Why localization is essential to growing your biotech company

Why localization is essential to growing your biotech company

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To thrive in today’s competitive biotech market, you need to expand the reach of your brand. And, that typically means taking your company global. To get the type of traction in a new market that will yield success, you need exposure. Gaining exposure means that you need people in the new market to know you and your products. And, part of the initial ‘getting to know you phase’ is building trust with your brand. How can you do this when you don’t speak the language or understand the culture?

The first step in the process is to translate your marketing materials. Unfortunately, just translating your documents isn’t enough. You need to ensure that your marketing content is localized. This means you need to take the local dialect, idiomatic expressions, and cultural cues into consideration. 

Getting this right the first time is crucial to your success in the new market. And, to increase your chances of success you need the right language service provider (LSP). To put you on the path to success, we’ve provided a few tips on selecting the right LSP partner.

  • Be sure the translators are experts in your field. Like many niches, the biotech field uses a lot of industry-specific terminology. With all of the specific topics that you need to know to educate your audience and sell, you need to ensure that your translations are flawless.To make this happen, you need an LSP that is an expert in biotech translations.
  • Insist on a trial run. Just as you put drugs through trial runs before releasing them to the market, you should put your LSP through a trial run before hiring them. Finding the right translator is never easy. You need someone you can trust, as well as someone knowledgeable in your field. When you do a trial run with your translator, you’re able to kickstart your project, and get an first-hand glimpse into the quality and accuracy you can expect from them.
  • Take translation beyond words. To get the maximum benefits from your translation project, you need to consider more than the words you use in your marketing material for new regions. Images, colors, and other non-verbal cues can have an enormous impact on how your biotech company is perceived. For example, red might work as a power-filled action color in one market, but may come across as offensive in another. To succeed, you must consider the non-verbal images, as well as the text you publish.
  • Plan for your text to expand after translation. As you translate your brochures, product packaging, website, and other materials, plan to end up with longer text than what is in your original English version. Foreign languages often take up more room than English. For example, Germanic languages, such as Danish, German, and Dutch, are often over 30% longer than their English counterparts. Latin languages, such as Spanish and French, are also about 30% longer on average. Be sure to take this into consideration, as you may need to redesign some of your marketing materials to accommodate the space requirements of the foreign language.

There’s a lot to consider when breaking into a new market, and having a trusting  relationship with your LSP is crucial to that equation. Before you begin your translation project, talk to your LSP about your goals and the outcome you hope to achieve.

If you’d like to learn more about how BURG Translations helps you ensure high quality biotech translations, contact us today.