In today’s business world, conducting business across borders has become increasingly easier thanks to digitalization. Businesses can collaborate with clients and partners from various countries simply through digital platforms. 

Business transactions have also become increasingly seamless, even for face-to-face meetings. However, the biggest barrier to global business expansion remains language—especially when the target market is local. To address this issue, your business needs business translation services.

Why are business translation services necessary? Imagine this analogy: You go to a clothing store. You browse the clothes on display. After a while, you find one you like, but it’s too big. 

You ask the salesperson about the availability of a size that fits you. Instead of getting the answer you want, you’re met with a language you don’t understand—so you leave the store. This illustrates that business success depends on how relevant you are to your clients.

This service is a valuable tool for companies looking to expand into the Southeast Asian market. Southeast Asia boasts a diverse and multilingual culture. Remember, business success depends on seamless communication. 

Good communication will prevent you from misunderstandings that can lead to financial losses, loss of intellectual property rights, and even legal problems.

Why Language Is Still a Barrier in Global Business 

In the era of globalization, one of the things that hinders businesses from expanding globally is language. Yet, language is the gateway to effective communication between businesses, clients, partners, and local authorities. Inappropriate language use has the potential to lead to misunderstandings, legal issues, and even loss of customer trust.

Although a primary language in a company, such as English, is the language of formal communication, dealing with clients or customers is different. Businesses must understand how clients or customers communicate. 

Remember the clothing store analogy earlier? That’s exactly the point. For businesses, this can lead to losses; for customers, language barriers can erode trust. Hence, language barriers can eliminate the opportunity.

Businesses’ failure to expand is sometimes not due to the lack of quality of their products or services, but rather to the language they use. Even if you’ve launched extensive promotions across various digital platforms, you’ll struggle to generate profits if your audience doesn’t understand the content. 

This is because people are more likely to trust and buy when the language they understand is used. Therefore, business translation plays a crucial role in business expansion on the global stage.

Southeast Asia: A Multilingual Market Full of Opportunities 

Southeast Asia is a promising business market. This is due to several factors, including a population of over 650 million people and 1,200 languages ​​spoken. This diversity has made Southeast Asia an increasingly attractive destination for business expansion. Significant opportunities exist for businesses that can implement strategies that effectively navigate the region’s linguistic and cultural nuances. 

Navigating these two aspects in this multilingual region makes businesses more relevant to the market, thereby building consumer trust and strengthening brand image. Furthermore, another advantage is the growth of business revenue in the region’s growing economy.

Here are some opportunities for staying relevant in a multilingual region.

1. Increased brand trust

Communicating with clients and customers in their own language builds closeness and strong relationships. This is because customers feel better understood by the business. Furthermore, customers will be more loyal to brands or businesses that provide services in their own language.

2. Young population and demographics

Around 33% of ASEAN’s population consists of young, productive individuals. This population creates a dynamic and large consumer market. Furthermore, continued economic growth has also led to a growing middle class. This increases purchasing power and creates significant demand for products and services.

What Business Translation Services Actually Cover 

Business translation services go beyond simply translating a text into a target language. They help businesses adapt local cultural nuances to better resonate with clients or audiences. Given the potential of Southeast Asia’s multilingual market, business translation is essential for increasing a company’s relevance to its audience.

During the translation process, translators assist in conveying messages accurately by paying attention to the local tone of voice. For instance, Vietnamese culture values politeness and indirect communication, often avoiding overtly negative responses. They often use implied meanings to indicate disagreement.

So, what does this service do? Here’s the discussion.

1. Business Document Translation

If you want to collaborate with your clients without misunderstandings, you need this service. This service helps you translate business documents while maintaining the accuracy, tone, and format of the original.

2. Localization

This process involves translating to local culture and preferences. If you want your business website to be widely visited by a local audience, you must localize your website. After the translation process, the next step is to adjust the format, date and time, culture, colors, and design to be relevant to the audience. Furthermore, this effort can prevent misunderstandings due to cultural differences.

3. Multilingual SEO

This service allows you to assist with the translation of keywords, metadata, and content to improve search engine rankings.

4. Marketing Translation

This service helps you translate press releases, social media content, and even slogans and taglines to be relevant to your audience.

The Main Benefits of Business Translation Services 

The main benefits of business translation services in Southeast Asia include expanding reach across multilingual markets. Furthermore, they ensure brand consistency across languages ​​and compliance with local laws and regulations. These services can also help businesses become more competitive and improve the customer experience. For more details, here’s the breakdown.

1. Expanding Market Reach

Imagine two websites selling shoes. Shoe website A is in English, and shoe website B is in the local language. With similar prices and quality, which would you choose? According to CSA Research, 76% of customers prefer products presented in their native language.

Furthermore, 40% will opt out of purchasing if product information isn’t available in their native language. This proves that adapting to local languages ​​is crucial for your business communications with clients or customers.

2. Maintaining brand consistency

Even when translated into multiple Southeast Asian languages, business translation services will help businesses maintain a consistent tone of voice and brand message. This consistency is crucial for broad brand recognition and trust. For example, a business selling instant noodles has the message “delivering warmth and happiness in every bite.” This message must be conveyed even when using different languages.

3. Improve customer experience

By translating your business into local or multilingual languages, customers will respond more positively, fostering trust. This is because they feel closer to the business.

4. Able to compete in a competitive market

In the era of global business, adapting to international markets, especially Southeast Asian markets, is essential. This allows businesses to stand out and compete with similar businesses on the global stage.

5. Improving efficiency and accuracy

This professional service allows businesses to save time by accurately handling content, especially if the content is sensitive and complex.

6. Increase credibility

Using professional translation services will prevent misunderstandings and reputational damage to your business and will reflect a credible business image.

How to Choose the Right Translation Partner 

When choosing a translation partner, prioritize those with proven quality and strong technological capabilities Furthermore, it’s crucial to review their reputation through client testimonials, experience, professionalism, and consider their confidentiality and security policies. 

Also, pay attention to the fees offered. Avoid providers offering prices far below market rates without ensuring quality.

1. Choose one with experience in your industry

Each sector has unique terminology and context. Ensure the service provider is experienced in your business to ensure accurate and relevant translations. At SpeeQual, we have a team of experienced translators in fields such as technology, finance, and law who are ready to assist you.

2. Choose a native-speaking translator

There’s a good reason to choose a native-speaking translator. This is because native-speaking translators will better understand the nuances of local culture, idioms, and language styles. This effort will make your business more relevant to your target audience.

3. Ensure the provider has a revision and quality control system.

Professional services should have a multi-layered editing, proofreading, and quality control process. This ensures that the translation you receive is error-free. To ensure accuracy, SpeeQual utilizes CAT and Machine Translation Post Editing (MTPE) technology.

4. Review reputation and portfolio

Choose a provider with extensive experience working with numerous clients and positive testimonials.

5. Avoid choosing a provider offering low prices without compromising on quality

You might be tempted by prices far below market value. However, what about the quality of the translation? Therefore, choose a provider that prioritizes quality, like SpeeQual.

Conclusion: Language Is an Investment, Not a Cost 

Business translation services are a valuable investment for businesses expanding in Southeast Asia. With such a large and multilingual population, the region offers both opportunities and challenges for businesses.You might choose to ignore local languages and cultures, but doing so will gradually erode your business and make it harder to compete.

Essentially, business is about how we offer our products or services to our audience. The more relevant your business is, the easier it will be to generate profits. This demonstrates that language is no longer just a communication tool, but a strategic asset. Investing in quality translation services will help your business build trust, enhance your audience’s experience, and expand your market reach in Southeast Asia.

Considering that business translation services are a long-term investment, you need to choose a quality and trusted service provider. SpeeQual has a proven track record of serving numerous clients across various sectors. 

SpeeQual is also ready to assist your business in expanding through translation. This is because SpeeQual has competent translators in Southeast Asian languages. From Indonesian to Burmese, we have competent translators in nine Southeast Asian languages, including Javanese and Sundanese.

Ready to help your business become relevant to your target market? Contact us now!