that:

• 72.4% of consumers said they’d be more willing to buy a product with information in their own language.
• 72.1% spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language.
• 56.2% said that obtaining information in their own language was more important to them than price.

Clearly, customers value being able to access information in their own language. That makes complete sense. It’s easier to understand what you’re buying when you’re doing it in your native tongue!  

Translating sales materials and websites also tells your customer base that you care enough about them and their culture to accommodate them. Everyone likes doing business with a company that actually values them.  

How Can Translation Apps Help Your Business?

Translation apps have been out in the ecosystem for years now. Way back in 2013, Google Translate was already helping 200 million people daily. Some of the most popular translation apps include:

• iTranslate Voice 3: You speak into your phone and the app will translate and speak that sentence in one of 42 different languages.
• Google Translate: This powerhouse has been running on machine learning since 2016.   
• SayHi: This is another app that allows you to speak into your phone. It transcribes your message into other languages.  
• TextGrabber: You can scan real-world text into your phone and the app translates it for you. 
• Microsoft Translator: This allows you to type, speak, or take a photo to input the text you want to be translated.    

Translation apps have become very sophisticated. We’re heading closer and closer to achieving the universal translator that’s been a staple of so many sci-fi movies over the years! 

Translation apps have a few basic business applications. If you tend to speak to customers in another language, such as if you run a tourist café, you might use one of the apps that translates what you say as you speak into the phone. In limited interactions like these, an interpreter might be overkill! 

You might also be able to use these apps in limited written communications, like translating customer survey emails, though not for large volumes of work. For larger jobs, it still pays to find professional translation services. Important documents like marketing materials or contracts, which we’ll cover more in-depth below, need a professional touch.

How Translation Services Can Transform Your Business

Translation apps have become very interactive and widespread. Will translators become obsolete? No, certainly not. Translation services are still needed for the most professional of jobs.  

An app can help in conversational or casual environments, where the occasional translation snafu won’t be devastating to the business. But if you’re translating something that will represent your business on a wider scale, like a marketing message, you’ll need a human translator.  

So, what is a translation service? This is a professional service that takes the written text in one language and translates it into another. Many translation services also handle localization, which carefully converts the whole message to resonate with the new culture.  

Translation and localization services can help:

• Keep the core meaning of the message the same as it transfers from one culture to another.
• Handle all aspects of a translated document or website, from changing currency symbols to updating graphics to making sure the layout of the text works in the new language.
• Handle regulations in the new market, like making sure a website abides by local privacy laws.
• Translate text to a professional level that takes into account tone and syntax. 
• Understand the background culture, so that you are not unintentionally offending overseas customers.

Marketing messages especially need professional human translators. Marketing often relies heavily on literary devices, humour and cultural references, which an app isn’t going to pick up on. Marketing messages can also be hard to translate smoothly into a new culture, since they rely on those cultural cues and literary devices. A translation service can keep those messages in-tact by understanding the culture.  

You may also have to translate some very sensitive documents if you’re planning to open a business in a new region. For instance, contracts may have to be translated. That opens up the possibility of mistranslated legal terms that could have serious consequences for negotiations.  

Many translation services offer different types of translation, such as legal translation. That means they can understand the specific terminology that goes into handling highly professional documents.

In fact, some translators or translation services offer specialisations in: 

• Marketing translation: This covers all marketing needs, including ads, brochures, sales letters and marketing emails.
• Social media translation: Sometimes part of marketing translation, this covers social media posts on many platforms.
• Legal translation: This handles contracts and other legal documents for businesses.
• Business translation: This general category covers everything in a business, from presentations to emails to reports. 

For anything that widely represents your business, involves important internal communication or detailed legal agreements, consider professional translation services.