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Welcome to wordFitness, the eZine from The Word Gym. Times are hard, which encourages everybody to cut corners. Sometimes that’s a good thing: gross inefficiencies stand out like a sore thumb during economic crises. But sometimes it’s not such a good thing…

We’ve got a couple of short articles for you this month, both tackling issues that can hamper – as opposed to enhance – your communications with your customers.

Best wishes for the Autumn!

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Should you translate collateral in-house?

Many organisations – large and small – prefer to translate their marketing collateral using their “in-country resources”.

On the face of it, that makes sense. After all, local representatives know about the product or service. They know the local market, too. Theoretically, they’re in the perfect position to reconcile the two!

But let’s take a closer look. When we talk about “in-country resources”, we’re usually talking about local sales teams or distributors.

This raises a number of questions:

First: If the sales team are translating the marketing materials – who’s doing the selling?

Second: Are sales team members also writers? With the best will in the world, if they can’t write, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the organisation’s marketing material – you don’t want brochures that read like bad flat-pack furniture-assembly instruction sheets!

Third: Is producing a beautiful piece of copy their main priority? Or is doing their own job at the top of their list?

Fourth: Sales teams may prefer to emphasize local-market requirements and priorities, rather than adhering to agreed organisation-wide branding strategies and messaging (many of our readers will already be aware that this is a significant issue, and if not controlled, can result in mis-positioning of your brand in a target sector).

We’ve found that organisations ask in-house resources to carry out this work not so much because of budgetary constraints, but because of (a) a misplaced belief that their own personnel know best what the organisation needs, and (b) time pressure.

The trouble is, the cost of correcting poorly written promotional copy is usually more than it would have cost to get professionals to transcreate it in the first place. And that’s before calculating the on-costs incurred by collateral damage to the brand.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example:

A well-known business broadsheet decided to launch their brand-new online service for non-English readers in Europe with ads targeting French and German speakers in particular.

But the advertising concept they decided to use was quintessentially British, as were the visuals. Not necessarily a problem in itself, because the paper’s reputation was, in any case, quintessentially British. But definitely something that needed sensitive handling.

We advised them of the issue, and suggested either reworking the concept, or taking a very thoughtful (and imaginative) approach to the copy to ensure that it resonated with their target audiences. Not enough time, they cried! They were in a hurry; they’d get their own overseas people to do it…

A few days later and a panicked advertising team were banging on our door, having been dragged over the coals by an irate senior management. Not being specialists, their French colleagues had provided a very literal translation of the ad execution. It was difficult to read, made references to unfamiliar concepts, and contained superlatives (in the target market, and especially by the target audience, superlatives are considered to be in – very – poor taste). Could we re-translate it, please?

The problem is a common one, and easy to explain: untrained individuals become so engrossed in the (relatively unfamiliar) process of translation that they forget that a “translation” as such is NOT what’s required. What’s required is, at the end of the day, effective advertising (or marketing, or PR) copy! Copy that makes a positive impression!

So next time you’re thinking of asking a colleague overseas to translate your copy, it could be worth stepping back and double-checking that their skills do match your priorities…

How do you talk to your customers?

No matter how independent-minded or maverick you are, working in a company – small or large – means that eventually, you become involved in that company’s culture and preoccupations.

Consequently, it’s easy to fall into the trap of talking to your customers as if they too are familiar with your products and services, your corporate vision and even your internal processes!

You know what I mean: you lace your language with corporate jargon. You use acronyms. You refer to products by their short, obscure in-house labels rather than their standard names. In short, you fail to explain either the product, or the service, or the relationships between them in language anybody can understand.

That kind of behaviour can be confusing for suppliers, let alone customers! To keep customers coming back, clarity is key. It’s no secret that many of the most respected premium brands keep their product ranges and service offerings deliberately simple.

Simple means they’re easier for customers to compare. And easier for your sales team to explain. Above all, it’s easier for your entire workforce to stay focused on the customer when they’re not bogged down in remembering the minor differences between product AZB3293-KK3 and product AZB3293-KT9.

If your workforce have to concentrate to tell your products and services apart, it’s much more likely that they’ll fall into the trap of corporate shorthand. It starts in-house, but soon starts to show up in conversations with suppliers and eventually with customers, too.

We’ve all been guilty of it – language is power, and jargon indicates that the speaker belongs to a group of “in”-people. Unfortunately, jargon doesn’t sell anything to anybody – it was never designed to. Jargon is simply a form of shorthand communication between close colleagues. It only works if those close colleagues share a clear understanding of precisely what the jargon means (“define your terms”, as good teachers like to say!).

But jargon tends to proliferate (because everybody wants to be part of the “in”-crowd). Which means that soon, it starts to be mis-used. Soon, you can’t rely on clear, shared definitions any more. Which means communicating with colleagues becomes difficult.

Think how much more difficult suppliers and – here’s the crunch – customers will find it!

Third-party reviews of your sales and marketing language can help. The third-party reviewers must be genuinely independent, however, and must be highly market-oriented. Management consultants are sometimes asked to play this role – an entirely inappropriate use of their skills, because they have jargon of their own, and in any case, they’re approaching your organisation from precisely the wrong direction – as “super-senior managers” rather than “am I interested? yes/no” customers.

To keep your customers interested, keep your language clear!

Howler of the month!

We’ve got some gems for you this month:

… such as the Coors slogan ‘turn it loose’, translated into Spanish as… yes, well, you can probably imagine.

Who cares if the stewardess won’t smile? The brochure promises “Wide boiled aircraft for your comfort”!

Even mountains have feelings. From a sign on a windy road in the Himalayas: “Be mild on my curves”.

From a hotel in Munich, Germany: “In your room you will find a minibar which is filled with alcoholics”

Drunkards should be careful – a sign at a wadi in Oman warns that “Drowning accidents are now popular”.

But linguistic infelicities are not confined to foreign parts:

A small hotel in Cornwall asks: ” Will any guest wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs. Harvey”.

Although foreign parts definitely have the best:

A sign at a hotel in Budapest: “Forbidden to hang out of hotel window. Person which do so will be charge for clean up mess on footpath”. Hm…

And finally, life wouldn’t be complete without the joys of great gastronomy. On the menu of a restaurant in Yaroslav, Russia, you’ll find “Lorry driver soup”. Only topped by a menu in Switzerland that proudly offers “Half a lawyer with prawns”.

Now that’s how I like my lawyers!

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