SMEs are branching out of home markets to stake new ground. We’ve invited Nicholas Goh, CEO of Verztec Consulting, to share and answer your questions on what companies should look out for as they translate their business content for local audiences.

As the world’s emerging markets progressively get connected to the Internet, companies are beginning to realise the value in reaching out to local users in foreign countries.

When Singaporean firm, Verztec started in 2000, it was a boutique Web development firm with just three people. It wasn’t till its first big break, a large-scale localisation project worth US$100,000, that it realised the demand overseas for local language content.

Today, Verztec has offices in seven locations around the world: Singapore, the US, UK, Japan, Thailand, China and Korea. It is, perhaps, no surprise that the majority of its offices is in Asia, given the nature of its work. It offers translation to more than 60 languages, and it supports a third of the Fortune 500 corporations in their efforts to market to the non-English speaking world.

We speak to founder and CEO, Nicholas Goh, about what SMEs can do to leverage the power of localisation when they branch out from Singapore to neighbouring markets.

What should SMEs consider when taking their first steps out of their domestic market?

First, they have to recognise and understand the purpose of the expansion. Is it to serve existing customers better overseas or to explore new markets so as to increase company revenue and market share?

Second, companies should identify their target customers, depending on which industry they are.

Ask yourselves:

a. Who are our potential customers in the target market and how can we reach out effectively to them?

b. Who are our major competitors in the target market and how can we differentiate from them?

c. What are some of the areas we may need to culturally adapt and customise in our business so as to gain faster and more effective traction in achieving our ROI (return of investments) for the target market?

What are some things SMEs should look out for as they localise for their audience? What are objectives they should focus on?

There are 2 main objectives to focus on in terms of localisation. Firstly, localisation is not simply translation and turning your messages into the desired language of your target market. For that, it is definitely also not copying and pasting content into a machine translation software like Google Translate or Yahoo BabelFish, for example.

Localisation is a way to show your sincerity in doing business in a foreign country, and by respecting the culture of its people. So before we jump the gun and go directly into translation of our materials, we first need to have a good understanding of the cultural values of the target market, cultural taboos and nuances, as well as the local jargon and industry terminologies that are used. With a good understanding of these areas, we can then effectively bring out the latent values of our communication messages, be it legal, marketing or training related, by emphasizing and tapping on them.

Also, we should not assume that two countries which speak the same language are homogenous and may have the same cultural values and nuances. An example would be Canada and France (where French is generally spoken but words are pronounced differently and sometimes phrased rather differently as well) and Taiwan and China (where Mandarin is spoken, but Simplified Chinese is used in China and Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan in written form).

Localisation should always take into account the target readers/receivers of the messages. The tone and delivery of messages is important, depending who will be digesting the localised messages at the end of the day. For example, a website with marketing information of a company’s products and services should be written and localised in such a way that it is easy to read and also motivates the reader to connect with the company or submit an enquiry. 

Is there advice you can give SMEs on how to identify their target segments more accurately, in order to corner their markets?

Before investing large amounts of money and time in a new foreign market, SMEs may consider localising some of their communication materials for the target market, and specifically for the target customer segment as the prudent first step.

For example, SMEs may consider localising their website into the target market language(s) as well as marketing collaterals such as whitepapers and brochures.

By having the website in the target market language(s) would also mean that major search engines such Google, Yahoo, Baidu would be able to sprawl the localised sites and rank them accordingly for potential customers. With a localised website in the local target market language(s), SMEs may also be able to roll out more effective localised marketing

Do you have any examples of SMEs which have localised successfully for their audience?

I have two great examples. The first is a company called Zopim. Zopim is a Singapore software company that helps clients with customer service. Zopim started off providing only English as the main language of support to customers.

Eventually, it localised its entire website but also its entire system interface to suit the various language preferences of customers around the world. Zopim localised the website professionally into other foreign languages also as a means to reach out to those target markets and to have a good idea of the market demand before they invest in more on-the-ground support and sales efforts to reach more customers across various industries.

The second example is a company called Up! Your Service. This Singapore company focuses on building service cultures in organizations around the world. It works with a diverse clientele of businesses, associations and government agencies throughout the world.

Up! Your Service started off with rolling out their service education programmes in English and then eventually moved on to adapting the workshop materials, video and marketing collaterals into quite a number of languages. This allowed the company to cater to the diverse cultures and languages of participants around the world.

How has technology affected your industry?

Has it been a catalyst in some ways, and what do you observe as a result of technology's influence?

In recent years, we have seen much development in technology particularly in the area of translation of content for various languages. The technology advancements generally lie in two main areas – Machine Translation Software and CAT (Computer Aided Translation) Software.

Machine Translation Software such as Google Translate and Yahoo BabelFish is useful for people who wish to quickly do a copy-paste and find out what a lump of foreign language text may mean in English. It is also useful in many cases for short sentence or single word translations such as ‘Car’, ‘Bus’, ‘Lavatory’ or ‘Thank You’.

I have also seen some people use Machine Translation for the purpose of chatting in a foreign language on a casual basis with friends or on social media platforms. Machine Translation can also be used for those of us who are picking up a new language and would like to have access to a quick reference tool.

However, we must understand that Machine Translation Software should preferably not be used in a professional context, such as the translation of legal materials, technical documents as well as marketing collaterals. 

In professional translation performed by human translation teams, a crucial part of the process includes two main points – 

a) proper contextual understanding of the source content and 

b) understanding the target audience which determines the choice of words to use in the translation process. For example, a technically-inclined audience would be more receptive to technical jargon and a ‘layman’ audience would prefer something that is easy to read and digest).

So Machine translation software would not be able to translate words such as ‘blind’ very well as it may mean ‘the person is blind’, or ‘we draw down the blind’ , and also ‘tear’ in sentences such as ‘tear gas was released’ or ‘I tear this paper’ – as in ripping the paper apart.

CAT (Computer Aided Translation) is what we'd recommend to help achieve a higher productivity output of the professional human translator and it is an approach that is most encouraged for the professional localisation industry. 

With more enhancement to CAT technology, the localisation industry as a whole would be able to provide better support with higher throughput volumes and at lower cost to the ever-growing needs for globalisation and adapting of products and services into various languages and markets.