Internationalisation has become a crucial factor in determining the survival and success of brands all over the world. Brands are investing vast resources into their marketing and advertising campaigns aimed at either launching or strengthening their presence in the global arena.
When marketing to international customers, companies must ensure that their core values and identity are maintained and, most importantly, conveyed through their global marketing and advertising.
It is pivotal for brands to recognise that their local and global presences must be intertwined to be able to flourish internationally. Indeed, brands that ignore the link between these two factors end up either losing their main identity or failing to launch on a wider scale.
That is why it is necessary for brands aiming to conquer the global market to adopt strategies which are aware of the co-dependency between local identity and international ambition as a key factor for growth and success.
Each company develops its own processes to achieve international recognition but, linguistically, there are three main strategies that can be applied to reach a global audience efficiently and effectively:
Translation
This is the most widely employed communication strategy to reach an international audience, which consists of being able to convey the same message from one language to another, respecting its structure, degree of formality, and overall style.
Some global companies have internal translation departments and most seek support from translation agencies. Translation becomes an essential tool when dealing with technical, financial, medical, and business content, as these areas require absolute fidelity to the source text.
Localisation
The process of localisation consists of being able to adapt a source language message not only into another but, most importantly, to a specific culture and audience.
This internationalisation strategy is mostly employed in the creative as well as technical fields (videogames, mobile phone apps, websites, market research studies, etc.). The process of localisation is related to that of transcreation since both strategies have in common the same goal, that is, to entice the target audience towards a message or product employing market-specific cultural references.
Transcreation
This communication strategy is the result of a combination of translation, copy-writing, and creative writing. Transcreation is the process of adapting the transmission of a message from one language to another, not only in terms of style and level of formality but also in being able to evoke in its audience the same emotions conveyed in the source text.
This strategy is frequently employed when it comes to advertising, marketing, literary, and more creative texts (e.g., videogames, mobile phone apps, copies of advertisements, etc.). Though successfully adopted by consolidated global brands, this marketing technique is sometimes underestimated and ignored by those less experienced and newcomers to the global arena.
It goes without saying that each of the above-mentioned strategies can bring a brand to great success in the international field but, if not managed correctly, they can lead to marketing disasters.
To avoid failure, brands co-operate daily with translation agencies which offer them not only expertise in the translation industry but also cultural awareness and a tailored consultative approach which can benefit and enhance any international campaign.
Here at TOPPAN Digital Language, we aim to help make your business the next international leader. If you are looking for success in your global communication strategies, have a look at our translation, localisation, and transcreation services and send us your requests.