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Spanish Translation Translates To Higher Profits

According to TNS Media Intelligence, marketers invested 10.5% more in America’s largest minority in 2005 than they did in 2004. In the U.S. market overall, marketers invested a mere 3.4 percent more from 2004 to 2005. Does this mean that this sector has been overworked? Not at all. On the contrary Synovate (a global market intelligence and research company) reported in 2004 that over 43.5 million U.S. Hispanics make up almost 15 percent of the U.S. population – a percentage growing 5 times faster than the general population, which is more than a 70% increase in the last 10 years. By the year 2020, which is only 14 short years away, 1 out of 5 Americans will be of Hispanic origin. This source also tells us that the net natural growth of the Hispanic population (births minus deaths) surpassed immigration as the main source of population growth in 2004. Over 1 million children will be born to Hispanic mothers this year and for the foreseeable future. Have you ever wondered how companies will market to them?

Hispanics are becoming increasingly affluent: 64% percent are now firmly within the nation’s middle class and more than half are buying their first homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics are entering cyberspace at high speed with over 14 million U.S. Hispanics online. Yet the companies successfully targeting Hispanics online in the direct response arena are few and far between.

A marketplace of this size and yet marketers are failing to capitalize. One of the biggest errors is that many are taking a one-size-fits-all approach to the Spanish language. There are many different variations of the Spanish language and you must first consider to whom you are marketing.

Delia Huffman, president and CEO of Bull Market, an Indianapolis consulting firm, said efforts to tap into the Hispanic market shouldn’t end with translating marketing materials. “The cultural piece of marketing is always what people miss,” she added. “To capture that market, you’re not just translating. You need to put some effort into learning the culture.”

This is true, but which marketers have the resources to learn so much about another culture that they can learn localized expressions, cultural hot buttons and humor? The answer is almost none. The best partner for marketers are Spanish translation services companies who have human resources from all major Spanish-speaking markets that can act as cultural translators and not just linguistic ones.

Does a Mexican American consumer laugh and cry at the same expressions as does a Cuban American? Are they offended by different language or ideas? Consult a market-specific Spanish translation specialist to make sure. You should be one click away from a sale not one click away from the door.

Marketing to Spanish speakers is not just a front-end project. Fulfillment practices are also an important issue that companies just aren’t getting right. Consider this example. Company XYZ has just launched their Spanish-language site complete with a catalogue of their fine widgets, a shopping cart and third party processor to handle all of their transactions. There is even an autoresponder to do all upselling automatically. XYZ tests the backend and it works seamlessly. Then somewhere in their finely-tuned system something goes wrong – a widget breaks and their customer needs to contact them. Having a FAQ page doesn’t cut it and their client needs real customer support. Does XYZ have the bilingual staff in place to handle these day-to-day crises? No, they don’t. You would be surprised how many companies fail because of this. There are cost-effective, bi- systems out there to respond to bilingual customer service chat, email and telephone issues.

There is no doubt that translation is a cost. Perhaps, however, companies would be better served to think of creating a Spanish-language website, for example, as an investment for the future rather than an expense. For 20-plus years, the Hispanic market has shown growth in both market size and purchasing power. Companies can no longer ignore the cost of not doing business with 44 million Hispanics.

This includes yours.

About the Author

Peter LeSar of http://www.ispeak.net makes it easy to buy human translation services of the highest quality and at the best price. For your Spanish translation quote or more information, visit http://www.ispeak.net/Spanish-translation.

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Mexican Living Survival Tip # 10 – Love, Belonging, Power, And Fun

William Glasser, M.D., of Reality Therapy fame, said this,

“…I believe that we are genetically programmed to satisfy four psychological needs: love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.”

If this is true, then you need to have a plan, a huge plan, for just how you are going to be able to meet these needs if you expatriate to Mexico. If you don’t, then what will happen is what I see all the time in American gringos.

They move to Guanajuato. For reasons I cannot fathom, they move here not knowing more than two words of Spanish. But they come and somehow they start a life here.

They spend their days holed up in front of satellite television where they can watch all the shows they watched in America. They drive a car to the supermarket to shop. They come home and sit in front of the satellite television and watch more of the shows they watched when they were in the United States.

They claim that the majority of their friends are Mexican. This is a wonder since they themselves cannot speak Spanish. So, I deduce that they have to mean that the majority of their friends are Mexicans who are bilingual. This has to mean there are a few Mexicans in Guanajuato who speak at least some English.

These gringos cannot attend cultural functions that require them to understand Spanish. The only movies they see are those they’ve brought from the United States because the movies in the theaters here are usually in Spanish.

There I go again haranguing about Spanish.

In my view, this is no way to live. This type of life would not meet my need for belonging or fun in any way. What kind of existence is that? If I wanted to live like that I would not have gone to the enormous bother to move to Mexico. You might be interested to know that these expats make frequent trips to the U.S. to get things they cannot obtain in Mexico. This translates to this:

“We cannot really stand Mexico. We tolerate it only because it is cheap to live here and it has year-round good weather. But, in the end, Mexico does not appeal to our American tastes. That’s why we spent a small fortune to bring our American materialistic goods to Mexico and why we go back to the U.S. to obtain those things which appeal to our American tastes.”

Why go to the bother to move here if you are looking for things that appeal to your American tastes? Why not stay in America?

These are people who somehow, someway manage to bungle themselves into living in a part of Mexico that is not really gringo-friendly. They would have been better suited to living in a place like San Miguel de Allende or Puerto Vallarta.

They are not meeting their basic human need for fun or belonging because they cannot. The reason they cannot is because they are too linguistically challenged to participate in any activities other than watching satellite television and socializing with the few expats who live in Guanajuato.

If you cannot or will not learn Spanish, then it would be advisable to expatriate to an area of Mexico where you do not have to speak the language. In those areas, the cost of living is going to be considerably higher. Everything from food to housing to entertainment will cost you far more than if you lived in Guanajuato.

My wife and I were once sitting in El Jardin when a gringo woman approached us. She was dressed like a San Miguel resident. We soon learned our initial impression was correct. She was from San Miguel de Allende and was in Guanajuato looking for a place to live. She could no longer afford to pay the increasing rent charged by San Miguel landlords.

She told us that she was having great difficulty finding housing (she didn’t speak Spanish…could that possibly contribute to her problem?). She also told us that she heard there were no cultural events in Guanajuato.

Believe this or not, I am convinced that the majority of gringos in San Miguel de Allende, if the truth be known, believe this.

This woman was actually told that there was nothing fun to do in Guanajuato. Her perception of fulfilling her human need for fun was to attend cultural events like concerts, the theater, and movies. She was told she would not be able to do that here because they did not exist!

We told her that there is the three-week-long International Festival of Arts in Guanajuato-The Cervantino Festival-each October, not to mention the many year-round events. But, we informed her, you have to be able to speak Spanish to understand them. This is a Spanish-speaking town.

Guanajuato defines fun with its year-round events. There is theater, movies (commercial and fine arts), there are concerts, art exhibits, etc… However, if you wanted to attend a movie you have to speak Spanish. When we first moved here, a lot of movies were in English with Spanish subtitles. Now, more and more movies are entirely in Spanish with no subtitles at all.

Thank God for that!

This woman, whose visage is burned into my memory, said sadly, “Oh, then I guess I would have to learn some Spanish.” She said it like someone who just realized they would have to take rabies shots.

There is a lot in this town to satisfy your human psychological need for love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. I wonder just what Americans think the Mexican nationals do here all day long: sit like lumps scratching themselves and grunting like apes?

Mexicans have to meet their basic psychological needs too. They do it much like Americans do. They go to movies, the theater, concerts, opera, lectures, parties, and to social gatherings where they have human fellowship.

But, as I am at the point of being sickeningly repetitious, Americans cannot do this here because they are not able to handle the language. There is not a huge gringo population with which to have involvement.

And, because they cannot handle the language, they are forced either to seek out the few gringos with whom they can speak English or they hole up in their houses with their satellite televisions.

I cannot understand this. Maybe it is psychologically damaging in the long run to move to Guanajuato if you will not learn Spanish. Your ability to meet the psychological need for love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun will be relegated to watching your satellite television, driving to the Supermarket, and getting back home to watch more satellite television. Just how long with you last doing that?

That is too pathetic to imagine.

The lesson here:

You could expatriate to Guanajuato where the weather is almost perfect all year and life is inexpensive. You could somehow muddle through getting a place to live and set up your life. You could do this without being able to speak the language. People do it. But, your life, the ability to meet your basic psychological need for “…love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun…” is going to be via satellite television.

Who would want to live like that?

About the Author

An American Expat in M

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