Language Preferences Extend Beyond Words
March 26, 2016
Thanks to today’s digital connections, commerce and communications take place on a global scale. Home buyers in China browse for properties in Los Angeles, Parisian restaurants hunt for the best coffee in Brazil, and teens in Mexico City order the latest "manga" comic books directly from Japan.
If you’re looking to take part in this worldwide market, it’s not enough to Google Translate your site into a foreign language and hope your audience figures out what you’re trying to say. You need to understand what is important to buyers in other countries, how they perceive and interact with products, and how their culture influences their preferences. And of course, you need to do it in a language they are familiar with.
Relying only on English is a barrier to selling to customers who are more comfortable with a different language. However, translating the words is often not enough. Your international customers live with a different set of norms, assumptions, and expectations that you must fulfill, if you hope to conduct business with them.
For example, if you use American standards to guarantee delivery by 5/4/2016, you’ve promised the product by May 4, 2016. However, a customer in London reads that date as the 5th of April, 2016, so your package arrives one month later than they agreed to. The delay will frustrate him and could lose his future business.
So it’s important that a native speaker translates your message not only into the local language but also with sensitivity to the local culture to avoid misunderstandings. Just as you tailor your communications in this country to suit the needs of each of your audiences, you must do the same for your foreign messages through a multi-channel strategy.
We can provide the linguistic expertise that you need whether you want an email translated into one language or need to deal with multiple websites for several countries. No matter the job size, ProLingo translators provide the same high quality for every project.
