Representatives of a Lost Art

In today’s era, digital marketing is gaining significance, copywriting and translation (including localisation - we’ll get to this later) are needed virtually everywhere. From advertisements, brochures, websites, and especially now, on social media; it is any writing done for a business, with the aim of selling a product or service. It is often used to persuade people to think a certain way about a brand or a product.

In a country where English is undoubtedly an undeclared second language, Jordan exceeds on most of its neighbours in the MENA region but falls short on the quality of its written content.

So we’ve had a crazy idea, hear us out, what if, we manage to create a well-written and well-translated content for anyone who requires it. Think of the many times you’ve watched a movie and saw the abysmal translation quality, or when you’ve had to send a document to a Jordanian ministry but the work was delayed by two weeks because they waited on their in-house translator, or if you’ve read a good book or browsed a fantastic website and wished you could share it with your friends who don’t speak English very well, or the 99.99% of video games that are not available in Arabic, and if they were, they appear to have been translated via 2009’s Google Translate (we’re looking at you Resident Evil 7: Biohazard).

Translation is important because not everyone speaks English

Sure, English is the most commonly spoken language. But that doesn’t mean you can overlook all the people who don’t speak it! Even England is home to significant populations of foreign and minority language speakers. And just because a person can speak some English, that doesn’t mean they can speak it well enough to cope in all situations. Holding a basic conversation is one thing. Easy and effective communication is another.

Translation is important because many prefer their native language

English is the most widely spoken language. But, that’s only if you take second-language speakers into account. And therein lies the rub. Almost without exception, people respond better to the language they grew up speaking. To effectively sell to people, it’s not enough to speak a language that they understand (especially if their understanding is limited). You must speak to them in the language their heart speaks.

Localisation mitigates cultural sensitivity

Localisation is the process of adapting a product or content to a specific locale or market. Translation is only one of several elements of the localisation process. Some brands will skip the localisation process and just translate the bare text of their solution. This way they miss out on one of the biggest benefits of localisation. Localisation means you adapt your solution to fit the target audience. It means you change colours where they’re inappropriate, you choose different words where they don’t fit, you format numbers, times and dates, as well as many more things. This way, you avoid being culturally insensitive and help to create positive associations between your brand and your market. Trust us, we tried to explain the Imperial system to Jordanians, we found it easier to just learn metric.