Latest / The Marketing Brief / Christina and Brian Discuss Language Translation and How it’s Really Cultural Translation (S1 E28)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: back to the marketing brief. I am your host Brian Acquan and this is the podcast where we briefly touch on topics across the marketing landscape. And we're always joined by an industry industry expert and today we are joined by Christina Spalding. Christina, welcome into the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you. Would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners? Can I talk about what your focus is right now? Christina Spaulding: Thanks, Brian. sure thing. My name is Christina Spalding. I started Manzanita Marketing three years ago to help small and medium sized businesses expand their reach beyond the English speaking market. So whether you're looking to serve clients in linguistic minorities near you, for most of the US that's Spanish, although it might also be a few other languages, or if you're looking to go overseas and start exporting into Europe or Asia, Brian Aucoin: Yeah, that's awesome. Christina Spaulding: I'm here to help. Brian Aucoin: I'm so interested in understanding consumers and working back from the consumer. And I can think of no better way to start than to localize in their language. Is that a great way into this? It's a really understand the consumer, you've got to speak, quote unquote, their language. And in this case, it's literally their language. Christina Spaulding: It is. And what's interesting is that sometimes you have the same consumer needs. So a lot of times here in the U.S., your Spanish speaking consumer has the same pain points as your English speaking consumer. So you can market the same thing the same way. All you have to do is translate. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, of course. Christina Spaulding: Sometimes there are slight variations in what one market needs or how one market perceives a product versus how another market perceives a product. So there was a case study around the Got Milk campaign, right? So in English, Got Milk, you got the little mustache. It was like a very fun, wholesome campaign. But the way they translated it in Spanish and the cultural assumptions that were in many of the Spanish-speaking households, this was, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, was like, milk is a staple. You have milk like you have running water. So the question, got milk, came off more of an accusation than like, a friendly banter. So the campaign in its first iteration in the Spanish-speaking market flopped and they had to retranslate. So there's a cultural awareness when you're going into a Spanish-speaking market that a lot of times, yes, you can just translate, but sometimes if you're trying to do something funny, Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Essentially they were shouting to people. Christina Spaulding: You want to double check with the native speaker before you launch your campaign. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, that's, I'd love to jump to that. So I was going to ask you about the tools because obviously there's a lot of translation tools and that can help you get most of the way there, but solving for the culture is always challenging, right? So how do you go about solving for culture in a certain neighborhood? Christina Spaulding: Yeah, the best way to do it is to have somebody who is either currently in the culture or somebody who has been in the culture, deeply steeped in the culture for a long time. They might not currently be in it, but they kind of keep the pulse they know. And you can get those people in a lot of different ways. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Christina Spaulding: So there are full-time translators, humans, that bridge that gap. They're available. They usually charge per word. And they have the full, usually have the full cultural experience. So. You can go to a translator or a cultural marketing firm in cities where you have a strong Spanish population. You'll also have language firms who specialize in translation or Spanish marketing, things like that. So those exist. They are the premium option. But if you're if it's the first time you're working with this particular culture, It would make sense to start and pay more money upfront and do it right the first time than to have errors or like cultural friction points where you put all your money in this campaign and then it fails. Like you put the money in the ad part rather than the creative part. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yes. Christina Spaulding: If you put the money in the creative part first, make sure you have cultural fit, language fit, product market fit, then the ad spend gets justified because you have a good return. So I am very much a human in the loop type person. If your budget limited, then you can use AI as a rough draft. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. we love. Yeah. Christina Spaulding: And then you can still engage a translator or a proofreader, one of these marketing companies and say, hey, here's the rough draft. Can you proofread it for me? And proofreading costs less than the research and the customer profile and the original translation or creation. So you can leverage AI and say, hey, here's what AI said. How much am I on the nose? Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Christina Spaulding: And then you can go from there. So you can use AI to reduce your costs, but you check it with somebody from the culture first. And the last tip, this is pro tip here. Check with your Institute of Higher Learning, whether that's a local community college, whether it's a university, a trade school, check with a Brian Aucoin: That makes sense. for a tip. Christina Spaulding: post high school educational institution and see if they have students, like community colleges and universities are great for this because they often have marketing majors who want to get out there and do stuff and get internships or just experience. So if you contact your local college and say, do you have a marketing group? a marketing class. In that class, do there happen to be Spanish-speaking students? Do there happen to be Mandarin-speaking students? I'd love to do a project. I'd love to get an intern. And you can tap into the next generation. And because they're college students, they're usually very affordable. And it's a win for everybody. Brian Aucoin: It's smart. Mm-hmm. Christina Spaulding: You get great talent, the college student gets experience, and you both get that access to the local community. Brian Aucoin: Yes, that's a good pro tip. I imagine, you know, I love that you kind of go through multiple steps of this, right? If just like, okay, you've got to, can use technology, but the human in the loop is something we talk a lot about on this podcast, which is something we really love because the humans provide something that the machines do not, right? But I imagine it's so important to have those multiple levels of checks because even one mistake here, can really shoot the whole strategy in the foot, right? If you're getting the language wrong, you're really, you're completely undercutting the whole effort of trying to reach out and find new consumers and really, again, speak to them in their own language, right? Christina Spaulding: Yes. You run the same risk in English, right? If you approach your customer and you don't have the right pain point, if your hook doesn't catch in English, then it doesn't work. And it's the same when you're translating or you're adapting for another culture. You're running that same risk, right? Brian Aucoin: Sure. Mm-hmm. Christina Spaulding: It's just you have to trust another person or entity that you're doing it right. We can read our own copy when we write copy, when we write a hook, when we write an ad. We can read it and we can go, yeah, that hits the mark of what I think the customer would want. When you're doing it in another language, we can't do it ourselves. So you really have to trust your provider that you're working with. Brian Aucoin: slowly. Mm-hmm, absolutely. mean, Spanish is probably the example you get the most and probably the work you get the most. there other languages that you've worked in? Christina Spaulding: I actually specialize in German and French. So I speak fluent German. I lived in Germany for six years. I studied abroad in France. I studied French for years and years and years. So I look for and get work in those languages. I love working with companies that are coming from Europe to the US because it's a Brian Aucoin: wow. Christina Spaulding: interesting way to shift their pitches, their solutions and see is the consumer the same? Is a European consumer the same as a US consumer? Brian Aucoin: Right. Christina Spaulding: Are the pathways the same, the distribution channels? How do we need to adapt the marketing for this product or the product itself for the US market? And sometimes there's like no adaption, but sometimes there's a lot of adaption and you have to just adjust things here and there, right? So it's very interesting. It's super fun. I really enjoy it. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Is there an example you? Is there an example that you could share with us on a European product coming to the US? Christina Spaulding: So the first one that I worked with was company called TextBroker, and this was back in the mid-2000s. They had a thriving content creation business in Europe, and they expanded to the US, and I was their first employee. And they had translated the website themselves. And I was like, OK. that works, but if we're going to scale, we need to polish this. The sentences were all grammatically correct, but they didn't encapsulate the brand the way it needed to be encapsulated. So we had to rework the content. We had to build a Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Sure. Christina Spaulding: marketing around convenience, quality, but mostly convenience. But it was a balance between the convenience and the quality. Having native speakers and vetted, you know, US based individuals, we have W9s from everybody, was an important quality point in the industry at the time. Now, the industry has been decimated by AI. because if you're going to have quality issues, like you'll get it through AI. But at the time, it was important to showcase that, yes, you can trust the system. There are things to be aware of, all of that good stuff. it was really fun and a very interesting place to be from a marketing perspective. Brian Aucoin: I'm sure and yeah and of course that's changed a lot. Well I always love to ask my guests what's something they're excited about right now. It can be in your professional capacity or in your personal life but is there something you're excited about as we're nearing the middle of 2020 sex here? Christina Spaulding: So I actually just hired my first employee at the beginning of April and I hired an intern from my local university. So that's why like the secret tip, I am using the secret tip. Even better, my local university had a grant for business owners to hire employee and interns through the business school. So. Brian Aucoin: Nice. There you go, your own tip. Nice. Christina Spaulding: I cannot say enough how helpful an intern can be and how cost effective it can be. So talk to your local institutes of higher knowledge and see what options there are. I was an intern way back when I started my career. It changed my life. That's how I got to Germany, was an internship. Brian Aucoin: wow. Nice. Christina Spaulding: And so when I say change my life, like really I relocated and I want to be that catalyst for my intern now. She speaks Spanish. I chose her partially because she speaks Spanish, partially because she's in marketing and partially because she just had a great presence when we met. And because... I had her language, additional language. I closed a Spanish speaking deal. So we're going to be doing English and Spanish website for a nail salon. So really I'm seeing some growth, getting new employees and, you know, making smart decisions for the business. very excited. Brian Aucoin: that's great. That's great. Awesome. Well, we share your excitement. How do people reach out to you if this is something they're looking for? Is LinkedIn a good way or do you have another way to get in touch with you? Okay. Christina Spaulding: LinkedIn is great. You can find me at Christina Spaulding. You can find me at Manzanita Marketing, that's M-A-N-Z, as in zebra, A-N-I-T-A, marketing. On Instagram and Facebook, it's Manzanita M-K-T-G. And that's also my URL is Manzanita M-K-T-G, M-A-N-Z-A-N-I-T-A, as in Mary, K-T-G, dot com. Brian Aucoin: Manzanita, what does that translate to? Small apple? Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. Nice. Well, it's been a joy meeting you and getting to know you and hearing about the international marketing part of this. So thank you for being a guest. Christina Spaulding: little apple in Spanish. Absolutely, Brian, thank you for having me. It was so nice to chat with you. Brian Aucoin: Absolutely. This has been a brief conversation. I'm your host Brian O'Kwan and this is the Marketing Brief Podcast and to everyone listening out there, stay curious.