Commodity translation and why it doesn’t work for marketing communications

The recent translation crowdsourcing debate has got me thinking about the many different segments on the translation market–which has made me realize more than ever what a jungle it is for buyers. Add to this an interesting discussion I had recently with a marketing executive from a multinational (dissatisfied with marketing translations purchased from some major players on the global translation market but not sure how to get better results and maintain a manageable process)…and I’ve been waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about commodity translation for the past week (yikes).

First I wanted to define commodity translation…but a neat and tidy definition remained tantalizingly out of reach (anyone want to give it a try?). What I would say, however, is that the main distinguishing features of commodity translation are :

1. Delivers low or no added value
2. It does not matter who does the translations (translators are interchangeable)
3. Price is the key selling point

Because I specialize in marketing translations, I’ll stick to what I know in this post  (I’m not qualified to weigh in on software localization, technical translation, or other segments of the translation market…but please feel free to comment if you buy or sell translation services in these or other fields!).

For marketing communications, commodity translation just does not fit the bill. Many of my clients agree with this, having been through numerous projects with commodity translation agencies and failing to ever really get satisfactory results. Which is not surprising when you compare the characteristics of commodity translation with the characteristics of marketing translations provided by a specialist:

1. Delivers high added value – the creative concept and source document often undergo significant improvements as the translator “unpacks” them before regenerating them in the target language. This includes non-text elements like colors and visuals, too.
2. The translator cannot easily be interchanged with another translator – as a full-fledged member of the creative team, the translator has been involved in the project from the initial creative brief, knows the product and marketing objectives as well as any other member of the team, and has been keeping an eye on the “translatability” of concepts from day 1.
3. Talent, creativity, experience, flexibility, and teamwork are the key selling points. Price matters, of course, but not in the same way it does for commodity translation (the lowest per-word rate being the usual objective). Here, the translation costs fit in to an overall marketing budget with logical ratios (X percent for artistic direction, X percent for source-language copywriting, X percent for translation/adaptation…).

For buyers of translation services looking to improve their results, a shift in mindset is the first step (translation as a high-added-value professional service, not a commodity). The second step is to determine a process for finding the right service providers and integrating the translation process into the project workflow from the early stages.

ATA has two fantastic informational brochures to help buyers get started. You can flip through them here.

Tagged as: Marketing, multilingual communication, Translation, translation agencies