Intercultural Zone

Writing errors influence client perception and behavior: a must-read survey

Professionals of the written word harp on this: poor style and error-filled copy have a direct bearing on:

• A company’s image
• A company’s reputation
• The perception of a given product or service’s quality
• The likelihood that a prospect will respond to a call to action

It’s one of my pet peeves. I’ve hammered the message here, here, and here, and again here and there.

Now, thanks to Sue Anderson-Lenz over at Marketing Lure, we’ve got numbers to back that up.

Sue ran a survey with 163 participants – business professionals largely from the US, “although the survey reached people in 16 different countries.” Note: it is not clear how many respondents were indeed from outside the US.

“One hundred percent of the people surveyed acknowledge that writing errors indeed influence their opinions. Nearly eight out of ten people have eliminated a prospective company — in part because of writing errors.“

And,

“Write‐in responses to one question reveal the impact that writing errors have on company credibility. Respondents said that errors will cause them to question the company and their leaders who permit writing errors to happen.”

Further,

“More than half of all respondents agreed that one error in any print material could be the kiss of death for a prospective company.
Four out of ten people expressed an extremely low tolerance for errors in electronic articles and books.”

Download a copy of Sue’s report from her blog: it’s a must-read -

For clients, as a needed reminder of the extent to which business success depends on good writing (no, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment).

And for professionals of the written word, as actionable data to support your positioning, dialog, and negotiations with prospects.

Conception-rédaction en langue étrangère : anticipez l’inquiétude du client

Gagner la confiance de son client est le socle de toute relation professionnelle réussie.

Lorsque celui-ci ne pratique pas la langue dans laquelle il vous demande un rendu écrit, cela peut être source d’inquiétude puisqu’il doit pouvoir justifier son choix de prestataire.

Quand le projet est une traduction, le client peut au moins s’appuyer sur le document en langue source pour essayer d’apprécier votre travail. Typiquement, en cas de doute, il fera appel à une connaissance capable de lire votre texte pour se rassurer. Et parfois, cela laisse la porte ouverte à des situations plutôt cocasses où la réponse pédagogique du prestataire fait toute la différence.

La perception de l'autre est imprévisible

Quelles précautions prendre, en revanche, lorsque votre client monolingue fait appel à vous pour un projet rédactionnel (copywriting) dans une langue qui lui est étrangère ?

Comment gagner sa confiance ? Comment le rassurer ? Comment vous protéger vous-même en cas de lecture de contrôle par des tiers qui n’étaient pas présents lors de la prise du brief client détaillé ?

Après tout, le texte que vous avez conçu et rédigé de toutes pièces peut plaire à Dupont, mais pas à Durand, tout est affaire de style, de goût : cela ne se discute pas, mais cela peut se gérer. Continue Reading…

Professional service firm web copy: speak with me, not at me!

Many professional service firms’ marcomm tools suffer from navel-picking copy. Sure, they aren’t the only ones, but in areas where a successful practice hinges on the personal touch, you’d think their marketing copy would at least involve you, right?

Wrong.

Take law firms. OK, maybe they are easy to pick on.  I put myself through university working as a paralegal; it’s a context I know fairly well. Continue Reading…

Il était une fois un texte…

Il était une fois un texte qui partait à l’impression.

Son auteur avait passé des semaines à le peaufiner, agonisant sur le choix de mots clés et sondant divers relecteurs externes sur l’équilibre du texte et l’impression qu’il laissait à ses lecteurs.

Puis, le texte est a été confié à un traducteur pour que celui-ci fasse un miracle : lui concevoir son jumeau en anglais (ou toute autre langue, peu importe pour ce conte).

Le traducteur passa des jours et des nuits — mais sans avoir autant de loisir que l’auteur d’origine, bien sûr — pour pondre de toutes pièces un nouveau texte capable d’accomplir avec brio, pour un autre auditoire, ce que la prose française se targuait de faire pour son lectorat local. Continue Reading…

Breathing, awareness, and style in translation

When starting to practice yoga, breathing properly is hard to learn. You have to be aware of each inspiration, each expiration and whether you are practicing diaphragmic, clavicular or complete yogic breathing.

As you master increasingly difficult positions, proper breathing becomes automatic: you are no longer consciously engaged in leading your body’s inspiration-expiration dance.

Writing workshop

Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban’s writing workshop for translators, Style Matters I, held in Paris February 5^th, was an immersion in writing translations for publication.

It offered valuable advice and techniques for those wishing to hone their craft and invited a return to consciousness for those used to leveraging their writing skills to serve their clients’ interests.

Writers and translators rely on proficiency of language to craft high impact texts. They also use their senses and their instinct, just as painters and musicians do to give life to colors and notes. With experience, techniques learned and practiced merge with creative intuition, words flowing together in an artful dance as if graced with a life of their own.

Conscious choreography

Working in a group spurs conscious engagement.

Why did we choose a word rather than another? What awkwardness in this turn of phrase tickled your pen to change it? What effect do you think this change has on the balance of the text or on the message it is to carry? What solutions did colleagues find to transform gibberish into music?

Chris asked me whether I’d found the course useful.

The answer is a resounding yes, for several reasons. It spurred a return to the consciousness of doing, and the satisfaction and enrichment this brings. Watching how colleagues approach a text and hearing the solutions proposed can boost your own creativity. And developing relationships with others who work in similar areas broadens opportunities, as a team, to take on complex projects for demanding clients.

And I learned that, in UK English, an m-dash is an n-dash and it takes a space before and after it.

So, when is Style II coming to town?

Trop de contenu tue le contenu

C’est étonnant le nombre d’entreprises qui oublie la loi de Pareto quand il s’agit des contenus rédigés pour leur site Internet. Si vous en faites partie, ce billet est pour vous !

Pour rappel, 80 % des effets est le produit de 20 % des causes. A force de vouloir toucher toutes vos cibles et répondre à toutes les attentes possibles, vous perdez les visiteurs que vous avez dépensé des sommes conséquentes à essayer de séduire. Continue Reading…

The best investment a company can make is to hire a good writer

Nearly a year ago, on LinkedIn, Michael Seidle of Problog Service asked “Why is it so hard to find good writers?” All answers, including mine, looked at the question from the writer’s angle. You can learn how to write properly, but the ability to write compellingly is a gift that still takes work to perfect.

As I work my way through 30 Days to Better Business Writing, Matthew Stibbe’s recently published e-book for wordsmiths, several chapters swirl in my head, calling for a client-oriented version.

Maybe even client-oriented versions in other languages. Take Day 7, “Analyse bad writing”, and Day 16, “Manage your writing”, for example. Continue Reading…

What do writing and a wardrobe have in common?

It’s Saturday. I’ve just finished polishing an adaptive translation. I had promised myself that, this week-end, I would – finally! – sort through my closet to make some (much needed) space.

So what can writing and a wardrobe have in common?
Clutter.
Excess.
Useless elements.
Weightiness.
Disorganization.
Lack of style.
Incoherence.
Sloppiness.
Stains.
Redundancy.
And by the way, no this is not my closet .

You can apply techniques used to polish copy to sort out your wardrobe.

• Why use three words when one will do? (Just *how many* black pants do you own?)
• How can you avoid using the passive voice? (You bought that sweater in Amsterdam in 1981, it’s had a good life.)
  
• Are some sentences too long? Can they be cut? (You keep up this shoe fetish, we’ll start calling you Imelda.)
• Do your ideas flow in a coherent order? (No wonder it takes forever to find something, the spaghetti strap dresses are next to the ski pants.)
• Are you using punctuation wisely, enhancing readability? (Give it up: you’ve tried for 5 years, the stain on your favorite silk blouse is never going to come out.)
• Is there any jargon left you should dispense with? (Miniskirts are not coming back, or, when they do, you shouldn’t be caught dead in one. Pitch.)

Getting the idea?

P.S. Remember: you may no longer need or want these clothes, but they can help others. There are Freecycle groups all over the world and local non-profit groups you can contact.

Translating jargon: avoiding the trap in your own copy

Jargon. The sound of that word makes me reach for a Tums. Jargon, as in “meaningless-gibberish-that-sounds-like-a-money-wrote-it.”

No, I am not referring to precise terminology used by a specific group of people and only occasionally understood by those outside the group. If, for example, you are writing or translating a medical text for an audience of specialists, you should be writing perorbital hæmatoma and not the plain English ‘black eye’ or the French layman’s ‘œil au beurre noir’.

I am talking about my pet peeve (or one of them, rather), the use of jargon that has become as prevalent as driver incivility.
Continue Reading…

“Write or die”

Do you write for a living? Or write copy to promote your own work?

Do you find yourself staring at a blank word processing screen or procrastinating turning on your computer?

Are you motivated by reward (”quick wins”) or by sanction? Or a combination of both?

Then this little web app is for you. I stumbled onto Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab this morning and am using Write or Die to compose this post. I gave myself 15 minutes and set it to Kamikaze Mode.
Continue Reading…