Lost in translation

Peter Bennett, founder of London Translations Limited, offers words of advice for entrepreneurs looking to trade with the expanding Asian economies.

Few of us receive emails in Chinese, but I saw one recently which translated into: "I'd like to spend a million pounds with you". Good thing I knew that, and a good excuse, I thought, to spend January in Beijing talking to business representative organisations and growing companies who want to trade with the UK. Perhaps this could be your firm in 2006 but not before you pay attention to the matter of communication – communication in tune with the local culture.

According to figures recently published by the Chinese government, the country's economy grew at a blistering 9.4% in the first three quarters of 2005 alone. Yet a pan-European business poll by parcel firm UPS revealed that almost a third of UK business leaders do not consider Asia to be an important trading or production market.

To ignore the headlines predicting the 'awakening of the Dragon' would be commercial suicide: the world economy is undergoing a revolution as a China-led Asia returns to its historic role at the centre of affairs, according to the Financial Times' Martin Wolf. If you are going to do business in a foreign language with unfamiliar cultures here are three lessons so you avoid getting 'lost in translation'.

Lesson 1: Sell global but talk local

Forget the notion that English is the international language of business. It is rarely spoken in the rapidly expanding markets of South-East Asia, East Asia, Latin America and Russia. I’m struck by the low numbers of English-speaking Chinese here in Beijing. To avoid embarrassing and costly mistakes in any translations, use a native speaker of the country concerned, someone familiar with custom, idioms and current trends. If you want to be taken seriously this is lesson number one. As I walk around the city I come across monuments etched in quaint English, translated by competent professionals but inaccurate in style and meaning. There is simply no substitute for using a mother-tongue translator. For example, Real Madrid aspires to be the greatest football club in the world but it cannot be taken seriously in England – the home of football – when its website declares of David Beckham:

"His speciality are the central shots from the wing, called 'bananas', and free kicks, two types of plays where he displays a shooting technique which is unique in the world of football". Really?

Some examples of bad translation by marketing giants are now so familiar that it is hard to know whether they are apocryphal or not. Kentucky Fried Chicken may sell "finger-lickin' good" chicken in the west, but the story has it that the Chinese were told to "eat their fingers off." Pepsi allegedly didn’t do much better. You may "come alive with the Pepsi Generation," but in Taiwan the slogan was translated as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead." Crikey!

Lesson 2: You get what you pay for

As a customer buying translation services, by definition, you can't understand what you are buying otherwise there would be no need to buy it in the first place.

Your document could have been translated into Japanese by an eminent professor of Tokyo University or one of their first year undergraduates; would you be able to tell the difference? Lesson number two: don't be tempted to buy the cheapest service on offer.

If you assume that, given a particular document, translator 'A' will translate the document in exactly the same way as translator 'B', you will be wrong. The only difference between A's output and B's output will be the price you are asked to pay for it. The internet hasn't helped either. There are those who offer electronic translations who frankly shouldn’t be doing so. Would you rather have someone that’s "trained as a doctor" or someone who has been "on a train with a doctor" to help you during a crisis?

The difference in the phrases is small but can have a huge impact on results. When it comes to any translation work, it is important that things get done right the first time. Shop around. Get several quotations and make sure you specify parameters such as number of words in the source document, the deadline, the complexity and document format and the language 'pair'. It is much cheaper to translate a French document into English than a Japanese document into English; even more expensive to translate from Korean into Dutch as the number of people capable of doing this is much smaller.

Lesson 3: Garbage in, garbage out

If you submit a badly structured document which does not make sense for translation, you will get a piece of work back which is less than excellent. Most translation firms will point out if the quality of the original document is not great and will attempt to work out what the author intended to say. But at the end of the day, as the barber said to the balding man in his chair: "Sir, I can only do my best with what little you have given me to work with". So, try to make sure your text is of a high enough standard to warrant translation.

Finally, there is no substitute for getting out into the cultures you want to trade with. Absorb the atmosphere, smell the cooking, soak-up the sights and sounds. Relax in the knowledge that someone better attuned to the language has taken care of your documentation – feel proud of your products or service and do business.