Why Should You Use Native Linguists For Marketing Campaigns?

The key to marketing is storytelling, and one of the most effective but most difficult ways to tell a story is through organic conversation.

This is what makes specialist telemarketing, particularly in medical, biotech and life science fields, both challenging and highly rewarding; it is not just about selling a product or offering a price list but engaging as part of a life sciences community.

Because of this, the language we use is key, and whilst there have been somewhat hyperbolic claims that automated systems for translation can be a major component for developing marketing copy in multiple languages, the reality is that they cannot come close to the ability of a native linguist of a particular language.

Many businesses have tried to use alternative means, such as machine translation, but have commonly found its limitations in the expressive world of marketing.

Here are just a few reasons why native linguists should be at the core of your marketing.

Capturing The Nuances Of Meaning

A vital linguistic concept at the core of why native or highly fluent speakers are essential for effective marketing is that there is often a lot of nuance involved in even the most straightforward forms of marketing.

Conveying this nuance is difficult enough in one’s native language, but translating the ideas, meaning, and vision to another language is even more difficult, with potential risks of confusing or even causing offence.

There are countless examples of this, often involving marketing slogans. Possibly the most infamous, albeit unverified, example of this is how the “Come Alive Pepsi Generation” slogan was translated into Chinese as a promise to return one’s ancestors from the dead.

A native speaker would have caught that immediately and provided a translation that has the same meaning, even if it is not as literal.

People Can Tell The Difference

Confidence is everything in telemarketing, as a person’s mind will often make some judgments on the caller and company based on how and what they say.

Many people who have been contacted by a telesales or telemarketing operative who is speaking to them in a language they are not confident in will often reveal this to be the case, even if they do not make any actual translation mistakes.

They may use words, idioms or expressions that are literally correct, but are either slightly unusual or convey the wrong meaning, such as “province” instead of “county” or “elevator” instead of “lift”.

Machine translation does not really understand the nuances of certain terms, particularly if they have regional connotations, and it cannot factor in which types of linguistic tone are acceptable in what region.

For example, a common misconception is that the slogan “nothing sucks like an Electrolux” was a mistake that inadvertently said that the company’s vacuum cleaners were bad products.

Another example is when juice manufacturer Tropicana tried to sell its orange juice using the translated term “jugo de China”. This means “orange juice” in Castilian Spanish as spoken by people from Latin America and Puerto Rico, but not to people from Cuba.

This might have been the case in American English, but in British English, it was seen as a somewhat mild double entendre with a poetic tempo that helped the company sell countless vacuum cleaners.

Whilst the biggest concern is causing offence, it can also cause some customers to disengage from the conversation; after all, if a representative from a life sciences company is not taking the conversation seriously enough to convey exactly what they want to say.

With telemarketing especially, the tone should be confident, clear and have a firm understanding of the meaning they want to impart to the caller. Without that, it can act like a barrier rather than a bridge.

An article in the journal Global Business Languages has a very insightful quote by Willy Brandt, former chancellor of Germany, which says that he would speak to a buyer, but someone trying to sell to him must themselves speak German. 

They Can Provide Additional Insight

Native linguists have a firmer understanding not only of the linguistic nuances of the target language but also insights into the market in question.

Every country a multinational organisation launches into is slightly different, and what priorities the sector or individual researchers have can vary significantly as well.

They can reveal insights into what types of products and services are already available, where people will tend to go if they need a specialist product for a given research project and some indications of varying detail with regard to budgets, allowing you to price accordingly.