Gengo - Media

12 Active Translation & Language Accounts on Instagram

Gengo — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 15:00:00 +0000

In the world of translation and languages, there is always more to learn. Keeping up with the latest lingo and tools, while continuing to improve your language skills, can be overwhelming especially for beginners. In this blog post, we introduce 12 active translation and language Instagram accounts that provide a #nofilter insight into the world of translation and language learning.

If you haven’t already, give us a follow too @gengoit — we’d love to connect and engage with you on Instagram.

Translation and Language Companies on Instagram

@duolingo: Duolingo is a popular freemium language-learning platform that can be accessed through the web or smartphone app. 81 language courses available.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Br5cahyBqyG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@gengoit: The official Instagram account for Gengo. As a crowdsourced human translation platform, we also post about translation and language news, infographics, and more.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoQWdjInSkX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@memsource: Memsource is a cloud-based translation platform that allows global companies, agencies, and translators to work in one secure online location.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpRUIc4DnAy/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@americantranslatorsassn: The American Translators Association is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States, with nearly 11,000 members in over 100 countries.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoSL8ang1b-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@transformatranslation: TransForma Translation provides translation services for all types of businesses including law firms, banks, and multinational companies.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsrDp8lH2N2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@pangea_global: Pangea is a localization company that provides services in over 50 languages including translation, copywriting, blogging, ORM and market research.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsm-_slgRzr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Translation and Language Influencers on Instagram

@coleytranslates: Coley is a freelance English/French translator, specializing in legal, business, and academic texts into and out of French and English.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsX-ASpjMeG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@greektometranslations: Vasiliki Prestidge is a translator, interpreter, blogger, translation consultant, linguist, and founder of Greek to Me Translations.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsfdk-XDjCV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@bec_irregular.endings: Bec’s instagram account is a space for language learning adventures. She is currently learning French, Italian, and German.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bso-O6Mjw0w/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@365smallsteps: Kathryn journals in Norwegian and blogs about language learning. You can read her blog here.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsYkzJujN6Q/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@chapmangamo: James Chapman draws infographics about sounds and idioms translated in different languages, for example, how to bark like a dog in different languages or how to sneeze in different languages.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpzOOIPBYn5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

@bridging_the_language_gap: Susanne Henke’s in-depth translation and language industry knowledge and 20 years of international experience are indispensable building blocks for quality medical translations.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrfZ3okDX-i/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Looking to connect with more social networks for translation and languages? Check out these 16 best translation and language influencers to follow on Twitter.

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Challenges and quirks in translating social media content

Gengo — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 15:00:00 +0000

“My dog ate my homework.” 19 characters. “mein Hund aß meine Hausarbeit.” 26 characters. “Mi perro se comió me tarea.” 22 characters. The above numbers may look similar, but when you’re trying to plan out a tweet in translation, the number of characters needed to say the same thing in multiple languages becomes one of the many challenges of multilingual social media. Preparing to meet the three main challenges of social media marketing in translation:

1. Length restrictions

As you’re preparing your content for translation, here’s a tip to speed up the writing-to-publishing process: Let your translator know if there are length restrictions! We often see this challenge come up with media translations, but in social media, your post won’t make sense if the ending is cut off. Character counts are the hallmarks of networks like Twitter, which require special handling when it comes to effective communication. If you’re translating a message from English to Japanese, for example, you’ll find that you need far fewer characters to communicate your idea. In fact, you might want to take advantage of the shorter character count and add something more. But, if you’re translating English into Spanish or German, you’re going to have to be very pithy indeed.

2. Jargon juggling

Every social media platform has its own accepted vocabulary and acronyms, and you’ll have to master most of the list to be considered fluent. Each population will also have their own jargon and acronyms, which might not translate outside of those groups. “LOL” is just the tip of the iceberg—how about trying to say “posting to your wall” in Tagalog? Translators can often refer to how social networks translate their lexicons, but it helps if you provide the context to ensure your translations are natural, instead of literal.

3. Geo-diction

Your challenge is to make social media posts across multiple channels and geographic locations simple and effective. To do that, you’ll need to put your resources in one place. Emerging translation platforms let you fully automate social posting so when you publish in one language, it triggers translation (and publication, but only if you approve it) to all of your associated feeds through one easy interface. Research to find the best translation platform for your company. Uneasy in your jargon-juggling skills? Want to avoid having your brilliant idea cut short? Let us help you choose just the right words—in just the right character lengths. Give us a call, or read more of the finer points of multilingual social media by downloading our free Guide to Social Media, produced in collaboration with Fliplingo. This guide introduces key strategies for successfully expanding your brand to global audiences.

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Tools and tricks for multilingual social marketing

Gengo — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Managing multilingual social media takes an already complicated job and multiplies it by the number of languages, with a few additional monkey wrenches thrown in. Not only do you have to plan the basic social media strategy for multiple accounts and handle all of the regular moving parts (images, post times, copy), you also have to consider which strategies work best within the context of each market. On top of that, you have to coordinate which words and abbreviations to use, how to localize humor and how to avoid offending people. It’s a challenge, but here are some tools and tricks to help.

Additional languages doesn’t have to mean additional work

The biggest fear we hear is that adding another language will double the workload and time spent on social media. It’s not nearly that bad! It’s actually relatively simple to streamline your social media marketing, but you will need proper planning and strong leadership to keep your social media managers from task overload. If you’ve played fast-and-loose with your social media organization, now is the time to tighten up your ship.

1. Who, what, when, where—planning dates and details

First, you need to decide a few things:

How do you delegate your social media tasks? Do you have one manager or several country-specific managers? Do your managers have dedicated social media teams or helpers?
Who is responsible for what steps in your promotion process?
Do you plan to create content in one language and translate it, or create and curate content for each region individually?
How do you measure success with your social media strategy?

2. Calling mission command

Your challenge is to make social media posts across multiple channels and multiple geographic locations simple and effective. To do that, you’ll need to put your resources in one place. Emerging translation platforms let you fully automate social posting so when you publish in one language, it triggers translation (and publication, but only if you approve it) to all of your associated feeds through one easy interface. Research to find the best translation platform for your company.

3. Best practices for setting up multilingual accounts

Your strategy for creating accounts will vary depending on the social network you use. For example, Facebook lets you target users by location and language, but Twitter doesn’t (so you’d have to set up language-specific feeds). Ask yourself where it makes sense to use targeting, and where setting up separate accounts in the new language is necessary or preferable. For language-specific feeds, be sure to link to them from your localized homepages so multilingual users can easily find those pages.

4. The balancing act between scheduling and live interaction

It won’t take long for you to find your rhythm of producing, translating and publishing your content—and then you can schedule your posts in advance. While there are some general guidelines for the best times to post, they vary by time zone and target audience, so you’ll need to research for each market. However, it’s not enough to just schedule your posts and call it good. Social media is about live interaction and having conversations, and it’s only by listening to feedback and responding to comments that you’ll be able to create a community receptive to your marketing efforts. It’s well worth your time to respond to users who take the time to interact with your pages, and there are a number of quick, high-quality methods you can use to do this in multiple languages without stretching your resources. If you’ve got questions for how to manage multilingual social media accounts, give us a call! We’d be happy to walk you through our process. Or, read more by downloading our social media guide, produced in collaboration with Fliplingo. This free guide introduces key strategies for successfully expanding your brand to global audiences.

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Translating social media: the pre-social translation flow

Gengo — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Social media works best when paired with other content marketing. It’s a way for you to tell people about your offers and deals, show the new e-book you’ve created, share your latest white paper, and most importantly, engage with your users on a social level about all of these. It’s one arm of a huge body of content strategy and, to be effective, you’ll have to translate much more than just your tweets. Here’s how to structure your pre-social translation flow to get the best results from your social media.

Begin with your goals

What are your specific marketing goals? Increasing the number of users? Increasing conversions? You’ve likely designed your native content strategy to achieve something specific, and you’ll need to do the same with your strategy in foreign markets. Yes, it’s not only social media you’ll need to think about, but the entire user funnel.

Localization starts here

Even though your buyer’s journey might not start with the product itself, the product is the first thing you’ll need to localize. Think about your primary product interface, which could be:

A dashboard
Admin console
Shopping cart and checkout process
Subscription page
Login page

What will people absolutely need to be successful with your product?

Then there’s your website

Translation and localization of key parts of your website (or the entire website, or a brand new website) are the next steps. Localize the pages your users will most likely need first, but don’t forget about information that isn’t essential to the core product experience, like how-to pages, about pages, press pages and catalogues.

Special ops for answers on the fly

Localization doesn’t begin and end with static pages—you have to plan processes that allow you to interact and answer questions on the fly. Many times, customer inquiries come through social media channels, which makes social media an extension of your customer service (or customer success) offerings. How will you handle questions fast enough to satisfy your social users?

Laying your local foundation in content-based marketing

The beating pulse of social media is content, and you won’t be able to use your social media accounts to their best effect without localized content to promote and share on them. Should you translate your existing blogs, articles, white papers and ebooks? Should you invest in fresh new content written by someone in your target market? Perhaps the best answer is to choose flexible translation tools that allow you to regularly create and promote multilingual content. Whatever method you choose, plan ahead to define your workflows.

Promotional materials

The success of your landing pages, marketing campaigns, email marketing and social media interactions have their foundations in how well your product, website and user experience has been localized. From there, you can explore ways to reach out to your international audience—including social media! Remember, success with international social media isn’t just about translation. Every joke you share on Futubra, each article you post on Mixi, or how you interact on Gree all have to be context appropriate. For seamless localization, be sure to double-check that every stage of your customers’ experiences is grounded in their local language and culture. Social media is a vital way for your brand to reach its audience—but are you maximizing your impact? Our social media guide, produced in collaboration with Fliplingo, introduces the key strategies for successfully expanding your brand to global audiences.

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The basics of multilingual social marketing

Gengo — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:00:00 +0000

How would you feel if you walked into a party, and everyone else was speaking to each other in Spanish—but you only spoke English. Uncomfortable, right? Any good host would make sure you were included in the conversation. If social media is like a cocktail party (as many have claimed), then you can begin to see how important it is to include everyone you want at your party in the conversation. As of 2015, two billion people (out of three billion internet users) were active on social media. That’s a very large potential guest list, and your job as host is to make sure everyone who comes to you gets what they need and has a good time. Sharing content in the language appropriate for your target group goes a long way in achieving both of these goals.

Social media defined—it’s more than just Twitter

Before we go into our tips for using social media effectively in foreign markets, let’s define the term. “Social media” encompasses:

Networks: websites and apps that allow users to communicate, comment, send messages and more with updates appearing on a single feed. E.g. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Microblogs: built for shorter-form content, microblogs work like network-style activity feeds with one update after another. E.g. Twitter, Medium and Sina Weibo.
Blogs: built for longer-form content, blogs—and their comments sections—are a powerful method for building a community of engaged users.
Messaging: created to make one-to-one conversations and group chats possible, often as a part of microblogs. They might include text messaging, voice or multimedia messaging. E.g. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat and LINE.

Our best social media tips for engaging foreign markets

Each type of social media, even each platform, has its own rules, community, and set of expectations. Essentially, they all have cultural differences, even when all users are in the same country. To effectively use social media as a marketing tool, you’ll need more than translated words. You’ll need to understand how each community works, and engage with those communities in the ways they most appreciate. As with any marketing decision, your social media plan should begin with your buyer persona or target audience. Where does that specific group tend to congregate? What types of content engages them the most? Then, decide which mix of social media sites you want to use. Contrary to popular belief, no company has to be on all social media sites. It’s more important to concentrate on the sites your target demographic uses most and develop strong followings there. Check out our list of the top social platforms by country. Whether your target demographic is on Twitter or Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter-like microblog), Facebook or Renren (China’s Facebook-like network), each type of social media comes with its own set of opportunities:

Networks: tend to have highly sophisticated posting and ad targeting, which can help you faster reach your target audience in new markets. You’ll need to create your own brand page for each network and each country to which you’re expanding, and be prepared to publish translated longer-form content, pictures, links to blog content and offers, and deals which will show up in the feeds of subscribed users—or as an ad to prospects who meet the brand’s target criteria.
Microblogs: have immediacy in their favor. They move fast and users expect equally fast responses. This gives brands the opportunity to publicly display their customer service and customer success initiatives, engage directly with consumers, and publicize deals, offers and content marketing campaigns—but only if they’re prepared with culturally-fluent language users who can respond in real-time.
Blogs: your brand’s and other people’s blogs—are among the easiest, most cost-effective ways to position yourself as a thought-leader in your industry. Claiming that distinction helps give your brand credibility, which is vitally important when moving into foreign markets. Guest-blogging, or writing for an already established blog, can be a very good way to introduce yourself in a new market, but it’s not an accepted practice everywhere. Understand the culture of your target blogosphere.
Messaging: is a relatively newer form of social media that many marketers haven’t tapped into yet, which means it’s ripe for innovation. Playful tactics play best, so our advice is to have fun with it.

In any language, the goal of social media is the same: to drive users to your site, boost your credibility, and build brand recognition. This takes several different types of content to achieve—along with a plan for distribution on social media channels. Your website traffic is fueled by content marketing, which reaches the public most directly through social promotion and sharing. Therefore, you not only need perfectly translated high-quality content your foreign users will want to share, but platform-appropriate translated messages to promote it. Social media is a vital way for your brand to reach its audience—but are you maximizing your impact? Our social media guide, produced in collaboration with Fliplingo, introduces you to the key strategies for successfully expanding your brand to global audiences.

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The guide to global social media

Gengo — Tue, 26 May 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Social media has become a necessity for marketers. It provides brands with a low-cost platform to directly connect with customers. While a lot of companies have established a solid strategy in their native tongue, they’re leaving out the rest of the world—and that’s a significant slice of the pie. Worldwide, there are three billion people online, and social media marketing allows you to reach them all. But where do you start? We are proud to introduce our guide to global social media, written with our partner Fliplingo, a translation service specializing in online content. The guide contains key information not just on why you should expand your social efforts overseas, but how. Another tip: use the guide in conjunction with Fliplingo’s Language Report, which analyzes what languages your Facebook and Twitter audiences speak. This will help you target your existing international followers. Think Gengo + Fliplingo is a good fit for helping you take your social media strategy overseas? Contact us today.

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