Build an International Presence through Accurate Transcription, Translation and Localization

The times they are indeed changing. People today grow up figuratively attached to their gadgets and devices. This IoT explosion has resulted in a major change in how people view the world and how activities are conducted. Add in the recent global Covid-19 pandemic, self-isolation and social distancing, and now more than ever, growing up with electronic gadgets and devices has helped the current generation to see more opportunity than ever to work in the same virtual environment to which they have grown so accustomed.

One factor that is often overlooked, lost amid the global coronavirus outbreak, is the globalization of the work from home opportunities and the increasingly global marketplace online. Working from home, whether as a remote service provider or as an online business owner, makes you a part of the increased globalization of society in general and not just a more localized internet community. Starting this process begins with website translation services, but there is more to it as well, including localization strategies. Building a business online or working from home selling products or services, means that now more than ever, it is time to focus on translation services for your online business, implementing localization strategies as part of the digital marketing, and move into a more international, expanded and profitable marketplace.

According to the Statista website, China is the largest market for Business to Consumer sales online, though this is followed closely by the United States. India however, has the second largest population of “netizens” or people using the internet with upwards of five hundred million users while China is the largest group of netizens with over eight hundred million people using the internet.

Despite these numbers, the US is second in line for B2C sales. This may make it seem like it is simply easier to just focus on a single language, targeting a single market, but even this would result in a great loss of potential market share. According to the US Census Bureau, there are literally tens of millions of people within the United States who are either considered “LEP” or people with a Limited English Proficiency or who do not speak English at all.

It does not matter what kind of online business someone is operating, or what one’s native language may be, or even if someone is working as a remote service provider online, these numbers alone justify at least some consideration for the use of transcription, translation and localization services for their online business operations. Add in the global market place and there is a potential to gain literally tens of millions of new audience members.

Website Translation and Localization and the Importance of Accuracy

Even for those selling food online, or local service providers who may not be able to work the international markets, translation, transcription and localization should be considered as an important part of the digital marketing campaign online. This is especially true for anyone living in a big city where there is more likely to be a large, non-native or immigrant population.

Again according to the US Census Bureau data, the top fifteen most linguistically diverse cities in the United States alone, all have more than one hundred languages other than English commonly used at home. Granted, some of these people will be searching for things online in English, but many will be searching in their native languages. Even for local service providers or someone selling knick knacks online locally, these are all viable markets that are well within reach.

Additional options for individual aspects of the digital marketing campaigns will be discussed later, but the website, serving as the online “store location” is probably the best place to begin. The first step however, involves conducting some research of the local markets. Even more rural areas are prone to large numbers of immigrants as these people may be working on farms or ranches. Determine and define the potential local markets (or even international markets) before focusing on the digital marketing campaign.

The website will serve as the storefront for the online business, seeking to attract a large, and perhaps more general audience. From there, the target audience can be more directly addressed, ultimately ending in the monetization of the viewers. How does one attract foreign viewers though? The most obvious answer is ultimately to have the website available in all of the respective languages being targeted.

If one elects to translate the entire website, care should be taken to ensure the accuracy of the translation. One of the most compelling reasons for using a translation agency is to ensure that any potential linguistic variations are considered and translated accordingly.

In Spanish, there are words that are complimentary in Mexico but offensive in Spain. Directions may differ between American English and British English. A professional translation agency will be aware of all of these linguistic anomalies and translate according to the needs of the website audience.

However, it may also be possible to limit the website translations by transcribing and translating content in order to allow it to serve in multiple roles. Each part of the digital marketing campaign may in fact overlap, and again, professional translation services, transcription and localization strategies can allow the online business owner to target a much larger, more international and multilingual marketplace.

Multipurposing Content, Digital Marketing and Localization

One of the beautiful things about content marketing, especially when it is conducted in a well planned and implemented digital marketing campaign, is that virtually all of the content can be repurposed and used on multiple platforms. This is just as true for a single language as it is when working on multilingual marketing.

Further benefit comes from the ability to integrate localization into the translation and transcription services and to more directly and personally target each market. Bulleted and numbered lists containing information can be turned into slideshows that are easily viewed across multiple social media platforms.

Podcasts can be turned into articles. Articles can be turned into podcasts or videos. Each act of multipurposing the content allows for the online business owner to increase viewership, audience participation and potentially to attract new customers and increase profits.

Accuracy in Translation, Localization and Content Marketing

No matter what type of content is being created, and no matter how it fits in to the overall digital marketing strategy, there should be no doubt that the accuracy, not only of the translation, but the localization must be perfect if the content is to be beneficial to the online entrepreneur. The first step is to have a better understanding of what both translation and localization services are to begin with. Easy! Right? Nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

“What is the makeup there?” How does one translate that seemingly simple sentence? Does it refer to a particular brand or type of makeup to be applied to the face or other body parts? Does it perhaps question the physical characteristics of something? Perhaps it is asking about the inevitable makeup between that couple that breaks up every other week?

One simple word with multiple meanings translated badly can literally destroy an entire digital marketing campaign. There are those that believe that translation is nothing more than exchanging a single word for its equivalent in another language. What about words that have no literal translation? What about localized expressions that lose their context and thus, even lose their meaning when translated literally?

Certified translators and other professional language service providers understand that their work is to provide not only a literal translation, but at the same time, to ensure the context is kept and that the meaning of the conversation is literally translated, even when the lexical semantics are beyond translation. Further, all of this must be accomplished without the translator or interpreter inserting themselves into a conversation, even as an empathetic third party.

Localization services on the other hand, include more localized and specific vernacular. Linguistic idiosyncrasies are not only limited by geographical bounds, but also exist within certain age groups, industry specific language and a host of other areas whereby the normal speech patterns may not be recognizable to outsiders.

This becomes crucial to consider when looking at marketing campaigns or copywriting for a specific audience, but remains equally essential in every aspect of content creation at the same time. Colors or even pictures that invoke great joy for one audience, may prompt spite or contempt from others. Accuracy extends well beyond ensuring an adequate translation or avoiding typos.

In terms of digital marketing and content creation strategies where there is no room for “just good enough”, professional and certified language service providers are always going to be the best option. This is just as true for the sake of repurposing the content as it is for the original content creation phase.

Translation, Localization and Audio/Video and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

According to a March 26, 2020 report on the Business2Community website, “By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. That’s a notable number, but what it says is that video is the future of online marketing. We live in a fast-paced world where people want to be entertained, share, and learn more than ever before, with video, it’s possible. About 72% of customers would instead learn about a product or service by way of video. More customers want to see more video content from brands.”

What makes both audio and video marketing challenging for some, is the difficulty of ranking for the relevant keywords on the search engines. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple and surprisingly effective means to fix this problem. Audio and video translation and transcription services can prove surprisingly beneficial as part of the successful digital marketing campaign.

Podcasts can be a great means for generating interest in a brand, but getting the podcasts ranked on the search engines can be challenging. However using transcription services and then adding document translation services to the mix, will provide audio transcriptions for all of the materials, helping it to rank for all of the relevant keywords not only in the native language, but also in any of the other languages to which the broadcast has been translated.

In terms of video marketing, the ability to rank well in the native language as well as the translated languages can be greatly enhanced, though it helps to know how as well as why. Google is the most popular website on the internet. YouTube ranks as the number two website in all of the world. Google is also a very popular search engine and also owns YouTube.

While this may be relatively common knowledge, what is not often considered is the fact that YouTube is also in a constant battle with Amazon to remain the second or third largest search engine in the world. How does a new online business ever hope to compete in such a market?

Once again, video translation services and transcription will help to greatly increase the potential for digital marketing success, even for a relative newcomer to the field of digital marketing. It may be tempting, especially given the inclusion in many popular video editors, to just hard code subtitles directly into the video. The only problem with this is that being hard coded, these valuable resources cannot be indexed by the search engines.

A video transcription that is converted into a txt or srt closed caption file can be easily added to the YouTube video and will also be crawled or indexed not only by Google, but also by the internal YouTube search engines. It is also equally easy to upload srt closed caption files for YouTube videos in a virtually endless number of languages.

Now, these videos will be crawled and indexed by what are likely the two top search engines in the entire world, ranking for relevant keywords not only in the original language, but also in every language that the video translation has been through. The use of Closed Captioning for YouTube videos is beneficial in many other ways as well.

A surprisingly large number of people watch online videos without any audio. This number increases even more substantially among viewers on portable devices. Closed Captioning allows these people to enjoy the full video experience, even when viewing without any audio.

Closed captioning also has been shown to increase not only the number of views, but the number of times the video is promoted in the “recommended videos” section, an increase in likes and shares and even an increase in the number of people commenting on the video. Combine this with video translation, audio transcription and multipurposing all of the content, and attracting an international audience is not nearly as challenging as some would make it out to be.

The current global Covid-19 pandemic is driving more and more people to the internet every day. There is no time like the present to begin building an online business seeking an international audience. Accuracy in the transcription and translation services, and using localization strategies as an integral part of the digital marketing campaign makes the entire operation that much easier and potentially, much more profitable.