The recent wearable technology show in London was a great success. To follow on, The Gadget Show Live is returning to Birmingham and promises to be as popular ever. The purpose of this show is to introduce the latest consumer tech innovations of the past year with great potential for the future. Influential start-ups and companies such as HTC and Tesla are exhibiting for this event, surrounded by recent smart-tech companies like Hive. Consumer technology is a booming business, but many forget its global potential.
For this reason, consumer technology translation is now more in demand than ever to capitalise on international expansion. In this blog, you’ll receive an overview of the consumer technology market and tips for breaking down the language barrier to ensure you understand the requirements for delivering high quality consumer technology translation.
Size of the market
The global consumer technology market is expected to expand by 15.4% in terms of value between 2015 and 2020 according to Future Market Insights (FMI). In other words, the industry’s revenue is expected to represent 2,976.1 Billion US dollars over this period.
This market – also called the consumer electronics market – refers to electronic, wearable, and home devices. The electronic device segment is the biggest in terms of revenue. However, this segment is at its maturity stage meaning that its growth rate is expected to be lower and lower in the future. Electronic devices are products that have been around the market for years and are not considered as new anymore like smartphones, TV, or laptops.
On the opposite, wearable devices and home devices are new and growing market segments of the industry. Wearable tech includes smart watches, smart clothing, and any type of tech device that can be worn. For more information about wearable devices visit our previous article here.
Home devices are about equipping houses with safety intelligence devices and apps improving the home experience that makes life easier.
Finally, the consumer technology market’s size also differs from region to region. For instance, the Asian market is expected to reach 31.3% of the global market shares in terms of revenue by 2020. Technology companies might consider the markets with the highest projected growth in order to take advantage of the favorable economic trend. In order to do so, it’s essential for businesses to use consumer technology translation to overcome language barriers.
How to engage foreign audiences with your consumer technology offerings?
In order to engage foreign audiences successfully, localizing and translating your consumer technology offering is a necessity. Here are some tips for you about consumer technology translation!
Tips for technology companies with a small budget
Technology start-ups and SMEs wishing to expand their activities abroad should first focus on machine translations. Machine translation can save you money in the future if there is repetition while being a database unique to you. Our servers are entirely secure and we do not share your work to grow our machine translation tool like free search engines do. Also, using Google Translate to translate your website, for example, is actually against Google Webmaster Guidelines and could incur a penalty.
Website, advertising content, and product description are generally the first elements to be translated when expanding abroad. Machine translation allows translators to provide fast and cheap translations which can be bolstered by a skilled human post-editor to refine the work. Even though machine translation can be a great tool for consumer technology translation, it still needs the expertise of a specialized translator to make sure the content is right.
Machine translation is an effective way to maximize the volume of translated content given a restrictive budget. Translating content such as blogs and news releases is a good way to generate more traffic on your foreign platforms although machine translation isn’t recommended for these as they are a creative medium and impact could be lost across languages.
Tips for technology companies with a wide-reaching global presence
High-revenue technology companies have the opportunity to invest in multilingual Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Translation Memory when expanding their presence abroad. These two tools require time and money but their return on investment is worth it to engage foreign audiences.
Multilingual SEO is about raising the company’s website visibility in all search engines like Google; across countries, you can be found high enough if you have a dedicated SEO team. Multilingual SEO consists of localizing websites and incorporating the right keywords into content for each market and for each consumer technology translation. If the site is audited correctly and with care, multilingual SEO can generate more organic traffic on foreign websites and is more likely to raise consumer awareness regarding your brand awareness in the area. It is best to have someone local do it as they will specialize in their area’s search engine, keyword searches, and the like.
Concerning translation memory, they are databases that record translations for future use. If you have particular phrases that continually crop up then the tool will remember and instantly replace them, speeding the process and allowing the post-editor or translator to focus on the stuff that requires attention. In other words, TM helps translate new content thanks to past translated content which allows the translator to increase productivity and reduce mistakes. Translation memory is very efficient for repetitive content such as website content, guidelines content, and product description. Consequently, translation memory is a great tool to reduce the effort for consumer technology translation and improve brand awareness thanks to accurate and high-quality translation.
