When working in the tourism industry, we have to consider that we are catering to a very wide audience that comes from different parts of the world. So, it’s important that the translations of our web page, brochures, and client contracts are indispensable.
A good translation can get you a more customers as people can see your company’s quality and professionalism through the material they’ll find on your website.
When navigating a traveling agency web page, we can always see how much they care about design and photography, but if they use automatic translations on their written material, their potential clients may not trust them as much or they will lose interest by the little professionalism of their translated material.
What’s so special about translation in the tourism industry?
Believe it or not, tourism translation requires needs professionals who with very specialized knowledge, because not only should they write a text into another language, they must also know both cultures, the source’s language and the target’s language. That’s why there aren’t many professionals who specialize in this area.
In touristic documents there are neologisms, false friends, idioms, slogans and specialized language that can be complicated for a professional in the area. Now, imagine a translation with these elements is made by an automatic translator or an inexperienced professional, I bet it’s not going to be as good as you expect.
Remember that a translation made by a professional won’t be cheap, even less if requested with a very tight deadline. However, if you go for the cheap option the best thing that can happen is that your client laughs at the translation but still hires your services; even though, we know that most people would go with another company that seems more professional.
Don’t lose customers, hire professional translators
It may seem that we are stretching this scenario, but it is a reality that a bad translation (as cheap as they can be) can bring to your business high economic losses, by affecting your image and your company’s reputation, and scaring away your customers.
Another common mistake for people who are starting a company in the tourism sector is wanting to translate their contents into the biggest amount of languages. When they ask for a quote and find out that the price is high, especially when working with more “exotic” languages; they might feel inclined to use automatic translators or to hire a friend or an acquaintance whose fee is cheaper.
The best thing is to go step by step. How? We recommend you to start with one or two languages. Then, as your sales increase, you can increase as well the number of languages according to the amount of clients by nationality.
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