Communicating to be understood

Willy Brandt said, If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen!

Machine translation tools are great. When we need to understand a text written in a language that we do not know, we can quickly understand its general content when using them. Its existence has made ours much more effortless.

When we talk about institutional communication, where a company intends to sell in a foreign country, resorting to this type of translation is a bad idea. The texts that result from these translations appear with orthographic errors and syntax that are not natural in the target language. The situation is even worse when the source texts have errors and incorrect syntax. The result is disastrous.

Presenting yourself in an international market with a language that sounds strange to your speakers is halfway to giving a less credible image.

Some people believe that if a webpage is translated into English, this is already enough to address all international markets. That is not true.

We cannot assume that everyone speaks our language or believe everyone speaks English. If we want to sell, we have to address customers to recognize and build trust and credibility through the correct language.