One of the things to expect your LSP to ask of you at the beginning of a project is a style guide. This, along with a brief, helps us deliver quality content. However, when asked, clients are often confused. If you need to work with a translator for your website, you should consider putting together a style guide to help with the entire project. 

First, a clear understanding of what a style guide means is vital. A style guide contains unique information about your preferences of contents displayed on your website. Things like the tone you prefer, your grammatical style, visual style, content information, and even targeted audience are all contained in a style guide. 

While your LSP will request for a style guide because it is necessary, here are a few benefits you stand to gain from having one. 

We can’t read your mind but we can read your style guides.

Importance of a style guide 

1. It saves time: A lot of communication goes into any translation job, and this can quickly add up to the entire project time. It is essential to leave the lines of communication open with your LSP so that you can explain what exactly you need. If you are looking to save time and still maintain excellent quality communication and results, a style guide will be the perfect way to go about it. Details contained in the style guide will tell your LSP all they need to know about the job; hence, achieving clarity right from the start. Your LSP can implement your style guide and create new ones for the new language pairs.

2. Better content management: With all the information contained in your style guide, whoever is in charge of managing your content has a more pleasant job. It creates a seamless workflow between you two, and you can expect higher efficiency. 

3. Contents tailored to your brand identity: With a clear understanding of what you expect and what your brand represents, your LSP or copywriter can appropriately tailor content for your brand. Every brand has a voice, a unique one that is recognizable, and it is not enough to put out generic content. Working with a style guide will ensure this is taken care of. 

4. Higher chances to appeal to your audience: The reason you are doing any of this; translating, transcreation or copywriting is to reach a particular audience. To make sure that they hear what you are saying, loud and clear. For that to happen, you must put them at the back of your mind all through the process. A style guide containing information on your target audience will help you stay aware of that, rather than just working in the dark. This way, you can create content that can appeal to them the way you want it to. 

5. It will help you solidify your brand’s personality: You get to solidify your brand’s personality by having a guide on how you expect things to be done. Everyone across your communication channel, handling your content will have a handbook guiding them, and you don’t have to explain yourself at every turn. 

6. Visitor retention: With consistency displayed in your content, you stand the chance of retaining customers who may have taken a liking to your style. Since a style guide is a way to achieve consistency, it is a chance for you to retain your customers. 

If you don’t have one already, it is time to create a style guide. You can start with a checklist of information to include in the style guide and go ahead to look at samples from other brands. However, working with an LSP, you don’t have to do all of these alone. Having worked with brands across different sectors to create a comprehensive style guide, TranslationsinLondon can help you with yours.