Today, social media stretches to every part of our world. It has opened up channels of communication that have simply never existed before. If you’re a blogger or business, you’ll want to know who is saying what about you and where. So, when language poses a barrier to this, it’s only natural to want to break it down.
Communicating only in English can put you at a disadvantage to those who have embraced globalization and are able to correspond in a variety of languages. So, if you decide to branch out into online conversation in other languages, you’ll need to maintain the same high standards you have in your native tongue and make sure that your reputation doesn’t become tarnished. The implications of not putting the same care and attention across different languages could be disastrous. You’ll have to think globally but at the same time react to local expectations in the different markets.
The following three points are very important when managing your online reputation across different languages:
1. Use the most effective translation option
When you communicate in a foreign language, keeping mistakes to a minimum is a big part of maintaining a positive online reputation. There’s the option of using machine translators and online dictionaries for translation purposes. Google Translate, Bing Translator and Yahoo! Babelfish are some of the options available and a big part of their appeal is that they’re free.
Machine translators can be helpful in translating other people’s tweets or blog posts and can let you communicate back in a foreign language. But even then you’re taking an avoidable risk, because machine translation engines are far from perfect and could leave you at the very least looking unprofessional, as problems such as inverting sentence meaning are not uncommon.
If you came across text online littered with mistakes or perhaps written in the wrong form of English (e.g. using American English when you should be communicating in British English), you would simply avoid communicating with that business, especially on a professional level. As such, you’ll recognize that flawless copy and translation is essential for your online reputation.
Cutting corners will save time and money in the short-term but will lead down a long-term slippery slope to disaster. The best option for your foreign language content is to use a native speaker that lives in the country that you are in communication with; they will make sure you’re using the correct dialect when in conversation and that your translated content is linguistically and culturally correct, particularly when it comes to colloquialisms. A good example of this in the English language is the word ‘humdinger’, which means that something is ‘remarkable’ in every other part of the English speaking world except in Scotland, where it means the exact opposite.
2. Track any mention of your business
Tracking keywords related to your blog or business, such as your brand name, is a great way to keep your eye on the online conversation about your brand. Google Alerts, for example, is a facility that will email you updates whenever your keyword is shown in a Google search. There’s even the handy option of the language setting that will allow you to follow your hits across several languages.
While useful, this is not without its flaws since Google isn’t the main search engine in several countries; for example, in Russia the main search engine is Yandex. Furthermore, your keyword might completely change meaning in a different language and would therefore be rendered useless. For example the word ‘gift’ in English means ‘poison’ in German – this is where using a local translator to check your keywords is handy. In saying that, tracking is still an excellent tool that definitely should be taken advantage of to keep your eye on who’s talking about you worldwide.
For instance, at Lingo24 we use Google Alerts to track mentions of our business, and one major benefit is that we’re alerted when spammers steal our online content and ‘spin’ it for content spamming purposes. Once alerted, we can have the content removed and maintain our online reputation.
3. Make sure you do your research
After having your content professionally translated, and tracking your brand keywords internationally, the final crucial tip for multilingual reputation management is ‘research your networks’.
Keeping an eye on Twitter and Google Alerts is useful, but there are many other social networks and online forums which are popular around the world. For instance, Orkut is the major social network in Brazil, while Mixi dominates in Japan and Qzone in China. If you’re targeting these countries with translated blog content, it will help to set up a presence on the popular social networks in your target country, to keep an eye on mentions of your brand and respond to any queries or criticisms.
Getting set-up as a multilingual blogger can be time consuming, but once you have your translation workflow and your various alerts and keyword tracking tools set-up, you’ll find it’s a fairly simple process to communicate with huge audiences internationally across multiple languages, all while ensuring your reputation stays untarnished worldwide.
