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Adding Value to Your Audience’s Life via Translation
When you’re translating a document, you want to keep two things in mind: what was said in the original document and who’s going to be reading it. Preserving the meaning which was intended by the writer of the document is important but so is the audience which will be reading the document. Although you don’t want to change the meaning of the document altogether, you don’t want to come up with something dull and boring which no one will want to read.
Appealing to Customers
Keeping the audience in mind is very important when you’re trying to attract a wide audience. This occurs in website translation, the translation of an advertisement, the translation of books which will be sold in different countries etc.
Appealing to Employees
There are certain documents which only very few people are going to want to read, such as business letters, memos, emails etc. If a document is not going to go outside the company, then it’s going to have a smaller audience. Still, it’s a good idea to keep the audience in mind if you want the document to have the desired effect.
How Are You Adding Value to Your Audience’s Lives?
The tone of the document is very important when you want your audience to make a change in the way that they’re doing things. In the case of customers, you want to change their behavior by getting them to buy your product. So you have to show them how doing so will add value to their lives. In the case of people within the company, you might need to give them instructions or get them to change their procedures. Either way, you need to convey how the course of action you’re suggesting will add value to their lives as well.
To show someone how doing something will benefit them is the only way to convince them that they should do it. And this is why the wording of your document and its accurate translation are both so important.
Questions to Ask Before Approaching Translation
So here are a few questions to ask yourself about your target audience before approaching the task of translation. If you’re working with a translation company, be sure to tell them the answers to these questions.
– What age group do they belong to? Are they teens? Young professionals? Retirees?
– What country or culture do they come from? Are they American? French? Hispanic?
– What specific region do they live in? Costa Rica? Columbia? Peru? Argentina?
– What do they value? Money? Family? Fame? Success?
– What is their level of education? None? Grade School? College Graduate?
– Why should they do what you’re suggesting they should do?
Contact us for more great tips to help keep your audience in mind when translating a document.
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:19:28.002Z):
Why Translation Services Are More Important for Short Translations
You might think that formal translation services are only required for large, intricate works like novels, collections of short stories and other full-length books. Why would you require a translator for something much shorter like a slogan, a business letter or a blog post? Isn’t it possible to just get someone who understands a smattering of the destination language to do this? Do you really need a professional translator?
Shorter Translations Are Harder
It might surprise you to learn that sometimes, it’s actually harder to translate something shorter and this is why a professional translator is needed. The reason why it’s harder to translate something short is that you have to be very precise. You don’t have the luxury of using many words in order to convey something.
Reading a Novel vs. Reading a Slogan
When you read a novel, sometimes, your eyes glaze over a few words. But then, you move on to the next and you’re still able to follow the story. The fact that you missed out on a sentence or a paragraph isn’t that significant.
But if you miss out on a company’s slogan, there aren’t going to be any other words to tell you what that company is about. This is the reason why most companies have their slogan printed up front and center on everything that bears their name—from ball point pens to billboards with advertisements. Those few words, usually numbering from 3 to 5, encapsulate everything that the company is trying to say.
For example, let’s take the Nike slogan, “Just do it.” This has so much more punch than saying, “Why don’t you just do it?” or “Don’t you think you should do it?”
Translation Services for Short Translations
So it’s harder to convey something in few words rather than more words. And this is the reason why you should get a professional translator who understands the nuances of words to translate slogans, business letters, advertisements etc. There may not be many words in these materials to translate but that is exactly the reason why a professional is needed.
Remember that you’re not going to have a do-over as far as slogans and branding are concerned. Once the public starts associating your company name with a certain slogan, it tends to stick. So contact us to make sure that you get your slogan right the first time around.
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:19:15.347Z):
Considering Tone, Style and Audience in Website Translation Services
You may think that website translation services aren’t really all that different from other types of translation services. But the fact is that each medium has its own specifications. Writing for newspapers is different from writing for magazines. And writing for the internet is different from writing for print. This is why it’s necessary for someone translating websites to understand how one writes for this medium. Here are some of the things a website translator needs to consider:
Conversational Tone
When you write for the internet, you have to adopt a conversational tone. Most people who are browsing the internet don’t want to read something full of jargon. They want something simple and easy to digest. So when a translator is translating a website, they need to make sure that it sounds conversational in the destination language, just as it does in the source language.
Short Sentences and Paragraphs
A part of the conversational tone mentioned above is that sentences can’t be too long. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use complex sentences at all but just that the sentences shouldn’t go above two clauses. If your sentence is 4-5 lines long, then it’s too long.
The same goes for paragraphs. Some people prefer really short paragraphs consisting of only 2-3 sentences. Even if you don’t go this short, you do still need to keep them to 5-6 lines. A 10-line paragraph comes across as too dense for someone to read on the internet.
This is something a translator needs to keep in mind. Sometimes, you need more words to translate something that you did to write it originally, in which case it’s best if the writing is split up into more paragraphs.
Audience/Demographic
The audience that one is writing for is important in any kind of writing. If you’re writing for teens, you might use slang that they are familiar with. In this case, the translator will have to come up with equivalent words in the destination language. The same goes for technical translation aimed at a certain specialized group of people.
Contact us for more tips on website translation services.
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:19:09.654Z):
Translation Services Help You Deal With Hard-to-Translate Languages (Part 2)
Welcome back to the second half of our two-part article on the hard languages to translate and how a translation service can help. Last time we talked about languages that are hard to translate vs languages that are hard to find translators for along with a few statistics. Let’s start back up at difficult languages for translators to learn.
Hard Languages to Translate
It is within any professional translation service’s best interests to collect translators that know a wide variety of languages. Assuming that you’re starting from English (which is hard enough to learn for non-natives), One vendor rates Mandarin Chinese as the top most difficult to learn, while another makes an equally strong case for Hindi. Both languages are spoken by many millions of people, have grown in complexity over their long existences, and have incredibly non-roman character sets. Following these two leaders are Japanese, Korean, and Arabic, each with their own character set and complex special requirements. In the small but difficult category comes Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Navajo, and Finnish.
What Make a Language Hard To Learn / Translate?
The more difficult a language is to learn, it generally stands that it is also more difficult to translate. The way we speak (and write) to a certain extent shapes and is shaped by the way we think, meaning that it is also more challenging to translate the same concept between two very different languages. Not to mention complex conjugation forms. Learning Japanese, for instance, requires the knowledge of three separate writing systems with individual alphabets. Iceland, on the other hand, tries to be a unified language but has become a mix of archaic traditional phrases and newly invented words based on the root language. Korean and Basque share the unique markers of not apparently having been derived from any other language, meaning that translators who like to work within a linguistic family are out of luck.
Whether your projects needs to be translated into one locally unusual and difficult to learn language or if you need a variety of translations for multiple international markets, a professional translation service is your best bet. They are the most likely to have a collection of skilled translators from various regions and linguistic capabilities to help you get exactly the translation your project needs. For more tips and information about working with a professional translation service, contact us today!
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:19:02.091Z):
Translation Services Help You Deal With Hard-to-Translate Languages (Part 1)
In the world of translation and interpreting not all languages are treated equally. The ability to translate between any two languages takes a fair depth of knowledge and contextual understanding, meaning that languages that are difficult to learn are also more difficult to source translations for because it’s not easy for translators to add them to their multi-lingual rosters. Then, of course, some languages simply have more translators available for them than others, making it easier to source translation to or from these languages. English, for instance, is popular worldwide and English-to-Spanish is one of the most commonly requested translation events. However, you will be pretty hard-pressed to find a single translator willing and able to tackle a Korean-to-Hindi translation, or more than a handful even familiar with Icelandic.
Hard Languages To Source
When it comes to sourcing high-quality translations, Google Translate just isn’t an option. You need someone who knows not only the interplay of syntax and grammar, but understands cultural nuances. Especially when it comes to business and contract translation, accuracy and clarity of meaning is a key part of the service. For this reason, you would expect native-speaking population size to play a large part in determining the availability of translator services.
However, a recent survey, recently asked it’s 140 survey responders to rate which languages they had experienced the most trouble sourcing, and the results are not what you might think! French comes in first as the top most difficult language to get an excellent translation for at 15%, shortly followed by Japanese and Arabic. At around 10% comes Korean and German, followed by Portuguese and Chinese.
These days, if you need a high-quality translation in any but the most common second languages in your region, you’ll need to deal with real professionals. The more difficult a language is to translate, the harder time you will have to get a good translation. Join us next time and we’ll talk about what makes these languages difficult and how a professional translation service can help you with as many language translations as you need. For more information about translation services, contact us today!
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:18:58.111Z):
MICA: The Four Cornerstones Of Translation
If the simple translation of a group of words into another language was all that’s required, any bilingual person could do it. In fact, computers do it all the time, simply exchanging words or phrases in one language for similar words and phrases in another. Of course that’s not nearly enough.
In any type of translation, no matter how large or small, four major criteria must be considered and satisfied: Mood, Intent, Context, and Accuracy. All are equally important in development of the translated document. If you are in the process of choosing a translation service for your document(s), be sure:
- they are thoroughly professional
- they have an enviable reputation
- their translations are built on these four essentials.
Intent answers the question “What is this piece supposed to accomplish?” Every document, no matter what the final form will be – appellate brief, sales manual, television commercial, email, or some other communications tool – is written with a purpose. This purpose must be understood and explicitly conveyed in the translated document in such a way that it has the intended effect on the reader or audience.
Every document is also written in a certain Mood – using words and phrases that convey a feeling appropriate to its intended audience. An appellate brief, for example, whose intended audience is a judge or other member of the legal profession, uses formal language and structure. An installation manual uses the simplest and most direct possible language and form. An advertisement or other marketing tool might use humor to make a point. The correct mood engages the reader or viewer, keeps their interest, and gives them confidence in the author. It must be retained in the translated document.
Any well thought out document is also aware of the Context in which the document will appear: the type of audience for whom it is being written, and the environment in which they will receive it. For example, the recipient may have been exposed to other messages relevant to the topic. A variety of external elements tangential to the subject may also be influential and must be considered. Context, therefore, requires an intimate knowledge of the audience or recipient. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to retain the Mood of the original document.
Accuracy, of course, is essential. There must be no typographical errors or grammatical improprieties. Just as important, words and phrases must be translated accurately so that the author’s exact meaning is apparent, and the subtleties of the original language – the author’s shades of meaning – come through.
Mood, Intent, Context, and Accuracy. These are the cornerstones you – or your translation service – must use to build a translation that accomplishes all the objectives of the original document. For more insight, or to find out more about our services, please contact us.
AI Search Summary (Updated: 2026-04-02T15:18:54.031Z):