Sick. Stoked. Snowboarding. The three words tend to go together in some countries. The winter sport has a lot of its own vernacular – “sick” can mean great, and “stoked” can mean “feeling good.” But, when Sage Kotsenburg won the Gold Medal for snowboarding in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, that’s not what Russian listeners heard.
USA Today’s sports blog, For The Win, explained that the interpreters at the event were struggling to find the right word to translate “stoked,” as Sage got up to receive the medal and invoked the confusing snowboarder slang on the podium. They decided on the Russian equivalent for “under the fly,” which can sometimes mean “under the influence of alcohol.”
This reminds us of the fact that many words and terms really don’t have a direct equivalent in other languages, especially when it comes to slangs and colloquialisms. So how did spectators, athletes and businesses navigating the nuances of different languages, so they could immerse themselves in the Olympics this year?
In part, technology seems to be the answer – and a reminder that the Internet is the most important place for translations today. So how are people dealing with language barriers during the Olympics? And what can companies learn from their methods?
One Hour Translation and the Real-Time Phenomenon
A lot has been made of machine-guided translation technology in recent years. It doesn’t take more than a quick look at Google Translate or a look at the debacle that occurred with the Affordable HealthCare Act’s Spanish website to see the obvious problems with this approach.
Translations via machine are going to run into flaws, whether it’s a problem of dialect, context or slang. That hasn’t stopped people from clambering for a real-time solution to language barriers. One of the most recent innovations is One Hour Translation (OHT), which was ranked one of the top five services and apps for watching the Sochi Olympics.
The concept behind OHT is simple. Users tweet at the company handle and, within an hour, a response is generated from a professional translator behind-the-scenes. The Sochi Olympics was a busy time for the company, as spectators tweeted different questions and parts of speeches and broadcasts for translation.
Is real-time translation really that easy?
OHT makes the process seem simple. But when it comes to translating responses to customers in-real time, the importance of accuracy – and the risk of being inaccurate – grows much higher. The real challenge is volume. If a company has a PR disaster or a product-related glitch and becomes flooded with user feedback, it can be overwhelming to contextualize and individualize each response.
Context is the key point here. Even with OHT’s help, snowboarder slang can easily throw off some of the best translators if they’re in a hurry, as we saw during the awards ceremony.
For companies, that can make translating seem like more trouble than it’s worth, especially when there are enough rudimentary options for consumers to translate things on their own. There’s also still a lingering impression that English is the dominant language online, but that’s no longer the case. Internet users in emerging economies are coming online at an increasingly rapid rate and all it takes to see that is a quick glance at OHT’s Twitter handle. This trend has had a significant impact on the consumer market and emphasizes that companies need to find the best way to get the right message to the right audience.
From 1996 to 2014: The Multi-Lingual Marathon
A connected world that speaks many languages is a relatively recent phenomenon. Even the fact that it’s possible to read about the confused translators at the Sochi Olympics – much less that it’s possible to get a rough translation of anything by tweeting at a company – is less than ten years old.
The Atlantic’s digital publication, Quartz, recently covered the phenomenon of the multilingual Internet in detail. In 1996, researcher Álvaro Blanc estimated that 80 percent of web content was in English. Today, he pegs that number at less than 40 percent. Blanc admits that this number is a rough estimate, but it’s not too far-fetched. The number seems to follow along with the population of Internet users on the whole. In 1996, 80 percent were from countries where the primary language was English. By 2010, that number had dropped to 27.3 percent.
All of this only serves to emphasize the findings from Harvard Business Review: consumers want to read digital content in their own language. In fact, nearly three-quarters (72.1 percent) spend most or all of their time on sites in their native tongue. Machine or real-time translation notwithstanding, companies have to already have a localized presence in place to attract an audience.
This, then, is the real competition in translation. If companies haven’t localized websites, products and documentation, they can’t even get out of the starting gate into a new market. There’s substantial evidence that even superior pricing won’t help – Harvard Business Review stated that more than half of consumers (56.2 percent) said that being able to get information about a product in their own language was more important to them than the price of the product itself.
And what kind of language? That goes back to the exclusively local slang that seemed to confuse so many at the Olympics in Sochi. If the native tongue plays such a big role in consumer behavior, it logically follows that companies need to do some research – or hire a language service provider – in order to better target their exact audience.
Rudimentary translations have become easier than ever, but it’s important not to ignore the fact that consumers still by and large expect a degree of polish from companies. That’s why it’s important for businesses to think carefully and strategically about how to approach translation today, especially given the nuances that seem to still serve as stumbling blocks of many professional translators. It’s only after those hurdles are cleared that the final product can truly be “sick.”
Want to learn more about how translation and localization work in a globalized world? Read about The Rubric Experience here.