Some ideas to start planning your next success.

Styles of consumption are constantly shifting. How do people relate? What is their way of working? Do they consume media? As people incorporate a digital mindset that is cross to all generations, new experiences become widespread. Demands and standards raise the bar.  

Differentiated products and interfaces are baseline blueprint. Not to mention political and consumer activism have become a weight variable when it comes to consumption. These macro currents along with enduring consumer tendencies must be addressed. 

But how?

Localize and adapt

ADM data shows that 63 percent of global consumers are interested in food and drink products that are customized to meet their individual nutritional needs.Personalization considers individual motivations and needs that reflect taste, culture and other approaches that align with one’s lifestyle. You may be thinking about the wellness of your business, but people expect you to consider their personal wellness and specific needs. 

From demanding that companies practice fair and humane treatment of the people and animals involved in every aspect of production, to the final product addressing them by their first name and in their language. Almost 30% of global consumers have actively boycotted a product or brand because of its ethical credentials. 

Currently, 8% of the United States population is limited English proficient (LEP). That number is expected to grow, as immigration is projected to account for 88% of the United States population increase through 2065. 

Almost all target audiences are language diverse, need accessibility measures and have a disability of sorts (be it permanent or temporal, like a broken arm). There are at least 350 languages spoken in U.S. homes. The LEP, Deaf, and Hard of Hearing populations grow. Language support is essential for all major industries, from healthcare to financial services and business to public services. Be it for subtitling, voice over, over the phone interpretation, localization of packaging, enabling multiple versions of one website, or adapting it to specific profiles. We must at least consider it.

Prioritize common spread language alternatives

Which are going to be the most spoken languages in the world in 2023? There are more than 7,100 languages today. Some might not be profitable to learn, like Busuu, which is only spoken by eight people. Some might be more obvious, like English, the most spoken language over the internet (55% of the language in the internet is English), official language of 67 countries, including many large international organizations, and the most studied language too. Though, if we’re personalizing, remember not all Englishes are the same. An Aussie, an American and a Brit won’t read, write and speak in the same manner. 

But languages like Mandarin Chinese (you only need around 2,500 characters to be able to read almost 98% of written Chinese), Spanish, spoken over 22 countries and 4 continents or  

Standard Arabic, official language in 26 countries, are often overlooked in business opportunities. In regards to native speakers alone, Mandarin Chinese is the second most spoken language globally.  

There are plenty of language experts out there ready to give a twist to your strategy and amplify it, whilst creating a more personalized experience.

Assist conferences on the topic

You live, you learn. But you learn faster when you connect with others, ask and study. Linguistic and translation events are a great way to network with colleagues and clients, learn about new trends in the industry, and be inspired by talks from experts in the field. 

Here are some, oriented to different industries, you shouldn’t miss: 

ICIT 2023 – International Conference on Interpreting and Translation 

Japan, Tokyo, 09-10 January 2023. 

It’s one of the largest international conferences on interpreting and translation in the world. Academic scholars, researchers and professionals from around the globe all get together to share their experiences. 

GALA Conference – Ireland, Dublin, 12-15 March 2023 

The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) is a non-profit organization that promotes the study, research and development of global localization strategies, as well as international collaboration among professionals working in this area. 

NLP 5th International Conference and Natural Language Processing Forum 

China, Guangzhou, 24-26 March 2023 

For those more tech savvy, all new research and development results on natural language processing, goes through here: speech processing, machine translation and translation aids, information extraction and text mining, computational linguistics and computational semantics, morphology and syntax, parsing, grammar engineering and checking, discourse analysis, you name it. 

Conference Multilingualism in translation, the English-speaking world, 16th century – present – France, Paris, 30-31 March 2023, Université Paris Nanterre 

If your field is more on the literary side, this is your place. IATIS explores how multilingualism has shaped the ways in which the English-speaking world has been understood and represented from the early modern period to the present day, WITH focus on literary translations from one language into another (in particular, from French to English).  

You get the idea. Even Silicon Valley has a conference that will be hosted three times in 2023 in different locations. Pick your niche and get to it.

Pay attention to your surroundings

Between 2013 and 2020, the number of people employed in the translation industry doubled. 

The global language services industry is forecasted to be worth US $73.6 billion by 2025. Innovation and virtual reality are one of the reasons.  

The Metaverse has slowly started to grow with more and more companies making plans for business in it. We may not see a full-blown metaverse in 2023, but it will start taking shape, and you can be one of the pioneers who strive and thrive thanks to getting involved now, with all the different audiences to be addressed in there.  

Not to mention the universe of NFTs, cryptocurrency, AI and decentralized finance will keep on spreading. Hybrid work will go on settling. Ubiquity and diversity will be two sides of the same coin. Everyone, everywhere, expecting more. From chatbots that can handle multi-turn conversations to smarter Alexa devices, we need to adapt, evolve, and bet on multicultural, multilingual strategies.  

So localize, personalize, travel, go to conferences, innovate. Or seek guidance from our experts at Stillman.

If you would like to learn more about this topic go to “Some B2B advice for effective communication”.