Branding Translation Services: Building Your Global Reputation

Branding Translation Services: Building Your Global Reputation

Branding translation services are an integral part of business expanse and appealing to a much wider demographic. Without it, potential key audiences won’t be able to understand your intended marketing message. This risks alienating them and in turn, dismisses what your brand has to offer.

With over 20 years of experience within the translation industry, at Absolute Translations, we can help your brand stand out from the crowd with precise translations that read exactly as intended in any language.

What Is Branding Translation?

From taglines, website content, marketing documentation, social media, to business cards, branding translation involves translating all marketing content associated with your brand, to appeal to the specific target audience. Branding translation services should always be carried out by a professional. This avoids any miscommunication and ensure that your original brand message resonates with your global audience accordingly.

What Can Be Translated?

When it comes to marketing abroad, branding translation is vital. Consequently, absolutely anything that is associated with your company should be translated by native-speaking experts, and where possible, those who actually have experience within the marketing industry.

Branding Translation Services: A Post-Pandemic Essential

As the world continues to return to a semblance of normality, it’s essential that businesses are doing all they can to cut through the noise and stand out above their competitors. Given the loss of business over the last 2 and a half years, companies are branching out in their marketing methods to create innovative campaigns that will gain them maximum exposure.

With innovative marketing should come inclusivity. You’d be surprised at just how many brands unintentionally ostracise large potential markets through lack of accurate translation. Ensuring you have all grounds covered and are able to appeal to as many possible customers as possible is a futureproof business necessity, post-pandemic.

The Importance of a Localised Translation

Unlike standard translation, localisation involves being aware of the specific target dialect. This includes cultural nuances and consumer preferences within copy. It’s imperative that your brand translator is a native speaker, who understands the language quirks and traditions of the language in question. This way, any branded copy will be relevant through effective and up to the minute localisation.

Utilising localised branding translation services enables you to build trust with your target audience, allowing you to build a credible reputation with future overseas counterparts. Any branded content can be localised. Like Absolute Translations, if this is something your translation provider offers, the opportunity should always be taken to bolster your brand image.

Credible Industry Professionals

When it comes to your marketing, it’s important to think about your multicultural reach at all times. Thinking about it from the very beginning ensures that it’s part of your internal streamlined processes. This will save you time and expenses in the long term and ensure you are a consistent front runner in the saturated business world.

Additionally, utilising branding translation services with experience within the marketing and PR industry sets you at even more of an advantage. Not only will the translator understand the exact translation but will be able to advise you on what content is currently relevant overseas and what messaging will resonate with your target audience.

Here at Absolute Translations, our team of translators are not only native speaking translators but are experts within their acquired field. Our translators have a minimum of 5 years’ experience within translation and their specialist field. Furthermore, they live and work across key locations to ensure we can offer localised translations within any time zone.

The Use of Transcreation in Brand Translation

Professional branding translation services should also utilise transcreation. This process works in tandem with translation and localisation, adapting a message from one language to another, whilst maintaining its intent, style, tone and context. Preserving your message in a new environment to reflect your brand and company ethos to local audience is key. It’s an important part of accurate branding translation.

For global marketing in particular, slogans and any product or service copy will need to be proofed by a transcreator before it can be released for mainstream distribution. This way, you can be 100% sure your brand message is culturally appropriate for your audience. 

Brand Marketing Fails

The anticipation of launching overseas can lead to rushed marketing efforts. As a result, an intricate campaign can sometimes get derailed by the tiniest of mistakes. Therefore, it’s important to utilise effective branding when introducing your brand internationally.

Here, our team have shared below four brands who learned they needed brand translations, localisation and transcreation the hard way:

Coca-Cola

In 1920, Coca-Cola was looking to introduce itself into the Chinese market. Without an official name in Mandarin, the drink was pronounced “ko-ka-ko-la” which actually meant ‘bite the wax tadpole’ when read. This was obviously far from what the brand represented and so, Coca-Cola created a new tagline for their drink. This new phrase translated to “to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice” which was much more fitting.

Electrolux

Not only is it important to check that your branding materials target language is correct, but you must check for slang and colloquial language too. Unfortunately, Scandinavian vacuum company, Electrolux, made this mistake when launching their new vacuum cleaner in the US during the 1960s. They used the slogan, “Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux” which hinted at the power of their cleaner’s suction. What they didn’t realise is that the term ‘sucks’ is often used by English speakers to show disappointment. Therefore, it sounded like Electrolux were knocking down their own product!

Parker Pens

The luxury ballpoint pen brand, Parker Pens, launched their brand in Mexico. They touted the slogan, “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you!”. You may be thinking what’s wrong with that? Well, when translated into Spanish, the slogan was “No te embarazará chorreándose en tu bolsillo,” which meant ‘it won’t leak and get you pregnant’. While it was slightly embarrassing for Parker Pens, the advertisement definitely led to increased awareness for the brand in Mexico.

For more brand marketing fails from over the years, this recent BBC article outlines other examples.

Our Branding Translation Services

If your business looking for brand translation services to take care of their overseas marketing, we’d love to help you. At Absolute Translations, our team are industry professionals, who can translate in over 200 languages between them!

If you’d like to find out exactly what we can offer you, get in touch with our team today! Alternatively, you can call us on 0333 577 0767, or e-mail at main@absolutetranslations.com.

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