Going International: Breaking the Language Barrier

Wendy Pease is President of Rapport International, an agency that specializes in multilingual marketing, translating messages and meanings in over 200 languages – in any format, including blog posts, audio content, video, print, and multilingual chat. Wendy bought Rapport in 2004, because the fit seemed right with her interests. Over 15 years, it has maintained the same depth of languages and increased staff, revenue, and its focus on marketing. Rapport International is a Hubspot Partner

In this interview, Wendy explains that interpretation is for the spoken word what translation is for the written word. Translation, especially in marketing, is not done "word for word." It needs to be culturally adapted and capture the meaning of the message. To ensure quality and to address this broad range of languages, Rapport International contracts with independent bilingual translators who specialize in writing for different markets and purposes.

Fifteen years ago, companies in English-speaking countries expanded internationally by exporting to companies in other English-speaking countries. Company websites opened markets across language, cultural, and geographical boundaries. Companies became "accidental exporters" when orders started coming in from other countries.

A reactive response to interest from other countries? Start marketing in any country that "self identified" as being a potential market.

A better way? Wendy believes it is important to ask, "What is the corporate strategy?" "What is the marketing strategy?" And "How is multilingual communication going to support that strategy?" If a company only wants to sell certain products in a certain country, they don't need to translate everything about all the rest of their products. A landing page can be used to test new market.

Wendy identified quite a few multilingual challenges: Keyword selection. Effective communication when a language does not have an equivalent word for critical product descriptor. Dealing with the approximately 3,000 new words added to a language each year. Marketing and inbound's increasing complication and specialization, content management issues, and providing it all in the needed languages.

Wendy can be reached on her company's website at www.rapporttranslations.com or on LinkedIn: Wendy Pease at Rapport International.