Unlocking New Markets: An Audio Guide to Translation Procurement

In the first of three podcasts, Andrew helps listeners to optimise their translation procurement strategy to engage global markets and touches on the pivotal role of professional translation services in this. He sets out the essential questions businesses need to consider to make effective decisions about B2B vs. B2C considerations, language specifics, and the balance between human and AI translation for effective localisation. Interested? Stay tuned for the second in the series!

Find the Transcript below to ‘A Guide to Translation Procurement’:

Hello! This is the first in a series of short webinars looking at professional translation services in the Age of AI. In this first webinar, I’ll be talking about translating for international business development. For example, you might be launching a new product or service in a new territory and need to localise your content into the local language or languages.

Let’s look at some common scenarios. There are some questions you will need to think about:

Firstly, is your offer B2B or B2C?

It’s important to know what sort of people your customers are. In general if your offer is B2C, it’s wiser to assume your customer’s English skills are not advanced, though obviously this depends from individual to individual. Even if they have competent English, a lot of research suggests they will still prefer to make purchase decisions in their own language. If it’s B2B, are you pitching to senior managers or middle managers? As a very broad generalisation, senior people are more likely to have reasonable English language comprehension skills.

Depending on the country and sector, some middle managers may have poorer English skills. So for some B2B clients and for pretty much all B2C clients you may well need to translate your stuff. So what comes next?

Secondly, which languages are commonly spoken in the territory you are selling into?

That’s not as simple as it sounds. For example, Belgium has two official languages: French, which for all intents and purposes is the same as ‘French‘ French, and Flemish which is written the same way as Dutch but pronounced completely differently. Switzerland has four official languages based on different regions of the country.

Finally, consider your readership and the wider audience.

What level of consistency and readability will your content need to have? And what sort of emotional resonance are you aiming to achieve in the reader? If your content needs to elicit an emotional response with reader, or if it’s important marketing or promotional copy then you definitely need human translation plus ideally proofreading by a second translator.

For non business-critical content or content where resonance with the reader is of secondary importance, you may be able to save money using AI translation, followed by professional editing by a qualified human translator. And finally, there is a role for raw AI-generated translation when content is being shared purely for information purposes and errors and omissions in the translation are acceptable. Here you could opt for a ‘do it yourself’ approach via Google Translate or DeepL.

A podcast by  Andrew Schlich.