For the clever entrepreneur, using a translation service is a great way of expanding your business prospects will very little effort or expense. Essentially you will be reusing your existing materials, simply making sure you’re getting the most from them. Of course, while a translation service is cheaper than starting from scratch and working in a new language, it’s not without costs. How do you know it will be worthwhile for you? Is there a particular business size which will benefit most from this sort of service?

1. You’re expanding your market

When you get a new company off the ground most people are just thinking about trying to make back some of the money they’ve put into the business, and beginning to turn a profit. They won’t be thinking about the overseas possibilities and therefore are likely to simply have all market materials written in their first language. When you become a bit more stable though, you might start thinking about additional ways for you to start making a bit of money. Financially it can be a big decision to have people re-write your copy, and a rebrand is even more expensive. If that you’ve got is working so far, think about having that translated in to other languages.

2. A translated website can be viewed everywhere

Well, actually every website can be viewed everywhere. The difference is that if you’ve not bothered to have your key pages translated by an efficient and successful translation service, this whole area will be untapped. There are search engines and other methods of automating translation, however as the copy won’t read as fluidly as something written by a professional copywriter.

3. Everything will read naturally

A professional translation service is like a copywriting service in itself. While automatic translation has come on leaps and bounds from when it first emerged, it isn’t intelligent. That is, it won’t change clauses or the style depending where the page is being used. In reality, you can’t simply change the words and expect it to work as well. Writing is an art form, and it varies from country to country. There’s no single right or wrong way to word something, but the typical sentence structure will vary depending very specifically on language (and culture). Go to any foreign language website to see what we mean. Use the Google translate tool and you’ll find that while you can read the words, they don’t necessarily make any sense.