• When Galician organizers of village harvest festival discovered, to their horror, that Google Translate had transformed their prized local vegetable into a certain sensitive female body part, that’s bad translation.
• When the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs welecomed world leaders to an exhibition at May’s World Humanitarian Summit with a billboard-sized claim in mangled English, that’s bad translation.
• When a sign at last year’s Milan Expo proudly described how one foundation “declined” the Expo theme, suggesting they’d refused it, rather than adapted it (declinare in Italian), that’s bad translation.
• And when HSBC bank’s multilingual campaign reportedly urged potential customers in many countries to “Do Nothing” (rather than the original assume nothing), that too, is bad translation.

Good translation is hard…

Why is there so much bad translation? The fact is, good translation is hard. To be a good business translator, you’ve got to have:

• Linguistic proficiency in two languages, with the sort of expert, idiomatic proficiency in the target language that only native speakers usually achieve.
• Cultural fluency particular to a particular market (i.e. English for American vs. British markets).
• Experience and skill in writing the kind of texts ― whether advertising slogans, website copy or white papers ― you’re expected to produce.

And contrary to the opinion of many clients I’ve worked with, translating “just a couple of words” is not inherently easier. In fact, for marketing copy like claims, slogans and taglines, it’s usually harder.

…and marketing translation is harder

Why? First, because fewer words means less context, and less flexibility to render the same idea in a different language within the same space constraints. Less context also means that stand-alone text may be interpreted by readers in the new language in ways that differ significantly from what was intended.

Second, because marketing copy is highly idiomatic, which by definition means that the whole is not deducible from the individual parts. That means it’s not a word-for-word translation, but a game of equivalence that in the hands of a less-skilled translator risks straying far from the original message.

And idiomatic and context-light copy isn’t just hard for people. It’s hard for Google Translate, too. It’s true that Google Translate is a super-convenient tool for on-the-fly translation when what counts is a basic gist of a message. And I have no doubt that in the future it will put most translators out of business. But for now, for the sort of short, punchy phrases so adored by the world of marketing, Google translate is still in the dark ages.

The cost of bad translation

If you’ve printed your bad translation in sky-high letters on a billboard, clearly, there’s a cost involved. HSBC ended up spending $10 billion to craft a new campaign to replace the old one. But even in the world of the web, where translation errors, if caught, can be changed, there’s still a very real cost that comes with bad translation.

It can damage credibility with (potential) customers

In the UK, one survey by Global Lingo (admittedly, a translation firm) found that 59% of respondents wouldn’t buy from a website with bad grammar or spelling and, according to the BBC, a British ecommerce entrepreneur found that revenue per customer doubled after fixing spelling mistakes on his website.

It can affect your search engine ranking

Both Google (since the 2013 Panda algorithm update) and Bing have signalled that bad grammar and spelling negatively affect a website’s search ranking. Why? Because as SEO experts Moz explain, it’s a user experience issue. Confusing copy in any language creates bad user experience and the search robots are designed to mimic human behavior (and reactions). They’ll push your website down in the rankings, making it even harder for potential clients to find you.

Of course, the above are not just translation issues, but copywriting issues for anyone writing in any language, even their own. But how much harder is it to catch the grammar errors when translating into a language not your own?

How to get your translation right

Here are some things to insist on when hiring for marketing translation services for your business.

Hire a professional

Sounds obvious, right? But this is probably the number one shortcut taking by small businesses looking to contain their costs. Buy you’ve got to make sure that the individual or agency doing your translation work is an experienced professional. It’s not always possible to find the perfect combination of a native speaker who’s a talented copywriter with target-industry experience and locale-specific cultural fluency. But having seen too much bad copy written by even degree-certified professional translators, I’d certainly prioritize a native speaker with copywriting experience over factors.

Multilingual consistency

If you’re crafting a multilingual campaign, your message should be consistent from one language to the next. If you’re relying on a digital marketing agency to craft your copy, make sure they’ve got the professional capability to handle translation into multiple languages. And, importantly, trust (and pay) them to do it. It doesn’t make sense to hire an agency and invest in beautiful, effective copy in your own language only to turn the translation over to an independant, cut-rate translator.

Historical consistency

Make sure whoever you’ve hired (as well as the your own project manager) has access to older iterations of your messaging. Different translators can arrive at different translations, but you need consistency throughout your messaging as you continue to run new print campaigns or add pages and grow your website.

Test in the target market

If you’re on the scale of HSBC then there’s no excuse for not testing your copy with the target audience before finalizing it. If your scale is a bit smaller, though, look for locale-specific translators who can help you understand if your message works in the target location.

In the end, everybody makes mistakes with translation. But what’s forgivable for individuals is not forgivable for businesses and organizations that aspire to attract customers on an international scale.

Investing in your brand means investing in good translation. Pay now, or your brand will pay later.

Moskito Design provides provides professional, native-speaker translation and localization (in addition to original creative copy) for newsletters and digital marketing in half a dozen international markets.