When a business begins reaching out to foreign markets they are best served by creating a solid, cross-border economic strategy. This strategy helps them to create a road map and best practices to follow as they work to develop relationships with distributors and other business partners, and attract new customers.
A well-developed strategy will be multi-faceted. It will cover multiple areas of concern. These include regulatory issues, increasing resource requirements, even currencies. One topic that isn’t often considered, but should be, is translation and localization. Businesses who have failed to prioritize this have frequently come to regret it.
It is a matter of fact that successful communication is the basis of every successful business interaction. Without proper translation and localization efforts, achieving that is not possible. Below are some of the ways in which translation is an integral part of creating a cross-border economic strategy.
Translation and Relationship Development Are Intertwined.
In order to gain economic success in foreign markets, building relationships is imperative. Customers, vendors, suppliers, local government entities must find your business relatable and trustworthy. To accomplish this, communication must be clear and accurate. Small misunderstandings can lead to serious issues when you are trying to gain traction in cross-border markets.
Every strategy should include steps and best practices when it comes to ensuring that communication goes smoothly and contributes to building important relationships. Expanding businesses rely on the trust and cooperation of those within other markets in order to be successful. By working with a translation professional, businesses can remove language barriers as a potential roadblock to developing these key relationships.
Marketing Strategies Must Consider Translation and Localization from The Beginning.
Any time a business owner decides to conduct business in foreign markets, one of the first things to consider is marketing and branding. These factors in addition to regulatory concerns and logistics are the most pressing. After all, if a company cannot establish brand and product awareness in new markets, their efforts will never be successful.
When there are language and cultural differences, it stands to reason that marketers will have to consider what barriers to communication, branding, and developing trust these differences will bring. More importantly, they have to strategize ways to overcome these strategies. A big part of this is using translation and localization to customize messaging so that it is relevant to new target markets. When businesses fail at international marketing efforts the results can be disastrous.
In order to accomplish these goals, finding and securing the best online translation services is key. Getting a service on board that can connect you with professionals who understand the markets into which you are expanding at the earliest stages can help to ensure success.
When Calculating Time Costs and Other Resources Translation Can’t be an Afterthought.
Resource planning is also an important part of your cross-border economic strategy. In order to ensure that your expansion leads to further fiscal success while also maintaining as much economic stability during your company’s growth you must ensure that you have the budget and resources to execute your expansion successfully.
Things to be considered include training, legal, need for increased technical resources, extra staffing and hours, and translation. To plan appropriately, it is important to ask the following questions:
- What documents need to be translated? How many staff members and hours will be required to prepare those documents?
- What are the costs associated with hosting web pages overseas? What about translation and localization? How long will it take to identify what needs to be translated and localized? How long will the actual process of website translation and localization take? How many staff members need to be dedicated to this task?
- Will interpreters be needed in meetings with potential business associates and entities? What are the costs associated with that?
- What are the ongoing needs when it comes to translation and localization?
With something as complex and involved as international expansion, ensuring that there are no surprises when it comes to securing and allocating economic and human capital is extremely important.
Translation and Localization Play a Key Role in Remaining Competitive Locally.
Cross border expansion often requires businesses to gain traction in markets where their competitors are already well established. Successfully translating new and existing content as quickly and successfully as possible makes it significantly easier to make these inroads quickly. Everything from landing pages to signage to advertisements to manuals to product descriptions to video content and more must be both consumable and relatable to new audiences. Economic success isn’t just dependent upon messaging being understandable. Expanding businesses must strategize ways in which they can make their branding and products seem even more appealing than their target market’s current options.
Translators Play a Role in Understanding and Meeting Regulatory Requirements.
Expanding into foreign markets requires businesses to understand, comply with, and adapt to new sets of regulations. Not only can translators help in this process by translating various legal documents, they can do so in a way that makes understanding these regulations easier.
A translation professional who specializes in legal translations as well as corporate expansions won’t only know the languages involved. They can help to make regulations clear and understandable to those who need to read and adhere to them.
Conclusion.
When a company decides to expand into new territories, that is a decision that can have deep economic impact. Every step must be carefully planned and executed in order to maximize the chance at success. In nearly every one of these steps, translation plays at least some role. Whether it’s marketing and advertising, website localization, resource planning, legal compliance, or relationship building, a professional translator can add value by making the process easier and ensuring accuracy.
Anyone considering an overseas expansion should not wait until the last moment to consider translation and localization services. Instead, they should consider consulting a translation service during the planning stages. They can help to identify areas where such services are likely to be needed.
