What Does Elvis Have to Do With Indian Language Translation?

2 min read

When Mary Meeker recently released her annual Internet Trends Report, it set off a globalization craze. Armed with a treasure trove of data, marketing teams are now scrambling to expand their content, services and products into new markets.

The entire world is using the Internet in record numbers, and the U.S. only accounts for 10% of that usage. For companies with a digital presence looking to grow their market share, this puts “translation and localization” in big bright lights.

cwimage1

What does this have to do with Elvis? When he died in 1977, there were 170 Elvis Impersonators in the world… now there are over 85,000. At this rate of growth, experts predict that by 2019 Elvis impersonators will make up a third of the world population. While we obviously don’t expect that one in three people will be Elvis impersonators, we can glean insight from the data, and ride it into the rhinestone sunset. The new data tells us that the Indian Internet, mobile and ecommerce opportunity is the trend to watch.

Some other illuminating points:

  • India is #1 in new user additions (China is #1 in sheer mass)
  • Mobile accounts for 65% of traffic (vs. France at 14% and the U.S. at 22%)
  • 41% of e-Commerce in India is mobile (vs. 15% in the U.S.)


Where is the opportunity? It's in companies translating their marketing efforts into Hindi, Kashmiri, Bengali, Marathi, and other Indian dialects.

Unlike Elvis, we don’t expect this trend to meet an untimely demise, but rather to gain velocity as other countries become increasingly digital. A global mindset is the key, and India happens to be the star attraction this time.

Where translation might once have been an insurmountable or at least onerous obstacle, there is now technology and resources to make it easy. A Translation Automation Platfom (TAP) like Cloudwords integrates with existing marketing software, allows for translation vendors, in-house translators or helps you find translators. It streamlines workflow and provides robust data on costs, time and marketing results. All of that can happen quickly at a fraction of the price (and headcount).

Thank you, thank you very much.

 

 

 

 

Written by Cloudwords