By Martín Rost
Even before 1492, the year Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, European countries tried to develop their commercial markets by expanding beyond their borders. Back then, perhaps having strong ships, a good route and a linguist was enough to trade in foreign lands. In a globalized world like ours, companies try to expand beyond their borders. That is the way they can establish economical and brand dominance over their competitors, just like it happened over 500 years ago. Naturally these processes have been professionalized over time and currently things are different. For a company to sell a specific product, it has to target the areas they think will be more profitable, plan accordingly and execute those plans better and faster than competitors.
It is here where translators come to take a big role. There are products that are international, mobile phones for example, companies can offer that same product worldwide. Marketing strategies, in most cases, have to be translated into different languages or adapted so that they are understood almost everywhere in the world. This process is called internationalization. Even in Spanish-speaking countries you may find slogans in English, therefore standardizing marketing throughout the world. This is a resource that only the most massive companies can use. Less known companies, or new companies, must have their marketing campaigns translated, especially if their product is new or difficult to understand.
If an international sport equipment brand decided to offer a new cricket bat, they could only offer it in a certain group of countries as not all the world plays cricket. This may probably be spread in English speaking countries only, using the globalization strategy: adapting the campaign for different sets of cultures. Later on, the company may decide to adapt their campaign to a specific country or culture, in order to improve their sales in particular market. This process is called localization. Linguists are involved in each of these projects, it would be difficult to succeed in a country if you do not speak the language and try to sell your products.
Linguists provide their clients reliability. It would be hard for a company to sell a product if its website is poorly translated or their slogan is confusing to the local culture. Translators must be ready to offer companies the service the need to succeed, in order to obtain good profits and benefits over competitors. This can only be achieved by learning about internationalization, globalization, localization and translation.
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