A Brief Guide to Using Translation to Build Your Network

Business owners and online marketers especially have good reasons to expand their networks beyond the comfort zone of their own native language. Those who run affiliate networks are in a similar position: there is an instant return on reaching foreign language speakers. So the need is clear. The remaining question is how best to localize your online content and messaging so that you can reach the business contacts and potential customers in their own languages, on a global scale. The answer may be found by considering the growing array of methods for translating your messages and online assets into multiple languages.

Into how many languages will you translate your content and messaging?

It’s important to distinguish the two main things you need to translate. First, you need to localize content which will attract the interest and attention of potential contacts and customers. Second, you need to manage two-way communication with your foreign-language-speaking counterpart. How best to get started?

Obviously, it’s possible to get by with a common second language. Many businesspeople and companies may settle for posting content and communicating in one of the common languages like English, Russian, or Spanish – even if this is not the first language of the target audience, or your own. This approach also requires a translation effort to produce content and communicate in that second language, but the burden is less onerous than translating for multiple languages.

Still, the ideal is to create a truly global multilingual website, and to gain access to the broadest possible array of relevant business counterparts, communicating with them in their preferred language, not their second or third choice. To be sure, you don’t need to translate all possible languages at once: you need to plan a localization strategy, often beginning with two or three languages, and then adding more. 

So here is a brief guide to getting started with a localization strategy that will help you add many more business contacts to your network, without forcing your new interlocutor out of their linguistic comfort zones. We’ll focus on three main ways to translate content and business messaging: localization and translation company, freelance translators, and machine translation.

The Easiest Way to Multilingual Communications: Hire a Translation Company

Translation companies are set up to provide a one-stop-shop for businesses seeking multilingual solutions. A translation company these days is most likely a business network itself, mediating between customers on one side and linguistic teams on the other. Typically the translation company’s management team are employees, while most of the translators, editors, and proofreaders are freelancers or part-timers engaged with the agency on a project or deliverable basis. 

Customers who don’t have an existing relationship for this purpose typically will do a web search for “translation company” or “localization agency” to describe their project and requirements, then select a vendor from those who respond to their query. You need to check your short list of respondents to ensure they support the language and content types you need, make sure to get a feel for the chemistry of working with that agency by asking some questions to see how helpfully they respond. Last but not least, you need to check rates. Typically, a translation company will have a cost per word for documents, a cost per web page, and a cost per minute for producing transcriptions of recordings from audio or video. Look out for project management fees as well.

The the big benefit of a translation company is that you get a wrap-around personal service that saves you time. You’ll be communicating your requirements to a dedicated account manager, who will manage the language-specific translating teams and the technical staff responsible for localizing your website, apps and other content. They’re also available for other content you need to translate on an ad hoc basis: messaging to and from foreign language counterparts in your expanding business networks.

Why work with freelancers for your translation projects?

There are hundreds of thousands of freelance translators on call to help you with your multilingual communications. Head to freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Freelancer.com, search for “translators” with your desired language, and choose from the results. Or post your job on the site and watch the bids roll in.

The big advantage of working with freelance translators is cost. Freelancer word rates are typically a fraction of those charged by a translation company. Rates vary according to the language pair, the freelancer’s native country, type of translation, and urgency of the job. Benefits also include a direct relationship with the linguist, without mediation of an account manager. But that places a heavier burden on your time and exposes you to more risk in case your translator gets sick, gets busy, takes a trip, or flakes out.  As insurance, it’s best to hire translators in pairs, one to check the work of the other and serve as backup.

Are there free apps which can build your network?

A decade ago, it would have been absurd to suggest that a software algorithm could outperform an expert translator. But now Artificial Intelligence machine translation is giving top linguists a run for their money. Experienced translators still outperform software for complex and creative translating tasks, but for structured content and casual conversations, tools like Google Translate and Microsoft Translator are adequate for your interlingual business conversations.

Be sure to check out features like voice interpretation and camera translation. The former lets you have fluent voice-to-voice conversations with foreign counterparts, while the latter lets you make sense of foreign languages appearing in images or in real. 

Just don’t rely on algorithms for published documents or online marketing. Instead of establishing rapport with foreign contacts, that risks leaving both sides lost in translation.