Why Outsourcing Translation Services Is a Smart Move for Expanding Your Business to Global Markets

outsourcing translation services

Are you looking to grow your business? Hoping to make connections abroad?

Read on to find out more about the advantages of outsourcing translation services.

Running a business successfully means raising the bar once you achieve your goals. This usually means expanding to another area, country, or even continent.

However, going global can be tricky even for big and powerful companies.

Mercedes-Benz, for example, tried to attract Chinese customers by launching the brand under the name “Bensi.

Unfortunately, the automotive giant didn’t know that it means “rush to die” in Chinese, which isn’t exactly the best way to promote a car.

The moral of the story?

If you don’t want to scare off or alienate your target audience, you need to plan your international expansion carefully.

This means finding a way to overcome cultural and language barriers: that is where outsourcing translation services can help you.

A Word of Warning

Before embarking on this overseas, intercontinental, and transcultural journey into outsourcing translation, there are a couple of factors to take into consideration.

  • Is your product the right fit for the targeted market and culture? Apart from doing some business research, it is a good idea to have a couple of local associates who understand the situation on the ground. They can provide you with their first-hand account of how things work there.
  • Is the infrastructure suitable? The supply chain you take for granted in your country might not be there in another. Again, you need someone who knows the ropes and who can tell you how feasible your business idea is.
  • What about dealing with bureaucratic red tape? Setting up a business in another country where you don’t understand the laws and regulations requires support from experts.

In order to find answers to all these important questions, you should consider outsourcing translation services to expert language providers.

Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing translations rather than hiring an in-house team.

It’s More Affordable

Having a team of in-house translators might seem like the best idea, seeing as contractors tend to have hefty hourly rates.

But you might need to localize your website and other materials for a number of markets. This means that you’d have to hire translators to cover each language.

Secondly, think about whether you’ll permanently need their services or whether it will be a project-based thing. Once you have localized a majority of your resources, you will still have people on your payroll all the time.

Alternatively, you could outsource to experienced translation professionals only when you need something done and then pay just for a predefined amount of work.

And don’t forget that with an in-house team, you’d have to hire a project manager to coordinate all tasks that need to be done.

It’s More Efficient

Professional translation agencies have a lot of experience in developing their work processes. This means that an agency will assess your project, streamline the workload, and deliver it much faster than an in-house team would.

Given that agencies have a number of expert translators available, it’s much easier for them to be flexible and pick the best people for the job.

In other words, by outsourcing translation services, you can be sure that professionals specialized in different fields will work on your project.

For example, to make sure that your contracts, company constitutions, and international agreements are properly translated, it’s recommended that a team of legal language experts work on them.

High-Quality Translations Are Guaranteed

Consistency is an important factor when it comes to translation services.

This particularly applies to legal, medical, accounting, or technical translations. Needless to say, even a single letter can lead to disastrous consequences or even loss of life.

Agencies use different memory and translation management tools in order to standardize the output and make sure that the entire team uses the same terminology.

Proofreading also comes with a set of guidelines to follow.

The processes that were mentioned above also guarantee that your translation is accurate, consistent, and high quality.

An in-house team would have to take all these components and resources into consideration, meaning additional expenses and time to develop the processes.

Small and medium-sized businesses need all the support they can get when expanding globally.

Opting to outsource translations to an expert language service provider is a decision that can save you a lot of time and money while making sure that the quality of your localization is top-notch.