How to Avoid Lost in Translation When Reaching out to Domestic Travelers in Local Languages

Above, Marriott International’s Bahasa Indonesia website. Right, Joanne Chan of IPPWORLD: “Going local entails using local slangs, communicating in commonly used local pop culture expressions and jargons, all aptly written with the target audience in mind.”

7 April 2022

Thanks to the pandemic, more hotel chains and tourism businesses in Asia have realized the power of domestic markets to fill air seats and hotel beds. Local travelers won’t be forgotten when international travel returns. If anything, some chains are stepping up hyper localization in an effort to keep local clients loyal to the group.

Marriott International, for example, has just introduced a new local website in Bahasa Indonesia, saying this is part of its “hyper local” strategy and commitment to offer personalized experiences to South-east Asia’s biggest market. The chain has more than 19 brands and 58 hotels across Indonesia.

But hyper localization such as providing content in local languages can be tricky. If done in a hasty or lax manner, the intended messaging could get Lost in Translation, to borrow the title of the 2003 romantic comedy drama film.

Hotels-Asia talks to an expert, Joanne Chan, about how chains can avoid pitfalls when translating websites into local languages. Chan oversees operations management and business development at IPPWORLD, a company that has more than 25 years of experience in providing transcreation (creative translation) and content localization services to global travel, hospitality, lifestyle and retail brands.

Q. Are you seeing more requests for local language websites?
A. In recent months, we’ve seen requests from global chains in South-east Asia to add new local languages – Thai, Vietnamese, Malay and Cantonese (the predominant Hong Kong dialect) — to their sites. Before, the languages requested for translation are of countries with huge outbound travelers such as China, Japan and Korea. I see this as chains’ attempt to expand their focus on local business such as staycations or short homestays, to make up for smaller numbers of inbound tourists due to travel restrictions.

Q. What makes an effective local website? 
A. Going local entails using local slangs, communicating in commonly used local pop culture expressions and jargons, all aptly written with the target audience in mind. Other considerations include brand positioning and tone of voice. For instance, it might not be appropriate for a luxury brand to use pop culture to attract bespoke guests. That’s more suitable for a brand that wants to convey it is more fun, chic or family focused.

Hotel, travel and tourism content gives people an escape from the daily grind. People travel to explore the world in an entertaining and easy-going way. So, to drive those emotions, the translated content must be able to ‘convey’ that escape. If proper expertise is not engaged, the localized content will end up being boring, lacking oomph or misrepresenting the brand’s intent through wrong translation.

No two markets are the same. Similarly, no two languages or cultures are similar, especially in Asia. What might work in one domestic market may not work in another.

For instance, we once transcreated content for a top hotel brand playing on the hit movie, Fifty Shades of Grey.

The content was about their seaview room. In one language we transcreated it along the lines of ‘Enjoy the multiple shades of clear blue waters from the comfort of your seaview room.’ In another language, we tweaked it to say ‘Enjoy the sunrise from your seaview room’ because the movie was not shown in that market. The aim was to provide the visual imagery in the readers’ minds that they can enjoy ‘clear blue waters’ and ‘sunrise’ from their seaview room.

Using the right words and visual imagery can motivate the reader to hit the ‘book now’ button, which is our objective, i.e., to help clients gain the highest number of direct bookings.

What common mistakes do you spot when chains or independent hotels try to ‘go local’?
I would not necessarily term it as common mistakes but more of carelessness as a result of engaging inexperienced non-native translator or worse, doing machine translations. 

That’s a big no-no in hospitality marketing where content must be creative and impactful to drive direct bookings. An experienced transcreation team can help with that. (Transcreation is a merger of translation and creation, i.e., translating with attention to context and culture, not word-for-word.)

Experienced language teams should comprise bilingual editors, copy editors and linguistic reviewers with marketing communications skills. Having worked in marketing, advertising or public relations, they would know how to sell a room using the appropriate choice of words and descriptions.

For a brand to make inroads into a new market, it’s not just about knowing local cultural norms and do’s and dont’s, but also the language (see review of Marriott’s Indonesian website below). The content is the communication link between the brand and its audience. Having a badly translated content gives the impression the brand just doesn’t care.

A reader’s native language is just as important as his or her culture and heritage. 

Do some local websites remind you of the movie, Lost in Translation? 
Yes, I read Chinese and have seen many bad Chinese language versions.

The first telling sign is the Chinese translation for the word ‘Home,’ as in the Home Page.

If a hotel uses machine, it will likely be translated as ‘家 Jiā,’ which literally means ‘home, as in house’, whereas for websites it should be “首页 Shǒuyè (“Main Page”) or 主页 Zhǔyè (“Home Page”). I’ve seen the wrong Chinese translation for “Home” used on the websites of the big global chains and high-end hotel brands. 

Often, it’s also the awkwardness of the Chinese translations, which read clumsily and strangely. Some translations come across as boring, or word-for-word with awkward sentence structures, or not aligned to the brand’s voice.

South-east Asia is so diverse. Does that mean chains or hotels must approach each ASEAN country individually? Isn’t that costly, involving dedicated manpower to oversee each website? 
On the contrary, with content management technology, multi-language websites can be easily outsourced and maintained by external parties. For example, IPPWORLD works on a translation management system which can be connected to the client’s content management system. This seamless platform allows the client to push requests for new content or updates directly to our system. Once done our system will import the transcreated content to the client’s system which directly integrates it into the respective webpages. 

Is a website with local language and local content more important than social media platforms to reach domestic travelers? 
Domestic travelers may visit social media pages first, then websites to seek more information that will help them in the buying process. A website is needed to partner with social media and digital marketing activities. This way, brands can drive direct conversions on their website.

If I were a hotel group, I will definitely transcreate my website into the local language first, whether into standard or regional languages should I have a property in that region (see review of Marriott’s Indonesian website below).

IPPWORLD Reviews Marriott’s Indonesian website launched December 2021:

This is a smart move by Marriott.

Indonesia has a population of around 275 million. English is compulsory up to senior high school level (age 18-20 years), but rarely used in daily life. Based on Indonesian statistics, we estimate that about 10 percent of the population, or around 28 million people, speak fluent English.

Using China as a parallel, if one considers that less than one percent of 1.4 billion Chinese population speak basic conversational English, that’s a huge market and hotels would lose out if they don’t have a culturally customized Chinese language website. Similarly, if only 28 million people speak fluent English in Indonesia, hotels need to reach out to the vast majority in their local language.

Bahasa Indonesia is still the preferred language for reading, writing and speaking. Translating into the national language is fine, however, we must also keep in mind that Indonesia has different local languages based on their regions. Hotel groups should consider the major languages such as Javanese (84 million people throughout Java island, Sumatra and Kalimantan) and Sundanese (42 million people in West Java, Banten and Jakarta), especially if they have properties in those regions.

While Marriott is astute in creating a website in Bahasa Indonesia, the content seems to have been translated by a machine, or a person who might not have ample experience in transcreating hotel-related content. 

Thus, some sentences are literal translations from English to Bahasa Indonesia, i.e., word-for-word and sound unnatural. Uncommon choice of words used and improper punctuations are other tell-tale signs. 

For instance, in the first photo below, the sentence Para tamu berjarak satu jam dari dua bandara utama kota, loosely translated into English as “Guests are an hour away from the city’s two main airports,” is not a natural Indonesian sentence. Para tamu should be changed into Hotel ini (this hotel) so that it reads as “This hotel is an hour away from the city’s two main airports.”

Some sentences in English were also left untranslated (see second photo below).

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