Language is the lifeblood of global businesses. As a result, you should seek to optimise your organisation’s translation processes just as you would any other business processes. That’s where language consultancy services come in. Here are four ways language consultancy can supercharge your international business.
Language consultancy helps effectively target multilingual and multicultural audiences.
Effective marketing requires a strategy. Effective marketing on an international level requires multiple approaches to accommodate linguistic, cultural and technological differences. Merely translating the content from one language to another may not be enough to reach people in your target market. For instance, consider the following:
- Images that are acceptable in one culture may be confusing or even offensive in another culture.
- Colours can carry different meanings from culture to culture, as well.
- Depending on the market, you may need to adjust the marketing channels you use to optimise the reach of your campaign.
- Some advertisements may need to transcreated, rewritten from the ground up to carry the original message more effectively to the new audience.
Professional language consultants can work with your team to build an international marketing strategy that takes these factors, and more, into account. The result? Global advertising and marketing campaigns that have the same impact as the original.
Improve workflows for translation-related tasks.
Language services are often treated as an afterthought or an add-on. However, lack of attention allows outdated methods and inefficiencies to flourish. This creates additional costs over the long-term. Professional language consultants can optimise your organisation’s workflows and procedures to maximise efficiency and productivity. It’s like giving your translation engine a tune-up.
Curious to see how this works in the real world? Here’s an example. In K International’s work with the British Army, we redesigned and modernised their translation workflow using Business Process Engineering principles. After making the changes we suggested, the Army is now able to take advantage of technology to simplify the process of handling and translating large amounts of paper documents.
For instance, we implemented a secure, shared workspace to allow for easy long-distance collaboration. Our solution included an online community, library, database, termbase, glossary and previously translated material. This will enable colleagues from around the world to work more efficiently on shared projects.
We also created a database of translation memories, allowing new material to be translated more quickly, more accurately and with less expense. Additionally, we integrated a machine translation solution to allow for real-time translation when necessary.
Reduce translation costs.
Translation costs don’t have to be a barrier to international expansion. An efficient workflow combined with the right translation tools for the job can help your organisation keep costs under control without sacrificing quality. Often, language consultancy is an upfront investment that pays for itself over time.
Helps your organisation make the best use of available technology.
In recent years, technology has revolutionised the language services industry, along with everything else. However, using the wrong technological tool for the job can end up costing more than is saved.
For example:
- Relying too heavily on machine translation can end up damaging your brand, reducing your organisation’s credibility and even causing potential legal issues down the road.
- Translation management systems can simplify the translation process, but only if they’re easy to use and only if they play nice with your companies existing procedures.
- Translation memories save time and money by re-using previously translated text. However, without proper quality assurance and validation, mistakes can creep in and corrupt your database, showing up in the final product again and again.
Language consultants can help your organisation choose the right tools and integrate them into your current workflow for the maximum impact.
For complicated projects, the team at K International can create and implement a custom solution to address your organisation’s specific needs. For one example, see our work with the British Library. We developed bespoke technology to link the data stored in the Library’s Drupal CMS with our translation management system, Tracklingua. Our technologists also developed tools to streamline the process of translating from left to right languages (like English) to right to left languages (like Arabic.
Is language consultancy right for your business?
What types of businesses get the most value out of language consultancy services? Any company that has high-volume translation needs or complex projects can benefit. This includes:
- Retailers and manufacturers of food and consumer goods, requiring accurately-translated, compliant labels in multiple languages. Large organisations who need help managing multilingual content.
- Companies that need help building or fine-tuning an international marketing strategy.
Do you have a complicated translation problem to solve? Does your company require top quality language services with fast turnaround times?
Our language consultants can help you design a process that makes it easier and less costly to get the results you need. For more information, contact us today!