The Translation People on Translation's Key Role in Growing the Global Fintech Industry - The Fintech Times - Translation

In this article, The Translation People discuss how translation technology is helping international fintech businesses.

Though the global fintech market was experiencing huge growth before the pandemic – with experts saying it would continue growing at around 25 per cent annually until 2022, to $309.98billion – the reduced face-to-face interactions inflicted on us because of Covid-19 has seen digital financial services become even more vital around the world in the last 12 months.

A joint study by the World Bank, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and World Economic Forum, found there has been strong growth in all types of digital financial services during the Covid-19 pandemic, because of their ability to reach more people and reduce the need for physical meetings between users and bank workers, no matter where they are in the world.

Even after the last 12 months, the continued development of cryptocurrency, blockchain technologies, ICO documentation and regulation of the financial sector have made business owners consider which services and products can aid them to grow their brand internationally, so they can reach key stakeholders and investors at a global level. From those dealing in global stocks and shares, to payment platforms using AI to support businesses wanting to trade internationally, businesses are looking at the role of translation in their growth, identifying providers that can demonstrate stringent, rigorously protected and accredited systems and workflows which are compatible with their own.

Any business working in or targeting an overseas territory should ensure they are equipped from a linguistic and cultural perspective – whether that’s translating reports or agreements, localising a website for SEO, activating copy to make it relevant for voice search technologies or translating complex software or technical manuals. This should be done using a combination of quality translation talent with experience of the financial sector, and secure, adaptable translation technology which – together – guarantee precise terminology and uncompromising quality right down to the fine details. That way, you can be sure that critical information such as key messages, technical jargon and product names and services are translated perfectly for your target market. When you’re utilising sophisticated, secure technology to offer customers something innovative, the way you approach communication shouldn’t be any different.

Translation technology

Data shows that over the last three years, the uncertain nature of Brexit, and what the future held for the UK’s relationship with countries like France, Germany and Spain, saw UK companies look further afield to develop their international growth. As such, areas such as Eastern Europe and Africa have seen an increase in activity, as businesses begin setting up new operations or begin selling to customers in these areas. In some cases, translations in these languages have increased at least 2,000 per cent more than three years ago.

For those that want to expand their footprint across the world, but who haven’t used translation before, some may worry that a service provider either won’t understand their terminology or that suitable translations into other languages aren’t available and therefore won’t make sense to the end-user.

However, specialist translation partners can support businesses in highly regulated sectors to achieve their communication goals in different languages. Combining specialist technology and linguists, a good translation partner can ensure that crucial pieces of collateral use accurate terminology across different languages, whilst also maximising consistency, reducing costs and streamlining timings.

For example, translation memory technology incorporates bespoke ‘memories’ of a company’s most frequently used terminology and language. They are built by specialist technical translators during translation projects to ensure that complex phrases and words are translated consistently in multiple different languages, ensuring high-quality translation output, no matter which country in the world it is being used, as well as a more streamlined, more efficient and, ultimately, a more cost-effective process.

Designed to make the process of translation smarter, translation memory software also enables greater automation and increased precision. With the ability to store and remember words, phrases and even entire sections of text in company-specific, secure databases, if the translation of previous technical material is already within the translation memory, it will issue a prompt to the translator that there is bespoke information available which can be reused to speed up the process.

Likewise, for certain projects, specialist machine translation technology can be configured and trained to produce a first draft automated translation that incorporates company-specific terminology and style, based on previous translations. Using a secure platform, this first draft translation can then be edited by a specialist linguist to achieve human-level translation at a fraction of the cost and the time compared with translating from scratch. What’s more, the edited version feeds back into the machine translation engine to continually improve results, resulting in better output, even lower cost and faster turnaround times.

Remote interpretation

The Coronavirus pandemic put a stop to international travel for several months and many businesses are still relying on technological platforms to replicate face-to-face meetings, events and workshops to bring together teams, clients, suppliers and even customers.

Many translation technologies are also helping the international fintech supply chain to be more sustainably minded. There is heavy expenditure and a major environmental impact associated with long-distance flying, but multilingual, remote conferencing and interpreting platforms offer a new solution. By facilitating an unlimited number of virtual interpreting booths, each accessed remotely by participants around the world who are allocated a qualified linguist, businesses can translate live, in real-time, in any user’s preferred language, entirely online.

Though these platforms help business leaders achieve some level of continuity in the wake of coronavirus, the technology should also be used by businesses who wish to nurture their international supply chains on a long-term basis, to save potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds, which can be reinvested in building stronger relationships.

Meanwhile, for those who want to use online content to engage their teams around the world – whether for training purposes or to encourage socialisation between different territories – translation can be used to create more interactive materials in a variety of languages. Using translation to produce content in a user’s native language – through foreign language voiceover and subtitles or localised e-learning courses, for example – the content becomes more accessible, meaning businesses will achieve greater engagement – even if everything is delivered digitally.

Website and software localisation

Considering that 70 per cent of the world has a first language other than English, statistics show that up to 85 per cent of those people won’t buy from a company without a local language variant.

The virtual world plays a key role in the fintech market’s increasing internationalisation, so technical prowess and financial translation expertise should be used to ensure websites offer flawlessly localised content that works linguistically and logistically for users.

It benefits your longer-term growth ambitions because individuals will more readily buy from and work with you if you’re using material that is fully localised, offering a stress-free experience that better appeals to their personal nuances and needs. Even in countries where your target audience is more confident in English, for efficiency, accuracy and inclusivity, it’s always beneficial to have materials translated into their native language.

However, without good SEO your website might not even be found. Multi-language SEO involves conducting local and cultural research to find out what your potential overseas customers might be searching for in relation to fintech, which may include different search terms than those used in the UK.

There are many ways to improve international SEO using translation services, and it’s worth considering it as part of your overall multi-language website strategy, so you can be sure to optimise your local Google ranking and be found by your target customers wherever they are in the world.

In practice

Following years of investment in technology-based workflows and solutions geared towards improving efficiencies and productivity, we’re supporting many fintech businesses to use automated transcription tools, website connectors, intelligent machine translation technologies, remote interpreting and more, to help them achieve global growth.

Clients we support in this sector can simply upload their content into our centralised translation management system, where our project managers and translators can complete the translation, offering a streamlined and secure way of working. Clients can even add software strings, including all coding, directly into the system, which is configured to understand and filter out only the translatable content. As and when they are uploaded, approved or amended by their teams, they trigger an automatic notification for our translators, who login and complete the tasks, allowing the client to retrieve the translated content quickly and efficiently. Communication between all people viewing and amending the content is centralised, offering a streamlined workflow even with teams working remotely from one another.

We can also integrate our systems directly with a client’s web platform so that as pages are added to a site, or updated later down the line, we are automatically notified that there is new content in need of translation. The content is automatically pushed into our system and then pulled back into the CMS when translation is complete, meaning whole website translations can be an efficient process. Better yet, there is no requirement for additional formatting – the translation displays on the website as it should because the translation system has been configured to handle the client’s coding and tags in a specific way.

Both ways of working allow for glossaries and translation memories to be stored in a central location, ensuring version control and consistency across all platforms.

The central role of the fintech industry in today’s global economy, and the ability for business leaders to make critical decisions in line with changing regulations and the ever-more flexible needs of users, is dependent on the aptitude, awareness, and attentiveness of a translation partner. Quality translations of financial materials are integral to supporting financial institutions and start-ups – including banks, remote payment technology providers, currency exchange specialists and fund managers – to further develop their own technological platforms and expand internationally, making it a truly valuable service within the fintech arena. Those who don’t make use of it today risk falling behind while others race ahead.

• Polly Jean Harrison

  Polly is a journalist, content creator and general opinion holder from North Wales. She has written for a number of publications, usually hovering around the topics of fintech, tech, lifestyle and body positivity.