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Running a business is hard work. There are a ton of aspects that go into making sure everything is running smoothly. It can be easy to overlook translation as a way to reach more customers, but translation should be in the front of every business owner’s mind if they are trying to expand into different markets.
Translation is important even if you aren’t trying to expand into different markets. Many American companies do themselves a disservice and only use English, but America is known as the melting pot, bringing together different nationalities and languages under one roof. Don’t let yourself get caught using English only. You are seriously limiting who you can reach. Instead, make sure that you get a quality translation service company to help you diversify and reach all the demographics out there.
English Isn’t the Only Language
There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, out of that number, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. That still leaves a ton of languages out there that aren’t English. English isn’t even the most spoken language in the world. Mandarin comes in as the most used language, with over 1 billion speakers on the planet. English comes in second, with 508 million speakers, followed by Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Bengali.
If you limit yourself to just English, you’re putting a severe limit on the number of people that you can reach. If you want to become a global company, then translation is going to be a vital part of your strategy. People are not going to buy something or use your service if they can’t understand what you are trying to say to them. You have to reach them where they are, in their native language.
Even if you don’t want to expand your company to a multitude of different countries just yet, that’s okay. Yes, translation is necessary to become a global company, but it’s also become more and more vital for American companies that want their stateside business to thrive. America has a diverse makeup of languages. From the West Coast, with heavy influences from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, and Native American languages, a trip through the heart of America to the East Coast will reveal influences from languages such as German, Polish, French, Gaelic, Russian, Swedish, various African languages, and many more. By using translation and incorporating different languages, you are able to aim your services at many potential clients right here at home that wouldn’t have been available to you before.
What Are Translation Services?
Language translation services are help you translate your material into a different language in order to reach more people. But, they involve so much more than simply moving the text that you’ve already got into another language, and more than a mere word count. Language translation services are about molding the text you have and adapting it into the language that you have chosen. There are a lot of different aspects that go into it. You have to consider both languages, context, the cultures involved, idiom, and even more. This is why it is so important that you get quality service from a trusted company.
Quality Translation Services
It is extremely important to your business that you get a quality translation. A correct translation gives your company a way to communicate between languages seamlessly. However, an inaccurate translation can be a fatal flaw. With so many aspects that go into translation, it can be easy to get the translation a little off from the original meaning. However, it doesn’t take much for a translation to mean something completely different from the original text. If your translation is wrong, you could leave your readers confused or offended, which might make them not want to use your company.
As soon as you have a bad translation, you don’t just lose one or two customers; you lose a whole group of potential clients. People are able to recognize a bad translation extremely quickly. Even if you get lucky and don’t offend someone, they will be able to tell that you didn’t put much effort into your translation. While most readers will excuse a minor error, too many mistakes will come across as unprofessional. If the audience that you are trying to reach doesn’t feel like you are actually speaking to them in their language, they aren’t going to take you seriously.
What to Look For
If you are ready to take your business to the next level and to a different audience, you need to make sure that you do your research on the translation company you choose. You want to find a translation company that is right for your business and industry. There are two things that you need to weigh with care when making a decision.
The first thing that you should consider is the company’s experience and reputation. Use a company that has been in the business for a while. A company is likely to be more proficient if they have had more experience working with different clients and languages. In addition to making sure that they have experience working with different clients, you want to make sure that they have experience in your industry.
The second thing that you want to look for in a translation company is customized service. A good translation company understands that not every one of their clients is going to be the same. Every project is different, and you should stay away from any company that offers cookie-cutter services.
