Social Media Translation: 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Table of Contents

What should be taken into account during social media content translation? When it comes to social media, businesses often face many challenges and pitfalls. Posting inappropriate or controversial content can seriously harm your brand.

In this article, Thao & Co. delves into the intricacies of social media and common mistakes to avoid. We’ll take a look at potential pitfalls as well as social media best practices to build a positive and appealing online brand image.

What is social media translation?

Social media encompasses online platforms and services that allow users to create, share, and interact with content. It’s where people connect, communicate, and share information, opinions, images, videos, and more.

Social media translation involves rendering social media content from a source language to a target language. This ensures your target audience can understand and interact with your messages and content on your personal, business, or community pages on social media.

Different types of social media content translation

Social media covers a wide variety of shared and interactive content which offers diverse ways for users to engage and exchange information. Depending on your personal or business purposes and goals, you can opt for the type of content that works perfectly in captivating and resonating with your audience.

Social Media Translation Services - Thao & Co.

Posts

Posts are short-form messages shared by users on their personal or business social media pages. Translating social media posts facilitates the sharing of information, opinions, events, or entertainment content. This helps you communicate with international partners and customers.

Videos

Social media is where users can upload and share original videos, vlogs, and more captivating media content, helping to build their presence and foster genuine connections with different communities. Modern social platforms enable users to add multilingual subtitles for videos, which expands the content’s global reach.

Advertisements

Social media platforms provide businesses with advertising tools to reach and engage with potential customers. Advertising translation is an excellent way to strengthen your presence and reach your target audience in a new market.

Podcasts & audio

Podcasts and audio have seen an incredible rise in popularity on social media. This audio-based content is shared as a talk, discussion, or live broadcasting. Enterprises can get their podcast content translated to promote and enhance their multinational audience reach.

Infographics and images

Infographics and images are visually appealing content that communicates information in a simple, easily digestible way through a collection of images, charts, and short texts. Effective content localization strategies involve the translation of infographics and images for maximum convenience and relevance with the target customer base.

Benefits of social media translation

Social media translation is more than just a tool. It’s the key to unlocking the door to endless potential. Social media is where users are free to discover, interact, and share their information, ideas, images, and videos with the whole world. It is a world of creativity and connection where businesses can stay connected with communities.

Social media translation is a crucial factor when implementing any marketing localization strategy. Translating your social media content may bring significant benefits and success to your cross-border advertising campaigns. Here’s how social media translation can give your brand a great boost:

Reach international customers

General Translation - Thao & Co.

Social media translation expands your reach and interaction with customers on a global level. By getting your content translated into the language of your target audience, you can effectively bridge the communication gaps with your customers across markets and grow your global customer base.

Adapt content to local cultures

Each country and territory has its unique culture, customs, and language. Social media translation helps you tailor your marketing content to a specific country to resonate more closely with local customers and offer a better interaction experience.

Deliver precise communication messages

Social media translation helps you convey your marketing messages accurately and consistently to your target customers in different markets. When your content is precisely translated into the target language of your target audience, your business message is properly communicated and you can gain more positive customer engagement.

Build trust

By communicating in your target customer’s language and culture, you show that you truly respect and care for your customers. This creates a positive brand image, fostering customer loyalty.

Optimize advertising campaigns

By ensuring that all content translation accurately and relevantly reflects the linguistic and cultural preferences of your target market, you can boost marketing effectiveness and expand your customer reach. Translating your most engaging content into multiple languages can also save you the resources of producing new content for new markets as well as improve brand awareness and conversion rates for your advertising campaigns.

Mistakes to avoid when translating social media content

To ensure the quality of your social media content translation, avoid these mistakes at all cost:

1. Overlooking domestic platforms

Each country has its own social media platforms. To optimize your campaign for success, be sure to give them proper attention and well-localized content.

2. Lack of understanding of the platform

Each social media platform works differently. This means you should take the time to get familiar with each platform best practices to ensure your content is platform-specific.

3. Lack of clear goals

Before starting any social media translation, it is a good idea to define your campaign goals. This helps you craft proper content that can get you your desired results.

4. Not providing a Creative Brief for translators

A Creative Brief is your guide to your campaign style, language, and goals. You should ensure to communicate these important details to your translation partner so that they clearly understand your requirements and develop appropriate content.

5. Overlooking local trends

Social media generally reflects the trends and preferences in local communities. So, keep up with these trends and actively incorporate them into your translations.

6. Prioritizing accuracy over emotional resonance

While accuracy is important, placing too much focus on every single word can damage the naturalness and emotional nuances of your messages. Always make sure the translation preserves both the meaning and emotional impact of your original content.

7. Relying on automatic machine translation

Automated translation can be useful, but it can never completely replace human knowledge and creativity. Translation tools can be leveraged for non-customer-facing content or internal communication. However, when it comes to brand messages, make sure your translation is done by professional linguists with cultural knowledge and marketing expertise.

8. Ignoring hashtag and image localization

Hashtags and images are crucial in creating engagement and building brand awareness. Translations with customized hashtags and images tailored to local preferences often resonate more closely with customers.

Creative Translation Services for Appealing Social Media Content

Get a Quote - Thao & Co.

At Thao & Co., we understand that high-quality creative content is key to attracting and keeping customers engaged. With a team of expert translators possessing in-depth cultural and linguistic knowledge, we are committed to providing superb translations that can help you achieve your business goals.

Beyond grammatical and lexical accuracy, we are devoted to replicating the message and emotional impact of your original content. By using proper language and a sophisticated communication style, we offer creative and captivating translations that garner the attention of potential customers and strengthen your brand image on social media platforms.

We understand that each translation project is unique and must be handled with meticulous care and boundless creativity. We take the time to understand all your requirements to make sure we can deliver unique and compelling translations.

With our innovative and engaging content translation services at Thao & Co., we take immense pride in our professionalism and reliability. We guarantee creative translations that enhance your marketing efficiency and engagement across social media platforms.

Contact Thao & Co. today for more details on our expert language solutions!

Key takeaways

Social media plays an essential role in fostering connection and communication with multinational customers. In order to leverage social media effectively, avoid these common mistakes and maintain a positive, consistent brand image across all platforms with high-quality content and well-localized translations.

Source: Thao & Company
Professional Translation and Localization Services in Vietnam
Where Precision Meets Quality Standards
Get in touch
Let us know how we can help!
Our industries
Healthcare
We provide accurate translations of items such as clinical instructions, medical records, articles, product labels and questionnaires.
Advertising + Marketing
Get your message across in any language when we translate your informational materials, instructions and simple promotional content.
Banking + Finance
As you tap new markets, we can translate sales materials, emails, job applications, CVs, legal documents, and entire banking/trading platforms and apps.
Legal
Get fast, precise translation of legal documents, contracts, memos, emails and other forms of communication.
Real Estate + Construction
Our translators have sufficient familiarity with architecture, construction, real estate and civil engineering to help translate relevant documents.
Retail + E-commerce
If you’re selling to global markets, let us translate your sales materials, company announcements and meeting minutes for your international partners.
Travel + Tourism
We can provide general translation of content for internal communications and customer-facing text for hotels, restaurants, travel guides and more.
Entertainment
Relying on our experience translating films, plays and commercials, we give careful attention to word selection and meaning in every project.
Automotive + Aerospace
Look to our specialized linguists to translate and localize user guides, CAD drawings, repair manuals and business contracts.
Manufacturing
Get precise translation of technical terminology whether for instructions, safety, quality control or regulatory compliance.
Manufacturing
Explore new markets for your games once we translate the rules, instructions, storyline, dialog, graphics and technical details.
Education
Empower global education with our translation and localization services. Available for academic transcripts, diplomas, degrees, certificates, websites, apps, and more.
Technology
Our expert localization services are here to get your tech materials, websites, apps, software and other digital products into new markets.
Ready to take the next step? Tell us about your project.

Get a quote