Marketing Translation Mistakes: 5 Key Blunders that You Must Avoid

There can be a big cultural gap from one country to another where slogans, campaigns, and initiatives don’t resonate with the end-user.

As you know, English might be the most commonly spoken language globally, but it isn’t the only language. This means that you need to translate your marketing material to put a great impact on international customers.

Also, if you made any mistake during comprehensive market translation, it will be disastrous to your business and could result in the failure of the entire marketing campaign in the long run.

This blog, allows you to take note of the mistakes that may stop you from engaging with your target audience through accurate multilingual translation.

Key Marketing Translation Mistakes That You Should Not Ignore

Marketing translation is a very complex process than direct translation as you can’s just translate the words. There are certain mistakes that company makes by translating the marketing material on their own that changes the original meaning into a big blunder.

Let’s have a look at those extremely worst translation mistakes:

1- Adopting Direct Translation

Taking marketing material and converting the phrase simply into another language isn’t seem effective because the target language’s cultural context could be completely different.

Words often mean something else within different cultures; a few words may not be proper, whereas some terms or thoughts could be very offensive.

Above that, there may be a few words that don’t need a direct translation in the target language.

2- Misunderstanding of the Marketing Concepts

This type of translation is a quite creative and complex process that has to create a balance between your brand’s message and the local culture of the target audience. And then bring both of them together.

This is the reason many companies take the help of marketing translators who follow proven translation tips to get their message translated and just only the words.

They do this effectively because they strive to know whether your message actually makes sense to the target audience. If it doesn’t, they have to find a way to explicit it differently.

3- Poor Look and Feel of Your Content

With marketing translation, it’s not only the words that have to be considered but the practical implications as well. This means that translated words should fit well on the page.

Few languages utilize many words to express the same thing whereas others use quite less, which means whether it’s the layout of your adverts or brochures, it may have to be modified for the translated material.

Not just texts, images and colours used also require changes so that the marketing material performs well for the target audience.

For instance, in a few countries, several colours have huge significance, which may not be good for your brand.

4- Misleading Brand taglines and slogans

Marketing translation errors can happen with your taglines and slogans too when they don’t meet the required and essential translation quality standards.

Did you know?

HSBC Bank made the silly mistake of translating their campaign slogan of ‘Assume Nothing’ into different languages. This slogan, which they had been using for more than 5 years, was mistranslated to ‘Do Nothing’ in several territories. As a result, this translation error cost the bank around $10 million to rectify the problem.

This can happen to you too. Thus, hire a marketing translator who can efficiently translate the idea of the slogan rather than just words so that they can bring the same reaction as your original material.

5- Non Reviewing Your Material

Most translated marketing materials, regardless of how awe-inspiring they may be, might have some flaws. This may prove to be bad for your marketing results. Thus, they demand a thorough review process to avoid misunderstandings.

When an experienced human translator, specializing in value added multicultural marketing translation, translates the marketing stuff, he gives you more reassurance that the messaging is being culturally appropriate.

In Conclusion

The above-mentioned pointers highlight that besides embarrassing and expensive mistakes, marketing translation needs to be given more thought. Having not able to reach your consumers due to translation mistakes can hugely impact your brand.

If your in-house members are not capable of handling the translation of marketing material, consider hiring a professional translation vendor for this job.

Let’s help make your marketing content impactful in your desired language. Connect with us at +91-8527599523 or request an instant quote.