Franglais?

    

The image above is taken directly from my Inbox and is a result of me booking a rail ticket (online) to travel through France last summer. I was just about to delete the email, when it occurred to me that this was a good example of the type of opportunity I have been discussing with one or two clients regarding the targeting of specific nationalities. In this instance, I know that if I click through to the SNCF website I will struggle to understand their offer due to my limited language skills, even though from the title I'm fairly sure it is an attractive offer.

One example of a company that has turned language barriers into opportunity (albeit not online) is the well documented Polski Herald, an eight page supplement published every Friday in Dublin's evening Herald. The supplement is published in Polish to target the growing immigrant population and has added around 3000 sales to its 90,000 circulation. The supplement contains information regarding EU citizen rights, jobs and other issues concerning the Polish community.  The newspaper is also now reviewing options to target the 100,000 strong Chinese population and possibly the 50,000 Latvians. Another example is Reed Recruitment, who offer both employment advice and job searches in different languages. If you visit their UK site, you can see an example of their Polish language services offering information targeted at this growing community.

Globally,the fastest growing language within online users is Spanish, with some 420 million Spanish-speakers worldwide currently only 80 million (18%) of these are online. Figures suggest that Spanish-speaking Internet users has grown 231% in the last six years (2000-2006) whilst English-speaking users increased 135.2% over the same period. A full breakdown of online language populations is available at Globstats.

With over 1,500 people per day arriving to the UK and the already well established overseas communities, maybe it's time to consider how you can turn these language barriers into opportunities. We know that wherever people live, they form online communities based on their native language and it seems logical to target these users in their own language. Unless you are a company with an established global presence and dedicated foreign language personnel, the most cost-effective options are either online translation services such as the one provided by Google or some form of automated machine translation software hosted on your own servers. The Google translation option is not really suitable as a means of establishing credibility and commitment, whilst the latter will may not provide totally accurate translations. However,despite the limitations of machine translations to always be 100% accurate, as we all know from our own travel experiences, a little effort to communicate in the native language goes a long way to building relationships.

The net effect of these language barriers/opportunities will vary from business to business and sector to sector, but will almost always include a review of your website, microsites, pay-per-click and search engine optimisation strategies.

To find out more about machine translation software please visit: www.worldlingo.com