Globalization is truly upon us. The signs are everywhere. Among them: a sharp uptick in recent weeks in the number of SEOmoz questions and blog posts about international SEO. This Q&A by Zeph Snapp was a follow-up to his webinar and is packed with useful information.

But for many SEOs, the picture remains fuzzy.

And no wonder. More and more companies are going global, especially in the eLearning, software, consumer goods and high tech industries. These days, product or marketing managers are often given ridiculously short deadlines to do multilingual product launches – everything from websites, to compliance documentation, to manuals, to brochures and marketing materials. And it’s all needed yesterday in a dozen or more languages.

Comme on dit en anglais: “Oy, Vey.” Or to put it a bit more diplomatically...

International SEO is part of this, but remains just that: part of a larger whole.

Pity the poor managers who are your SEO clients. Confronted with something close to Mission Impossible, they don’t know where to turn. They may consult you, their ad agencies, marketing firms, or other consultants, but each has only a piece of the puzzle.

So please consider this blog post a cry from the heart from the depths of my soul. The message is: serve your clients best by zooming up to 30,000 feet to see the big picture.

Let’s cut to the chase. I’m Daniel Freedman, a Web Strategist for LinguaLinx, an international language services provider that provides translation, publishing, cultural consulting, and technical services. And I also happen to be a Canadian who speaks English, French, Spanish and Hebrew, has lived in Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Washington, DC and London, England, and spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley. In previous lives, I have been a TV producer, magazine editor, news executive, and non-profit executive.

And here’s my takeaway. I think much of the recent advice on SEOmoz on International SEO has been excellent – but too narrowly focused on technical issues.

I loved Gianluca Fiorelli’s International SEO: Dropping The Information Dust and his own key takeways:

• Do not get obsessed with having a local IP for your ccTLD site, as it is now a minor ranking factor
• It is extremely unwise to rely on automated translation services, especially Google Translate
• It is equally unwise to rely on people in-house, who happen to know the language to be translated to

First, let me elaborate on Gianluca’s last point about the dangers of grabbing random amateurs to do translation. Then, we are going to take it one step further to discuss what I and my colleagues at LinguaLinx call ...wait for it... wait for it...(drumroll, please).....

Cultural Consulting.

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Case Study #1: Trivantis Learns a Lesson

Years ago, one of our clients started using native speakers of various languages — local college students, specifically — to translate documentation from English.

The results weren’t exactly as expected.

“We learned the hard way that it just doesn’t work that way,” said John Blackmon, senior vice president of Trivantis.

Simply knowing the languages isn’t enough, he explained. The translator also must intimately understand the nuances of translation.

Trivantis, founded 13 years ago, is best known by its flagship product called Lectora. Essentially, the software is a tool that allows customers to create eLearning courses.

In 2008, the company started to expand into international markets. Likewise, the Lectora tool would need to be translated into the native languages of potential customers. “You would be surprised at how much translation that requires,” Blackmon explained. Thus far, we have translated the Lectora product into five languages. “It has allowed us to confidently enter markets knowing that we can get the product localized in a reasonable timeframe to enable sales,” Blackmon continued.

And that’s really the key point. Whatever your product or industry, you need to send these crucial messages to your clients and prospective clients:

• We know you
• We respect you
• We have taken the time and trouble to get the details right

The alternative is to send the very bad message of: “We want your money, so please send it right away even though we can’t be bothered to appreciate what makes you and your culture special and distinctive.”

Case Study #2: Accuracy Counts

Accuracy and attention to detail in translation are also crucially important. Consider the experience of Hanesbrands, another client. With tens of thousands of employees in more than 25 countries, they are more than familiar dealing with documents in multiple languages.

The global consumer-goods company has 50,000 people on its payroll; 35,500 of those are outside the United States. We translate Hanesbrands’ documents into eight languages. The company has roots that date back more than 100 years with such
 well-known brands as Bali, Champion, Hanes, L’eggs, Playtex and Wonderbra.

Victoria Triplett,
 Hanesbrands manager of global ethics and compliance, warns against using online translation tools such as Google Translate and 
FreeTranslation.com. Although they are free to use, the sites have been known to 
incorrectly translate words and phrases. “There’s a real danger in that. The resources on the Web are limited,” Triplett said.
 “Accuracy — that’s important. Especially translating and making it visible to those 
around the world. You want to make sure the integrity of the document is maintained.”

Case Study #3: Many Languages, Many Meanings

In a very different realm, Deborah Stewart agrees about the importance of accuracy. On a daily basis, she hears four languages. Working with refugees and immigrants at New York’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, being able to communicate information accurately — and in the appropriate language — is vital.

“We serve thousands of people,” Stewart said.

The state agency, known as OTDA, supervises programs providing assistance and support to eligible people and families. On its website, they offer information on how to apply for its services in Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. That task isn’t taken lightly. Free online tools often aren’t up to the robust job of translating OTDA documents into various languages to explain the state agency’s services, she noted.

“It can take a word and translate it so wrong,” Stewart explained, specifically referencing Google Translate. “In trying to help the clients, if the word is mistranslated … it just totally misrepresents the program and we can’t have that.”

On a regular basis, my client translates OTDA documents into several languages. There is a large difference between free online tools and human translation.

In Chinese, for example, the word “grass” can be translated into English many ways, meaning many things.

“If you translate it wrong, you throw the whole meaning of the document off,” Stewart explained. “It’s critical that it be right.”

In matters of providing temporary cash assistance or supervising homeless housing and services, there is no wiggle room, she said.

“If you’re talking about food stamps, you have to get the meaning of food stamp the proper way for people,” Stewart said. “It’s not a postage stamp and Google translated it to a postage stamp.”

Stewart added: “It’s just not a word-for-word translation. You have to know the meaning behind the translation to get it appropriately translated in the language you need.”

More Than SEO

And that’s my main point. If you take away nothing else from this blog post, please take away this:

If you want to serve your clients well, you need to go beyond getting the technical SEO details right.

Many people appreciate that machine translation or word-for-word human translation can lead to problems. But they think the best that can be expected of translation is to accurately convey the nuance of one language into another.

Not so! You need to take things a step further. What’s really needed is “cultural consulting” that solves business problems. Your clients need to reach new target audiences in ways that best suit them.

Your clients need to deftly address the critical cultural perceptions that make all the difference to the success or failure of your project. And that means going light years beyond getting the page titles and descriptions right.

Intriguing Autobiographical Detour - Keep Reading

As a Canadian who lived for ten years in the U.S., I never quite got used to how much some American businesspeople loved shouting from the rooftops about how great their products were – and how much their competitors sucked.

In many countries, such boasting is seen as a dubious tactic employed only by questionable businesses. In some countries, it’s actually illegal. So would you really want to deliver such messages from your clients’ websites – even if its SEO is great?

There is another big issue. Americans tend to see their brand of informality and directness as virtuous. Not everyone in every country agrees.

If you get stuff like this wrong, it could be a bad mistake that costs your clients time and money. And it would all be because you came across as disrespectful, when you were probably just clueless. It’s all so needless.

To this day, I just shake my head at seemingly minor incidents like this. A very competent and kind and wonderful guy at the Apple Store at the Eaton Centre in Toronto went above and beyond the call of duty to fix my MacBook Air on New Year’s Day. But he is officially burdened with the culturally insensitive and brain-dead title of “genius.”

WTF! “Genius?” My mouth drops open. It’s just wrong for Canada. How can you possibly call yourself (or your employee) a “genius?” It’s so immodest, if not “ugly American.” It’s almost as bad as people on NPR who call themselves “intellectuals” or atheists who call themselves “brights.”

Or, at least, that’s the way I see it; which is the whole point.

As an Anglophone who grew up in Montreal, I once received a letter from my bank inviting me to apply for a loan “since your account has operated in a satisfaction matter.” Which was a far cry from Quebecois people who had to put up for decades with insults, humiliations, and disrespect that came very, very close to destroying one of the greatest countries in the world.

Want more?

A few minutes of Googling can bring up many examples like these:

Why You Want To Avoid Stuff Like This

Consider these howlers:

• In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.” Not so good!
• Japan’s second-largest tourist agency was mystified to get requests for sex tours after it entered the English-speaking market. The name of the agency? Kinki Nippon Tourist Agency
• The correct Spanish translation for the dairy association slogan “Got milk?” is not, in fact, the equivalent of: “Are you lactating?”
• As Christian Arno pointed out in his excellent YouMoz post a coche is a car in Spain, but a baby stroller in much of Latin America!

Conclusion: Putting It All Together

So here’s the grand finale conclusion. If you get the big picture translation and cultural stuff wrong, getting the SEO details right on stuff like site architecture, page titles and hosting really isn’t going to help much. You will have shot yourself in the foot.

Your clients deserve better. So make sure you get the translation done right. It’s not a detail of an International SEO project; it’s critically important..