The 5 sectors that need translation the most

When asked today about translation, most businesses will respond in the negative: no, they don’t need translation and besides, they don’t have the budget for it anyways. When surveyed, the majority of marketers (86 percent) admit that they generate U.S.-centric content. 59 percent of respondents do not have any money allocated to reach multilingual audiences just within the U.S.

However, Stepes now makes translation faster and more affordable than ever by tapping into the worlds’ bilingual population. By democratizing access to translation, Stepes allows businesses to access multilingual translation services they would not have considered or been able to before. Now that the world of translation is open to more people than ever, which industries should consider investing in high quality initiatives? Below we identify the top five sectors that would benefit the most from translation.

1. E-commerce

People shop online more than ever before. In countries like China and the US, online sales are even outstripping daily revenue made from traditional brick and mortar locations. E-commerce is also shifting towards a mobile browsing platform as new mobile apps allow customers to easily browse and chat with vendors right from their personal mobile devices. In 2014-2015, mobile e-commerce alone grew 35%. However, the linguistic diversity of growing international markets in Asia are still a barrier to establishing a truly global e-commerce platform. Thus, sites like Amazon, Taobao, Flipkart, and Ebay still remain largely regional.

All this is to say that there is a huge amount of content that is being generated from e-commerce sites that could be translated to reach a wider global audience. This content ranges from product names and descriptions to user reviews.

However, with thousands of new products being updated and uploaded each day, the sheer volume of content would be overwhelming for a traditional translation company to handle. Furthermore, traditional desktop translation software is unequipped to handle continuous flows of digital and mobile nature of much of e-commerce content.

Enter Stepes. Stepes’ “Big Translation” approach can scale up to meet this volume of content, much of it on mobile, and deliver turn around in the language pairs e-commerce companies need.

2. Entertainment and gaming

The entertainment industry (including television, movies, and music) as well as the gaming industry are booming. The entertainment industry produces a huge amount of visual and audio content that presents a unique challenge to translators. Much of it must be subtitled or dubbed to reach a wider international audience. For television shows, subtitling and releasing new episodes each week is particularly demanding. Currently, volunteers or internet sites often will provide pirated content with subtitles of varying quality for viewers in different languages.

Gaming in particular is a new entrant to the global market, but with talented firms producing top-quality work from all over the world, the demand to provide native localization of gaming interfaces is higher than ever. Unfortunately, gaming companies usually have a difficult time finding translators who are familiar enough with their subject material (i.e. are gamers themselves!) that they can produce translated games that look and feel like their original.

Professional and timely translation for these industries would help them distribute their content to a broader audience while preserving copyright, raising visibility and revenue.’

3. Global travel sites

It’s easier to travel around the world than ever thanks to travel sites that help you navigate transportation and accommodations booking. Given that they deal with travel, these sites regularly encounter ticketing information, accommodation descriptions, and tour package details that are listed in their local languages. To serve a truly international customer base, that content must be translated into multiple language pairs. Sites like C-trip, Expedia, Momondo, Hipmunk, etc. could break beyond their domestic market to serve a wider population.

Furthermore, when making a big purchase (for example, airline tickets) customers often consult user reviews on traveling platforms like Lonely Planet or Trip Advisor. Those reviews can be a huge boost for businesses but as of now, remain in only the language used by the reviewer and thus constraining the number of potential customers who might read the review and be persuaded to buy a service.

Big translation would be able to take this user-generated content as well as multilingual travel information and translate it to a global audience for truly worldwide reach.

4. Social media

Our social media footprints – the user-generated data we create on our personal or business accounts – is as valuable as it is ephemeral. Viral Facebook posts, Instagrams that get hundreds of thousands of likes, articles that get re-Tweeted thousands of times: these are now some of the most powerful publicity and revenue-generating tools for enterprising businesses and individuals today.

The two problems that many entrepreneurs and businesses run into on social media is that one, all content remains in their native language and two (this may seem obvious), there is just so much content. This means that publicity from one post in one language can’t be transferred to a viewing group that doesn’t speak that language, severely limiting the reach of anyone’s online presence.

While traditional translation processes and software were not designed with social media content in mind, Stepes can easily take small segments of text such as comments, image captions, and posts and translate them into multiple languages while maintaining the original formatting. When everything from your latest Tumblr post to a business’ Instagram feed can be translated daily, then we can have a truly global communication network.

5. Finance

Money knows no boundaries. Today’s financial world moves vast sums of money around multiple institutions, sometimes several times a day, in order to keep capital flowing to the places where it is most needed. However, being responsible for that much wealth and capital means careful documentation and review; international financial transactions must always be up to legal standards so that they do not violate trade and market laws. Thus, all financial documents – contracts, reports, correspondence, etc. – must be translated by taking into account local and international financial regulations. This is where Stepes’ subject matter experts and terminology management system are crucial for ensuring that people knowledgeable about legal documents are translating the legal documents with the right terms and abiding by legal standards.

In an industry where timing and the flow of capital is incredibly important, making sure that there are no legal hang-ups and miscommunications along the way is crucial for ensuring continuing growth.