Three Benefits of Editing Your Marketing Copy Pre-Localization

advertising reproduction frequently falls sufferer to being mistranslated into other languages, as creative colloquialisms and reducing aspect slogans by chance wander away in translation. a brief seek on the web will yield plenty of examples of marketing translation fails, which include kfc’s iconic “finger lickin’ true” being translated as “devour your palms off” in chinese. however without being so spectacularly embarrassing, the way you deal with your source textual content can bring about translations that simply don’t get the activity completed.

as my colleague vijayalaxmi hegde says in her article, translation disasters often have little to do with the interpretation itself, but may be attributed to upstream issues within the source text, which includes expressions which are overly colloquial and tough (or impossible) to translate. so spend a touch time prepping your source text—it's going to repay by minimizing waste and maximizing your message.

1. boom translation clarity
your supply should use plain language to keep away from confusion with the aid of translators. that’s a simple rule. but what in case you are localizing from pre-present legacy content material that has extra than its honest percentage of colloquialisms and slangy phrases that make the content shine, but will send translators bashing their heads in opposition to the wall? truely do now not use it as-is (even though a quick-coming near closing date may tempt you to). positive, colloquialisms provide your supply content a pop and fizz that you’d hate to delete—but do it. until you have the time and energy to scour the earth for someone who can transcreate such phrases with same finesse, you're plenty higher off spending less than an hour simply simplifying the text.

particularly, you’ll need to separate clearly lengthy sentences into shorter ones that are much less probably to be mistranslated. simplify terms like “met up with” (is that “up” without a doubt vital?) to “met with” or just “met.” more about what’s up with the phrase “up” can be looked up in this newsletter. colloquialisms need to be rephrased, edited out, or if you leave them in, add comments that offer perception that the translator will love you for.

what takes place when you don’t do that ahead? you’ll probable note that translations are too literal due to the fact the translator didn’t apprehend the real purpose of the textual content and opted for a phrase-for-phrase in shape with the source. or, the translation comes across as ambiguous and doubtful. in either case, the translator is attempting to keep away from a first-rate blunder through gambling it secure. so continually be searching for such issues, particularly in remarks from the neighborhood markets where the translations are getting used, and consider approaches in which you could edit greater successfully earlier than translation.

2. increase translation relevancy (and engagement)
any other way this pre-localization modifying step may be used for your advantage is to boom the textual content’s relevance on your target market. in case your source content material contains plenty of references to conditions that the reader may have a hard time figuring out with, you may do considered one of 3 things—edit out that component, update it with some thing that is identifiable, or reframe it in a new context.
three. lessen textual content period and translation cost
relying at the sort of content you are having translated, you could use pre-localization enhancing as an possibility to keep a few cash. or, perhaps more crucially, as a manner to reduce textual content length in order that the translation suits inside a sure format.

an unavoidable fact is that text translated from english into any other language tends to come to be longer. based by myself enjoy, some customers pass as a long way as to require that english supply textual content be within 70% of the maximum allowable individual remember for his or her websites, to absorb the predicted “enlargement” whilst localized. take a look at out this newsletter through the world wide internet consortium (w3c) for a few exquisite insight in this trouble.

for blog posts, in which there are not any obvious textual content length limitations, the most not unusual period is round 500-600 words. many pick this period for seo issues, but according to hubspot, in case your blog post can serve its purpose in 2 hundred words, that’s nice too. obviously a shorter piece of content is in all likelihood to be easier and quicker to translate, not to mention inexpensive. however make certain no longer to head overboard with the trimming process as you can land up with a bland and dead supply textual content—without difficulty translated, however read by means of nobody.

additionally, in case your supply has key phrases that have been painstakingly researched for your house market, certainly translating them into the goal language will no longer get you the traction you assume. be sure to investigate (or have a accomplice research) an appropriate keywords to your goal marketplace and put in force them into the translation services. contain them as a part of your tm (translation memory), glossary, or as remarks for your source textual content.