Translation has evolved drastically alongside the digital revolution in the past ten years. From mobile apps to multilingual content, translation has made the internet accessible and easy to understand for non-English speakers worldwide.
Did you know that even though 52% of the world’s content is in English, however, English only reaches 25% of the internet’s global users?
If you’re curious how professional translations assist in providing the world with multilingual digital content and businesses expand internationally then keep on reading!
How has the Translation Industry Transformed Digitally In The Past 10 Years
Gone are the days where translation was purely done on pen and paper. In this technologically advanced world, it’s no wonder that the translation industry immediately saw to adapt and incorporate it.
Webuters Technologies reported that over the years a lot of improvements within the social media platforms like Facebook have become synonymous with the internet. It also mentioned the rise of smartphones, online streaming platforms like Netflix, and Google.
If you were to examine the article you would notice a unifying factor in the mentioned advancement, and that’s most of them incorporate some form of language and translation. For example, smartphones have in-built language options.
You can change the language of your iPhones with just a couple of taps to the keyboard settings. You can even use it to learn another language. This is all made possible because translation services combine technology and the expertise of human translators.
Now more than ever, it has become easier to incorporate translations into the digital industry because the translation industry has developed state-of-the-art translation machines that allow them to make translation more cost-effective and quicker to produce. The advancement of translation technology also allowed them to easily incorporate translation into software, websites, apps, and other digital content.
Translation helping businesses expand internationally
Innov8tiv reported that due to the pandemic, people have become more active online than ever before. Due to this, businesses looking to continue to grow amidst the global pandemic must learn to create effective digital marketing strategies.
Because translations made multilingual content more easily accessible for non-English speaking users, which unknowingly led to the demand for more multilingual digital content.
To further discuss how businesses have greatly benefited from the combination of digital and translation industries’ achievements over the years, we got some insights from those within the language and technology industry.
Ofer Tirosh, the CEO of Tomedes, a translation services provider, explained that despite the pandemic, the translation industry has shown resilience due to its market growth of 10% in 2021. He stated that many companies want to expand globally and that the only way they will be able to achieve that is through having translation services as part of their marketing strategy rather than an afterthought.
FE News, an education and employment news provider, reported that over the decade translation has made itself a critical component in just about almost any industry because of how versatile it has become from SEO marketing to the creation of multilingual content.
Gartner, a technology consulting firm, explained that 66% of buyers reported that web content in their native language was important. They explained that even with the developments of translation machines, human translators were still needed due to how limited the technology was when regarding the cultural aspect of translation.
Translation played a key role in a non-English speaker’s buyer’s journey, which is why when planning to create a marketing strategy for a target locale it should be incorporated earlier on than later.
We have listed three industries where translation has been integrated and become a fundamental part of their international market, as follows:
Digital transformation in Communications
In this day and age of smartphones, if you’re not making your business mobile app friendly then you’re missing out on $462 billion revenue. Also if you’re not localizing or translating the buying experience of your multilingual user, you’re at risk of losing potential customers.
Digital transformation in Human Resource
Ten years ago, remote work and freelancing seemed like a dream for the average employee. However, in the past couple of years, especially now with the pandemic, being a remote worker has become the norm.
Employers now can tap into a multilingual workforce. Due to this, human resources has relied on translation services in ensuring that their contracts, NDAs, and other HR-related documents comply with their remote workers’ local government.
Digital transformation in Marketing
Like we’ve previously discussed, the digital revolution in the past decade has made digital marketing a force to be reckoned with. Consumers today are no longer swayed by simply swayed by traditional marketing.
About 93% of consumers said that online reviews have convinced them to buy a product while 42% of B2B marketers have said that their content marketing strategies and efforts were effective. Did you know that 73% of non-English speaking consumers said that they wanted product reviews in their native language?
As previously mentioned at the start of this article, only 25% of English content reaches the internet’s global users. There’s a lot of potential in digital marketing wherein translation services are vital in creating multilingual content.
Final Thoughts
The translation industry’s market value is said to reach USD 46. 21 billion in 2027, which just proves that in a tech-driven, globalized world, it’s no longer practical to be monolingual. Multilingual digital marketing is integral to a company’s marketing strategy if they wish to expand internationally.