Over the last decade, the translation industry has been plagued with the common misconception that technology is a threat to language service providers, a misconception fed by the fearmongering belief that one day, technological advances might lead the Artificial Intelligences behind Machine Translations to achieve human capacity and fully replace translators.
Such misconceptions can be debunked by looking at that issue like we can truthfully look at about any issue in any field – like a glass half-empty and half-full situation.
Just like technological advances have been a threat to the translation industry because of increasingly intuitive Machine Translations, it also has somehow broadened the scope of responsibilities of translators by ushering companies into the concept of digital business. Indeed, all of these technological advances over the last decade were not only beneficial for MTs; they also led to a newfound need for transcreation services within companies through the rise of digital products and services.
User Experience, its definition and impact
Now, some people may already know what UX is since it isn’t a brand-new concept. UX, or User Experience, is a broad notion referring to a user’s interaction with a company, its services, and its products. Although it is a concept that has been around for quite a long time already, it has recently been brought into light within the translation industry thanks to companies’ newfound interest in digital marketing.
When dealing with digital products and services, UX is a top priority for most companies. Not only does the information on their applications and platforms need to be clear and easily readable, but the display also needs to appeal to the audience. On a medium where the user is only one click away from finding another company to buy from, first impressions are a must and a flawless user experience is imperative.
A proper translation for a proper experience
Now, for an efficient application or platform that will offer a smooth user experience, the first thing to come into mind is a proper translation. The content needs to be as marketable as possible; it needs to be engaging to the users from different backgrounds and cultures but also to sound as natural as possible in order to build trust between client and company. The translation of a company’s application or platform directly impacts how the brand is perceived, which is why most of them are ready to invest into some great language provider services in order to achieve the best user experience possible.
Adapting translations to the designs
However, like it has been mentioned earlier, the rise of digital businesses did more than just act as a great advertisement for language provider services – it also broadened the scope of responsibilities of a translator.
Having to pay meticulous attention to the readability of the text and the use of a marketable tone have always been part of a translator’s array of skills. What is a little more surprising, however, is the new aspect that UX has brought into a translator’s tasks – designing.
When it comes to user experience, layouts are a critical aspect that need to be taken into account when translating. A brand-new text will completely change the interface of an app or a platform and potentially affect its seamless and appealing design. For instance, Western languages will look significantly different than East Asian languages on an interface since one uses spaces to separate words whilst the other may not. Thus, translating French into Chinese without taking time to work on the layout will completely disturb the interface of an app. In the same way, some languages such as German have sentences considerably longer than others, which means they won’t seamlessly fit into the end product.
To preserve a sound user experience, most companies invest in some high-quality transcreation services that’ll ensure them a spotless end product redesigned by the translator themselves. This task of redesigning can represent making sure the font used provides multi-lingual support and checking that the font size is adequate (there’s no ideal font size that works with all languages), however sometimes it also includes a step of decluttering, making the end product lighter and cleaner by using a more direct wording. With UX, there is now a visual aspect that needs to be considered during the translation task; an aspect that has added the steps of resizing and condensing into the range of duties of a translator.
All in all, thanks to the rise of digital businesses, companies now require the help of language service providers more than ever. A proper translation is crucial for an app or a platform, whether it is in order to appeal to customers or to build a trustful reputation for the brand. No company wants typos to slither their ways into their products descriptions or a cluttered layout that will make the content hard to read for the user. And especially, no company wants a content that won’t quite resonate with its target audience or worse than all offend them.
Indeed, in digital marketing, translation is no longer about the conversion of a source text into another language, it is about the full adaptation of a whole app experience to another culture. Proper translations take a whole new meaning with UX: users shouldn’t feel like they are navigating an application or a platform created in another country. This cultural aspect of UX will be tackled in the next blog post, be sure to tune in!
And if you’re interested in our transcreation services for a good UX, reach out to us now!
