Translation Mistakes and Why Languages Matter in Business

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Embarrassing mistakes are really not that big a deal when you make them with your friends. Making mistakes is an art that individual language learners need to embrace if they are truly to learn a language well.

If you conjugate a verb wrong when ordering your first coffee abroad, the world does not come to an end.

What continues to boggle my mind is how a business can spend millions or billions of dollars on a campaign without putting the same care into its target-language version. A learner’s mistake may reach one conversation; a campaign can reach an entire market.

This is why professional localisation matters.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

Why Localisation Needs Human Review

Many famous translation-blunder stories are repeated online without solid sourcing. The examples in the original version of this article could not be verified well enough to keep presenting them as facts.

The broader lesson still holds: names, slogans and campaigns need review by people who understand the target language, audience and local context. A word-for-word translation can miss tone, connotation or culture even when its grammar is correct.

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Poor localisation can confuse customers, weaken trust and waste a campaign budget. A review by people who know the language and market can catch problems before a campaign goes live.

This kind of review does not always require mastery of the language.

An intermediate speaker may spot an obvious problem, while a high-stakes campaign still deserves review by an experienced translator or local specialist.

I’ve always advocated for language learning because of the cultural benefits of being multilingual. It opens up your worldview and connects you to new people. Those benefits do not end with our personal lives.

Learning a New Language Can Make You More Employable

If you're running or starting your own business, being multilingual can help you become a better employer, entrepreneur or business strategist as well.

And this is because businesses are about people. A business helps people get something they want or need, or sometimes tries to convince them to buy something they may not need.

My point is that the business world is about communication. It’s about forming connections and relationships with people, first and foremost.

The same is true of languages.

I’ll always maintain that one of the most important “keys” to learning a new language is to have a passion for developing your skills and communicating with people who speak it. But let me point out something that may or may not be obvious: Work and passion are not mutually exclusive!

If your job or your business is your passion, there can be good reasons to include a language-learning project in your work and business strategy.

Becoming fluent in a language that your customers, clients or partners speak can help you build relationships and understand their needs and cultural perspectives so that you can serve them better.

Some of these relationships may already exist through international partners or a specific community that uses your product or service. Others may begin when you make the effort to communicate.

Big businesses also know that languages are important

An international mindset can also help businesses succeed.

Companies that work across borders need people who understand how language and culture affect communication. That matters whether a business is entering a market, serving multilingual customers or working with international partners.

So if you have to learn a new language for your job, or think that knowing several languages may help your business, look beyond the job itself. Think about the people on the other side of those business relationships and how you can communicate with them more directly.