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Social media now plays a large part of a brand’s digital marketing strategy. Regardless of the sector, service or audience, it’s expected for a company to at least have a presence on social media sites. So when it comes to localising your digital marketing, where does social media fit in?
Translating your social media won’t be for everyone, but if your brand has an established presence in foreign markets, and your audience use social media avidly, it’s a no-brainer. So where do you start? Do you translate every single tweet or Facebook post? As with any localisation project, the key is to be strategic – choose content, languages and social sites that are relevant to your business and audience. It’s worth conducting some local market research, for example, in China due to censorship requirements, QQ, Wechat and Renren are favoured over the traditional Western networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Social media language
Social media is changing the way we speak and communicate. Not only are new words being created, we’re also repurposing existing words. Most of the popular social media sites originated in the U.S., so the majority of the jargon and terminology are in English, but due to the use of language in social media, most of these words don’t necessarily have equivalents in other languages. In other European languages, on Facebook a button shows “I like”, rather than “like”. Or think about the verb “to tweet” – most languages will have an equivalent, but this relates to a bird’s tweet, not a Twitter post. A literal translation of these phrases won’t carry the same meaning or significance as the English version does.
If language on social media wasn’t difficult enough, there’s been a huge growth in ‘text-speak’, using acronyms to shorten a phrase to just a few letters, such as “OMG” (oh my god). In French, you’ll find “MDR” (mort de rire) instead of “LOL”, which translates as “dying of laughter”.
The emergence of emojis
Shorthand writing is now taking another form – emojis. It was announced back in 2015 that ‘emoji’ was the fastest growing language.
Crazy, you might think, surely this trend is sending us back to the dark ages and limiting our creativity? Or is it doing the opposite?
Are emojis being used in new and entertaining ways, and rather than simply replacing the written word, they are enhancing and elevating it to new diverse levels? Some brands have started using emojis in their digital marketing, including social media and email marketing, as they know that most of their consumers interact with their brand on a smartphone, and regularly use emojis when communicating with their friends and family, so they’re likely to engage more.
Emojis originated in Japan (‘e’ meaning ‘picture’ and ‘moji’ meaning ‘letter’) but have been widely adopted by UK and US audiences.
Beware of cultural sensitivities though – what you may think acceptable or humorous in your country could be offensive or distasteful in another. Symbols and gestures can present problems in other cultures. For example, in Africa and the Middle East, the ‘thumbs up’ signal can be seen as rude.
Techniques for creative translation
When it comes to translation, one size doesn’t fit all, so it’s important to tailor your approach to make it appropriate for your audience.
When translating technical content or engineering manuals, accuracy is of the utmost importance, however with social media content the end goal is to ensure your message sounds right.
Using native translators means that your message will sound natural in the target language, as native speakers are aware of cultural and grammatical nuances. Social media is usually regarded as a personal channel, so using poor translation techniques that render your message incomprehensible will not earn you any likes, retweets or follows. It’s likely that it will even put people off your brand.
Don’t forget that social media is built on 2 way communication; if you offend or annoy someone they’ll voice their anger for all to see.
