Thinking about exporting?
As your business grows, opportunities start to present themselves for your business to expand abroad. You meet someone at a trade fair, a friend moves to a particular country… at first the move to exporting may be somewhat haphazard BUT if you want to make a success of exporting, you cannot afford to take an amateur approach.
The UKTI are very helpful in providing information and even funding to exporters. They will help you research potential markets and advise on steps you should take for success.
Take it seriously – invest in translation
One vital part of doing business abroad is being prepared to adjust to foreign cultures and languages. Even though it is true that English is the language of business internationally, any trade partner overseas will appreciate you making an effort in their language. It’s polite to translate your technical materials, brochures and websites into the local language. Speaking more to the bottom line, you are also likely to get better results.
A couple of years ago a colleague at Accutranslate came across a gem of a website that had been translated from Spanish into a language approximating English. This was probably done by using an automated translation service (avoid!) or an amateur translator who was not a native English speaker (avoid at all costs!).
Sadly, that website is no longer live, but here’s an example of a typical sentence: “Our company was began to offer engineering services to customers. Soon follow construction work…”
It’s quite funny – until you bear in mind that it appeared on a professional, business website of a company who wanted to make a bit of a splash in English–speaking markets. Does this inspire confidence in their firm? By not paying their potential clients the courtesy of providing quality information via a quality translation, this firm have potentially lost business many times greater than the investment in a decent translation by a native speaker.
So – get your website professionally translated – bite the bullet, do it properly and develop relationships based on courtesy and good communication. Fill in our quick contact form or pick up the phone and speak to us about your translation needs – you may be pleasantly surprised to learn what a professional translation costs!