Marketing People Of The World. Are you Ready For Us?

So you’ve decided. Those pieces of Marketing collateral just have to be translated for the German, Japanese and Chinese markets. Just send it out to us and you’ll hear back sometime yesterday when it’s finished, right? Maybe not – so here’s your quick 4-point checklist for eternal enlightenment.

1. Do You Really Know What You Want?

Ok, so you have the collateral. But have you checked with any in-country people [your Distributor, your Sales office] that this piece of collateral is locale-ready? Maybe they’ll want to re-write parts of it to make it more specific and maybe some parts just don’t wash locally [those stories about Coca-cola taglines in China are still legends].

Are there any screen shots in the piece that require either part of the relevant software to be translated, or the shot to be “faked” with some clever artwork? And do you really, really want that Flash Demo localized?

2. Which Part Of The Content Is Most Important To You?

When you’re writing the content for a piece of collateral you may be able to pick some terms or words that are key to your marketing messages. You’ll use these over and over again in a campaign or over several campaigns. Once you’ve indentified these, we can use them to create a “Glossary” of key terms that can be re-used in subsequent campaigns, saving you on costs. And also they will be a valuable starting point for any new language translations you decide to add along the way.

It's Not As Cold As It Seems, Go Ahead Try It

3. Who’s Approving Who?

Have you considered how the approval process will work – if we translate the marketing collateral, who will approve the final translated content – will it be an in-country Distributor, a Sales person on the ground or will you have someone in corporate HQ give it the thumbs up? Who you choose [if anyone] to approve final content, will affect Point 4……

4. How Much Time Have you Factored In?

So you want the job completed yesterday….Ok, well, here’s a rough example of how long “yesterday” will actually take. Say you have 1,000 words of copy, one or two graphics/screenshots in the piece and an in-country Partner who will sign off that the translated piece is good for the local market.

1,000 words translation = 1 day

Graphics manipulation = 1/2 day

Review [by Partner] = 1 day [Just think time difference!]

Implement review feedback and approve final copy = 1 day

Total:  3.5 days

But of course being a good project manager as well as top notch Marketing person, you’ve padded out the schedule and told everyone it will be 4 to 5 days turnaround time!

This is just a quick overview of what is entailed [no mention of file formats, source files, etc], but it should give you Marketing folks some baseline for judging the time and steps involved in the translation process. Now then, about the costs…….

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