How to Work with a Language Service Provider to Optimize L10N ROI

How to Work with a Language Service Provider to Optimize L10N ROI

How to Work with a Language Service Provider to Optimize L10N ROI 4000 2667 Accelingo

L10N ROI is in the Hands of Your Language Service Provider

An established language service provider (LSP) is a must-have partner for any startup that looks at global expansion. By ensuring consistent, high-quality services for each and every localization project, an LSP can help your business grow and experience higher ROI.

Localization Is Not an Option, It Is a Necessity

There is a strong link between content language and the willingness of customers to purchase a given product or service. If you want to launch a successful marketing and sales campaign with a strong ROI, you need to speak the language of your customers. Literally.

Harvard Business Review advises companies to speak to global customers in their own language, as this will significantly increase their sales and profit. A Common Sense Advisory survey reveals that 56.2 percent of web consumers believe that the availability of product information in their own language is more important than price, and 72.4 percent stated that they will be more inclined to purchase a product accompanied with information in their own language.

Eurobarometer published an analytical report on user language preferences online that reveals the same tendencies. While people are inclined to browse sites on other languages, 42 percent stated that they will never buy products and services in another language even if they are fluent on it and 19 percent of the respondents even stated that they never browse the web in a different language.

Having these results in mind, you can reach the conclusion that localization is not an option but a necessity in case you want to grow globally and experience return on your investments.

Plan Your L10N

In the initial stages of your startup development, you will experience budget constraints and look for cost-effective ways to manage your foreign market penetration. As entrepreneurs, you are aware that translation and localization will play a significant role in your global growth.

In order to save time and money, you need to develop your product or service with localization in mind. You can follow MVP principles to reduce localization costs and create content using neutral language, art, videos, and proper file formats that are easy to work with.

It is a good idea to have a dedicated localization manager as part of your team from the start, even on a part-time basis. The person should be in charge of collecting data that can facilitate further translation and localization projects and help you scale up. These are marketing research data, customer feedback, preferred markets for your specific product or service, and the like.

Once you have the core data for your first localization project, it will be easier to scale up and add more languages as you aim further market penetration.

Why Working with a Language Service Provider Is Crucial for Your Startup?

As you may have scarce or no knowledge of localization at all, it is essential to choose an established language service provider who can support you throughout your startup growth.

An LSP already has an established translation management system, as well as CAT and QA tools that can work in your favor and present you with a customized service. A translation company that has experience with localizing content for startups will add value to your partnership with the expertise its translators already have.

As a contrast, working with a freelancer will leave all the management of a localization project in your hands, and you will have to coordinate the communication between your startup, the translator, and the in-country reviewers that may affect the duration and smoothness of the process. Not to mention that you will need to find a different freelancer every time you need to add another language and that not all freelance translators work as localizers.

In many cases, LSPs offer translation and localization services in more than one language. They keep a client file with terminology glossaries and other requirements for each client, which facilitates localization scaling.

You will end up receiving a high-end service for a lower cost and thus maintain a healthy L10N ROI.

The Key Benefit of an LSP Partnership—Translation Quality

There are many reasons why you need professional translation services, but the translation quality is one of the most important.

By establishing close connections with your chosen language service provider, you can also influence the quality of the translation that you will receive.

Each LSP uses specific tools and metrics like MQM-DQF to measure translation quality, and you can request the data in order to use it for your specific purposes. As your startup matures, you will be able to manage translation quality data more efficiently and use it to make smarter decisions for future localizations.

You can combine your product data with the linguistic data of your product localization and end up with a more appropriate market penetration strategy that can guarantee higher ROI.

According to the CSA database, there are nearly 18,000 language service providers worldwide. To facilitate your choice of the right localization partner that can increase your ROI, we recommend reading our whitepaper on “How to Choose a Translation Company That’s Right for Your International Expansion Strategy”.

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