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The Importance Of Going Global

What Does It Mean To Go Global?

Last time around, we looked at the current social and technology state of play when it comes to the online world. As it turns out, there are a lot of people online – we’re sure this doesn’t surprise anyone! It represents a huge opportunity for any company looking to expand their reach internationally and go global. In spite of all the noise online and the difficulty of cutting through and engaging with your target audience, those that succeed will find themselves with a global, worldwide audience at their feet.

The Importance Of Going Global

So what does it mean to go global?

Fundamentally, it’s a question of communication. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you still need to find some ways of communicating with the person next to you. Whilst pointing at things is a tried-and-tested tactic across many marketplaces the world over – which works perfectly fine for your goals when you’re a tourist – it doesn’t quite apply when you’re the one trying to build an engagement with a new target audience.

Even in a world where some 1.65 billion speak some level of English, it’s no good anymore to just leave your online presence in English exclusively. Only about 360 million of those speak English as a first language, meaning that for everyone else, English is something they’ve learned or picked up along the way. To build an engagement with a customer, you’ll want to speak the language they think in. Languages have a habit of aligning and shaping how we view the world. This article highlights how, for example, Russian speakers are better able to perceive different shades of blue because the Russian language has separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy) – and we’ve seen many studies highlight the importance of how languages shape our way of thinking.

Communicating with these potential audiences requires understanding how they think – so going global means finding ways to bridge that gap. The crux of that process is translation, and that’s where we come in. As an AI-powered translation company, we’ve seen first-hand the challenges faced by companies looking to bridge those borders, with our WordsOnline software – automated translation powered by machine learning, but with a human eye at the end of the process to edit and correct mistakes (which the AI then picks up on for future translation!).

Think of the challenges facing a company like Amazon, as global a company as you’re likely to get. Translating the content across all of Amazon’s services manually would take many millions of work hours, driving up costs across the board. Amazon needs scalability of translation like no other global company – and that’s exactly what we provide.

Going global is not just a case of turning up in another country, setting up shop, and hoping for the best. It’s a distinct process that requires understanding the way your target market thinks. But where in the old days you may have needed months and maybe even years of painstaking translation, followed by small armies of translators capable of covering both languages, today it has never been easier or more immediate.

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