A conversation with Jill Kushner Bishop about using language to drive Global Sales Growth

Welcome to the Global Sales Mentor Podcast for conversations that drive growth.

When you are ready to grow your international sales, join the conversation with your host, Zach Selch. Welcome to today's show. We're going to talk a little bit about translations and how to use them to increase your international sales. I have a guest today, Jill Bishop, who is a friend of mine and comes from my hometown, and we sit on a bunch of different organizational boards and stuff like that together. And she runs an organization that deals with translations. And we're going to talk today a little bit about how you can use correct translations to increase your international sales. So welcome, Jill. Do you want to talk a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So I'm Jill Bishop. I'm founder and CEO of Multilingual Connections. I started the business 15 years ago in my Logan Square basement. Never expected to be doing what I'm doing. But what else does a PhD in linguistic anthropologist and former language and culture consultant for Chipotle do when she's looking for something a little different, but very similar? So it's been a really interesting 15 years. Originally, we focused on providing job-specific English and Spanish training for the workplace. And then we started doing translations, and then lots and lots of pivots in, in prior years, but for the last 5 or 6 years we've focused exclusively on translation services. So that could be document and website translation, audio and video transcription, voiceover and subtitling, and we work in about 75 different languages.

Fantastic. Great. And so we've actually— I've used your services before, and that's how— well, one of the ways I know you from. And the type of things that I've used this for, for sales, is that basically we translate marketing material. Sometimes we translate— seldomly we translate letters, but we do that sometimes— communications like actual correspondence and contracts and stuff like that. I try to avoid ever translating a contract, but every now and again I'll have to do that. But marketing communications, I do this quite a bit. And, you know, you have a big organization. I'm sure you don't follow everything that I do, but, you know, a couple of weeks ago I needed something in a Central Asian language, I think Uzbeki, and— or Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz. I needed something in Kyrgyz and something in Russian, and I need stuff in Spanish and Portuguese on a regular basis, and it's very helpful. And I was telling Jill a little while ago that somebody was talking about translating using Google Translate to translate all of their material, and I said you can't do that. That is just a disaster, right? And people, people do that, but you never know what kind of mistakes you're going to have. So, so talk a little bit, please, if you could, about some of the services you offer and what people— and I know you do a lot of stuff, and, and what I do is really a very small part of it. This sort of export selling is a small part of what you do, but maybe you could talk a little bit about focused, the type of things you do for people like me who are trying to sell and market American products internationally?

Sure. Well, I'll say this morning, um, I saw an article about Amazon launching their Swedish website and all of the challenges, uh, all of the mistakes and errors and inappropriate cultural references, the wrong flag, um, huge, huge mistakes. And you never want to be on the other side of that kind of cringe-worthy, um, headline in the news. So, uh, we do our best to help make sure that that doesn't happen. Um, so we work, um, across industries. So we do a lot of support for those that are looking to sell internationally. We also do academic and government work. We do legal work and law enforcement, everything from jail phone calls and wiretaps, nonprofits and universities and elementary and high school. So really all across the board. But your point about Google Translate is an important one. And I'll say that machine translation is getting increasingly sophisticated and mind-bogglingly good in some languages for some content in some cases. And I use it all the time for informal purposes. And I think it's a great way to be able to evaluate lots of content when you need just kind of a quick high-level overview, get some sense of what, what's what, and then be able to then focus in and say, this segment I need to really know, or I really need a professional. You know, there's, there's a lot of ways that, that Google Translate or machine translation in general can be really helpful. But the challenge is, You don't know what you don't know.

Right.

And so it could read perfectly, but it could be wrong.

Right.

And we talk a lot about nuance, and sometimes nuance doesn't matter, but sometimes it makes all the difference. And so our goal at Multilingual Connections is to help you create meaningful connections. And that means understanding, engaging, expanding your global markets. And if you're missing out on that connection and that nuance, that's going to make the difference in your sale and in creating a relationship and trust, you're missing the boat. And so that's where you really need humans. It doesn't mean that you can't use machine translation also, but you can't skip the human part of it.

Right, right. And to your point, like, what was this Kyrgyz translation I needed? I had a telephone meeting or a Zoom meeting with somebody in Central Asia, and we were talking, and I had given him some English material. and I had the feeling he wasn't understanding it, but he didn't want to tell me he didn't understand it. His English was okay, but I had the feeling he wasn't getting everything, and I thought I should just— you know, it was 6 pages, something like that, 10 pages. I translated it and I sent it to him, and then the next time I spoke to him, he was much more comfortable because he had understood everything, right? And that's the type of thing. So— Again, I don't translate. You know, I deal with people right now who speak maybe 40 or 50 languages. I don't translate everything. Most of the people I'm doing business with speak English. But when it's urgent, I'll translate that because I think it's really important. And like you said, it's that whole relationship. Are they understanding the nuances of my marketing material, right? And that can be very— that can be critical to the sale at the end of the day.

And I think what you did makes so much sense. And in terms of translating those— that document, and Pete, there are— we work with people internationally who speak really good English, but, but it's still as a courtesy or as convenience or just the fact that people learn better in their own language and they understand more in their own language. And so they may be really fluent English speakers, but still be much more comfortable with reading and writing in their own language. And so if that makes the difference, spending a couple hundred bucks to get something professionally translated, and then you know everybody knows exactly what's going on. There's no surprises, no mistranslation, nothing. It seems like money well spent.

Oh yeah, and we have a concept in sales, especially in what we call complex sales, where there are a lot of customers involved at the customer organization. You can talk about what you have as a champion or somebody who— a mobilizer. There are different terms for it, but basically your person on the inside who may very well be helping you sell your product because you can't be there all the time, right? So that person, very often, you know, you're giving him or her a document or some type of marketing material, and that person is going around and talking to their friends. And if that isn't a clear-cut piece of marketing material, if not everybody understands it, if it's in English and half the people don't— aren't comfortable with English, or even the person who's walking around, your champion, isn't 100% confident of it, you might lose out on the whole benefit of this exercise, right? So that type of thing is really worthwhile translating.

Yeah, it's like the broken telephone or operator game we used to play as kids, and you may have spoken to that person, but then when she's relaying it to the next person, and then it just goes on and on and on, and in the end, the original and the end results have nothing to do with each other.

Right. So, you know, with everything in sales, you have to weigh the cost-benefit. So again, it's sort of funny, like you'll talk to people and they'll be like, well, I'm going to translate everything on my website. You know, we have 75 pages of material, we'll translate everything on the website. And then they come back and they go, holy, that was so expensive, you know, and I wanted to translate into 9 languages. And then they come back and they said, no, no, we're not doing anything. But, you know, what you can do— sorry?

There's a middle ground.

There's a middle ground, and you have to think about the return on investment. So what I've found with websites is if you can translate a couple of pages into a few languages, first of all, you're giving that welcoming feeling to people, right? You're giving your primary messages But you're not spending $100,000 on translating your website, which could very well happen, you know.

And with untested— in an untested situation, if you're going to do that, translate one language and see how it goes. You don't need to do everything at once unless you know for a fact that this is what you need and what your audience is explicitly asking for and you have the people to support it. We as a translation agency, people ask me all the time, why isn't your website translated into other languages? And we've talked about it for years, but we don't want to translate it and then not have people interested in it to follow up on the leads. And so we're a small team. And so we have linguists around the world for all the languages for translation, but from a sales and production perspective, we don't. And so we wanna be really diligent. And that's actually one of our goals for 2021 is thinking about what languages we do wanna translate it into and whether we're gonna translate everything or just have a microsite with the key languages. You don't need every blog post you've ever written and all kinds of detailed information, but if it's kind of a showcase, Showcase yourself and your products. And then if there's a need, certainly translate more.

That's, that's right. It all has to be about business, right? Or, you know, from, from our perspective, it all has to be about business. Does there— is there return on investment for this? Does it make sense the way we're doing it? Right? So I am sure, like, everybody I talk to always has some pretty funny stories about people not quite understanding what it is they do or trying to misuse their services. So you have anything that's come up that's sort of funny about this in terms of, you know, business perspective?

You know, I would say that people always— when I say that I own a translation agency, people think that we provide UN interpreters. When I used to talk about being a linguistic anthropologist, I'd get questions about Indiana Jones. You know, there's like people grasp onto the little teeny thing that they know about it and then think that that's everything. And we You know, we hear about all kinds of translation goofs that other companies have done, awkward kind of, just kind of robotic-sounding translations. And granted, we're human and we are human-based. We're very technologically savvy and we use a lot of technology in the work that we do, but we are human-based. And we are— I will not say that we have never made a mistake in our lives.

Right.

And, you know, it happens, but you wanna make sure, you wanna minimize those to the extent that you can. And one of the ways you do that is by having a second set of eyes on anything Right. Transcribe. And so that role of editor and proofreader is really important. Um, but we do see mistakes all the time of, you know, not the client not knowing that that actually meant something sexual in that country, or that meant something vulgar, and it makes everybody laugh and it's a fun little, you know, joke to share.

But I always—

you want to avoid those, right?

I always find it funny with Spanish in that to some extent, if you're not a Spanish speaker, a lot of times you think, well, there's Spanish, but there's, you know, there's Mexican Spanish all the way down to Argentinian Spanish, and of course Spanish Spanish. And you have different little different things, um, with the words, and that can cause, you know, so you get somebody who spent, you know, junior year abroad in Guatemala, and they're trying to translate something that's going to be read by somebody in Chile, And there is room for mistakes there, right?

Absolutely. I studied abroad in Barcelona my junior year of college, and then I lived in Argentina for a year before grad school. And I actually went to an orthopedic surgeon. I was having knee problems. I was in a hospital gown, and he looked at me, and he was staring at my knees, and he said, ¿Cuándo te joden? Which in Spain means, when do they bother you? Or maybe I was in Spain. I'm trying to think now. No, where— when did they bother you? In Argentina and in Spain, it's, when did they have you? And I was like, what? And it was just such a shocking moment. And I realized immediately, and I felt very vulnerable in my hospital gown. It was just very awkward. But you just— one word that you just don't think about how much power one word has.

Oh yeah.

And so when you're doing translations, the first with Spanish, you want to make sure that you have not just a native speaker of Spanish, but of the region that you're translating into.

Right, right. That can be very, very important.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And you have a similar thing. The only other language I can think of that's like that really is Arabic. Although I guess you can deal with the dialects of China, but they're really, you know, dialects as opposed to accents and, you know, localized. But the same thing with Arabic is you get Arabic from all the way from, you know, Senegal all the way to, you know, to the Persian Gulf. And there can be big differences in some of the words and some of the grammar.

And even with English too, between the UK and the US, there's a lot of slang that doesn't translate, or just think you're being very straightforward in the US with US English and it means something very different. And so you don't always know Until you know.

There you go.

Until they're pointing them out.

There you go. And it's funny what you said about, uh, about interpretation. So as you know, my wife is an interpreter and it took a long time for me to stop talking about her translations at work. You know, she'd look at me and she'd go, I'm an interpreter. Stop saying translating. It's different. You know, I'd be like, yes, yes, I should know that. Yes, I should know that. So yeah, sometimes people bundle those things together.

Sure. And because we do audio transcription too, then people think we're transcribe— translation is transcription or, Interpretation, you know, there's— it's, it's all different directions. And so we just have to make sure that we're all on the same page and really clarify what the need is so that we can provide the right service.

Of course.

Make sure that everybody knows what they need and, and you can give them what they're asking for, or give them what they need and not necessarily what they're asking for if they don't know how to ask for it.

You know, that, that's, that's actually pretty right. And I think, again, going back to the cost-effectiveness of this, this is a type of thing where we can lead somebody into the right direction where They might— I really think people overestimate how much they need translated. And very often, you know, basically by translating the right stuff, you know, if you put together a few pages of good marketing material and you translate that into a number of languages depending on how many places you're going, that really covers you. You don't need necessarily to be able to show that you have it in every West African language or that kind of thing. Now, of course, you know what, I didn't even touch on this. You're probably dealing with a lot of the legal requirements of the EU now, because when somebody wants to sell something into the EU now, they have to make user manuals available in every language that it's going to be sold. So that becomes a huge project, I guess.

Right. And then it's a matter of, you know, relief determining how to budget, how to make those decisions. And professional translation can be expensive. And it just, it is what it is, but it's a skill. It's not just looking at your coworker who has a last name that would indicate that they're a speaker of a particular language and saying, hey, can you translate that? In the same way that you wouldn't just ask anybody at your company to write your marketing content and create your voice and brand guidelines. You know, just because you speak English doesn't mean that you can do a great job on that. So you wanna make sure that they've got the skills and that they're good writers, that they can accurately represent your brand and your voice, and they can do accurate and nuanced translations. And then you want that second set of eyes in most cases. That being said, when budgets are tight, you can get creative. And so sometimes if it's a chance, if it's a choice of doing no translation or doing one professional translation, one professional translator and no editor, then that's a decision you can make. Or if you have a lot of content, you can do machine translation with a post-editor, a human post-editor, if the content is right. But it really depends. But that's where having a partner that you can trust, where you can sit down and talk about your business goals and help them understand what ultimately you need, and then, okay, let's work backwards and let's see what we can come up with. And if this doesn't work, this is the gold standard, but maybe there's no budget for the gold standard, so let's not just throw it out. Let's come up with something different that will work. Right.

And that's one of the big themes that I talk about with everybody is you want to have good relationships with your vendors. You want to figure out what you're going to need and what you're going to need on over and over again, right? And I find, you know, I've been doing business with you for at least 10 years.

Yeah, it's been a while.

Yeah. And basically you want to make sure that you know somebody you can reach out to for this. And If you have that relationship, they're going to trust you, you're going to trust them, they're going to lead you in the right direction, right? If you're reaching out to somebody and they know this is a one-time job, they're going to try and get whatever money they can out of you possibly, right? So having a good relationship with somebody who does translations that you can trust is really a key part of this, because eventually if you are selling internationally and you're not just selling in the UK and Australia, you're going to have to translate something at one point or another. Right. So you should have the right person to do it, right?

And if you have the luxury, setting up that relationship even before you have the needs, even better. And we have situations where we get a phone call or an email of, here's a document, I've never worked with you before, I need it by tomorrow. And we'll do that. We're happy to do that. If we have the luxury to sit down before there's even a specific project and timeline and we can talk about it and we can figure out what the best workflow is and how can we make it faster, easier, more efficient for you from the get-go. So then maybe you can work on creating the content in a way that's going to be the easiest and most affordable to be done.

Right.

So that you can make those decisions from in the beginning that will save you money, as opposed to just doing all the work and then coming to the agency and saying, okay, can you do this? And then there's a long list of things. Oh, I wish I had done this. I wish I had done this.

Right, right. And going back to what I said about the EU, One thing that I've done in the past with instruction manuals is do 80% of the material with graphics. So it's sort of like a comic book. And then you— what you're basically doing is you're limiting the number of words. And that way, because if you're going to have to translate it into 17 languages, you want to keep that— the verbiage as small as possible if you can, right?

Yeah.

So if you plan that out strategically, You can save yourself a fortune and, and have a very good product that way. And not, you know, there are people who don't go into the EU because of that linguistic issue, right? Because they, they can't, they don't see how they can get around it. They can't afford to deal with it. And it's a shame to walk away from a market because of a reason that you can solve with the right vendor, right?

Right. And your point about having, um, having graphics, who as a user doesn't prefer to have graphics over a long, you know, rambling paragraph. And, you know, if you can make it more simple, your users are going to appreciate that as well. And that goes back to having the best written original to start with. And so have graphics if you can, have it less, less, less text-heavy if you can, shorter bullet points, make sure you're not using sports metaphors and, you know, that might not translate. And, you know, there's, there's translation and then there's what's called transcreation, which is— Right. Creating something new when there's no equivalent. So like the Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, you could translate that literally, but it's not going to mean anything. In that case, you have to transcreate it. And so if you can be more— and sometimes your marketing content is going to require transcreation, and that's going to be ultimately what you're going to want to do. But you want to make that decision intentionally and not because your content is so nuanced and culturally specific when it doesn't need to be. And then it has to be kind of dismantled and then recreated.

Yeah, I once saw a sales playbook that was built like a baseball playbook, and it used all this baseball terminology. And I said, okay, we really just have to get rid of this. Like, we— there's nothing we can do with this because, like, even just trying to change it to a soccer or a football thing, I was like, it, it's going down a path that is Eventually going to be a problem. We just have to start over, right?

Right. That's what happens. For those that don't follow sports and can't understand those, even in their own language, it's going to be over in my head personally. But certainly, as you're trying to convey that into multiple languages, it's just— just be straightforward. It's going to pay off tremendously.

Right.

Exactly.

Well, Jill, thank you very much. Why don't I give you a second to give a little pitch about your company and who you are and how people can find you?

Absolutely.

And I'll just say, like I've said before, You know, this, uh, the, the genesis of this, uh, podcast episode really came— we were talking together on a forum, uh, and I said, yeah, I'm a customer. Oh, actually, no, I'm sorry, it was one of your employees. But I said, oh, I'm a, I'm a customer of, uh, of Multilingual Connections, and I can highly recommend them. So again, I'm going to say I'm a customer and I can highly recommend them. If you need somebody to do this kind of work, this is a company you should reach out to. So sorry, Jill, why don't you just give a little pitch?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, and thank you for that endorsement. It means a lot, truly. So yeah, Multilingual Connections. We're based in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. We have about 11 employees here in the Chicago office, at least theoretically, if not in person in reality right now. And then the rest of our team is international, and our linguists are all around the world. We provide document and website translation, audio and video transcription, We do a lot of work in in-depth interviews and focus groups. We do a lot of audio or video subtitling and voiceover. So we work in 75 languages, and we really want to create relationships with you and help you create relationships with your end users. So we're happy to help at any point. No project is too small. And we're at multilingualconnections.com.

Great. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

Okay.

So until next time, enjoy.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye-bye.