Can Marketers Act As Translators?

As someone responsible for the impact of messaging in new international markets, you might turn to like Google Translate to adopt your content, but truthfully, marketers are not translators, and you shouldn’t attempt to translate your marketing content yourself. There is a plethora of translation talent out there, especially in marketing networks. It’s worth reaching out on LinkedIn, or wherever you network resides, to find good people to translate and localize your content. You can also go through a language service provider (LSP) to find the right person for the job. But why shouldn’t you just do it yourself? Well, machine translation isn’t always accurate, and the result is often poorly translated messages or even worse– tone-deaf content that offends and turns off your audience.

At a minimum, you need to find a native speaker with an understanding of the nuances and local culture of your target audience. Also a marketing professional acting as a translator, especially if you’re not a speaker of the target language, is not scalable. From a quality perspective, it’s a huge risk, and the fact that you already have heaps of other tasks. You need to make it easy for yourself so that adapting content for new markets does not take over your all your other tasks. It will take some effort, and you need to have the commitment and resources necessary to do it right.

There is only one quiz on this one: True or false - Marketing professionals are the ones to take on the translation function. It’s false. It’s critical to avoid trying to do it yourself. You should get the right resources, and this approach is much more likely to result in seamless localized marketing content that will delight your new audience.