The Ultimate Guides To Choose Marketing Translation Agency

It is a must to invest in top-notch marketing due to resonating with your target audience while breaking into the new market. The first step is to communicate with them in the local language through the careful translation of marketing materials. 

However, marketing translation and localization can be demanding, especially when your project targets multiple countries.

How do you overcome the language barriers to scale your global marketing content? How can you find the best-in-class marketing translation agency? Let’s find out!

1. The types of marketing translation

As implied, marketing translation refers to the process of adapting marketing content from one language to another. This involves translating various types of advertising copy on both online and offline distribution channels.

Here are some examples of marketing materials

In other words, marketing material comes in many forms, but the aim is to assure that the branding message and voice remain consistent according to the cohesive brand identity. 

While the same principle applies to multilingual campaigns, adapting marketing content for other cultures calls for more nuanced adjustments.

Notably, it can not be one size to fit another. You should customize your global marketing content based on the preferences of local audiences in the target market. Translating marketing materials into the local language is a great place to start.

2. The importance of marketing translation agency 

In marketing, the most effective way to sell is not by offering products, you need to offer an emotional experience. Especially, since the target audience is from a different language and culture, a shift in mindset is required.

Therefore, it can be said that the marketing translation agency is important due to helping businesses not only translate marketing materials but also communicate with customers. After all, English is the most spoken language globally, with more than 1.5 billion native and non-native speakers. 

When you can reach a demographic as large as 1 in 7 of the world’s population just using English, it may be tempting to translate your marketing content. It isn’t really. In fact, you can not sell the same products and adopt the same advertising strategies across various markets.  

Nelson Mandela said it best: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” 

Language is not just the way to consumers’ hearts, but also their wallets. The latest translation statistics show that:

• 75% of consumers prefer to buy from websites in their native language.
• 40% of internet users will only buy from websites in their native language.
• 65% of non-native English speakers prefer content in their native language, despite their high proficiency in English.

Therefore, businesses that rely on only English as the marketing lingua franca will therefore miss out on a huge portion of online shoppers. A marketing translation agency can be a bridge between you and your customers to deliver an accurate message and connect both together. 

A marketing translation agency helps you translate word-by-word and localizes the content to adapt to the cultural nuances of the target country. It also involves:

• Providing subject-matter experts: This is especially important if you need legal, medical, or technical translation, where specialist field knowledge is required. Marketing translation agency has an extensive network of subject matter translators who can help you with fast and accurate translation. 
• Boosting ranking in the local search results: From a search engine optimization (SEO) point of view, translating your web pages into certain languages can help them rank higher for searches conducted by users who want answers in their local language.
• Reducing support costs: By translating marketing content materials into the language that the target market understands, you will minimize opportunities for miscommunication. As a result, customers may encounter fewer issues or misunderstandings with your products and thus consume fewer support resources. 

3. Examples of marketing translation for international brands

HSBC Bank

There are many examples of companies where direct translations of their marketing catchphrases have sufficed. HSBC is not one of them.

In 2009, the bank had to spend $10 million on a costly global rebranding campaign when its catchphrase “Assume Nothing” was translated directly into some languages, without paying sufficient attention to meaning and cultural context.

Instead of conveying that the bank prides itself on security and transparency with its customers, the translated version of the slogan came out as “Do Nothing.” 

Basically, precisely the last message a bank would want to communicate to its customers in the middle of a significant financial crisis.

In an effort to change the content marketing translation, HSBC spent $10 million to clean up the translation mistake. After spending such a large sum of money, they came up with a new slogan: “The World’s Local Bank”, which they managed to translate effectively and is still used in many markets today. 

Mcdonald’s

The famous slogan of the American fast food retailer – “I’m Lovin’ It” – has been known across the world since its launch in 2003. In countries with high English proficiency that are culturally similar to the US, they simply use it in its native form.

However, this would be less acceptable in countries, where the word “love” carries a much heavier connotation.

Instead, “I’m lovin’ it” became:

• Me Encanta (Spanish for “I really like it”)
• 我就喜欢 (Chinese phrase with a similar meaning to “I like it no matter what you say)
• Ich liebe es (German for “I love it”)
• C’est ça que j’m (French for “I lovin’ it)

As you can see, McDonald’s used content marketing translation in a way that was more palatable to various countries’ ears – and was much better off for it.

Coca Cola

In 2019, the Hanoi-based Department of Local Culture issued an official dispatch to culture departments in localization across Vietnam, asking local officials to collaborate with Coca-Cola Vietnam to rechange their advertising campaign. 

The tagline “Khui lon Việt Nam” (crack open a Vietnamese can) appears in several of the beverage company’s television advertisements and advertising banners, which are “vulgar” and “goes against Vietnam’s traditions.” The department has also ordered that all advertising materials be removed.

Coca-Cola Vietnam has changed all marketing materials that use allegedly offensive phrase. The campaign’s relevant advertising banners have been changed to read “Cơ hội trúng vàng mỗi ngày” (There are chances of winning gold every day).

This case study shows the importance of multilingual content marketing translation to consider a company’s brand image to ensure the translated message meets the cultural nuances and traditions of the target country. 

4. 6 steps to choose the right marketing translation agency

Step 1: Consider your current marketing translation needs

How much do you need to translate? Is it an email to your German business partners every few weeks, or is it at least one social media post per day? Do you send multiple marketing emails a month, to a variety of countries? Platforms such as proz.com can help you look for possible contacts for this option. The more international, diverse, and creative your business becomes, the more critical it is to contact a marketing translation agency with a worldwide network of professional translators.

Step 2: Possible Research partners

Have you ever tried googling ‘marketing translation agency’ or even just ‘translation services’? Or you are hoping to find an online dictionary, or you want Google Translate to do some work for you. What’s more, your perfect translation partner might not necessarily be based in the same country as you. Particularly for digital marketing translation, it might be best to look a bit further afield. You can find a seemingly endless list of language service providers on this website: Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).

Step 3: Rate criteria to consider for marketing translation agency 

Marketing translation companies offer various services while targeting different market niches. You need to ensure that you need to choose the right marketing translation agency that can provide high-quality work for your specific niche.

For instance, medical marketing translation is one of the hardest subjects for translation. It entails that the agency must comprise a large team of professional translators and have years of experience with multilingual subject matter experts specialized in translating content for all types of medical marketing materials. 

Furthermore, you can ask the marketing translation company for the following elements:

• Testimonials from other clients.
• Examples of work.
• Translation technology applied such as CAT Tools and XBench QA.

Step 4: Arrange a test run

Ask the marketing translation agency about carrying out a sample. A good translation agency should be able to do this for you free of charge. For your test run, choose one or more short texts (200-300 words max). Identify what sort of texts you would need translating most often. Ideally, you’ll have a colleague or a business partner in the industry who speaks the language in question. They can evaluate the outcome for you once it’s delivered.

Step 5: Price comparison

Request a quote from the selected agencies for the test translation. It would be best to specify the basis for their calculations since every marketing translation agency is likely to calculate their rates differently. Some charge per word from the source text or charge per page. This makes comparing prices in a meaningful way almost impossible.

Step 6: Choose the marketing translation agency

In the end, the main focus should be on the quality of the translation and collaboration. Importantly, badly translated texts can end up leaving companies with extra work, and therefore extra costs. Most importantly, false or misleading texts in creative fields can cause negative results. This in turn can cause considerable damage to a company’s reputation.

GTE: The top-notch marketing translation agency

If you are looking for a trustworthy marketing translation agency, GTE Localize is one of the best options.

With years of experience in marketing translation services, GTE Localize can help you with any project. We provide you with the best staff of native speakers and subject-matter experts who have highly skillful localization to deliver the highest accuracy outcome. 

Also with the aid of our specially developed technology, we have assisted some of the most prosperous foreign companies from a variety of industry sectors in expanding their operations in various markets.

Therefore, schedule a 1:1 consultation with one of our professionals to receive a free test and the best quote from a top-rate marketing translation agency.