SEPTEMBER
2004
¿Habla
Español?
Translation companies are a hot commodity as businesses
reach out to the Hispanic market
By BRIDGET McCREA
Southwest
Airlines knows the value of good translation. The Dallas-based
low-fare airline also knows that the buying power of U.S.
Hispanics is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2007, per
the Selig Center, and that more than 22 million Hispanics
currently live in the markets that the airline services.
“We want to be the airline of choice for U.S. Hispanics,”
says Edna Z. Ruano, spokesperson for the airline, which
goes the extra mile to make sure its marketing, advertising,
Web and other informational materials are properly translated
into the Spanish language. To get there, Southwest enlists
the help of professional translation firms Garcia Shilling
International of Dallas and Akorbi of Farmers Branch, Texas.
Currently, those firms—along with Hispanic advertising
agency Dieste Harmel & Partners—are working with
Southwest to produce a Spanish-language media plan that
contains targeted, culturally relevant advertising messages;
bilingual airport directional signage; and a Spanish-language
website. The company recently added a bilingual extension
to its Adopt-A-Pilot program, through which its pilots are
“adopted” by a fifth-grade classroom.
“We
use Akorbi’s services to translate the program curriculum
available to teachers and students,” says Ruano. “It’s
enabled us to provide both an English and Spanish curriculum
to teachers participating in the bilingual component.”
Tapping opportunity
Southwest is just one of numerous U.S.-based companies that
have come to realize the importance of having a reputable,
professional translation firm in their corner. Ever since
the 2000 census opened Corporate America’s eyes to
the size and prowess of the Hispanic community—not
all of whom are fluent in English—companies have been
scrambling to produce materials that the growing community
understands and responds to.
“After
the census showed that Hispanics represent the largest minority
in the U.S., offerings in Spanish have increased and become
mainstream, resulting in more volume for the translation
companies,” says Renato Beninatto, vice president
at Common Sense Advisory of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, a
research and analysis firm that specializes in localization
and international business. Personally involved in the translation
industry for more than 20 years, including a stint as vice
president for The Berlitz, Beninatto has also seen a new
specialization in “U.S. Spanish,” in addition
to the traditional European and Latin American variations.
Still,
Beninatto says most companies have yet to address the 13
percent of the U.S. population that is of Hispanic descent,
primarily from Latin America, either via the Web or through
traditional media channels. “That’s 39 million
people,” says Beninatto, who adds that addressing
that portion of the population isn’t always easy,
thanks to language and cultural differences. “Even
if they do recognize the opportunity, most companies only
address one facet of the Hispanic population. They also
tend to treat them as consumers, neglecting Latinos as shareholders,
businessmen and rising entrepreneurs.”
Enter the professional translation firm which, if equipped
with the proper experience and in-depth knowledge of the
market, can help steer companies in the right direction
when it comes to producing marketing materials, advertising,
promotional items, press releases and other relevant materials.
One such company is Into-Spanish.com, an Atlanta-based firm
that provides English-to-Spanish translation services for
a variety of clients.
Guillermo
Astigarraga, project manager and translator, started the
company last year after his own freelance translation workload
warranted the use of other professional translators. The
company works mostly with U.S. firms that are targeting
the domestic Hispanic community, offering translation and
editing services, website translation and localization,
on-site interpreting, and training for translators and translation
students.
According
to Astigarraga, American companies targeting the Latino
market face two key challenges: producing text that is grammatically
correct, spelled properly, and that actually reads and sounds
like Spanish; and creating text that can be easily understood
by all Hispanics living in the country, including Mexicans,
Argentines, Cubans, Colombians and Chileans—each of
which use vocabulary specific to their country of origin.
“Companies looking for customers among those groups
need to be able to reach them all at once with the same
informational brochure, or other medium,” says Astigarraga.
To accomplish this daunting goal, he says companies have
to be as neutral as possible, do the proper research and
consult with linguists who grew up speaking Spanish in different
parts of the Americas, to make sure everybody can understand
the message being conveyed.
“Experienced
translators usually manage to strike a happy medium,”
says Astigarraga. “The expressions and vocabulary
they use may not sound totally and completely familiar to
everybody, but they can still be clearly understood.”
Market
growth
Reaching a group that not only speaks a different language,
but that is also segmented into different “variations”
of a language within itself, is no easy task. “You
have foreign-born Hispanics, native-born Hispanics, those
that can barely speak English and those that speak English
fluently,” says Mario Garcia, Jr., president of Tampa-based
Garcia Media, an information design firm that does consulting
work for newspapers, magazines and corporate communication
departments. “For companies that try to reach these
diverse groups, it is no easy task.”
The
conundrum has led not only to the growth of the domestic
translation market, but, thanks to advances in technology,
to increased competition from translation firms based overseas,
especially in Latin American countries. Such companies typically
work for lower rates than American firms, according to Beninatto,
who says U.S. companies usually translate for 10 to 20 cents
a word (with smaller projects billed on a flat-fee basis),
while foreign-based firms will do the job for as little
as 3 cents a word.
“Because
of the Internet, companies have been able to find excellent
translators in countries like Argentina, Mexico, Colombia
and Chile who work at lower rates,” says Beninatto,
who adds that companies need to do their homework before
selecting a translation firm. “Just because someone
speaks Spanish does not make that person a translator.”
To
differentiate themselves, many professional translators
have received certification from the American Translators
Association, a national organization of professionals whose
program evaluates the competence of translators according
to guidelines that reflect current professional practice.
Although ATA certification is not a license to translate—the
translation industry is unregulated in the United States,
as opposed to the role of the translator in many Latin American
countries, where translators and interpreters are licensed
by the government—what ATA certification does indicate
is that the individual translator has passed a rigorous
exam involving a specific set of source and target languages,
and that the translator meets continuing education requirements.
Martha E. Galindo, president and CEO of Coral Springs, Florida-based
Galindo Publicidad, Inc., says the competition from overseas
at lower prices not only puts pressure on the domestic translation
industry, but it also confuses U.S. companies that need
good translation services. Since 1993, her firm had been
translating materials for marketing departments, ad agencies,
human resources executives and attorneys nationwide.
During the course of business, Galindo hears the horror
tales from companies that outsourced their translation overseas
only to end up with dismal results. “The low prices
being offered by overseas companies has created confusion
in the minds of the U.S. corporations,” Galindo explains,
“particularly if the people who are assigning the
work or approving the project are monolingual.”
Where Galindo sees the most future potential for companies
like hers is in forming strategic alliances with companies
that offer complementary services, such as a multimedia-
or video-oriented company that produces such materials for
the Hispanic market. “Going forward, I see more concentration
of the pie by larger translation agencies,” says Galindo,
who points out that the national economic downturn took
its toll on the translation industry. “The economic
recovery will be decisive for this industry to move forward.”
Astigarraga
sees the demand for translation services continuing to grow
in size and scope as a result of globalization in general,
and—in the U.S.—to meet the demand of already
large and diverse foreign communities whose populations
do not count English as their first language. “Many
translation firms have come to satisfy this demand,”
says Astigarraga, “but many others have gone, too.”
TRENDWatch
The $9.5 billion U.S. translation and interpretation
industry is expected to grow 37 percent to $13 billion
by 2007, mainly in response to a booming immigrant population
and the war on terrorism. The fastest-growing sector
will be website localization—the business of translating
websites into multiple languages—projected to
grow in revenue from $499 million in 2001 to $3.1 billion
in 2007.
Source:
Allied Business Intelligence, Inc.
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For
more information on the translation industry in the United
States, contact:
The
American Translators Association
225 Reinekers Lane, Ste. 590
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 683-6100
www.atanet.org
The
Translators and Interpreters Guild
962 Wayne Avenue, Ste. 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 563-6450
www.ttig.org
