Including social media translation in your digital marketing efforts can extend your reach to audiences who are not native English speakers.
However, social media translation presents a variety of challenges as well and can be a complicated task. When your audience is global, how should you approach social media translation? Should you translate each individual message? What strategy should you follow to make sure your audiences can engage with your messaging?
If your company seeks to engage audiences who speak languages other than English, these are the things you need to consider when posting to social media.
Social Media Translation and Brand Terms
If your audience is global, you want them to understand your messaging in their native language. There are many different aspects to consider when translating brand terms. First and foremost, you should consider localizing your brand name. Localization is the process of taking a word, or series of words, and adjusting them so they make linguistic sense in a different culture. If your brand name doesn’t translate easily into another language, localization can make it so the name translates correctly. This allows you to better connect with your global audiences, as your brand messaging will be culturally aware due to social media translation and localization.
Another factor to consider is if your industry terms effectively translate into other languages. To ensure your audiences can engage with your social media messaging, your industry terms also need to go through social media translation and localization.
Social Media Translation and Social Media Profiles
If you have a global audience for your business’ social media pages, you’ll need to consider your options regarding social media translation. There are a few options when it comes to your social media pages.
If you have a breakdown of what languages your audiences speak and it isn’t a large list, you may consider creating a different social media profile for each language. To effectively accomplish this, you’ll need to hire a Language Services Provider who can effectively accomplish your social media translation goals, or you can hire a social media manager for each language. This will be dependent on the size of your company, and how much time and money you have to dedicate to social media translation. Using bilingual employees can come with its own risks though, so be careful to evaluate the risks and benefits before beginning your social media translation project.
Alternatively, you can post your social media messaging in multiple languages. Facebook includes a feature that allows you to post your messages in multiple languages. On other social media platforms, you can repost your message in your alternate languages. This form of social media translation will allow you to keep all of your social media marketing attached to one page, which will allow you to better track your analytics when it comes time to do so. However, you’ll need to consider if this is the best way to reach your audiences. Will your global audience respond better to a page in each native language, or will they respond better to translated messaging on a single social profile? That’s for you to determine as you start your social media translation project.
Finally, you can set each of your social media profiles to automatically translate dependent on the user’s location. If someone from a Spanish-speaking area accesses your social profiles, your messaging will automatically translate into Spanish. This option relies on machine translation, which is not always accurate. If you want to effectively reach your global audience, this could be a dangerous method of trying to do so, due to the errors machine translation produces in translated messages.
Social Media Translation and Your Core Message
The most important element to consider as you go into a social media translation project is your core message. Your translated messages do not need to read exactly the same — you’re simply trying to get your original message across. Use language to which your global audiences are accustomed.
One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to create content that is easy to localize and will allow you to reach your global audience in a way that simply translating your message won’t. If you create content that’s easy to localize, and you’re aware of your core message, you won’t struggle nearly as much with your social media translation project.
To create content that is easy to translate and localize, avoid using idioms, sarcasm, and location-specific jokes. If you do want to use these, you’ll need to spend more resources translating and localizing your social media messaging to ensure that your global audiences connect with and understand your core messaging.
While social media translation can be overwhelming, the right LSP can help you to effectively implement a strategy for your social media translation projects. To learn more about how an LSP like Avantpage can help you translate your social media messaging, call us today at 530-750-2040, or request a free quote.
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Ash is the Marketing Coordinator at Avantpage, Inc. Ash works to create high-value, targeted content that allows consumers to connect with us at Avantpage. They are a strong proponent of everyone having equal access to communication and information. They have written and created content for a variety of online platforms, and have been published in over 30 online platforms with varying topics. But Ash is other things too! An avid athlete, Ash enjoys spending their free time rock climbing, partaking in aerial circus sports, and practicing acroyoga.