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It seems so straightforward. Prepare top notch marketing material in
English. Given that English is spoken at one level or another by some 1.5
billion people worldwide and is effectively the lingua franca of the world at
this time, it should be cost-effective. In practice, that approach is as relevant as
“one size fits all”. While it is true that much of the world can somehow
express themselves orally in English, far fewer can read effectively in
English. Many non-native readers even avoid reading complicated materials in
their second language as they find themselves spending more time and energy
with less effective results when trying to decipher them. Visual elements, such as
different letters and direction, significantly increase that difficulty. Thus,
if a person or company wishes to reach a target audience, it is significantly
more effective to prepare marketing material in the native language of their
customers.
Ranking languages by native language readers leads to rather different
result than that for speaking, native or non-native. The most dominant
languages, at least in terms of numbers, are limited to a few countries. For
example, Russian and Chinese are almost entirely spoken and read in the Russian
Federation and China, respectively, while English as a native language is
limited to a handful of countries, primarily the UK, the United States, South
Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Even in those countries, a
meaningful part of the country does not read English fluently whether because
they are immigrants, children of immigrants or live in areas where another
language is dominant. This phenomenon is not limited to the English-speaking
countries as immigrants have reached every country on the globe, including Scandinavia
and Germany, or multiple local languages coexist, as in many parts of Africa
and India. Even the same language can have significant different local versions,
as it the case of Spanish and Arabic. Therefore, the number of native language
readers in English or any other language is significantly less than speakers,
first or second language.
This distinction is meaningful to businesses because non-native readers
are much less effective in grasping written text. First, they read slower to
one degree or another as even fluent speakers of foreign languages have
experienced. Second, scanning in a second language requires much more effort
with less success. Of great importance is the fact that Internet users scan
much more quickly in their native language than in their second language
regardless of their familiarity with the latter. A difference in letters and/or
direction(Hebrew/Arabic vs English/Spanish) further encumbers the scanning
process. Furthermore, non-native speakers often miss direct or indirect
messages due to a lack of familiarity with the nuances and cultural references.
Psychologically, it is often so much effort to read a (relatively) long text in
a foreign language that even high-level foreign speakers prefer to avoid such texts. That
second-language learners may be able to read that language does not necessarily
mean that they can efficiently and effectively understand it or even choose to.
As a personal example, my native language is English but I am quite
fluent in both French and Hebrew. During my recent trip to France, I found
plowing through the French sites slower and “heavier” than if they had been
English. As for Hebrew, a language that I live in and use every day, including
translate from, I am quite slow in skimming websites, not to mention longer texts, and dread
receiving long emails in Hebrew as I know that I will have truly concentrate. For
that reason, I don’t read Hebrew books for the pleasure before I go to bed,
preferring English or French. In practice, notwithstanding my oral ability, my
reading in my second languages is less effective and requires more effort.
For a business or individual desiring to reach a certain customer, it is
important for the written material to be in the most transparent form, one in
which the language of choice does not interfere with the message. If the
readers are expending significant energy on trying to decipher the language, it
is at the expense of considering the product or service. Yes, their English may
be sufficient to basically understand the content but they are probably not
going to act on it as there is little mental energy left for the effort even if they
read to the end. Thus, translation is not “extra” expense but an essential
marketing tool.
Today, it is quite tempting to use machine translation, whether a
“Google Translate” tool of some kind or a ChatGPT result, to save money and
achieve a seemingly acceptable result. Some 20 years of machine translation
have left behind a long trail of failed and even embarrassing marketing
efforts, even by large companies, that tried to save money and made themselves
into a laughing stock, not the desired result. It is far more cost-effective to
pay a human being a proper amount to a proper job. The increased sales almost
always surpass the expense and create a positive company image, the purposes of
marketing. As my father said, anything worth doing is worth doing well.
In summary, when conducting a marketing campaign, identity the native
reading language of your customer and have a human professional translate the
written texts. When it comes to making your written marketing material effective, no language,
not even English, comes close to ruling them all.
* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.
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