It often seems that the main goal of localization is to create unreadable text in Russian and cheaply translate it into even more unreadable English. It’s good if it’s not an urgent translation.
A huge number of organizations do not believe that content has any real value. They see it as a necessary evil and strive to get content at the lowest possible cost, increasing the entropy in the universe.
This approach leads to the emergence of worthless sites, because of which companies lose customers. Such sites with meaningless articles infuriate potential customers and buyers, damage the brand and reputation of the organization.
Let’s assume that the main market for a particular organization is Russia. Whatever attention the Russian-language site of such a company attracts, you can be sure that its English or German versions will not be as popular.
Overseas example: A large international company organized a workshop in Japan to improve the performance of its Japanese website. During the seminar, representatives of the company were amazed that almost none of the Japanese clients present in the hall visited the Japanese website of the company. Instead, they used the English version of the site. Why?
“When we go to the English-language version of the site, we can at least expect to find up-to-date information there,” one of the Japanese replied. – “The Japanese version is not distinguished either by the relevance or the quality of the materials.” We once worked with a Danish company that had a very good Danish website, but the English version of their website just didn’t work.
We want to reveal a secret. Don’t count on earning yourself extra points just by trying to do something on the internet for show. Users are ruthless and impatient, cynical and skeptical. Don’t expect them to look at your poorly translated articles and say, “Well, at least they did their best. I’ll probably buy something from them. ”
Do you know what some organizations are doing to solve the problem of having to create a multilingual website? You may not believe this unless you work for a large international company. Move closer and take a deep breath.
They reduce the size of the source text so that translation is cheaper. Here is a typical dialogue between a company representative and a translation agency specialist:
– Can we transfer only half of this volume?
– Yes, but initially we took only the main sections telling about the company’s products and services. We’ll have to cut it alive.
“We’ll have to do it anyway. This will allow the organization to save money, especially since this is our entire budget for website translation, unfortunately.
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “The miser pays twice.” It fully relates to how many organizations manage their content. Someone has to explain to these people that in this race downhill, everyone ultimately loses.
Cheap, poorly written, badly translated content has been circulating through sewers all its life. But it never rinses off. It just leaves stains on your reputation and your brand.