As a company owner growing your business is essential, keeping in mind the cost / profit ratio and making sure the costs do not surpass the profit. Especially small and mid-size company managers are struggling with such issues and are hesitant to invest into new markets easily. But many firms overestimate the costs or are unfamiliar with globalization and how globalization can help you grow our business.

Globalization in Context of the 21st Century

The 21st century is great, Globalization has helped many to develop new markets and win a larger market share. But the challenges company owners or business managers are struggling with is also real. Globalization is a chance, if you know how to maneuver your company through it and follow a olid strategy.

Going global does not necessarily mean investing in offices onsite in new markets, this concept has been obsolete since the markets are opening up, cross-country trade has become a normality and the consumers have adapted e-commerce as a new way of shopping.

Cross-Country Shopping

Companies can now reach their consumers by means of Internet and through ever-growing online and e-commerce solutions. It has become normal to consumers to shop in other countries, meaning U.S. consumers are on shopping rampages in China, and international crowds developed to go on online cross-country shopping tours.

Native Language Shopping Experience

A clear strategy to be successful in going global online is to create a comfortable consumer experience. This means foremost that the consumers want to shop similar to what they are used to, and this also includes that the e-commerce or online shop solution they visit and where the company is offering their goods or services, needs to be in their mother tongue language. A research publically available in the internet shows that 72.4 of consumers were more likely to buy products in their native language.

Multilingual Content Creation

But how does this knowledge help a company´s business to accelerate? We read just now that there is a huge cross-border market available. Getting a share of this market means the company selling products or services needs to create a comfortable environment for the consumer during his shopping experience, including a native language shopping experience. This means that translating and localizing my content will already help me to be more attractive to more consumers from other markets! Language localization is the process of adapting a product that has been previously translated into multiple languages to a specific country or region.

Content Selection and Translation

Therefore in a first step the content of the website / online or e-commerce shop needs to be selected and then translated into the language for the target audience, including adaption of links, payment processes, and more.

Now many companies use different e-commerce providers or even had their IT division tailor their own e-commerce shop or online solution. Exporting such texts into a format that can be translated easily such as Microsoft´s MS Word might be a time consuming and costly aspect, and importing it back even worse, as your IT expert might need to copy and paste Chinese characters, Arabic text or other foreign language that he is unfamiliar with into your source code, meaning a lot of small and big mishaps can occur.

A reliable multilingual language supplier will offer you for this a more sophisticated solution. Professional multilingual language suppliers, including Wagner Consulting, will offer you the translation, localization and testing directly in the Content Management System your company has in place for your online solution or e-commerce shop; or will work directly in the source code and return to you a ready-to-use solution. Additional information about how e.g. Wagner Consulting´s Localization Solution is handled can be obtained here.

Culturally Adapting To Target Market

A common mistake made by many companies going global is their believe that their marketing style, text style and slogans can work in other countries as well. Do not get fooled by that believe. Cultures adapt words, phrases and meanings differently and this should be taken into consideration by your multilingual language supplier, who will adapt your text to local needs and consults you if necessary on issues you might not see.

Adapting to local needs is crucial at this point, as you want to sell your products and services to that target consumers. Losing their trust by not creating the comfortable environment they expect, can cause a low or no sale at all. We put together a few translation mishaps that happened publically and should show you why working with a professional multilingual language service provider is important.

INSIGHT LOOK: PE Solutions for Large Scale Content Companies

Certainly larger firms have their own solutions for content development and translation in place, or use Wagner Consulting´s solution to process content and have it go live automatically through a translation interface.
But what happens if you are a large corporation and process millions of words each day or week, or are a portal like eBay who have millions of users publish content each minute into their platform.

In that case a possible solution is post-editing (PE) machine translated content. Many large scale corporations, including eBay are already doing this and the outcome is of a level that a target audience speaker does not or rarely sees the difference between a human translation and a post-edited machine-translation. Certainly – this applies only to very simple texts and the industries technology level is not yet so far advanced, so that MT solutions can be applied to any translation request.

Wagner´s staff recently joined a Webinar held by GALA – the Globalization and Localization Association – about Language Resources for MT Quality Assurance at eBay. It was very interesting to hear their Quality Assurance approach and learn more about the tools eBay is using, and in many ways they use similar approaches as the solution Wagner Consulting provides, including the use of similar software tools and systems.

PE Solutions are only advisable to be used large-scale clients and for non-crucial content.

Roll-Out

Once your content has been fully localized, Quality Assurance took place and the website has been tested, you can publically roll-out your content and make it available to your target consumers.

Increase in Revenue

Congratulations, you have done the first step in Globalization. But now think about the following – you have an awesome product or service, made it appealing looking and many consumers would be interesting in acquiring it, but you hide it in your drawer. Will you be able to actually sell it that way? Well no you will think, and this is similar to going global. A local presence in form of an online solution or e-commerce shop will not succeed, until you introduce it to the target audience and make them aware of your product or service.

A professional multilingual language supplier such as Wagner Consulting will not stop here, but will consult and guide you further about how to proceed with the Globalization process and how to turn your multilingual content to work for you and generate profit.

Ongoing Support by Wagner

This means your products and services will be publically found by your target audience. Globalization is an ongoing process that needs continuous support and work. Similar to your existing Sales and Marketing activities does your Globalization approach also need resilience and passion. Among such efforts it´s important to provide fresh and unique content to your target audience on an ongoing basis. According to Forbes 88 % of shoppers characterize detailed product content as being extremely important.

Wagner Consulting is one of the best online translation agencies that provides professional Translation, Globalization & Localization services to a large local and foreign customer base.

If you wish to receive a detailed offer on or consultation on Globalization or Localization services provided by Wagner Consulting, then please feel free to contact our Sales Team, who will gladly assist you.

Patent Translations – Filing Your Patent The Right Way

Submitting a patent is no easy task, and having to submit it along with a translated copy or even worse, with multiple translated copies in several languages can create a lot of stress and pressure.

But how can you get rid of this stress and pressure? You may want to find a firm tha will consult you with your multilingual patent translation needs and helps you to maneuvr efficiently through the patent application process.

Many patent attorneys and patent agents are facing similar issues here, they sometimes pick a supplier who claims to have the knowledge, but in the end delivers something far from being useable. This may even turn worse, if you do not speak the language, submit your application to the Patent Office and weeks later, certainly after you paid the language suppliers invoice, find yourself confronted with a rejection letter issued by the Patent Office claiming that the translated copy will not be accepted due to several reasons, such as quality.

Quality may not just be defined as a good understandable translation, but the Patent Offices require a very special use of terminology and not many translators can apply or meet this. That means you might take your translation to yet another translator, who tells you this must be a mistake as the translation is well understandable and well written, leaving you even more jeopardized as before.

Learning from faults is good –but as someone submitting a patent application you do not want this to be rejected. Therefore it is important that you select a firm or a linguist that possesses the skillset required by patent translations.

Now you may have paid attention and realize a patent translator is a good choice, but does this translator know the field he shall translate in? Very good objection! Relating this to the legal industry, if you want a patent submitted, you may not want to retain the service of a family attorney.

Same applies to patent translations. You need to make sure that the linguist who will be working on your patent translation is also a field specialist in the area he is supposed to translate. This means that a patent translator who is a field expert in bioscience will most likely fail in doing a great job for a patent translation in telecommunications.  If you work with a multilingual language provider (translation agency) they will pay close attention to this, but do ask such questions to make sure they also know what they are doing!

A multilingual service provider usually posses as a standard ISO 17100 and applies this standard. For patent translations we always suggest to even use a higher standard, making e.g. sure that the patent translator has 10 years of experience as a patent translator.

Summary

Make sure to retain the services of:

• a professional patent translator
• who is native of the target language
• with 10 or more years experience in patent translations
• field expert in the subject matter

Imagine you have done this now successfully for your first language combination but are stuck with 12 more languages to assign. Do you really want to do this 12 more times and screen linguists yourself? Also – keep in mind that screening the linguist is only one step, but you still have to manage your project. Linguists might have questions regarding terminology, run into problems with formatting or do not know newly published or updated requirements of the Patent Office. You may want to indeed go with multilingual language service provider after all.

Project Management

The Language Service Provider (LSP) will take over all of your project management requirements. As a project stakeholder he will keep you updated about the progress at all times. They will maneuvr you efficiently through the patent application process and will listen closely to your needs, taking away the pressure from the complicated and complex translation requirements.

Nonetheless, do ask for partial updates and partial deliveries along the way. A professional LSP will provide you with this wihout discussion. You may also want to agree to milestone deliveries. But do note, usually LSPs and the patent translators perform the Quality Assurance Lifecylce after the translation is done, yet another advantage working with a LSP. So if you still see some minor mistakes, such as spelling errors, do not get worried.
Should you want to clarify any of this, do send your LSP a quick email or give them a phone call. A professional LSP will listen closely to your concerns and respond to them appropriately.

If you retain the services of a LSP make sure to receive a formal quote outlining their services, the costs and a delivery date for each language combination. Make sure that the offer includes TEP (Translation, Editing and Proofreading) and pay close attention, that the LSP knows and respects the requirements outlined by the Patent Office you wish to submit your patent application to. Some Patent Offices require the LSP to either verify or certify the translation. If this is the case, make sure the LSP includes this into your quote. It is also important that you have a direct Project Manager or Team assigned to your project and you, so that you have a direct contact person within the LSP.

Summary

• Get a direct Project Manager assigned to your project
• Outline the requirements in writing, including pricing and service ordered
• Check if the translation meets the Patent Office requirements
• Check if you need Verification or Certification
• Patent Specification translation for validation in the U.S., European Territories and Overseas

VERIFICATION

Verification of a translation means that the translation must be accompanied by a statement signed by the applicant or by the translator, to the effect that, to the best of his knowledge, the translation is complete and faithful.  There are only a few designated Offices that require verification.

CERTIFICATION

Certification of a translation means that the translation must be certified by a public authority or a sworn translator. This is usually not required for an (international) application, but if a designated office reasonably has doubts about the accuracy of the translation, it may require the applicant to furnish a certification of the translation.

Another good way to choose your LSP is the level of service they are offering. LSPs usually have different divisions within their organization such as DTP or QA. You may believe still you may not need DTP services, but this is might be a false conclusion.

You may have special formatting requests or only have the patent text available as scan or pdf. That means that the Project Manager of your project will schedule the DTP Division to help with the OCR or formatting work, prior and after the translation is done.
The DTP division will also be of great help when it comes to rebuilding complex tables, drawings, flow charts or graphs.

Summary
A good LSP will provide:

• Patent specification translation for validation in the U.S., European Territories and Overseas
• Multilingual translation of Descriptions, Claims and Abstracts
• Translator Certification and Verification (If Needed)
• Special Formatting – ensure documents are ready to send to your agent abroad
• Complex tables, drawings and flow charts rebuilt
• Skilled Project Management Team
• Quality Assurance Service

Wagner Consulting is one of the best online translation agencies that provides professional Translation, Globalization & Localization services to a large local and foreign customer base. Our Patent Division has translated into and from, but not limited to languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese,Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian more than 10 Mio words that have been filed successfully with several Patent Offices domestically and overseas.

If you wish to receive a detailed offer on or consultation on Globalization or Localization services provided by Wagner Consulting, then please feel free to contact our Sales Team, who will gladly assist you.

Scandinavian Midsummer – More Than Just Traditions
Midsummer is celebrated throughout the scandinavian region, and started originally as a pagan holiday, being celebrated on the day of John the Baptist and is now celebrated on the weekend closest to the summer solistice.

It welcomes summer and is usually taking place between June 19 to June 25.

Celebrations in

Sweden are taking place around a maypole, trimmed with garlands of flowers. People dance around the maypole holding hands and enjoy themselves.
Finland are taking place at someones favorite lake, around self-build bonfires and are usually taking place during midnight, with a lot of dancing.
Norway are also called Sankt Hans Aften and customs date back to pagan times paying tribute to the powers of the sun god. By litting a bonfire it reflects the defeat of darkness.
Denmark are also similar to Norway, even calling it Sankt Hans Aften as well. Bonfires play a very important role after dark, during the day they enjoy picnics.
Iceland are taking it to a different level. They call the midsummer night Jónsmessa (“Mass of John the Baptist”). According to folklore, seals become human, cows speak in human tongue and elves come out of their hiding places on this magical night.

No matter where you are, we at Wagner wish you a great midsummer celebration. Enjoy your tradition!

Travel Industry – Content Solution