Our digital world has created an increasingly globalized workforce. But a globalized workforce has its fair share of challenges - namely, how do large corporations ensure their messaging resonates across all of their employees, no matter the language? And how can a business ensure increased productivity and employee satisfaction if they don’t speak the language of their workers? The answer is simple - clear, concise communication that has been localized properly.
At Language Intelligence, we believe that communicating with a global workforce doesn’t have to be hard. Our localization services allow businesses and brands to communicate across the world with ease, but it is important to first create a strategy that explains what you want to say and how you want to say it.
Follow these tips to ensure your message is being heard loud and clear.
1- Know Your Audience Inside and Out
This may seem obvious, but so many companies are creating communication strategies without first understanding how their audience ticks. This goes deeper than just researching consumer habits, as well as their wants and needs for a product and service.
Instead, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the culture of each foreign market, whether it is a new market you want to enter or a place where you already have employees. Look into the customs, societal norms, and religion(s) of each specific locale as this will help you communicate with your audience in a way that respects their culture.
If you’re not sure where to start, your translation and localization company can point you in the right direction. Language Intelligence’s localization services work with native-speaking, in-country professional linguists to provide accurate, cultural insights throughout our localization process.
2- Keep the Content Short, Sweet, and to the Point
There’s no need to make your content lengthy - customers enjoy simplicity. In fact, according to The Simplicity Index, 64% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand because of a simple experience. The same goes for your employees and target audience as it is easy for your message to get lost within unnecessary text and imagery.
We recommend keeping your messaging as clear and concise as possible. When you do this, you also eliminate the risk of your message getting lost in translation. Lengthy content tends to include English colloquialisms and humor, which are almost impossible to translate efficiently.
So when in doubt, simple is the way to go.
3 - Invest in Mobile Accessibility
As of July 2022, mobile phones hold almost 61% of the market share worldwide. This means that more and more people are communicating, accessing information, shopping, and working from their mobile phones compared to desktop computers and tablets.
All of your communication should be mobile accessible, and all of your content should be designed to work optimally on mobile platforms. If not, you run the risk of missing out on a huge chunk of your audience. After all, you’ll want to put your content right where your audience will access it, and mobile accessibility should be at the forefront of your mind.
4- Ensure Your Formatting Makes Sense
There are plenty of factors that can affect your content’s formatting, so you’ll need to take the time to work through these changes with your translation and localization company. Because languages all present differently, you’ll need to make some formatting accommodations to ensure your message resonates across languages and locales. This can be anything from adapting your left-to-right texts into right-to-left languages like Arabic or Hebrew, or modifying layout designs from English into languages that tend to use more space, like German, or less space, like Finnish.
Language Intelligence has a dedicated multilingual DTP services team to make sure your content looks professional and complete in every language. You just have to send us your content files - and we’ll work our formatting magic.
5- Engage With Localization Services
You will need more than just translation to communicate with your global workforce. Translation is the literal word-for-word rendering from one language into another, but localization is the adaptation of the content to fit the target language’s culture. Localization services will cater to a locale’s cultural differences, such as their history, religion, customs, and societal preferences, and in doing this, they make the content seem natural to the reader.
If your content is not localized properly, your readers will be left confused and your message won’t resonate to the best of its ability. We’ve created an end-to-end localization process with the goal of bridging cultural divides and building human connections. With the help of our team, your message will be ready for global distribution.
Speak Their Language, Wherever They Are
At Language Intelligence, we want you to speak the language of your employees, audience, and readers, wherever they are in the world. Our comprehensive localization services make this possible, as our team is dedicated to making global communication easy and accessible.
Language Intelligence is a translation and localization company that works for you. We’d love to help you communicate with your global workforce - so let’s chat.