The translation for tourism has been in high demand over the past decade, when hotels, travel agencies, and other kinds of business related to tourism want to reach the highest number of customers possible and get a higher chance to win their hearts.
The tourism sector’s strong entry into the digital world has obliged the companies involved to translate all kinds of content, as the internet has no limits and the number of potential clients is exponential. Your translation investment is well worth it.
Read on to see an overview picture of the translation for the tourism industry, and how you could find a reliable translation service provider to bridge the gap between you and your customers.
1. Reasons why translation for tourism is vital
There are a lot of reasons why a tourism company should have its content translated. Here are the 3 most important ones:
- Customers do not trust poorly translated web pages
This is not specific to translation for tourism, but it is true for any company that desires to tap into a new market. Figures show that 80% of the users on the Internet would think twice before making a buying decision on a poorly translated web page.
When someone uses their credit card to pay for or book something, they pay close attention to the website they are purchasing from. Small details, such as a misspelled synonym or a grammatically incorrect sentence, can have a significant impact. Such errors imply carelessness and do not inspire confidence.
- It’s a quick way of expanding your market reach
Translating your website into another language isn’t the only way to attract new customers in new countries. However, it is a significant step in the right direction.
For a tourism company, the translation of their website, social networks, and blogs are essential. Although people frequently use English as an international language, 72.1% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language.
- It helps with SEO
Following Google’s standards, your SEO approach should be different for each language. For example, a travel agency has an article that ranks high for the keyword “holiday resort Maldives.” If you decide to translate into French, the new article will start from the beginning in Google’s eyes.
As a result, tourist companies with websites in English only would find it exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) to rank in searches in other languages. If you want to reach your customers through organic searches, you should provide content in their native language; otherwise, search engines will not make things easy for you.
2. Translation for tourism is more complex than you might think
Many people think translation for tourism companies is easy, as this industry is not full of technical terms but relatively direct. However, translation for tourism has its own issues that can be solved smoothly only by professional language service providers. Some of these issues are:
- The messages must be tailored to each language’s culture
Some examples of difficult-to-translate tourism messaging
The tourism industry is commonly linked with leisure, which is reflected in its messaging. Airlines, travel agencies, hotels, and airports; all of these make an effort to adapt their communication to the way the customer speaks and to use messages that are appealing and familiar, with which the customers feel comfortable.
As such, it is not easy to deal with translation for tourism. If the translator wants to keep the original tone of the message, they will need an in-depth knowledge of the country they are translating for.
- The translator does not really know what they’re talking about
A really important part of translation for tourism is the content in which the company talks about a city, a monument, or any other sites that are worth visiting. In these cases, original texts tend to include all details and subjective opinions to make them as visual and fascinating as possible.
However, if a translator has never visited these places and has no idea what they are really like, it can be difficult to translate descriptions of these sites into another language. Let’s say you have to talk about a remote village in the Scottish Highlights, and the particularly picturesque path you should take to reach the center. Even if you understand the original text, it is still challenging to translate it and be certain that what you have described is true to reality.
That is why in some cases, the translator needs to look for more information about the place (through travel guides and other blogs), to ensure the place you’re describing is exactly as you’ve understood it.
Pick GTE Localize
At GTE Localize, we have been working with tourism companies of all kinds for years, and we know the difficulties that can crop up and how to deal with them.
Contact our specialists right now to get started on your translation for tourism projects, or to get a free 300-word-long test to get to know each other better!
