Please also check Singtel’s Ask the Expert in Localization for the Interview session with Mr Nicholas Goh, CEO and Founder of Verztec.

There is a strong correlation between the ranking of companies on a particular list and the number of languages found on their websites. Whether the ranking is based on revenue (the Forbes Global 2000), brand value (the Interbrand 100 Best Global Brands), or website traffic (the Alexa Top 500 Global Sites), sites at the top of these lists consistently show a higher language count than those on the bottom. Two findings stand out:
• Bigger companies offer more language choices than smaller ones
• The most popular websites publish in more languages than less popular ones.

Bigger Companies Offer More Language Choices
When we visited the sites of the top 50 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 list, we saw that they typically provided content in 15 languages, while sites from companies in the bottom 1,000 averaged only four languages. The average number of languages in our entire dataset of 2,409 sites was nearly 5.7. But it’s not just at the top and bottom. The trend line is clear at each slice – from the top band through to the middle, and all the way to the bottom. Smaller companies, taken as a group, average fewer languages per site.

The smaller companies in our sample – those with super-popular websites as ranked by Alexa but not listed among the world’s biggest companies – generally does better than their rivals in the bottom half of the Forbes Global 2000 list. These high-traffic volume websites average 4.8 languages rather than 4.1 for larger companies with less popular sites. This metric underscores the importance of adding languages in order to gain traction in the online marketplace.

About a quarter (23.3%) of the smaller companies don’t offer English on their immensely popular sites. Many in this cluster are country or regional social networks and other online services originating in non-Anglophone countries, with only one or a few languages spoken in their region.

The Most Popular Websites Publish in More Languages
The trend line of popular sites, such as Google and Facebook, to offer more languages is dramatically apparent among the top 50 grouping, but essentially flattens out after that. The whopping average number (17.9) suggests that to break into the top category, a company probably needs to put up 15 to 25 languages. Less popular websites – by traffic volume – include many corporate sites, including business-to-business brands with lots of languages but without the volume required to break into the Alexa Global 500.

Verztec is a leading ISO 9001:2008 Global Content Consulting Services Company. Verztec assists companies around the world to design, develop, localize and publish their global communication messages in over 60 languages across various channels. For more information as to how Verztec may partner and assist in your next localization project, kindly contact us at info@verztec.com or call +65 6577 4646 now!

*Source: Multilingual Websites: October 2012 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

Will a simple translation have the rhetorical effect you need in another market? If not, you might consider developing content from scratch to meet the expectations of the audience to which you’re selling. Here are a few general items that every buyer should know before engaging in projects that require transcreation services:

• Purpose. Unlike translation, the purpose of transcreation is to evoke a specific desired reaction or emotion from the buyer. If the message does not sound right from the beginning, the buyer will carry the negative connotations all the way through the marketing and sales process. Especially in sales and pre-sales settings, poor communications can negatively impact the buying process.
• Project types. The jobs that most typically require transcreation are usually related to marketing and advertising. Frequent projects relate to branding, corporate identity, manuals, brochures, sales materials, some types of user manuals, press releases, and websites – content which is usually meant to elicit an emotional response. Some regulatory filings, such as annual reports and listings, also require transcreation due to legal requirements and the sequence of how information is displayed, as in a Form 10-K report.
• Providers. The companies that offer transcreation fall into three major categories:

1) niche players that specialize in transcreation;

2) large language service providers with experience doing advertising/marketing translation;

3) advertising agencies, especially those that specialize in multicultural domestic markets (see Figure 1)

• Volumes. Transcreation projects tend to be quite small – just 2,000 to 5,000 words instead of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of words. Smaller niche transcreation providers will undertake these smaller efforts, while larger projects with a mixture of transcreation and “straight translation” requirements typically go to the bigger, more generalist suppliers.
• Turnaround time. Because clients often fail to plan appropriately and provide sufficient time to their suppliers, most transcreation providers work with timeframes of hours and days instead of weeks and months. However, for larger jobs, such timeframes are not possible.
• Starting point. Instead of getting the source files from the client, a transcreation project typically requires the client to give the transcreation provider a creative brief, including all the background information about the target market – such as any market studies or focus groups that they have conducted. The more information the firm has about the intended audience, the better prepared they will be to do the work.
• Resources. Transcreation firms typically work with bilingual creative writers, not with translators. If translators are engaged for transcreation projects, they most often have a literary translation or advertising background, and are therefore accustomed to dealing with work of a more creative type. Because the freelancers do not usually agree to be paid on a per-word basis for this type of work, they often bill out their services by the hour.
• Costs. Transcreation is far more expensive than translation. They commonly bill such work on a project basis, or by the hour. While they do not price jobs on a per-word basis, some providers charge for a set number of words (for example, US$500 for every 1,000 words). However, if the provider does charge by the word, text type may determine the cost. For example, they may invoice more for headlines and titles than they do for copy, because the former needs to capture the attention of the reader faster.

Verztec is a leading ISO 9001:2008 Global Content Consulting Services Company. Verztec assists companies around the world to design, develop, localize and publish their global communication messages in over 60 languages across various channels. For more information as to how Verztec may partner and assist in your next localization project, kindly contact us at info@verztec.com or call +65 6577 4646 now!

*Sources: Best Practices for Purchasing Transcreation Services: November 2009  by Common Sense Advisory, Inc

The Bottom Line and How Translation Boosts It

Our research repeatedly shows that translation enables companies to expand their customer base and increase revenue:

• Translation gives you access to more customers. Many customers simply won’t buy your products unless you market to them in their language. How many are you missing? Our study showed that 72.1% of international consumers spend most or all of their time on sites in their own language. The 11 languages that allow you to reach 85% of the world’s online wallet are English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian, Korean, and Italian. And each language you add takes you further into any market where it’s spoken.

• Translation unlocks global revenue from those customers. Overall economic growth has stalled in North American and Western European markets. As a result, companies headquartered in those regions are finding it a requirement, rather than an option, to offer additional localized versions of their products and services as quickly as possible in order to attract customers with rising incomes in emerging and frontier markets. Are you one of the many firms reporting decreasing domestic profits, while your global revenue is climbing upward? If not, you better find out why.

• Translation enhances your existing market presence – even at home. Do you own 100% of any market that you’re already in today? Doubtful. But you can get closer to penetrating the markets you’re already in by adding more languages. Even just one language – such as Spanish in the United States, Polish in the United Kingdom, or Turkish in Germany – can help you reach customers in the locations in which you’re already spending marketing dollars, making that money go even further.

• Translation costs very little. Your investment in languages will be insignificant compared to the international revenue it will enable. After all, the average cost per word to create original content is US$0.65, while the average cost per word for translated content is only US$0.10. Your financial and procurement teams will be on-board once they recognize that millions of dollars of additional income can be generated through a very minimal investment.

• Translation doesn’t have to be difficult. If you’re concerned about losing control of your content when it moves into other languages, rest assured that there are professionals out there to help you. Recruit the talent you need to build a great translation team from a vast team of professionals in this $26 billion industry. Or outsource the function to professional language service providers (LSPs). The bottom line is that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel – plenty of companies (including competitors) have already learned the most painful lessons on your behalf.

• Translation makes it easier to win against competitors. You can leverage your investment in global markets based on a defensive or offensive strategy. Either way, the goal is to prevent challengers from dominating markets that could have a negative effect on sales, revenue, or overall brand perception in other markets, including the one at home.

• Translation provides your brand with a consistent voice. Over the last decade especially, firms have learned that consistent branding with local flavor represents a corporate asset with a hard dollar value. It now requires at least 16 languages if you want to be among the best at remaining competitive online.

• Translation allows you to protect and enhance your global reputation. If your organization is not set up to implement every product or service launch around the world, then you risk relinquishing control to your customers. With machine translation readily available for many languages, people buy, write reviews, and provide feedback on your offerings whether or not you officially launch in their market.

• Translation is often required by local markets anyway. You may be barred from selling your product or service unless it has been translated, and perhaps even adapted to meet local business requirements, in countries that have language compliance laws such as Belgium and Canada. Similar rules will apply for regulated industries such as energy, financial services, life sciences, telecommunications, and utilities. And even if you’re not in a regulated field, you may be required to translate in order to support customers who are.

• Translation is simply what smart executives do. It’s not enough for you to merely mandate that your company be #1 in its top five markets around the world. To be able to earn globally over time, you must invest consistently in local markets and the internal teams to support them (see “The Global Business Leadership Manifesto,” Mar11). The key is to create a global presence through building many strong, local presences, which includes delivering and supporting products in the right languages that are adapted to the right level.

English may be the language of business, but it’s not the language of your local consumers. The demand for language directions such as Zulu<>Chinese and Turkish<>Chinese is increasing as new trading agreements are established. According to the International Monetary Fund, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) alone will account for as much as 61% of global growth over the next three years. Currently, these five countries comprise 42% of the world’s population and 18% of its GDP. And right behind them are Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey as fast-growing economies with middle classes whose purse strings are loosening and whose wallets are expanding. Now is the time to put your international business strategy in order, supported by an appropriate translation plan, to allow your team to support local prospects and customers according to their expectations.

Verztec is a leading ISO 9001:2008 Global Content Consulting Services Company. Verztec assists companies around the world to design, develop, localize and publish their global communication messages in over 60 languages across various channels. For more information as to how Verztec may partner and assist in your next localization project, kindly contact us at info@verztec.com or call +65 6577 4646 now!

*Sources: Why Smart Companies Invest in Translation: 1 January 2012 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

Images speak louder than words when it comes to defining transcreation. The examples that follow show how a pharmaceutical manufacturer markets its birth control product differently to different groups – U.S. English speakers and U.S. Latinas. The tagline in English relates to convenience, while in Spanish it relates to freedom of choice (see Figure 1 and 2). Content is displayed differently – safety information plays a more important role in the Spanish sub-menu to alleviate fears about infertility that are more prominent in this demographic.

Figure 1: Pharmaceutical Transcreation in Practice: U.S English Website (Source: Pfizer, Inc.)

Figure 2: Pharmaceutical Transcreation in Practice: U.S. Hispanic Website (Source: Pfizer, Inc.)

Confusion surrounds the term and the concept of transcreation across all groups that we interviewed and surveyed. As such, the definitions vary widely. Most people agree that the term “transcreation” is the amalgamation of the words “translation” and “creation,” or perhaps “creative translation.” Here are some other basics related to the definition of transcreation:

• The history of the term. Some trace the term’s roots to the computer and video game industry, as companies struggled together to take games from one market to several. People discovered that translating only the words was insufficient to convey an enjoyable and comparable user experience. They started changing images and even modifying story lines in an attempt to transform the content in very creative ways. The process was different than the more straightforward localization process being applied to business application software at that time.

• The current definition. The term “transcreation” is now more commonly applied to marketing and advertising content that must resonate in local markets in order to deliver the same impact as the original. The term may be applied when either a direct translation is adapted, or when content is completely rewritten in the local language to reflect the original message. Most often, transcreation includes a hybrid of new content, adapted content and imagery, and straightforward translation.

• Synonyms. Other terms often used to convey the same concept include “marketization,” “cultural adaptation,” “multilingual copywriting,” “copy adaptation,” “marketing translation,” “international copy,” “adaptation of marketing materials,” “creative international marketing,” and “transliteration” (incorrectly applied).

Typical projects that require transcreation include web campaigns that don’t attract customers in other markets, ads that are based on wordplay, humor that is directly related to just one language or culture, or products and services that need to be marketed to diverse demographics within the same market.

Transcreation provides the freedom to address the cultural gaps. It allows the intent of the message to be communicated so that it is positively received by the intended audience, without requiring the local version to remain fully faithful to the words or images used in the original version.

Verztec is a leading ISO 9001:2008 Global Content Consulting Services Company. Verztec assists companies around the world to design, develop, localize and publish their global communication messages in over 60 languages across various channels. For more information as to how Verztec may partner and assist in your next localization project, kindly contact us at info@verztec.com or call +65 6577 4646 now!

*Source: Reaching New Markets through Transcreation: March 2010 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.