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Video Jan 24, 2025

3 Questions with Rebecca Ray – The Latest Translation Trends

Welcome to three questions with MotionPoint. I'm your host, Dominic Ditervaille. And today I have the absolute pleasure of talking with Rebecca Ray. She's a senior analyst and director at CSA Research.

CSA Research is a firm focused on global business specifically.

Rebecca, how are you doing today?

I'm good. I'm really ready for this. I get to talk about something I love.

So this is great.

Awesome. I love that. I love that. Well, let's just get right into it. Why don't we?

So Okay.

Rebecca, regarding global research, right, globalization, and international marketing, what are some of the latest trends and research findings in the realm of business globalization that you would like to share with us?

Okay. First, I'd like to define it to make sure that we're all on the same page, so to speak. So when we talk about business globalization, we're talking about the language, the translation, localization piece, but we're also talking about everything that has to work within a company for global expansion to work. So your customer support department, all of the back end IT infrastructure, all of those things that need to work together to actually ensure that international customers have at least as good an experience as domestic customers. So when I'll be answering and talking to you today, I'll be talking about that big picture, including language, but not necessarily just that. So I think, when I thought about this earlier today, I think one of the big things is, and this applies to stuff that's going on in all industries, people are trying to figure out, okay, how do we apply generative AI or tools or whatever to global expansion?

Could it help us, you know, do better with our business cases? Could we calculate ROI in in, you know, better ways for the markets we're going into? So I think that's that's a big one. I think the other thing is that people are trying to figure out how to better organize their staff around supporting international customers.

So as you and I know, Dominique, I mean, no one's we're we're never gonna have c level executives, right, for globalization. It just isn't going to happen. But I think there's more and more realization, no matter how big a company is, that you've got to have your staff, you know, in with the tools they need to do that. So, that whole business globalization thing is really a horizontal function.

And so it's gonna touch everybody, even if people are only going into a couple of markets. So organizing staff, I think, is the second thing. But I think the most important thing, at least from our perspective in the research is that we're seeing is that similar to when China really, it became obvious that they were, an economic power and going to be in a huge market that everybody wanted a piece of. It really forced a lot of companies coming in from the outside to do a better job internationally and to do a better job with their translation and localization and even, you know, adapting their products.

So I think that what's gonna happen is that, the large language models are going to do some of the same thing. Right? Because if those models can only handle, say, French and German and Spanish and English and Chinese and a few other languages, it's not going to work, you know, over time. So I think that's gonna push, teams within a company to actually work more with local station teams internally and with companies like yours.

Because who has the data? The data for language sits with your company. It sits with your customers. It sits with internal translation teams.

And, other teams are going to need access to that data and how to use it. And so I think that's gonna be a big one. But I'll stop there, but that's what we're seeing on our side talking to companies and and around the world.

Alright. Well, I really like that.

I I think to the core of it, when you’re trying to translate something, you said you you mentioned it’s a horizontal, you know, type type of dynamic where it’s expanding across all departments in all facets of a business unit, right, of a company.

And at the end of the day, if you wanna do this correctly, I believe that that's that's really the heart of it because you don't wanna make make multilingual or, you know, customers, clients that speak other languages, people that speak and prefer another languages, you know, feel alienated or feel like second class citizens. And to truly get that done, it has to be, you know, you know, something that touches all the departments. So I I really like that piece. I wanted to highlight that a little bit more.

Whether or not they like it. Yeah. Yeah.

And and I I I think if it's good, let's move on to the next one. So Okay.

Rebecca, let’s see.

Do do you have any best practices that you would like to, you know, share that you’re seeing when expanding, business into international markets?

Yeah. And I do wanna say that a lot of what we're talking about today also applies to companies or organizations that, that have multicultural, audiences within their own domestic market. So again, we're talking global and international expansion, but, you know, as we know, Chinese and Spanish speakers in the US, Turkish speakers in Germany, you know, all over the place, lots of different, audiences that this applies to. Yeah. For sure.

I mean, I I think I I just because you’re you you inspired me inspired me.

I I was looking at some data and, you know, you would think Argentina, Spain, you know, Colombia, that these would be the countries with the second most Spanish speakers, perhaps after Mexico.

But really, it's not. It's the USA. It's there's there's more Spanish speakers in the US and, you know, a bigger opportunity for, domestic domestic, in inclusivity, right, by transiting into another language. So I I I totally like that you highlighted that it's not something we have to do to limit the talk of globalization or or language really to international. It's has a big deal to do with domestic assets and domestic factors as well.

For sure. We've got, obviously, a lot of research on that because that Spanish speaking group within the US is huge, actually. And what's really interesting is that there are lots of different variations depending on the generations and which part of the audience, they may still want English for parts of it and Spanish for another. And it it's a really interesting thing to study within the domestic markets for for a lot of countries.

But whether it's domestic or international, what I'm gonna say is really obvious, but organizations need a strategy. Right?

Yeah.

We we still see companies that kind of, you know, nibble around at the edges, and it's not that they don't know that they they know that they need a strategy, but they just don't go through, you know, the discipline to do it. And so I think if you don't have a strategy, then what we see happening so often is that then the product fit isn't there. And we're not saying that a product has to fit every market perfectly in the world. But as you see that you all work really hard on the language, but if the product doesn't really fit the market that it's going into, that's where the big struggle comes.

So strategy is really important to go, okay, where does this fit? Do we need to make changes? Where does language fit into here and all that? I think the second thing is also to prepare teams for this expansion.

And we touched on that, you know, under the first question, but you need to think about, okay, again, IT infrastructure.

What about our data security and all privacy across borders? Oh, do we really have the right payment options? Which is a typical one, but still people don't get it right.

Every team across an organization, even if it ends up they're not directly involved, maybe they won't have as many resources because they're being put into international. So in other words, the teams really need to be prepared, besides the, in addition to the language support teams and stuff.

So the last one is, my favorite actually, and, it's hard to do. And I think a lot of companies and that's why a lot of companies either don't do it or actually don't even realize. And that is, okay, no matter how good your strategy is, no matter how good your product fit is, no matter how good MotionPoint is at doing, you know, the localization piece, if you don't have your employees within your organization tied their objectives, their KPIs, their metrics, their OKRs, whatever you wanna call it. If those aren't tied in some way to international performance, then it's never gonna get there. People will be heroic. They'll do what they can, but if they don't have the resources to do what they need, that's really, really key.

So for example, when these questions apply to international marketing, a big one that we see in fact, they just work with the company this week. They do all this work on SEO. Right? But are they ready for international? Do they know what they're doing? No. And so all the work that they did on translating all this content, if people can't find it, that's really important that that be tied to performance objectives within a company.

That’s super true. I I think that that’s a really good best practice to think about.

We see something in parallel with MotionPoint as well where it's, the the things that hold hold back the most, let's say, taking a new website that's been translated live into the market is, you know, set setting, you know, at the smart the at the smallest level, what what what's the glossary? What's the style guide? Like, how are you going to decide to merchandise your internal lingo, your products, your, you know, brand voice, into global markets. Huge.

And that's that's something where, you know, a company or a translator in any in any in this industry that that just, you know, speed, whatever it is, that they all have to go through the bit. The approval has to come from a customer or a client there. Right? And that that's not something that the service provider should be prescribing.

They should be getting that style guiding roster. And similar to what you're talking about, like setting a strategy because, you know, just translating your website or, you know, translating a brochure, that's not truly doing, there's no strategy behind that. That's that's more of a tactic. And when you when you when you don't really think things through, and and and what I mean what I mean by that is, like, how is it gonna fit with the rest of the puzzle.

Right?

You you you see like sub subpar results and also, you know, there there’s no road to fix it because there’s no plan to look back at, you know, if it’s getting executed or not.

No way to measure it.

Exactly.

And and then peep and then an executive, rightly so, will well, we we we spent a half million dollars or we spent two hundred fifty thousand dollars and we did this translation. I'm sure we increased our sales by a little bit, but, like, it was supposed to be magic.

Yeah.

And it can’t be it it can be magic.

You've gotta have certain pieces in place and you have to be organized about it. Yeah. But again, as you know, it's just a business process. I mean, doing all of this is a business process, and that's the key.

How do you integrate that into an organization's way of doing business when it hasn't been part of their DNA? So that's why people like me still have jobs. I shouldn't so many this should really be easy for people. I shouldn't have to tell people how to do this, but it's not quite as easy as it looks from outside.

Alright. Absolutely. Last question.

Last question. So, I mean, we kinda touched on it, but I'll ask it anyway. It's you know, what what are some Uh-huh. Potential risks, or or pitfalls associated to, you know, multilingual marketing, language translation?

And are there any is there any research or stories that could illustrate, you know, the impact of something like that?

Sure.

I think, I did wanna touch on the advantages eve as well.

Okay. Which are obvious. Right? We can do that.

Yeah. I I think those are obvious, but I wanna remind people no matter what size you are, at some point, if you're really good at what you do and people like your product and or your service, you will run out of enough customers in your own market. So where do the next thousand, next ten thousand, next hundred thousand customers come from? And it won't be your home market. So that's that's the advantage. I mean, at some point you will need to do some kind of marketing, you know, outside of your own market.

But the disadvantage comes in that it requires an ongoing investment. It's not a one and done thing.

It's kind of like having a baby. I mean, it's just that once you have a baby, you you shouldn't kill it off. I mean, you can't kill it off. Right?

And the same thing with moving into a market or marketing. If you start and someone, you know, people do know about your brand and then you pull it, that is not a good thing. So that's, I think, maybe not I mean, it's a risk. Right?

Not not a disadvantage, but really recognizing that it’s an ongoing investment that you need to make that changes over time, I think.

Yeah. And the reason the reason I kinda asked, more about the disadvantages first because we we spoke a lot about, you know, advantages in in some in some ways. But I I'm very much aligned with that because, you know, what what what you're doing when you take when you go into a new market is committing to that market. And it's it's very it's very, it's very delicate to your brand reputation if you were to just, you know, take the rug from underneath that market and and stop serving you.

And you're right. I like the analogy of a baby because you can start small, but you have to nourish it, and it has to keep on growing. It has to keep on getting better. You can't just disregard.

Yeah.

Were you gonna add anything else, Rebecca?

Well, no. But I was gonna say too, just like a baby, things will change around it. Right? The environment's gonna change.

You know, an assumption you made, a child was two, it's not the same as when the child is three being four. So the same thing with marketing. The stuff's gonna change, and you need to pay attention. And things that worked last year might not work this year.

So, yeah, all those things to be aware of.

Yeah. Absolutely. You have yeah. That's all the parts. You you what what are the trends in the market you're serving? What's the, you know, change in buying behavior?

It it really is Exactly.

You know, people, marketers, and businesses, and executives spend a lot of time talking about something like what's the ideal customer persona? What's the profile? Right? And these things, they spend hours and, and hours of time and resources in for their flagship market. And do they have to do the same thing for their multilingual markets? Right? For their global markets, their secondary markets and their domestic.

And but on the on the flip side alright.

And on the flip side, though, I think especially US companies still sometimes don't realize that certain markets are really looking for a US or an American experience no matter what global politics are, no matter what's happened. And so I think maybe companies are getting better at realizing, okay. We don't have to make as many changes as we thought. Yes.

We definitely need to translate and localize our code and and the website and get all that right. But the experience may not need to change as much as they think. So that's what makes our field exciting is because it's never the same. You know, each company and each market is different.

Different.

Yeah. We call it here internally. We call that the balance between customization and standardization. You know, there there there's points that you can keep the same.

Yeah. There's other parts that you can you can change. And finding that balance really does make it, like, you're right, unique to every company. Nobody's gonna do it the same, and then that that's pretty neat.

Exactly. Exactly.

So you asked for some success stories. I don't have a we within our research, we do, but I don't I don't have one I wanna point out, but I wanna point out kind of a bigger picture thing. And what we find out is that with global marketing and translation and localization in general, that the more that it can be tied to an overall corporate initiative, the more successful it's apt to be. So for example, whether it has to do with AI these days, whether it has to do with customer experience, I don't know.

Maybe maybe a company has a procurement initiative, They’re trying to save money or do certain things with vendors or quality.

What's really great about the translation of global marketing is that it is a horizontal function, as we said. The Achilles' heel means, you know, that that causes problems. But Right. It also means that you can almost always tie it to an initiative in some way. There's gonna be an international perspective or a marketing perspective to almost anything. So the, what we see the most successful stories with, and the most successful companies, usually those teams, it's always a part of whatever the overall corporate objectives are over time.

Yeah.

And that’s key. Yeah. That’s okay.

Well, that kinda that kinda wraps up what what you were saying at the beginning where it has to be part of the the the KPIs and the key objectives of a company. And and it sounds like what you're seeing is well, that's because the proof is in the pudding. The companies that are actually making it part of their of their entire strategy and marrying their multilingual markets into their, you know, their their KPIs or cars that their their global yearly objectives. Right? Like, they're more successful.

So absolutely, that tone makes sense.

Exactly.

For sure.

Because there’s a commitment. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

So do we have to stop now?

No.

No.

But I'm not talking about this, and it's it's great for companies such as yours who come in to to actually look at the the language part of it. You all end up educating companies many times to say, look, you all need to look bigger than just the language piece, and and that's what is great about, working with companies such as yours. So this has been fun. Invite me back sometime.

Absolutely. We sure will, Rebecca, and I appreciate your time. I really do appreciate you take taking a part of their day to do this.

So that does it for three questions with MotionPoint.

Thank you everybody for watching. Until next time.