The internet and social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube, have gained significant influence in global commerce. Thus marketers who use these powerful marketing and communication platforms can promote their goods and services internationally. They can also communicate with multilingual and multicultural customers, suppliers, retailers, distributors and employees in real time to solve international communication challenges.
Communication Challenges of Marketing Internationally
Today developing an international strategy is necessary for businesses wanting to expand their customer bases. However, marketing internationally also increases the complexity of business communication and creates written and spoken communication challenges. Because businesses today rely on accurate and timely communication, they face ever increasing hazards when operating on an international level. Consequently, businesses must communicate with their stakeholders in the local language.
For example, Royal Dutch Shell, a British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in the Netherlands, operates in more than 70 countries. To meet these countries’ demands, Shell translates its manuals, operating procedures, reports, correspondence and other materials into French, Italian, German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Greek, Japanese, Korean and other languages.
Businesses seeking to market internationally face communication challenges that require answers to the following questions:
- What manuals, reports and other correspondence should be identical representations of the source files, and which ones require cultural, regional and local changes?
- Will all versions follow a global communications policy that mandates tone, style, content, units and conversions?
- Will each version be tested, reviewed and edited for usability, cultural sensitivity and accuracy?
Communication Solutions For International Companies
Since most companies do not have budgets for dedicated teams of technical and legal translators and interpreters who specialize in each technical field, culture, language and region where the company conducts business, they usually need to rely on translation companies to solve their international communication challenges. Businesses like 24 Hour Translation provide translation services in more than 40 languages and have specialized teams that provide engineering, technical, marketing, legal and managerial translations. With its large network of professionally trained, tested, and screened translators, 24 Hour Translation provides world-class translations to the world’s largest companies.