By Clemens Rettich, on January 11th, 2012
Thinking from the back of the envelope…
Sometimes It’s Not Enough to be Unique
Sometimes the value we offer just doesn’t match a need in our market or community. As the common wisdom once went, “There’s no selling coal in Newcastle.” They’ve already got lots, thank you!
We call that a market without white space. It’s all filled with lots of shapes and colours already, and doesn’t need any more.
It’s also a sponge. When a sponge is full, shy of wringing it out, nothing you can do is going to make room for more. Changing up your offer by changing the temperature of the water, or adding food colour, or even pouring good scotch on it, won’t make it absorb one more drop. It’s not about you, the sponge is just full.
If a market is saturated with a product, service, or message, it is very difficult to get more uptake even if what you have to offer is truly different. If everyone in a neighbourhood has purchased a vehicle in the last 2 or 3 years, they aren’t going to buy another one no matter how unique or attractive your offer is. And yes, clusters of saturation like that really do exist. A combination of demographics, recent promotions, economic conditions, trends and fads, and just plain probability, can combine to create saturated markets.
Find a New Sponge
The answer? Find a new sponge. This could be a new demographic, a new geographic market, or a new market segment of any kind. You could go as far as Steve Jobs did and gamble that the right products will create their own markets.
The key is to remember that your brilliant ideas, products, and services are not enough to bring you success. Listening, learning, and paying attention to where the needs and fit are the greatest, matter at least as much.
I help businesses and organizations get the mix right. People and systems working together to produce remarkable results. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on December 23rd, 2011
 Comet Lovejoy - Lester Barnes Prima Facie
Mistaken or not, how easy to see that over 2000 years ago 3 royal scholars/astrologers/scientists would have been compelled to see what such a vision pointed to.
In a world of an imploding America, and Arab Spring that still cracks hearts and sidewalks, and a Europe at the edge of its biggest challenge since the second world war, how does one not seek a guiding star?
Verso
The great unifying visions of the human race have lead to so much suffering. Having found our star, or our interpretation of that star’s message, it seems our next instinct is to define those who experience the vision differently as ‘other’. And the enemy.
Hundreds of thousands of years of defining and protecting our species, our tribes, villages, clans, and families, have lead to first coagulate and calcify the story of the vision, and then violently defend that story against all others who saw it differently.
If there is a moral arrow, and I believe there is, then will the day come when we experience a vision like this, and then instinctively weave the creation of its story into something entirely new?
We will know that story is entirely new and entirely right when it clearly undergoes two transformations: it atomizes and becomes a singularly unique story for each and every soul that absorbs it, providing 360 degrees of orientation; those millions of perspectives all reconnect instead of splintering and dividing, providing a truly universal story of healing and new direction.
Utterly utopian, I know.
I’ll keep my eye on the evening sky.
By Clemens Rettich, on December 20th, 2011
 Lend me your ears
When Shakespeare penned the words “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” in Julius Caesar he did his share to perpetuate the tradition that confuses great oratory with great communication. That tradition has done more to damage our understanding of good communication than almost anything else.
Check out Google. Enter the search term “communication”, and click on the “Images” search tab. Count the number of ears that are featured as opposed to mouths, megaphones, speakers, etc. We say “I’m all ears…” but you wouldn’t know it from the walk we walk. It’s all talk! It should be “I’m all mouths!”
Let’s turn that on its ear.
Meaning begins with listening
Great communication always starts with listening, not speaking.
Meaning is a value ascribed to incoming data by the listener. You can have the most polished speech, the cleverest PowerPoint slides, the latest technology broadcasting the newest numbers, but if your listeners don’t find value in what you are broadcasting, it’s just noise.
So how do you shape your message so that your audience hears it as information; as a communication they value? As you prepare your ad campaign, keynote speech, or blog content, how can you ensure you will be heard?
You start by listening. Begin by finding out what your audience values; what would make them tune in and turn on.
Here are 4 questions you can ask before you put your message together:
- Who is your listener as a person? The most effective communication always has an emotional thread. By getting to know how your audience feels about your topic, and about their world in general, you will be more likely to strike the right emotional chords and have your message resonate more deeply. Even the largest audience consists of individual human beings. Get to know them.
- What are their needs and desires? This is basic market research. Everyone in your audience wants something. If you can hitch your message to those desires you will have their full attention.
- What keeps them up at night? As well as desires, we all have fears. While this aspect of understanding audiences has a very dark history (just think of the history of how popular fears framed as anti-Semitism and racism have been fanned into holocausts in the last 150 years), it remains critical to know what problems and stresses your audience is dealing with. All successful business messages connect because they promise to solve someone’s problem.
- Can you share the ride? Sometimes it makes sense to share a cab ride with someone if you are both headed in the same direction. In business communication, you can get a lot of mileage by finding out where your audience is headed (or would like to go) and connecting their journey with yours.
All communication is an act of translation. It’s like speaking in a foreign country: it doesn’t matter how articulate you are in your language, if you don’t understand your audience’s language, and translate your message accordingly, your audience will be hearing gibberish.
I help businesses and organizations get the mix right. People and systems working together to produce remarkable results. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on December 15th, 2011
I don’t want a balanced life. I want an aligned life.
You want the wheels on your car aligned. When the wheels are even a little bit out of alignment, the ride is uncomfortable, the wear on tires and other parts goes up, and the vehicle works less efficiently. When the wheels are critically out of alignment the ride is unbearable, and your safety is at risk.
When things that matter in your business and your life are not in alignment:
- there is conflict and discomfort;
- you, or your business, use more energy than you need to, and even risk grinding to a halt;
- the moving parts of your life and your organization are at risk
When the important things are in alignment, you move smoothly, efficiently, and sustainably.
What is it that has to line up for you to be happy or your business successful? The answer is found on two planes or in two layers:
- The fundamentals. Your values and your vision. Your financial resources, human resources, brand, and operations.
- The details. The more you can make every part of everything you do reinforce the direction and momentum of every other part, the more successful you will be.
Success Is Alignment
The more I think about this perspective the more I am convinced it is the most productive way to define success.
I am happy when that which I expect and that which occurs lines up. When our hopes, faith, desires, wishes and needs are met or exceeded, we are happy. Buddhism has a valuable perspective: when seeking that alignment, rather than trying to focus on the “what occurs” part, they would suggest focusing on the “what I expect” part. This is logical, as we have greater control over our expectations than over what happens.
On the business level, the alignment is the most important way to measure success.
Failure is Business Out of Alignment
Failure is a critical lack of alignment. History, habits, resources, skills, or values are not in alignment with what is wanted. On the detail levels, things like the treatment of employees is not aligned with desired behaviours; investments in resources are not aligned with stated goals; the values and spirit of an organization slide out of alignment with their customers.
Focus Fixes Your Vision, Alignment Gets You There
We often say that success in business is about focus. That is true, if by focus you mean keeping your eye on an ultimate objective at all times. Alignment just takes that one step further: if focus is relentlessly working towards that one objective, alignment ensures that everything that is required to get there contributes smoothly, efficiently, and sustainably to that one single outcome.
I help businesses and organizations get the mix right. People and systems working together to produce remarkable results. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on November 24th, 2011
 There is in the human soul a desire for reproducibility. Not reproduction, (we have that for sure!), but a need to reproduce things, perfectly and repeatably.
Traditional MBA programs are built on that desire; on the belief that the behaviours that constitute good management can be learned and repeated in any context. Those programs suggest, by making management a discipline, that if you get the basic skills down, you can manage a retail business or a bank or a restaurant, each with equal success.
The trouble is, it just isn’t true. But it seems that the desire to create reproducible systems is powerful. A powerful myth.
The E-myth, by Michael Gerber, pushes that message: that the biggest failing of small businesses is that they have no formal systems. The role of these formal systems is to allow the owner to exit themselves from the daily running of the business, to ensure cost-effective workforce-building, and to make expansion (like franchising) possible.
In Lean Manufacturing’s Oversized Claims, in October 2011’s Canadian Business, similar ideas are examined. The article explores the validity of the claim that systems like Six Sigma can consistently and sustainably reduce costs simply on the basis of a perfectly executed system.
In each case there is the underlying assumption that if you could just figure out a perfect system you could do away with people, or at least highly trained, hard to replace, expensive people.
Nonsense.
While I agree that betting the success of your business on recruiting the perfect talent is a strategy guaranteed to produce an early and unhappy end, the opposite is just as deadly.
Systems matter, but people matter more. The “best” systems are nothing more than Platonic ideals, more philosophy than business strategy, and in the case of Lean systems like Six Sigma or Kaizen, are almost religious cults.
I will drive my stake into this territory:
- No production or performance system is universally applicable across every industry or environment without being modified to the point of threatening the integrity of the original system (i.e. is XYZ Pure System still XYZ Pure System after 50% of it has been modified and made conditional?).
- No production or performance system is a perpetual motion machine. That is, it cannot operate well without reasonable talent, and cannot produce remarkable results without remarkable talent. The human talent and buy-in are non-negotiable inputs for success.
What is the right mix of people and systems in a business?
Simple: it’s the great performance mix. Not the “high performance” kind of performance. The performing art kind of performance.
Every trained actor, musician, and director understands this intuitively. They work with scripts, scores, or chord changes that are meticulously noted systems. The score of a Mahler Symphony is a notated system of an order of complexity that no Six Sigma company in the world can hope to duplicate: tens of thousands of discrete actions, notated in absolutely precise detail. Yet they are pure noise in the hands of the wrong people (and a sublime experience in the hands of great talent).
Note that the reverse is true: the world’s greatest symphony orchestra, asked to perform without score or direction, would produce noise. The system is necessary, but to assume it can every be so perfectly designed as to obviate the need for anything more than minimal talent, is understood to be ludicrous in the performing arts. So why do we perpetuate that myth in business?
Take a page from the performing arts:
- Create the best system you can. Tailor it precisely to your vision, your audience, your times, your genre (or industry). There is NO one-size-fits-all score or script (well there is, but unless you want your company to be know as the elevator music of your industry, not a good idea). This is the score or script for your performance. Get it right.
- Invest in talent development. Hiring a superstar is occasionally a good strategy. But not very often. It is more cost-effective, and brings much greater benefits to find people with great raw talent but only just enough experience, and invest in training them. Do it right and they will invest in your performance. The greatest ensembles have been playing together for decades. A healthy symphony orchestra has a turn-over of less than 3%. We can learn from that.
- Practice, practice, practice. Neither good systems, nor great talent, are any replacement for putting in the hours to get it right. That is another lesson we can learn from the performing arts: it is expected in the process of creating a great performance you are going to make a lot of mistakes. Do it again. And then, when you have it right, do it ten more times. Having a great script and great talent are never enough. Even the very best put in the hours. Musicians, actors, and athletes live with this. Why do people in business think they are exempt?
I help businesses and organizations get the mix right. People and systems working together to produce remarkable results. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on November 22nd, 2011
The biggest misconception about improvisation is that it is all about making stuff up… that anything goes.
The reality is that good improvisation, whether it is jazz, classical Indian music, or improv theater, is always grounded in a strong set of rules and guiding principles.
A new improv game for business
The next time you are onboarding a new recruit, here’s a little improvisation I would like you to undertake. The rules:
- Confirm that the candidate has the basic skills (and only the basic skills) required to do the job
- Present the candidate with the current written objectives for your organization. In no more than 20 minutes, explain the role the candidate’s position plays in achieving those objectives.
- Give the candidate your SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) and tell them to look them over for the rest of the day, and to report back to work in the morning, ready to go.
- Tell the candidate that this will be your last conversation with them for 30 days.
Now let the candidate improvise their day-to-day performance based on the rules we have set. What do you think the results will be? If poor, will that be your fault or the employee’s?
I think we know what the answer is.
With the exception of a few passing conversations in that first month, this is exactly what 80% of all employers do.
Wait, no that’s not true. Most of them don’t even go this far. Remember what I said at the top about rules and guiding principles? Most employers ask their new employees to play my game without the clear objectives or the SOP’s. They don’t have written objectives or SOP’s.
And then they wonder why employees just don’t get it! They blame it on education, the ‘Gen Y’ factor, gender, age, socio-economic background… anything but their own failure to provide the necessary structure for success in this improvisation, and for the success of their teams in general.
Why this game matters to your business
I have written a lot about the requirement for positive feedback in a successful work environment. At the heart of an effective positive feedback strategy is the requirement that the employer and all of the team members are crystal clear on organizational goals are and what everyone’s role is in attaining those goals.
This game is a litmus test for successful positive feedback strategies and healthy team management practices in any organization. Here’s why:
- Hiring at the top of the skill curve is not cost or culture-effective in most organizations. Hire at the sweet spot of ‘talented-but-but-limited-experience’ and you will be able to develop team members who are not know-it-all, cost-you-an-arm-and-a-leg, prima donas. Just bright, cost-effective raw talent, ready to learn.
- Systems and clear goals are not optional if you are recruiting to that sweet spot. Employers always tell me they don’t have time to train. Why are you training each and every single employee over and over again every time you have turnover?? Where are your systems?
- The game I described is not some artsy exercise in ‘getting in touch with something.’ If your organization can’t pull that off for real, you are either recruiting below the talent and training sweet spot (note: not talking experience here) or your SOP’s and goals are sloppy or non-existent. That is not the new employees’ fault.
- You need rules, guiding prinicples, and clear objectives to manage a positive feedback strategy that doesn’t deteriorate to the vague good jobs and pats on the back that employees and employers alike love to ridicule.
- Your (quality of) life depends on this. Unless your business is able to play The Ultimate Business Improv Game well, your valuation as a turn-key business for sale will suck. And you will have to eat cat food when you try to retire on its sale. Learn to play this game right . Now.
I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on November 15th, 2011
What are you selling?
If nothing, then you are not in business. If only commodities, then you won’t be in business for long.
“But wait,” you say “I am a service provider. I don’t sell commodities. So I guess I’m safe.”
Sorry. A service alone is still a commodity. In the brave new world of social business, anything is a commodity to the extent to which it is a) a transaction that consists only of the exchange of a good or service for money, and b) reproducible in every important way.
So a service which is repeated over and over again, where the narrative arc ends completely when money changes hands, and which can be replicated by any competent professional the world over, is a commodity. And commodities have no place in the social marketplace.
The antonym of ‘commodity’ in this paradigm, is ‘experience’.
An experience in the context of social business, begins before the customer comes into direct contact with the business, and lasts long after the core transaction has taken place. And each experience is unique.
An experience is the product of a unique interaction between equal players. In the social market, the focus is on the unique relationship between the buyer, the seller, and the environment. That particular relationship cannot be reproduced and is becoming the new USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Social tools, especially those focusing on place (like FourSquare or Facebook Places) create the opportunity to customize interactions for both the buyer and the seller.
An experience is a story. The traditional models of acquisition and retention are losing their definition. Through digital social channels, we become aware of brands long before we click a link or walk through their doors. We are made aware of them through the conversations of those we trust, through targeted ads, and through the directed stream of data that flows around us. Sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and the shaped offerings and reviews from sites like Amazon provide a near-global conversation about brands, which those brands can participate in, but not control. At mid-transaction, the story continues as business and consumer exchange information, and successful businesses attempt to create a remarkable experience with each visit or purchase. Then after the sale, the digital threads connecting consumer and business remain sticky and elastic. Follow-up, follow-through, return-incentives, and CRM all lose their distinct post-purchase roles and flow backwards and forwards to sustain the relationship and the experience of the brand for as long as possible.
In the social market, desire becomes more nuanced. In 20th century marketing, brands would try to speak to our desires for acceptance, status, fulfillment. But the whole experience had a tawdry one-night-stand feel to it. As soon as you purchased that object of desire: the house, the nicer car, the bigger TV, something akin to post-coital depression set in until the credit-fueled dance of desire started again, focused on a new fetish. In the social market, the seductions still continue, but there is nuance and a deeper commitment. Apple probably understands this better than any other brand. The combination of beautiful objects and a tribal-cliquey sense of being part of a special community is masterfully handled by Apple. Our desires remain, and brands will still seek to fulfill them, but the pace must be slower. The nature of the fulfillment must be richer. As Apple knows, it can’t just be about stuff any more. And I think it is just the beginning. There are deeper and more subtle desires that brands can connect with and act as partners in fulfilling: the sense of belonging, the sense of making a real difference in our communities and globally, a spiritual dimension… In my memory, the Body Shop perhaps best understood and exploited (not necessarily in a bad sense) this. But they were before their time. Lululemon is close. But there will be many more: successful businesses will find ways to act as partners in shared stories that address our needs and desires, and weave together the social, the commercial, the emotional and spiritual into extended, and profitable, shared experiences.
The experience must be truthful. If there is one thing for which tolerance is evaporating rapidly, it is deception in the market. And sustainable relationships and real experiences cannot be built on lies. It will be interesting to watch as the marketing, PR, and branding universe adjusts to the truth that whatever else consumers will demand, it is… the truth. Punishment for deception will be swift and many times fatal, as the social networks (including many of the consumer rating sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp mentioned above) spread bad news at a speed with a reach we have not seen before.
I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on November 10th, 2011
 Information theory. Physics. Classical music & jazz. Monastic orders. The sciences of the brain and cognition. Statistics and probability.
Business Fundamentals.
Rules.
Each of these disciplines have rules at the heart of them.
So why do I find myself constantly going back there to think and act out of the box? Isn’t getting out of the box, out of the rut, all about breaking the old rules?
No. This is a complete failure of insight. We are not boxed by rules. We are boxed by habits, instincts, and unexamined emotions. One prejudice creates a prison of a box more secure than all the laws of physics combined.
Despite the popular conception that the ‘box’ is the world of rules, order and structure, it is the opposite. The box is our emotions, instincts, and habits… all the stuff we are supposed to ‘get in touch with’ to get out of the box. It is a box of comfort. The box is not really a box at all. It is a groove, a deep groove of habits of thought and actions, made deep by our going over the same ground again and again.
The best way to get out of the box is a reality check. A real-ity check: a return to the world prior to, and impervious to, our assumptions and prejudices.
This is why even a cursory understanding of the laws of thermodynamics or probability trumps ‘common sense’. This is why learning to read a statement of cash flows is more valuable than reading one more woowoo pop psychology The Secret of Blah Blah Blah Success book. This is why understanding that you multiply two unrelated probabilities (for example the probability that you will have an opening for an employee next month, and the probability that some great talent will walk through your door looking for a job), that you don’t add them, is more valuable than clinging to the law of attraction. It is why understanding the Pareto distribution is more powerful and freeing than $1000′s in inspirational speakers.
The next time someone says: “we need think outside the box,” notice what happens next. If it is some kind of pseudo-brainstorm group-think exercise, or even worse, the not-laws of The Secret, then all you are going to get is new layers of crud built on old layers of crud. In a weird MC Escher-like journey you will think you are making forward progress, when you will only find yourself exactly back where you started… less the energy you had when you started (check out the laws of thermodynamics for why that happens).
On the other hand, if the “getting out of the box” exercise begins with someone reaching for a giant scraper, to scrape away the layers of unexamined assumptions and habits, while saying something like “Let’s get back to fundamentals and rebuild,” then you know you have a hope of getting out of that box.
Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Clemens Rettich, on November 8th, 2011
 Ideas are easy. Consistency is hard.
I think that one of the reasons I return to that epigram so often is because of my music training. The business world has much to learn from the musical world.
In music we keep going back to the fundamentals over and over again. You keep practicing all the time. Inspiration and creativity matter, but if you are a professional, it is your chops that really matter. No one expects to get it right the first time. You make mistakes, but you keep practicing until you don’t make mistakes any more. Yes originality matters, but at least in the worlds of jazz and classical music, you won’t get a lick if you can’t perform.
I heard an interview with Paul Simon a few weeks ago. Simon made a comment about having some great material in his head for another recording, but he had put it all on hold because he was on tour now. The interviewer asked, clearly perplexed, if that meant he just stopped writing, if he just put his creativity on hold. Simon response was that he was a professional. He didn’t sit around waiting for inspiration. He had a job to do, and when it came time to write, he would write.
Paul Simon has, among a crazy wealth of other abilities, solid writing chops. It is his craft, and he practices it.
That’s the way it is. So close your copy of 10 New Laws of Success I Just Discovered or any book with the words new, secret, laws, or success in the title, and start acting like a musician.
Practice your Craft
Business is an art and a craft. Practice it. Learn the fundamental rules of finance, social sciences/psychology, operations & logistics, communication and information theory. Understand the real laws of cause and effect that are the constants of your world much as the laws of acoustics, theory, and rhythm are the constants of a musician’s world. Study, study, study.
Then then practice. Practice, practice, practice. There are no shortcuts, no magical ‘laws’, no real silver bullets. The 10,000 hours that Gladwell writes about in Outliers won’t be ignored. Honour them or you will get nowhere.
Do you have to love what you do? Of course. Who wants to do something for ten thousand hours that they don’t love? But if you want to excel at it, if you want to make a living at it, it becomes a labour of love. The love must come first, but the system, the labour, the practice cannot be ignored. And if you want to be successful as a business owner, it is the practice of business that you must focus on. Not what got you into the business: baking or sales or mechanics or construction. The business itself is now your craft.
In music school, I spent 1,000’s of hours in study cubicles and Wenger practice studios. In the cubicles we were mastering the theoretical fundamentals of our art. In the tiny practice modules we were all practicing the performance of that art. And in the middle of all those hours, what struck me was not how hard I was working, it was what I heard when I took a break in the common area: the sounds of pianos, voices, trombones, trumpets, violins, double basses, percussion… heard faintly through the almost-soundproof doors of the other Wenger studios. The same scales, the same passages, the same failures and triumphs over and over and over again. The relentless patterns of the search for mastery.
I just don’t hear enough of that in the world of business.
Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.
Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!
By Claudia Waitman, on October 27th, 2011
 By: Claudia Waitman, President & CEO of Junction International
When I introduce myself to small businesses and explain what Junction International offers in terms of translation and cross cultural consulting services, I often get the response: “That’s great. But lucky enough for us, one of our employees speaks Spanish.” Or worse yet, I’ve even heard, “We used an online free translation site and then I tweaked it thanks to my high school French classes.” While all too common, these responses still make me want to scream!
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text; or in other words, the translation of content from one language or culture to another. That means that it requires much more than being a native speaker, having a few years of high school language under your belt, and/or hiring an employee that happens to be multilingual. Professional translation is a learned and trained skill and one that companies and small businesses too often take for granted.
Professional translation requires many years of linguistic education followed by years of experience. Not everyone who can speak two languages can translate. It is important to remember that a bilingual person and a translator are 100% different things. One way to remember this is to consider that a bilingual person will suffice if you need to understand “Hello,” “How are you?” and others types of informal conversation. However, for everything else a professional translator should be considered!
While I have been confronted with individuals and respected businesses that believe otherwise, it is important to note that translation isn’t just about making another version of a document literally word for word. (Thankfully our clients at Junction International understand the important difference between the two!) In professional translation, it is critical that the meaning of the translation be the same as the original document, and that the terminology used corresponds to that used by professionals in the corresponding field. Furthermore, translating involves taking into account the context, the meaning and intent of the source content, an appropriate use of the target culture’s idiomatic expressions, etc.
To prove our point even more, Junction International has put together a list of the top five reasons you should consider a professional translation company before asking your bilingual neighbor to take a look:
- The risk of using a casual or inexperienced “translator” isn’t worth it. Just ask Coors, the American brewery company, which realized its hip phrase “Turn It Loose” was translated as “Get Diarrhea” in Spain.
- There is a reason that your bilingual friend offers to translate for free or as a favor…Professional translation may cost more but it will save you money, time and frustration in the long run!
- When you engage a lawyer, a doctor or any other professional service provider, you have an expectation that the person doing the job is trained and qualified in their field. Your expectations when using a professional translator should be no different.
- A bilingual neighbor down the street that offers to help you out is not bound by ethical constraints such as impartiality and confidentiality. A professional translation company is and you have the right to ethical, professional, accurate and confidential services.
- A professional translation company invests in their business as you invest in yours. A professional translator uses industry-relevant software to help him/her in the course of the translation, keep consistency with the terminology, build glossaries, etc. A professional translator invests in training and continuing education, in dictionaries and research resources because his/her work depends on it.
Claudia Waitman, President & CEO of Junction International, has nearly 15 years of translation and cultural adaption industry know-how. Claudia co-founded the company in 2008 and has had first-hand experience in the implementation of translation solutions and multilingual communication strategies for many corporations, large and small, in a variety of industries including marketing, pharmaceutical, healthcare, publishing, software, business, and legal. She has helped businesses and organizations expand their market opportunities and diversify their reach – both in the U.S. and abroad. Originally from Argentina, Claudia graduated as a Certified Public Translator in Spanish.
For more tips and advice on translation services and cultural consulting, please visit Junction International’s blog at www.junctioninternational.com/blog. Follow Junction International via Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Junction-International/64653052776 or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/JCTINT.
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