The question is how to make the most of the global reach efforts and how to do it right?

First, if your site is English only you should check the competition and consider expanding to other languages. If you are already targeting global customers please consider the following:

1. Use professional human translation service only to translate your content. Do not use Google Translate or any other machine translation. The last thing customers want is to spend their money at a site that is not properly translated to their language.
   To illustrate the risk in using machine translation, try translating any financial newspaper headline from English to any language, e.g. Japanese or Chinese and back.
2. Provide native language customer support – make sure you provide native language customer support. One of the most efficient ways to do that is to provide multi-language email support using fast professional translation service (like One Hour Translation
3. SEO – translating your existing content can also assist your SEO efforts. First, it does not require creation of new content, 2nd there is much less SEO competition in foreign languages for both paid and unpaid for keywords. So SEO efforts in other languages are much more efficient.
4. SEM – there is also less advertising in languages other than English, so the cost per click is lower and your ads can appear in better places.
5. A possible higher CTR for foreign-language keywords, leading to higher Quality Score for those words.
6. Better chance of creating a ‘buzz’ around your product: many products and brands become hits with only one demographic with specific cultural characteristics.
   Orkut, Google’s social network, can serve as an example: it became successful only in Brazil, thanks to its well localized version.
7. Get in line with the competition. Many SMBs have multi-lingual site without one you are in disadvantage.

Do you think there are more advantages I didn’t think of? I will appreciate you feedback.

Translation to more than 50 languages is performed thanks to a community of over 8000 certified translators from all over the world.

One Hour Translation created a unique platform that enables customers to get quality human translations by certified translators in a very efficient and affordable way.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsOlPLmuQlc

With that said, these ideals are often at odds with each other. Ergo, a seventeenth-century French critic once humorously observed that translations, like women, could either be beautiful and faithful, but never both simultaneously. In other words, a translation could have more fidelity and less transparency or vice-versa, but never both at equally high amounts. More to the point, as many a translation service agency or professional translation company knows, fidelity refers to the faithfulness of the translation to the source text, while transparency refers to the comprehensibility of the translation in terms of the target audience’s cultural perspective.

In-Depth Definition

Fidelity refers to the limits to which a given human translation work precisely depicts the underlying message or meaning of the source text without distorting it, without intensifying or weakening any part of its context, and otherwise without subtracting or adding to it at all. Transliteration a la with machine translation comes closest to this school of thought, with the caveat that it usually fails to properly convey the message because of its rigid faithfulness to the original document.

Meanwhile, transparency pertains to the degree to which a translation caters to native speakers and the target audience, such that idiomatic, syntactic, and grammatical conventions are followed while cultural, political, and social context is kept in mind at all times. Adaptation and localization comes closest to this school of thought, with the caveat that a bit of sacrifice in terms of the intended message will inevitably happen whenever translators use this approach in their translation.

Translations that have high fidelity are classified as “faithful” translations; in turn, translations that meet the second standard are referred to as “idiomatic” translations. Then again, the two ideals aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive from each other;   keeping the context intact, for example, can be seen in both a high-fidelity translation and a high-transparency translation. A veritable multitude of paradigms and measures could also be used to review the faithfulness of a given translation, such as social or historical context, its literary qualities, function and use of the text, the type, the precision of the original contents, and the subject.

Even though their power of influencing communication between an audience and an author can be abused or misused at times, these practices are still too useful to be abandoned. What’s more, whenever human translation is properly done by a competent professional translation agency or freelance translation service provider, it results in an effective exchange of ideas that’s appreciated by different audiences around the whole world. Just like with rewriting, translators have the power to introduce the source text to a wider audience by taking advantage of their extensive knowledge of the language, localities, culture, and so on of the target audience.

The Linguistic Translation Process

In many ways, the translation process is comparable to the rewriting process, such that you need to use the language (or, in the case of translation, two or more languages) to adapt the meaning of the source text into the end product. Moreover, translators have the linguistic power to help enrich or preserve the target literature and society by furthering respect, understanding, and trust between the various ideologies, cultures, and languages throughout the world.

Additionally, these professional translation experts serve a valuable role in bridging the gaps between nations as they enhance humanity’s identification with global citizenry. With that said, here are the following linguistic translation methods that these language rewriters could use in order to communicate the meaning of a given text from one tongue to another:

• Intralingual: This linguistic method involves commentary, expansion, summarization, paraphrasing, and rewording of text. Transliteration and rewriting is most associated with this approach.
• Interlingual: This method shifts meaning from one language to another, which is the traditional concept when it comes to handling the source or original text and the translated or target text when it comes to translation.

Intersemiotic: Altering or communicating the meaning of a written text into a different form, such as dance, art, film, digital media, and so on; in other words, this is a type of translation that goes well beyond any given language.

Theoretically speaking, functionalist approaches in human translation help quite a lot in liberating translators from the bonds of the source text and its author by transferring the attention from moral norms to social norms. However, translators much practice caution in avoiding the abuse of this functionalist ideology so that they won’t be enslaved by and forced to abide blindly to the dominant social norms (otherwise known as cultural context and socio-political understanding). Blind compliance with dominant social norms is just as bad as too much concentration on moral norms because the shift was intended mostly to balance the two principles.

Domesticating strategies—otherwise known as localization techniques—aren’t bad in and of themselves as long as context is maintained. However, a translator is definitely crossing the line when he becomes too compliant to the culture of the intended audience, to the point where he could be abandoning the context of his translation altogether (which can be considered as a major breach in moral norms, because any deviation in translating a source text is considered “immoral” by those advocating faithful translations). Although useful, the functionalist approach and domesticating strategies are admittedly limited when it comes to achieving the perfect balance between faithfulness and adaptation.

Sure, the typical output that the functionalist approach produces is more often than not acceptable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a particularly successful attempt. To be more specific, that method concentrates mostly on safeguarding the interests and meeting the expectations of the target audience, so of course the context, meaning, and intentions of the source text will be discarded or ignored more often than not. As such, in order to satisfy the makers of the text and their potential new audiences from all across the globe, violating the norms (which may be either social or moral) is actually required.

Therefore, a consequential ideology when it comes to translation is a must because it discards translation morality and sociology and focuses more on the consequences of a translator’s output. This way, the translator will be able to avoid all the usual faux pas, blunders, and errors translations commit by keeping in mind the result instead of the processes. The objective message of the translator himself is of the utmost importance in this methodology.

With that said, it’s imperative that both professional translation and freelance translation service handlers know the actual rules in order to not make erroneous decisions based on presumptions and conjectures. A lot of the standards and regulations outlined below govern the work of professional translators regardless if they’re aware of them or not. Then again, these are merely guidelines and recommendations that ensure the best work possible, so translators must treat them as such.

• Competent translators must submit work in accordance to the best of their skills and talents while also considering the available time and other such limitations.
• When in doubt, a competent translator will always consult the client for clarification.
• When in doubt, a competent translator must do his best to use only the most authentic and reliable of resources such as previous translations, dictionaries, and other similar work that has already been checked for quality.
• When in doubt, a competent translator must cooperate with a better (native) speaker or expert (provided by the client himself, if possible) in order to solve his present translation dilemma.
• When facing a strict deadline, a competent translator must split up his work with another translator in order to comply with the designated delivery times without the need for compromise on his company’s part.
• A competent translator observes the needed consistency over market players, over time, across the client or document, and so on in order to produce high-quality and standardized output.
• A competent translator will always keep context in focus regardless if the client wants a localized work or a translation that’s a bit more faithful to the source text.

Aside from the above recommendations, there’s one particularly important factor you can keep in mind in order to not fall into the common assumptions trap that victimize even the best human translation experts out there. As a rule of thumb, context must always be maintained in your translation at all times. Context is defined from collocations to real-life experience characterized by established top-level categories or abstractions. It’s crucial for a translator to emphasize in his mind that translations are context-sensitive; that way, he’ll be able to avoid faux pas and double entendres as well as get rid of ambiguities that muddle the overall message of his work.

Translation has become very important for small business that are trying to increase their client database and attempting to get a foothold in the industry. The reason behind the importance of translators in the small business industry is due to reason that to get noticed by the global customers and compete in the market where the price margins are very close you need to reach out to more number of people then your competitors. If your competitors are able to sell their products to customers comprehending a foreign language only then you must translate your business profile on the internet in that particular language to gather their attention. Otherwise, your competitors will grab a foothold in that particular market without facing any kind of competition from you and you will probably loose out on a huge client database.

Apart from the internet, other forms of written media too have become important part of advertising in the modern world. The principle objective remains the same for the small businesses; it is the effort to reach out to a more diverse customer database by approaching the clients in their local dialect. Big brands are quite well known and sometimes only the logo of the company works wonders and they do not have to regionalize their advertisements for the general masses. However, for small businesses it is important that they reach out to more and more and customers by informing them about their products and about their organizations themselves. This is possible only if the small businesses advertise their product in the local dialect.

Translation services have thus become very important for the small businesses. The application of these translations has been more on the online advertising system than anywhere else. Finding the proper translator having profound knowledge about not only the local language, but also about the product that you are selling is very difficult to find. However, since the importance of such translations became evident, more and more persons have opted for a career in this field as translators who have gained expertise in promoting small business on the internet in the local dialect.

Small business websites today offer the option of multilingual interface. You will find that many such small business websites today offer many international languages as options on their websites so that customers do not have to face problems while trying to place their orders or understanding the product and organization description. With more and more small businesses are opting for advertising their product on the internet in multilingual formats the scope of translators working on the internet and other media formats for these small businesses is surely going to flourish.

It is especially applicable to advertising and marketing business. International marketers involved in global advertising, localization or brand building are likely to be familiar with the term ‘transcreation’ Transcreation does not imply recreating a whole new advertising campaign in one or more languages or geographic regions. The original concept shall remain but it shall be reworded in the target language taking care of the cultural nuances. The idea is to create the same impact on the intended audience as the original ad campaign.

Transcreation reduces the time taken to create new advertising campaigns in different languages by retaining the original concept or idea. You don’t need to invent new idea while doing transcreation. Mere word by word translation of advertising campaigns may not resonate well with the intended audience. This is where transcreation comes in. Transcreation implies such ideas like creative, bold and original rather than accuracy, faithful etc. which are more appropriate for translation.

A transcreator must have thorough knowledge of the source language in which a campaign has been created and understand the ‘message’ that it is aiming to convey. The purpose of transcreation is not just conveying the meaning of the original campaign but to produce the same ‘reaction’ of the audience as the campaign in the source language in the target language. Not only should the transcreator have high proficiency in the target and source languages but also thorough understanding of the respective cultures.

A transcreator must also be very creative as he has to connect with the audience with their feelings and transmit the message at subliminal level. The advertising may be for the TV, print or radio media but the purpose of transcreation is the same i.e. content adaptation. Transcreated content must reflect local culture to have maximum impact. Transcreation is not so much applicable to legal or technical translation where the stress is on accuracy as compared to advertising or marketing business where creativity matters more.

Thus a transcreator needs to have in depth knowledge about the cultures, be creative etc. in addition language proficiency like a translator. He/she must also have experience in running ad campaigns.

The basic difference between translation and interpretation is that the former is a written task while the latter is an oral task. Translation involves changing a written text from a source language to a target language. Interpretation involves listening to a speech or conversation in a source language and orally convert it into a target language.

The difference between translation and interpretation may look subtle but actually the skills required are quite different. While a translator has to be good writer, interpreters need to be skilled in oral communication. The spoken language can be quite different from written language with slang etc. which adds to the complexity. Translators generally work alone in doing their job while interpreters work with two or more people depending on whether it is a head to head meeting or conference, seminar etc.

The common types of translation are human translation, machine translation, machine assisted translation, screen translation (making subtitles of movies etc.) etc. Interpretation is mainly of 2 types: consecutive interpretation which is performed in head to head meetings in both directions and simultaneous interpretation in which a speech is simultaneously interpreted in a target language like a meeting in U.N. in a single direction.

Interpretation is done in real time while translation is offline. Interpreters have the choice of consulting the speaker for more clarity if required while a translator has no such luxury. Translators usually sit alone in their chambers, ruminate over the material to be translated, consult thesaurus or dictionaries while doing their job. Rarely there is opportunity for the translator to interact with the original writer before translating. Thus translation is an inorganic process while interpretation is more organic with scope for consultation with the speaker.

Translations are often delivered as a single product meaning thereby the order is unimportant i.e. you can do the end first before the beginning. Also the time pressure in translation is less compared to interpretation. Interpreters do not have that luxury and are under intense time pressure to deliver the job in real time. Translators can revise their work and fine tune and polish it before delivery which is not possible in interpretation. Interpretation is more about catching the essence or meat of the speech while translators can afford to focus on the nuances or subtle differences while executing their job.

Thus the experience that a translator and an interpreter undergo while doing their job is vastly different as also the skills required.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsOlPLmuQlc