Translations are pillars of your corporate identity!
Whether you focus on Belgium or you export, your company has to use multiple languages for communication, and that means you have to get your website, documents, catalogues and other texts translated. Opting for professional translations should be at the heart of your business strategy.
By its very nature, a translation reflects the identity of your business or organisation. To convey a good brand image, translations must be of a high quality, whatever the language.
Make a good first impression
Who has never experienced the annoyance of reading a dubious translation? It’s irritating, and suggests a lack of professionalism on the part of the company behind the texts. What’s worse, it may be confusing and misleading.
The possibility of making a good first impression, which is crucial to creating a strong corporate identity, has been well and truly missed. To really hit the mark, a translation shouldn’t obviously be a translation.
Translation and brand image
Translation quality therefore needs to be part and parcel of your company’s identity, marketing and commercial strategy.
Translations must both reflect your company’s linguistic and cultural identity and meet the target audience’s expectations concerning that identity . They must support multilingual communication in a way that is acceptable to both author and reader.
It therefore makes sense to take the location and market of your target audience into account, and this means it is essential to use translators from the targeted countries or regions.
Obviously, then, it follows that entrusting your translations to an offshore translation agency charging prices which are improbably low for Belgium, or relying on an online automated translation service such as Google Translate, is not a good idea for looking after your identity.
Inspiring confidence with the right choice of vocabulary and tone
A translation that reflects your identity will also need to use the vocabulary, turns of phrase and tone that are appropriate to your trade, sector and market.
Consistent use of the semantic field specific to your business helps to ensure coherence and build trust.
This is why working with a dedicated translation agency has advantages. By making regular use of translators who are competent in the subject area – technical, commercial, medical, legal, IT, cultural, etc. – the agency will be able to gradually build up a translation memory specific to your organisation.
Benefiting from the partnership
Finally, a professional translator will save you time and money, because he or she will seek to understand your aims and work accordingly. In addition, the translator will offer an outsider’s perspective on your texts and be able to point out any inconsistencies that could undermine your image.
The quality translations he or she will provide will relieve you of the sometimes tedious work of checking each text, leaving you free to focus on enhancing your organisation’s image.