One of the biggest challenges that professional translation services face is to stay successful for a long period of time. And especially when they are planning to offer new services or in this case add new languages or products in their offerings. One can proclaim how difficult it can be to add a new language to your service portfolio? Well, to answer this question, you need to understand one thing. You can add as many languages in your offerings, but the chances of it being a successful endeavor are extremely minute. Hence, you have to conduct in-depth research of the target audience of that particular language. Understand what your competitors are offering, and then create a superior product that helps you stand out from the crowd. In simpler terms, there is no other way than a straight-line method of developing a new language.
In this article, we will expound upon the steps involved in creating a new product, either by website localization services or software localization services. The steps are almost the same.
Idea Generation
Idea generation is the first step in the process of new language development. It can be done vis-a-vis two resources. Agencies can either generate new ideas from internal sources or external sources. Internal resources constitute the R&D done by the organization, as well as, the contributions from the employees working within the firm.
On the other hand, external sources constitute potential customers, clients, and your competitors as well. If website localization services want to come up with new ideas, they can utilize these two resources.
Idea Screening
After you generate new ideas, the next step is to screen out the best ideas. Though it may seem like an easy task, it is one of the most time-consuming steps. You can generate as many ideas as you want, but selecting the one particular idea that is best for your company’s vision and mission, is a daunting task. The chances of errors are quite minimum, and you cannot afford to make a mistake.
Concept Development and Testing Â
Once professional translation services decide the language that they are going to offer, they start the process of concept development and testing. They select a particular target audience and help out a couple of people looking for translation services, just to see if they are able to localize content by adapting it to the specific cultural preferences and linguistic intricacies of that target audience. Moreover, they also decide how they can develop the idea of localization and turn it into a product or service that can cater to the needs of multiple people. For instance, software localization services will first decide the software that they are going to localize, then study the target market. Meanwhile, prepare to test the process of translation for a small group to see if they are able to conduct it properly.
Marketing StrategyÂ
Once translation services decide on a concept of a language and test it to see the effectiveness of the process, they decide to design the initial marketing strategy for promoting their services.
In the initial marketing strategy, the first step is to describe their target market. Meanwhile, the value proposition is established as well. After finalizing that, the stakeholders take out the time to decide on the price and rates that they will be setting for their services. Distribution and budgets are considered while keeping in mind the potential long-term sales and expected profits.
All of these factors are taken into consideration once the marketing strategy is being constructed.
Service Development
Once the marketing strategy is decided and the language passes the business test, it must be developed into a physical entity. In this case, the organization will develop an online presence of its services. Meanwhile, the firm will hire translators for that specific language. These steps will ensure that the product idea can be turned into a workable market offering.
In this step, the quality assurance team will consult multiple testing phases, so that the services delivery could be more efficient and error-free.
Commercialization
The final stage in the language development process is the commercialization stage. In this step, the website or the online presence of the translation service becomes fully operational. And hence it’s introduced to the general public.
Moreover, the following steps are also taken;
- Introducing timing:Â The launch of the timing is also decided in the commercialization process. For instance, if a region is facing economic turmoil, you will wait until the following year to launch your service for that particular state.
- Introduction place:Â In this aspect, you decide whether your services will be launched in one particular location, a single region, a national market, or an international market.
Conclusion
The new language development process in translation agencies is multifarious. It requires a lot of research and development. Moreover, teamwork is required to enable the smooth functioning of the development process.
You start off with the idea generation stage, in which new ideas are generated using internal and external resources. Once, ideas are generated, the next step is to shortlist them and screen out the best ideas that will fit the goals of your translation firm. After that, the concept development and testing phase start, followed by the construction of a marketing strategy that helps to enable the right product or service. Once you do that the process of commercialization starts which ultimately helps organizations to offer their services to the general public or the target audience of their choosing.
