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Localizing Content Marketing with NMT to Build Brand Awareness

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Think with Google reported that 72% of online shoppers stated that they spend the majority of their time on websites that are in their native language. Due to this, if businesses want to enter a new market and widen their clientele, translating and localizing their content is one of the best ways to go about it. 

There has been a lot of emphasis by marketers on creating content to build brand loyalty. In an interview conducted by Marketing Insight, about 80% of marketers said they would focus more on this in the coming years. The problem is that English content is over-saturated even though it’s not the largest number of native speakers globally. 

 If you want to learn how a translation company uses neural machine translation or NMT to enhance its content localization, then keep on reading!

Localizing Content Marketing with NMT to Build Brand Awareness
Table of Contents

Why is Content Localization Important?

To discuss content localization, let’s first talk about what localization is all about. Localization focuses on the target culture and language rather than being “faithful” to the original content. Unlike translation, which prioritizes translating the source text word for word, localization looks deeper into its target audience’s culture, history, customs, tone, and preferences to make it marketable.

As for content localization, it’s like repurposing old content but which is not for the same audience but transforming it for another market. There are several reasons why this approach is more engaging to international users. 

For one, not everyone speaks English, and so you’re missing out on the market by not localizing your content, which makes it more relatable to target users by engaging content that’s in their mother tongue and cultural preferences. This, in turn, increases trust and establishes a deeper connection with your international users.

If people don’t understand the content you created, you cannot form any trust with your users. This is why you should localize content, as it makes it easier for non-English speakers to communicate with your users and build brand awareness and loyalty. 

Finally, there have been countless research papers on the effect of language on consumer behavior. As one study reported, “it is not just what is said that matters, but also how it is said.” The cultural and linguistic nuances play a major role in how users will perceive a brand, which varies from country to country. Due to this, it is in the best interest of businesses wishing to personalize content for an international audience to research their users and localize to their preferences.

The Problems of Localizing Content and Branding in Another Market

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Now, like with regular content creation, there are some issues you will face when it comes to localizing content and building your brand internationally. We have listed below some common problems you will be facing:

Don’t be discouraged by the challenges mentioned above because marketing campaigns don’t happen overnight. It’s a process. Take your time researching and learning all you can about your target market. 

Later, we will discuss how machine translation, particularly Neural Machine Translation (NMT), can create multilingual content quickly and more accurately than other forms of machine translation.

How Tomedes Applied NMT to Achieve Brand Consistency for Content

We interviewed Rachelle Garcia, the Localization Manager of Tomedes, a translation company that provides content localization to thousands of businesses and Fortune 500 companies, and they have published an in-depth article on Neural Machine Translation, which offers insight on the history and development of MT and NMT. 

Garcia explained that localization of content, to an extent, still involves translation in the initial phase. Compared to other types of machine translation engines, NMTs are different due to their end-to-end machine learning program, meaning the more data it gathers from previous translations, the more it improves. 

NMTs are used for a wide range of uses but are primarily used in business because of the way it stores data. Unlike Statistical Machine Translation models, it requires less memory to operate, which makes it more cost-effective and versatile. 

“NMT is an excellent technique to use if you’re planning to localize you’re content while maintaining consistency. Because each time you translate your marketing content, its program stores that information,” Garcia explained.

She continued, “So, for example, you have a slogan you want to promote to your target market by using NMT, every time you’re translating your slogan across different content, the program will take note of it from previous translations, making the content localization process quicker.”

She stated that when they’re localizing content with NMT, their native translators manages these project by editing the translated text to ensure that the transformed content is in line with the request of business owners and follows the preference of their target market. 

“NMT has come a long way since its creation, but it still has flaws. Over the years, we found that merging advanced technology from MT with the marketing expertise of native translators is the best formula in ensuring that your content localization is successful,” Garcia advised.

Limitations and Potential of NMT in the Global Content Marketing Scene

Since we mentioned that NMT has flaws, we enumerated some of its limitations below.

As for its potential, NMTs are quicker and more intuitive when translating content. The fact that it’s trainable and adjustable makes it the perfect tool for localizing a wide range of content.

It’s scalable, allowing you to increase the amount of content you’re creating for your target market. Due to this, professional translation companies have begun offering their NMT services to most industries. 

Final Thoughts

Machine Translations have gotten a bad reputation. But like with any new technology, there’s always push back against adapting them in various industries and our daily lives. 

As of now, the tech-driven translation company is one of the few companies that have begun to primarily uses NMT in their projects. In the coming years, international marketing experts will be treating NMTs as any other digital tool to increase their productivity and improve the quality of content marketing.  

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