Marketing is a universe on its own. Once you’re in it, you realize you’ve just embarked yourself on an endless journey in which you’ll never stop learning.

Marketing translation is a term that has gained popularity in the last few years. It can refers to two different concepts:

  • Translating marketing materials.
  • Applying marketing to the translated texts to reach specific goals.

In this article, we’ll discuss the second concept and list 5 things you should know about this specialization.

What Is Marketing Translation

As we mentioned above, marketing translation is all about promoting and selling a product. It’s like copywriting, with the difference that the original copy is translated and then adapted to meet marketing goals.

Hiring a marketing translator or a Localization team can be beneficial to your company for many reasons. First of all, they can be strategic partners that help you reach your business goals and reach your target audience in a different country.

Entering a foreign market is challenging not only because of language barriers, but also because of cultural obstacles that can affect communication.

5 Things You Should Know About Marketing Translation

Are you planning to hire a marketing translation team? Let’s take a look at 5 points that will offer you a full picture of what it’s all about.

1. Marketing translators are marketers…

In order to translate important material to a different language -like marketing campaigns- understanding marketing is key. Besides their language skills, a translator needs to apply their marketing knowledge to create copy that converts. Translators have to use content marketing strategies in their texts to persuade the users and convince them to buy the product/service that is being promoted. It’s not just a matter of transferring ideas from one language to another.

2. ROI is king

ROI, or Return on Investment, is a formula that calculates how much revenue you got from content marketing.

If you’re thinking about requesting fast and cheap translation services, think again. Always make a decision with your ROI in mind. When you invest on good quality, you’re more likely to get good results.

Think about the consequences of hiring a translator who doesn’t know anything about sales.

3. SEO matters

Marketing translators always work with SEO in mind. The benefit of hiring an SEO translation specialist is that you get a text that’s already optimized in the other language.

Important reminder: Keyword translation is not a thing! The SEO optimization process must be carried out directly in the target language.

Why is that?

The fact that you’re ranking well for a specific keyword doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same result in the other language. Every market (and locale) is different and has its own search trends.

4. Keep an eye on character limits

This is an aspect we should always pay attention to. It can apply to metadata as well as website copy.

In the case of metadata, the number of characters must be limited for SEO reasons. Metatitles should have around 60 characters, while metadescriptions should have around 160 characters.

In the case of website copy, character limit is necessary to guarantee a quality user experience. Think about the CTA text, for example. CTA buttons must be concise, but effective enough to entice the user to act.

5. Marketing translation is culture-dependent

Understanding the cultural nuances is key for a successful campaign. There are concepts that work well in a given language because users can relate to what they are reading as it’s part of their culture.

In other cases, however, some concepts must be adapted in order to fit the target culture. It could be puns, slogans, plays on words, rhymes, taglines, etc. Undoubtely, this is one of the trickiest aspects of our job and requires a lot of previous research.

What could happen if you don’t keep cultural elements into account?

  1. Some users might feel offended because you’re unintentionally saying something that is rude in their culture and it’s not in yours.
  2. The tone of the text might be too neutral and distant.
  3. The users might be reluctant to buy because they can’t see the price in their currency.
  4. Wrong date format: if you’re launching a promotion on the 7th of June (06/07/2023) for your Spanish customers, remember to change the date to 07/06/2023 to avoid misunderstandings.

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