It's hard enough for native English speakers to understand the myriad financial services available to them today. Imagine how confusing it can be when English isn't a primary language.
Thanks to numerous federal and state regulations which require certain financial information be provided in a consumer's primary language, many companies now have reams of fine print ready to go in multiple languages. But the companies that stop at the legal requirements are missing out on benefits that can directly affect the bottom line.
With successful multilingual communication, organizations gain new business opportunities and more customers, by offering existing sales, marketing or informational materials in languages that invite entire new audiences to the table.
According to a report from Common Sense Advisory, 85% of consumers surveyed said that having prepurchase information in their own language is a critical factor in buying insurance and other financial services. More than half of those surveyed said they buy only at websites where the information is presented in their language.
That makes sense, because people tend to gravitate to the familiar. When they see content in a language they're comfortable with they are more likely to buy or consider buying that product.
Companies also gain efficiencies within the organization. Through better communication, they can reduce calls to help desks or customer service, cut time required for account maintenance, increase a client's understanding and willingness to proceed in a given financial transaction, and avoid litigation.
That clever play on words, that intricate, fully packed sentence, that timely reference to an upcoming national holiday … all those things that make your document interesting and informative in English will be the very things that make your message misunderstood in any other language.
For example, we translated marketing materials for a financial services company wanting to encourage employees of its client, a poultry company, to invest in its retirement accounts. In English, the playful headline read: "Don't Be a Chicken." We were instructed to keep the "chicken" reference in our Spanish-language translation. But in Spanish that turn of phrase doesn't have the same meaning. It took a few meetings and plenty of back-and-forth before we persuaded the client not to translate that chicken line literally.
Another common pitfall in translating financial content in particular: information that is translated on a printed direct mail piece but not on the website. For example, a product might be listed as "Stable Value Fund" on the company website, but as "El Fondo de valor estable" on a Spanish-language brochure. This causes confusion for the customer. If you point a consumer to your website for additional reference material, make sure that content is also translated, along with the information found at any other relevant links.
Here are some additional tips for getting the most out of your translations:
- Be aware that other languages use more words than English. A translated document can be 25%-35% longer, which can cause problems when the text has to fit the designed of a brochure or financial form.
- Be careful with numbers: 1,107.61 in the United States would be written as 1.107,61 in Latin American Spanish and could have devastating effects when translating financial documents.
- Ditto with dates: 6/3/11 is June 3rd here in the United States but represents the 6th of March in other countries. Many aspects of the financial services industry rely on dates, and getting it wrong obviously could be devastating.
- Don't rely on bilingual staff members or acquaintances — anyone who hasn't been trained as a translator. There is too much at risk. Financial contracts are written by teams of experts and so must be translated by experts with legal, financial and real estate backgrounds who are native speakers of the target audience's language.
- Select a translation service that can offer you translation, editing and proofreading by separate and independent linguists. Each step should be performed by native speakers of the target language who specialize in the subject matter.
- Also ask the translation service about desktop publishing and design capabilities. Being able to give customers a translated document that is a mirror image of the original English-language docuSment gives customers a sense of security.
- Create a partnership with your language-service provider to create style guides and glossaries.
Give consumers a reason to put their trust in you. Speak their language.
