Monthly Archives: November 2020

Is Your Business Attracting International Buyers Unintentionally

Is Your Business Attracting International Buyers Unintentionally?

In the Linguistica International blog, we talk a lot about the problems businesses face and the potential opportunities that come from targeting customers in new markets. However, occasionally, some businesses find themselves in the serendipitous position of targeting overseas customers unintentionally.

In this article, we will explain how businesses can accidentally attract international customers and talk about the steps you can take if you have traffic that you could really do without.

Be prepared to capitalise on unexpected opportunities

In the age of the internet, businesses can receive enquiries and orders from territories they had never intended to target. Any sale or enquiry should be welcomed and if it’s something you can fulfil, often one sale will lead to another, particularly if you can identify how overseas customers are finding you online.

In many cases, such an unexpected order will lead to a scramble to arrange shipping and some initial confusion about the relevant rules and regulations for imports in that country. You’ll also need to have a payment system and shipping service in place that can fulfil the order. However, not all businesses can plan that far ahead, in which case, it may be necessary simply to refuse the order and refund the customer but also to think about how you might be able to fulfil this type of order in the future.

How to identify international search traffic

It’s not unusual for even very small businesses to find themselves with unusual web traffic patterns that don’t make much sense. To check where your website’s traffic is originating from, go to Google Analytics, select ‘Audience’ and then click ‘Geo’ and ‘Locations’.

Low volumes of international traffic can potentially be explained by expat activity, but what if you’re receiving higher volumes of traffic from completely unexpected locations and with no clear reason? That’s when your international visitors could become a cause for concern.

Potential explanations for unwelcome search traffic

Despite being widely available for almost two decades, the internet is still very much the wild west, and receiving a large amount of unexplained international web traffic is not necessarily a good thing. That is particularly the case when the traffic visits your site for malicious reasons or through paid advertising campaigns that have not been properly targeted.

Fake traffic

Fake traffic is artificial online activity generated by bots, click farms and other types of software, and unfortunately it’s extremely widespread. If you have lots of visitors from an unusual location over a short period of time that leave your website almost immediately, that’s a sure sign of bots.

You might think bots are harmless, but they can completely distort your reporting and make it difficult to distinguish between genuine and fake visitors. Fake visitors also lead to higher bounce rates, which can have an impact on your search engine rankings.

Cloned websites

Plagiarism is a less common problem but could still be the cause of your mysterious international visitors. Some websites and their content can be cloned by those in other markets, which can lead to an unexpected increase in traffic from overseas.

If you suspect that your site has been cloned, you can paste chunks of your content into Google to see if it has been replicated elsewhere. If it is, the good news is that Google is adept at distinguishing between the original and duplicate content and the cloned site will be heavily penalised. You can also issue a DMCA takedown notice to get the content removed altogether.

Attract an international audience for all the right reasons

At Linguistica Translation and Recruitment, we can help you attract an international audience with meticulously translated content that attracts clicks from genuine overseas customers. Call 02392 987 765 or email info@linguistica-international.com to discuss your project with our team.

The role of translation during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Role of Translation During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Sharing knowledge and information is central to medical and scientific advancement. This has been irrefutably demonstrated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As the virus has spread from country to country, medical professionals around the world have been learning from the research, information and experiences of their international peers. In the early stages, that information was not readily available. However, as more and more translation teams have joined the battle, now that potentially life-saving information is much more readily available.

Sharing information between medical peers

In the early days of the US outbreak, one of the first recorded coronavirus patients was a doctor’s assistant in New Jersey called James Cai. He reached out to his Chinese peers for information about how to treat the virus, which at that point was only available in Mandarin. Fortunately, the patient’s boss, Dr George Hall, was originally from China, and he was able to work slowly through the treatment guidelines from the Chinese National Health Commission and give the patient the treatment he needed.

This story, as told in the New York Times, ended happily, as the patient was treated in accordance with the guidelines and survived. However, it required 12 straight hours of translation work from Dr Hall to produce what became the early blueprint for the symptoms, signs of mild and severe cases, methods of oxygen delivery and the course of the disease.

Combating misinformation

Sadly, we live in the age of misinformation and the ongoing pandemic has shown just how damaging it can be. At one stage, telephone towers were being destroyed amid 5G conspiracy theories and we were being told by certain soon-to-be ex-presidents that bleach “used inside the body” could be an effective cure. Everything from garlic to saltwater has been hailed as a silver bullet. This misinformation, with the help of social media, has been disseminated across international borders and through language barriers.

Translators have a vital role to play in combating the spread of misinformation. Translators Without Borders and the BBC have created resources in a huge range of languages urging people to fact-check the information they read online before they share it or act on it.

Giving the public access to coronavirus information they can trust

Perhaps the most important role translators are playing in the outbreak is ensuring that reliable information from trusted sources is available to the public. Specialist medical, pharmaceutical and life sciences translators have been working around the clock to ensure vital messages are heard by everyone.

They are experts in the field who can communicate complex concepts such as ‘social distancing’ and translate technical medical information accurately into different languages. That’s more easily said than done when some of the terms that are now widespread have only been introduced in the last few months.

The bottom line

When it comes to creating trustworthy information that could save lives, you need to work with a team of translators who are qualified, vetted and adhere to proper quality control procedures. That’s where we can help.

Just give us a call on 02392 987 765 or email info@linguistica-international.com for expert translation assistance during this critical time.