In today’s society, with its instant global networking, communication is more important than ever. Unfortunately though, we aren’t all multilingual, and, to be honest, some languages are pretty tricky to learn!
However, communication between people from different countries is becoming increasing essential; whether you are holidaying abroad, conducting business meetings overseas, or simply expanding your network of friends online, you are likely to need at least a few basic words to get your point across.
Overcoming the language barrier has become critical to conducting the lifestyles we lead today. Governments, businesses and individuals are all trying to find solutions to their communication issues in order to live, travel and work within increasingly multi-cultural societies.
Language training is a fast growing industry with business leaders often motivating in this growth. Building strong foundations for relationships, either business or personal, requires communication with people from other cultures and a grasp of their language is essential.
Within the business world, translation is key to understanding, marketing and ultimately, success. Translation services for business need to be accurate; getting it right can promote prosperity, while getting it wrong, can leave a lasting bad impression that is difficult to overcome.
Mistakes in translation, especially when made by multi-national companies, are more frequent than you’d think and their legacy is long remembered.
Here are a few you might have missed:
• Ikea made a workbench called “Fartfull”. Eventually they changed the name!
• Clairol launched a hair curling iron called “Mist Stick”. Mist in German means manure!
• “Irish Mist” an alcoholic drink, didn’t go down to well in Germany either…
• The Japanese “homo soap” was the latest thing in hygiene!
• “Coolpis”, an unappetising fruit juice, is another inappropriate Japanese translation
• “Germ bread” and “Shito Mix” are two more examples of Japanese localisations gone wrong
From the above examples it is easy to see the importance of an accurate, and appropriate, translation within the realms of business.
Translations must take account of culture, regionalisms, colloquialisms and idioms. Localisation and translation can work effectively for your business if they are correctly applied, but they can also work against your product, business or branding if it goes wrong.
Global communication, and therefore, translation and localisation are an integral part of a growing world economy, use them wisely and extensively to get the most from your business.
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