6 Reasons A Multilingual Website Benefits your Business

Can a multilingual website really add value? Any business who has a website wants to entice customers to their services, products or solutions. But how do you expand your business to reach new international speaking customers without blowing all your marketing budget?

The answer is simple, you need a multilingual website.

Businesses that offer customers a choice of multiple languages on their website have a real competitive advantage. Read Lingmo’s 6 benefits of why you should take advantage of making your website accessible for everyone.

1. Translating your website is cost-effective

Expanding your business to reach new markets doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, a multilingual website is the most cost-effective and reliable way of engaging customers who speak another language.

By translating your website you can still work towards your global marketing strategy and stay competitive by offering your valuable content in multiple languages.

The thought of offering multilingual content on your website has always been associated with high cost. However, with cost-effective monthly payment schemes now available, your website can be translated directly from your original copy at the click of a button.

2. A multilingual website increases financial productivity

The focus of most businesses is to increase sales. Translating your website is one of the most effective ways to achieve this.  

Customers that can read content in their native language are more likely to purchase from your website. In fact, 46% of website users agreed that if the information was in their native language it provided trust and confidence in the product making them more likely to buy the product.

By localising content, customers are more inclined to connect with your brand because you offer an advantage point compared to your competitors.

3. A multilingual website available to everyone

This may come as a surprise, but English is no longer the universal language of the internet.

As of March 2020, only 25.9% of internet users were English natives. In contrast, 3.4 billion people are from non-English speaking countries.

Most internet users will skip past non-localised websites in preference to sites that offer multiple languages.

Therefore, businesses without a multilingual website are missing out on a large share of potential customers.

4. Expand your potential market

Translating your website into multiple languages is an excellent starting point to increase your company’s global presence.

Your marketing messages will be reached by more people if you localise content which in turn will increase the size of your online audience.

For example, there are more than half a billion Spanish speaking online users currently however, the Latin culture has 10 different Spanish dialects.

With Latin users making up 8% per cent of the Internet population, you would instantly increase traffic to your website simply by translating it into Spanish.

A translated website will enable you to expand into new international markets and reach new target audiences quickly and effectively.

5. Increase international website traffic and SEO

Not so long ago, businesses believed you needed an army of multiple websites each translated into a different language to rank on the Internet. Apart from being time-consuming and expensive, this was a myth. 

Instead, adding languages to your website optimises the chances of it getting picked up by different search engines.

Websites that offer multiple languages will help your business rank internationally.

6. Build brand recognition and trust

Greater awareness of your brand comes from consumer engagement. Therefore, a translated website means more people will come to your website and that increases your brand recognition.

Providing a multilingual website will attract people globally and they will start to associate your brand with a certain need and want. This will be a point of difference and help you gain recognition of your brand and service. Not to mention, set you apart from your competition.

Customers who can understand your content in their language are more likely to tell like-minded people creating familiarity and repeat business.

Furthermore, a website in multiple languages adds credibility to your brand. You can truly become a ‘global’ brand once you offer a multilingual function on your website.

Similarly, if your website is localised, customers will appreciate your understanding of their culture thus, earning their trust.

Localise your website

Now that you are aware of the benefits of translating your website, you can increase web traffic, improve your global brand presence and expand your audience reach.

Lingmo Translator is a translation plugin for WordPress websites that enables content to be contextually translated into 80 languages. Your customers can select their language from the dropdown box located on your website and instantly see your website content and information in their language. Start a FREE TRIAL today and see the benefits of adding translation to your website.

Marketing Translation Blunders

By Gemma Giuliano
Head of Marketing, Lingmo International

Marketing translation blunders are not new and have happened for years, even the big brands fall victim to this. With companies competing to be the first to market with a brand in a new country, sometimes their eagerness fails with marketing mistranslations. This is usually because they haven’t spent the time to check the logo or slogan meaning relative to that region.   Slogans that work in one language may not always translate well in another language. With big business spending millions of dollars on advertising, some do not give a thought to what the slogan may mean in the country they are advertising in. 

When companies expand into new international markets it is essential contextual translation is used, not just literal word for word translation. Here are some brand marketing translation fails that have soiled brand reputations and show that translation isn’t always as easy as it seems.

Funny Marketing Translation Blunders

HSBC Bank made the classic mistake of literally translating their campaign slogan ‘Assume Nothing’ into multiple languages. Unfortunately, this translated into a meaning of ‘Do Nothing’ and cost the bank $10 million in global re-branding to correct the mistake.

KFC learnt the hard way when they entered the Chinses market. Their well-known slogan “Finger Lickin’ Good’ was mistranslated into Mandarin as “Eat Your Fingers Off”.

Pepsi tried to market its beverage in Taiwan with the slogan ‘Come Alive with Pepsi’. However, in Chinese this translates as ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave!’.

When the ‘Schweppes Tonic Water’ campaign entered the Italian market, it completely failed. The company’s product name was literally translated into Italian as “Schweppes Toilet Water.”

Braniff Airlines launched a campaign about their new leather seats, ‘Fly in leather’. This was translated into Spanish as ‘Vuela en cuero’, however in Mexican, it meant ‘Fly naked’.

Lost in Translation

This really highlights that apart from embarrassing and costly mistakes, translation needs to be given more thought.  Not being able to connect with your consumers because of a translation blunder can seriously affect your brand.

Be mindful of Cultural Differences

Business is about communicating with people and building long fruitful relationships.  Each company has a product or service to offer and it is up to that brand to convince the consumer to buy it. To do this right you need to do you research to find your target audience but also understand the culture of the target country too. It’s imperative to understand any differences or any sensitive areas that your brand could potentially violate.

Essential Translation

Translation solutions do not need to be a chore, painful, time consuming or expensive. Language translation can be used to localise content, build relationships and understand the cultural perspectives.  Being able to communicate directly in a stakeholder’s native language will also help your business flourish and grow, and offer that all important competitive advantage. Investing in a translation solution allows your business to communicate with your foreign speaking target audience. After all, consumers would rather buy a product if content is in their native language. 

Brands that got it right

While we have seen some epic brand translation blunders, some brands did get it right when scaling their products into new international markets.

One example is “Guilty” by Gucci Perfume: 古驰 “罪爱”
One of the cleverest brand names around sees this translation not only stay loyal to the pronunciation of the original brand name but also capture the meaning of the word “Guilty.” In Chinese “罪” means “guilt” and “爱” means “love”, so “Guilty Love’.

It is difficult enough marketing in your home market let alone a foreign market where there are multiple languages to contend with. Lingmo’s customised translation solutions allow you to create a unique voice that differentiates your brand in every market without losing your core values.

Thinking about bringing language translation solutions to your company?

Lingmo  are AI translation software experts. Check out our multilingual solutions to see how you can support your global audience better.

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ATM Language Translation: Making ATMs Accessible in 80 Languages

By Gemma Giuliano
Head of Marketing, Lingmo International

ATM Translation

With more people living aboard, immigrants settling in a new countries and tourists travelling to international destinations, our multilingual world needs to cater for different languages and localise content. No matter what language you speak and in what country you are in, you will probably need to access an ATM to withdraw cash but can you be guaranteed the ATM you go to will have language options allowing you to select your native language to perform a transaction?

Would you feel comfortable using an ATM in a foreign language? Would you be confident withdrawing cash if you couldn’t understand the instructions and had to stumble your way through the menu options in hope you pressed the correct button to receive your funds? Currently, with ATMs having the ability to allows customers to do a multitude of banking functions, wouldn’t having the ability to perform banking transactions in your own native language be huge value add?

Multilingual ATMs

ATM’s are widespread throughout the globe and are in many locations for residents and tourists to access. Trying to ascertain which ATMs should be equipped with certain languages choices would be difficult and would no doubt need to be upgraded frequently because of ebb and flow of people movement around the world. What is probable is that ATMs need to offer their services in multiple languages and making them accessible in most languages will be essential.

Therefore, instead of banks choosing a location they believe have a multilingual presence, Lingmo’s software can be embedded into all ATM’s, making them all offer 80 text languages and 29 voice languages. Just because an ATM is put in Sydney, Australia, doesn’t necessarily mean the languages on offer should be limited to English and Chinese because they are the most commonly spoken languages in the region, or in the US, Spanish and English, but instead displaying all languages puts the ball in the customer’s court.

One thing is true, an ATM should be accessible by anyone without discriminating language and location. Machines that are equipped to converse with customers in their native language will define the bank, provide a point of difference and improve the bank’s ROI.

80 Text languages for all ATMs

With digital AI-translation, Banks don’t need to fathom out which primary languages their customers are going speak or who is going to visit their country and what languages they will probably converse in – that would be hard given there are so many variables. Instead of relying on what the native spoken language is in an area or which country tourists visited from in the past, our AI software allows customers to choose their native language on the ATM without being required to choose a limited pre-determined language selection. This will improve user experience, build trust and confidence and increase engagement. Therefore, financial institutions need not be limited to where they can put an ATM because Lingmo offers a broad range of languages to cater for 80% of the world’s languages.

ATM’s that converse in your customers native language

Our AI translation can perform Realtime translations into 80 languages allowing text to be translated on-screen instantly. Our software is trained and customised to recognise financial services terminology and detects industry specific financial focus keywords and vocabulary. Leveraging IBM Watson on IBM cloud, our automated translations are highly accurate, 97% in fact and contextually translate the entire paragraph, not literal word for word translations resulting in a better translation. With continuous training the AI becomes smarter the more it is used.

So, you may be asking how it works? After the customer has chosen their desired language, all text on the screen will change to their preferred language allowing the customer to have a seamless experience and an easier way to use the ATM rather than losing confidence in the service.

Adding speech translation to ATMs

ATMs usually offer visually impaired customers an option to listen to the menu instructions as an alternative to reading the text on screen. With the audio in place, language translations can easily be added allowing customers the ability to hear instructions in their own native dialect. Our translation software covers the most common 29 languages in speech and once customers are guided to select their preferred language, the instructions are heard in that language. This means, an ATM with our translation software can be used anywhere in the globe because all 29 languages are accessible no matter where they are located.

Making AI Translation accessible in all ATMs

Regardless if you’re a large International bank with ATMs across the globe or a boutique bank located in a tourist destination or with a high multilingual population, you can benefit greatly from using AI Translation software to make your ATMs accessible to customers in up to 80 languages. Instead of making customers struggle and become frustrated when trying to decipher unfamiliar languages, financial institutions can add our translation API to their application that puts the customer first and gives them a better banking experience.

Keep your customers satisfaction a priority – contact Lingmo to enquire about our voice and text translation APIs for ATMs.

With AI-Powered Translation, Industries Look To Speak Every Customer’s Language