Expanding into an international market is always difficult. But few are more difficult to enter than Spain. Not only is the competition fierce, but Spain is an incredibly linguistically and culturally diverse nation. To make a successful jump, you must use a quality Spanish translation service.
Why Is Spanish Translation So Difficult in Spain?
To an outsider unfamiliar with Spain, the Spanish language might not seem so complex.
After all, Spanish is the country’s most spoken language, according to a study by Word Atlas.
Not only that, but it’s also the country’s official language. More than 99% of Spaniards speak Spanish as their first or second language.
The problems arise from the various regional dialects. The most widely spoken are Castilian, Catalan, Euskaran (Basque), Galician, and Valencian.
Although these regional Spanish languages share many similarities, they also boast their fair share of differences.
These differences typically go unnoticed during spoken conversations (even Spanish speakers from Latin American countries can easily converse with those from Spain), but become problematic when it comes to reading and writing.
In addition, the regional cultures of Spain are very diverse. Those speaking the different regional dialects often experience life in very different ways, including their values and emotions.
And the rise of the Internet, specifically social media, isn’t exactly helping. This growth in global connectivity has continued to evolve and increasingly scatter the Spanish language.
According to a study in New Scientist, social networks even create their own regional dialects within regional dialects, making language in Spain even more muddled.
Why Target the Spanish Market, Anyways?
Launching a startup in Spain requires top-quality Spanish translation.
Depending on your multilingual and multiregional SEO goals, this typically involves multiple translated versions of your content for each specific region.
And the difficulties of Spanish translation in Spain are compounded by the fact that moving into new international markets is never an easy task for a growing brand.
So, why bother at all?
Well, according to a study in Ethnologue, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world, after Chinese.
The organization goes on to state that there are over 437 million native Spanish speakers in the world, spanning countries from Spain to Mexico to Venezuela and many more.
A study by CSA Research concluded that 204 million of these native Spanish speakers, across 24 countries, have a total spending power of $3.5 trillion.
Almost 42 million of these native Spanish speakers call Spain home, according to an article in El País. That’s a big market to pass up.
If your international market research suggests your brand will do well in Spain, there’s no reason not to make the jump.
Just remember that you absolutely need quality Spanish translation, tailored to the many linguistically and culturally diverse regions of Spain.
You Need to Hire a Professional Spanish Translator
Don’t make the same mistake countless brands have made—hire a skilled Spanish language translator.
Too many companies make serious translation errors (such as the infamous Coors “turn it loose” campaign) when they forgo a professional language service provider.
Not only does neglecting to translate properly often result in difficult-to-read content, but the poor translations can even potentially offend some users, creating a negative image of your brand in their minds.
A skilled translation service utilizes native speakers that understand the complexities of translating for a Spanish audience.
These professional translators not only understand the Spanish language as a whole, but also the individual dialects as well as the complexities of Spanish culture.
A professional translation service will help you avoid making common multilingual content marketing strategy mistakes.
What You Can Do to Improve the Results
Your multilingual SEO strategy starts with creating easily translatable content.
Most brands don’t want to create completely different content for each international market or sub-region of the market.
That’s why writing for translation is so important.
Writing for translation consists of creating content for your multilingual SEO efforts that’s easy to translate into many different languages.
For a launch in Spain, this means creating content that’s easy to translate into the several different regional varieties of the Spanish language.
The best way to do this is to opt for a clearer writing style.
The simpler and more straightforward the writing style, the easier it is for the translated version to get the same message across.
For example, fight the temptation to include clever wordplay, such as metaphors. These often don’t translate well from one language to another (or even from one regional dialect to another).
In fact, BBC’s list of “untranslatable words” describes numerous words that can’t be translated to another language at all.
Simply put, adopting the clearest possible writing style is one of the keys to creating easily translatable content that is engaging for your varied Spanish audience.
