While we all have our own personal reasons to look forward to 2016, so does the translation industry, which grew at a rate of 6.46% last year. The biggest clients of translation agencies are now businesses that are looking for new ways to attract customers. No doubt these clients will impact on how the translation industry will be shaped over the coming year.
So, how will language translation services gain in 2016?
There are many ways translators have satisfied the needs of their business customers. One of the main ones is not just simple word-to-word translation but they have had to learn how to use business terms in the right way to suit the jargon of each individual business client.
This is the marketing terminology that a particular language and culture understands best and will respond to more readily. They build up a glossary of terms that can be referred to and use those terms over and over again. Now, this is more for slogans and other phrases and words that are included in paper marketing material such as flyers and leaflets and of course for Internet marketing too.
Oral translation on the rise in 2016?
This year it is expected the trend will move more towards business messages being translated on websites that are orally presented. It’s not uncommon these days to find live video presentations on websites describing and marketing a product normally in the language that the business operates in. This is sure to change as English speaking businesses move their marketing overseas.
Static images of products, well translated with the catch phrases related to the company’s products, are already the norm but not all companies yet have succeeded in loading video content in a specific language which contains all the cultural nuances that make it sound genuine. This is still an untapped opening for translation companies.
There is still room also in the less sophisticated subtitling and voice-over applications but companies will have to strictly recruit talent that genuinely plays the correct role, otherwise the technique won’t fit in seamlessly with the website and its product messages.
Localisation is going to be even more important in 2016
Localisation has still not been refined enough to make it sound truly authentic, as some businesses are still using bilingual staff to help them create website content without them really knowing the target language well enough to input the right slang and dialect to deliver the message.
Using machine translations that only basically translates text into another language is another obstacle a business will have to consolidate if it wants to provide an affective translated message. Experience has shown that a NAATI translator provides far better translations than even the most sophisticated machine translation.
Long tail language translation set to rise in 2016
The demand for long-tail language translation used to be almost non-existent but is now moving at a faster pace than most translation companies can keep up with. As people from all around the world, whether it’s from the nation of Madagascar where Malagasy is spoken, or a country like Eritrea where 50 percent of the population speak Tigrinya, there are openings to market products as long as the population can understand what the product is and what use it could have.
There are few countries today which don’t have access to the Internet and are listening with willing ears to any new product that they can afford and will brighten up their lives. Translation companies have to do their research and determine what long-tail languages will be most receptive to certain target customers in 2016 and ensure they have the skills to match this market.
