A few years ago in China, in a meeting between emissaries from the California winery Kendall-Jackson and Chinese restaurateurs, the Kendall-Jackson representative poured a glass of pinot noir and went on to describe the wine as having hints of strawberry flavour. He was met with blank stares. Strawberries are not common in China, and no one in his audience had ever tasted the fruit. The company went back to the drawing board to adapt its descriptors for the Chinese palate.
This is just one of a myriad of missteps that companies can make when they troll international markets for customers. But as North American companies attempt to expand their global reach, many are realizing that it is not only important to translate corporate websites into other languages, but also to adapt them to other cultures. Some marketing strategies do not even exist in other cultures.
Take the commonly used American term 'open house'; for example. Many people from other countries simply don't understand what this concept is. Business etiquette also varies among cultures, and these differences are sometimes reflected in web content. For example, North American culture is one of the most casual cultures in the world. Here, it is common to address a customer or a colleague by his or her first name; in China, it is considered rude and, in business settings, it is most common to address others by their full names. When an executive recruiting firm translated its website into Chinese, it did not know this and set up the wrong email auto responders. The problem was only discovered and fixed after a much-needed cultural audit.
Website designers must be wary of inadvertently offending the very audiences they intend to target. What works well for a North American audience might backfire in other markets. A Dell computer website recently included images of people placing their thumbs and forefingers together in what is the American symbol for 'O.K: or 'good: But in some countries, such as Brazil, this is an obscene gesture. It is also important to vet a website's images to make sure that Caucasians aren't featured to the exclusion of other races and ethnic groups. While it's a good idea to audit website images for cultural appropriateness, it is even better to customize images for each market.
Sometimes, an English website must be adjusted to accommodate post-translation text expansion and contraction. European languages like French, German, and Spanish can take up to 30% more space than English.
Double-byte languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean will occupy less space than English text. Web designers should always take these factors into consideration when composing content, setting table properties and creating textual graphics.
Online translation tools such as Google Translate and Babelfish can be suitable for getting a quick gist of something in one's personal life, such as a letter from a distant cousin. But it should never be relied upon for translating marketing material or professional web content.
One of the best known 'success' stories of machine translation is the Metea system. For nearly 30 years, the Metea system has been translating Canada's weather bulletins between English and French.
Metea works because its vocabulary has been edited to be free of ambiguities. For example, the dictionary definition for the word 'front' has many meanings. But in the world of Meteo lingo, 'front' always means a weather system.
Although machine translation was serviceable for the Meteo system, it can be quite ineffective in non-weather related contexts. Marketers often write with colourful words and expressions such as 'we cut the red tape out of the process: or cultural references such as 'our sales team hit a home run~ Machines cannot think like humans and cannot make the word choices that humans can, so to expect machine translation to produce marketing copy that appeals to international customers is unrealistic.
Launching a website is like opening a store at the North Pole. Nobody knows it exists unless someone actively promotes it. Studies have shown that visibility on search engines is one of the best ways to promote online content. But if translators have no search engine marketing knowledge, they can easily take a state-of-the-art search campaign back to the dark ages.
In search engine marketing, it is extremely important to understand the keywords that your target customers will use. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! publish their search data so that marketers can look up how users search.
During the translation process, however, translators are often given free rein to select keywords. Often the word choices are made based on flow of text, technical accuracy and personal preferences. Very little consideration is given to what words target customers would use to search for the client's products and services. Translators may choose the most technically accurate phrases or even colourfully descriptive words and terms, but those phrases may be obscure and ones that are seldom used by searchers. When that happens, it greatly reduces a website's search engine-referred traffic.
For example, in Portuguese, 'Computador portatil' refers to a portable computer. A translator can translate it into English as a 'notebook computer' or a 'portable computer~ 80th are correct, but there is a big difference between the numbers of searches for each term. In May 2006, 952,839 searches were conducted for the term 'notebook computer: while only 50,198 for the term 'portable computer~ So it's important to check a translator's word choices against a keyword database. A good website translator must balance the desire to use flowery and descriptive marketing language with the need to use common search terms.
Consumers from different ethnic and national backgrounds may appreciate different products and services. German travellers tend to prefer back-country explorations and canoe trips, while the Japanese usually choose organized bus tours. Most people from Asia live in much more densely-populated areas and have rarely been exposed to the solitary travel style. Therefore, if someone is a tourism operator promoting travel packages online, although it is important to provide all travel offerings in both German and Japanese, the company would do well to consider what its target clientele is seeking and modify the offerings.
Shopping habits also vary among cultures. In North America, online purchases usually require credit cards. Residents of other countries are not as comfortable with this method of payment. Many Japanese consumers book hotel rooms online and run to the nearest 7-Eleven to make the payment. The Chinese tend to prefer cash-on-delivery. You have to know what payment arrangements your target audiences prefer and offer them for your online offerings.
A cultural audit is a process used to check the cultural appropriateness of a website's copy, images, sounds and usability.
Before the localization of a website begins, check the source-language copy for any analogies, jokes or colloquial expressions that are understandable only to the North American audience. Replace those with alternative wording that would make sense to an international audience.
Check sounds and images. They should not be negative connotations to the target culture. And check any forms and auto responders to make sure they follow local customs (e.g. in Japan, the address format is from general to specific, in the reverse order of North American addresses).
A cultural audit Is best conducted by a native-language speaker who is an experienced Internet user and familiar with cross-cultural communication issues. So when hiring a translation company, make sure that it employs people who are fluent in English as well as in the language of your website's target audience.
To build a successful international web presence, company decision-makers must stay open-minded and remember that what works in North America may not work elsewhere. In the words of management guru Peter Drucker, we must rid ourselves of our 'intellectual arrogance' and become true global Citizens.