Planning to set foot in a new market localization? Great, but do you know how to do it? That’s what agencies are for. Employing teams of localization experts, translators, copywriters and designers, they have a distinct advantage over your in-house teams.
Cutting corners does not serve you well in the long run, let alone when you seek to enter new markets. A typical example of failed or “what not to do” if you want to expand your market share is HSBC. Its tagline “Assume nothing”, which, let’s face it, in English is so powerful, when translated into several languages, it came across as “Do nothing”. Now, that’s a message you don’t want any of your clients to take seriously. It cost the UK leading bank millions to rebrand to “The world’s local bank”.
To avoid a pitfall of this magnitude, it’s advisable to let professionals handle your brand localization projects for you. While it may seem easy at first, it’s not so easy.
Being multilingual yourself or having multilingual teams across your organisation does not tick off all the boxes when it comes to imprinting on a new audience. Beyond words, there’s power. Translation alone doesn’t “do the trick” to convey all that power and make it stick.
The difference between localization and ordinary translation is that localization is both translation and adaptation of your content to the new culture you’re setting foot into.
Typically, localization is required by companies selling goods or services and IT companies that need to localize their applications or sites.
Professional localization companies like Pangea Global take recruiting seriously and screen each candidate carefully to select the best linguists. Localization agencies of Pangea’s size have teams of translators and revisers who work together to ensure the translated content, be it a slogan, tagline, blog post, marketing brochure, or website, is as compelling and engaging as the original. Often translators are also copywriters and storytellers who don’t stop at the primary level of the written words; they dig up the meaning, intentionality, and finally, emotion that inspires action.
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