International Business Communication
Don’t let your lack of language skills stop you from reaching all of your potential clients. With over 2000 languages with some sort of a writing system in the world communicating with everyone may seem impossible.
Getting international clients may seem nearly impossible unless all of your potential clients speak your language or you invest in costly, time consuming, translation projects.
Sure, you will need native language people to write your sales materials. However, in the initial stages of your international market research, there are online translation tools that are ‘good enough’ to get you started. Now I wrote ‘good enough’ and not ‘perfect’ because no online translation tool is perfect.
And these translation software are getting better.
Google Translates
Heard of Google? If you have, one of the easiest translation tools is just a couple clicks away. Go to the Google home page. Simply replace the ‘www’ with ‘translate’ and you will be on the translation page.
This translation page lets you translate 41 different languages. If you speak two languages and don’t like the translation Google suggest, the Google translation tool gives you the ability to provide a better translation for a word or phrase.
Are you translating from a foreign language into English… but you don’t know which foreign language it is?
No problem, the link http://translate.google.com/translate_t#auto|en| will even figure out what the foreign language is and if that language is one of the 41 that Google supports it will translate for you.
Want to translate into a different supported language? Change the final ‘en’ to the two letter international language code (for example, fr for French, de for German) for the destination language and Google does the rest.
Why Online Translation Tools Are Important in Business Today
The reason online translation tools have become so important has to do with the supply and demand. The volume of online content that needs translation is growing as fast as the internet increases in size. The time needed to translate any given document isn’t changing and although the number of translators may be increasing, they are not increasing as fast as the online content that is being produced. This pushes further development in software for translation and content management. You can can count on translation tools improving in the future.
The English speaking world has pretty much saturated the internet. The amount of English speaking internet users is not going to dramatically increase, simply because there are more non-English speakers in the world. 75% of the 340 million people in North America are connected to the internet compared to 17.4% of the 3.7 billion people in Asia. And Asia already accounts for over 40% of the people on the internet.
Translation software has improved greatly since its beginning. And it is destined to get better and better. Originally, software translated word of word, a grammatical nightmare. The electronic tools available at present have no real problems with standard phrases and only start having issues with long and complex phrases.
The problems occur with how the original document is written. In order for translation software to work well, the original text must be written clearly and simply, avoiding grammatical and linguistic pitfalls.
Here Is The Translation Dilemma
The quality of the translations is good enough for most uses other than sales and marketing materials.
If you begin to use the free translation tools available for you today for your market research and foreign competitor analysis you will appreciate the service they provide you today. You will also become familiar with using the translation and you be able to evaluate uses of any future improvements in software developments.
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Why Free Online Translation Make It So Easy For Getting International Clients• How can free translation tools help you develop your international business? • When should you use free translation tools? • How can you get the most out of free translation tools? Find out how to use free translation tools here. |
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Why Free Online Translation Are In Your Future For Getting International Clients• What is happening in the world of free translation tools? • How can this progress help you? • What can you expect for the future? Read more on why you should follow future improvements. |
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How To Use Free Online Translation Tools To Expand Your Business• How should you use free translation tools? • Can free translation tools do everything? • What is the best way to use free translation tools? Use these guidelines to get the more out of them. |
Other Resources
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International Market ResearchLearn how you can use free online translation tools to help you get past initial language barriers and then start your international market research. |
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Free Translation ToolsIf you want an quick and easy way for your international visitors to access your information in their own language without taking them away from your website, download either the free WordPress Plugin or the Translation Widget for all websites. |
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Key International ResourcesYou can find other useful resources for your international business development. |
More From Cindy
Interested in reading more on my personal opinions and experiences with culture customized content?
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Read the whole story
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This is part of the Core Business Guide 3 Design Your International Visibility Be sure to check out the other useful tips to design your international visibility |
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately, “good enough” doesn’t cut it in business. Incorrect translations show that you lack respect for your customers.
If you are a regular reader of my blogs, you know that I would never use software translations for any sales related materials. However, software translations are great for market research.
Yes, I often hear professional translators preaching that translation software should never be used.
From a small business perspective this does not reflect reality. All reasonably competent businessmen know they need native language content to get more sales. And if they don’t, they learn this quickly.
It would be refreshing to hear a professional translator give guidelines on how small businesses should use translation software if they cannot afford their professional services. I’m sure the small business owner would also turn to this same person for “human” translations when they had the budget to do so.
Don’t forget, there are ways to use the software tools to make sure that your translation is reasonably accurate. For example, translating from the original language to the target language. Then translate back. If the returned translation is wrong, you can assume that the translation is not good enough. This provides translations that are good enough for market research. If the subject matter is complicated and there is a glitch, this can go through “human” translation. This is a practice successfully used by many companies.
As I’m sure you know, many translators use translation software to work faster and remain competitive. This is why there is something false when translation professionals demonize translation software only to sell their own services.