SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwired) — 10/16/13 — Cloudwords, the market-leading cloud-based translation management application, today announced findings from a recent survey of content marketing professionals that reveals insights into their localization and translation practices. The survey results highlight content marketing challenges, strategies and solutions for those who market to multilingual audiences.
Although 41% of companies that market globally say translation is part of the marketing budget, more than two-thirds of global marketers revealed they lack insight into their annual translation spend or budgets. Couple that with 60% of participants whose companies market globally without a multilingual content marketing strategy, and the growing need for translation strategies and solutions is more evident than ever.
“These findings are another indication of the larger challenges that Cloudwords is solving, namely that companies want to increase market share by reaching global audiences, but lack the approach and tools to do it successfully in today-s fast-moving, content-rich world,” said Cloudwords CEO and Co-founder Scott Yancey.
The survey findings highlight marketing pain points typically associated with localization projects. Nearly 30% of participants whose companies market globally say the biggest challenges are high cost and slow turnaround times. In addition, 20% of participants noted the complexities of keeping branding and messaging consistent globally, and 19% found difficulties in managing multiple translation vendors and projects as a challenge to the localization process.
Particularly revealing, while more than half of the global marketers surveyed translate content in an average of eight languages, a surprising 80% are not familiar with “Translation Memory.” Translation Memory, a database of previously translated content, is commonly known among translation service providers, but often not by the customers who stand to benefit from its usefulness. A centrally-hosted Translation Memory database, when leveraged properly, can significantly reduce translation costs by eliminating the need for marketers to repeatedly pay for the same content to be translated.
Other survey findings that highlight the need for translation management to be part of a comprehensive global content marketing strategy include:
Desire to Reach Global Audiences – The survey shows global marketers translate into an average of eight languages. The top five languages into which global marketers translate materials are: French, Spanish (Latin America), German, Chinese and Japanese. However, nearly 8% of participants from companies that market globally don-t translate any content at all, a practice which industry research shows can have a negative effect on global growth;
Increased Demand for Multilingual Marketing Materials – Content translated most often includes: website content (79%), brochures and product literature (42%), blogs and social media content (23%), and press releases (23%); and
Lack of Insight into Translation Projects – A majority of participants are unsure which technology tool, if any, is used to manage translation projects (67%); and nearly one-third (31%) don-t know how long it takes to complete translation projects.
Conducted during the Content Marketing Institute-s annual Content Marketing World conference (), the survey polled 469 respondents on their global content marketing and translation strategies. To view the report on the survey results, visit .
Cloudwords delivers an enterprise-ready translation management application that streamlines the process of translating and localizing content to help companies decrease their global go-to-market timelines and reach multilingual audiences faster. Cloudwords data shows that customers reduce their translation costs by an average of 40% and customers report completing translation projects as much as 80% more quickly; translation projects that used to take several months can now be completed in several weeks.
Cloudwords revolutionizes the way global companies think about their multilingual content strategy and execution. Through an intuitive customer-centric interface and a secure cloud infrastructure, Cloudwords delivers an application for business users to accelerate their translation process, manage vendors, and leverage data. Created by veterans of the translation industry and high-tech leaders from Salesforce.com, the company is backed by Storm Ventures and Cloud visionaries such as Marc Benioff. For more information on Cloudwords, please visit or join the global conversation on Twitter .
Sara Korolevich
Point Communications Group for Cloudwords
623.326.0881
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