Lost in translation: why speaking the language isn’t enough when exporting

Image: AI-generated illustration created with OpenAI.

You can translate every word on your website perfectly and still be talking nonsense to your audience. The awkward truth about international communication is that actual understandable words are only part of the job. The rest is context, tone, expectation, humour, trust and cultural baggage.

In the 2003 film Lost in Translation, Bill Murray’s character isn’t wandering around Tokyo feeling lost because Google Translate hasn’t been invented yet. He misses cues, misreads situations and stumbles around a culture he doesn’t understand. One of the few moments where he really relaxes is belting out Roxy Music’s More Than This at karaoke. A dictionary is not the solution here, context is.

It’s the same with website localisation. Businesses can do the same thing when they launch in a different country. A website gets translated into French, German, Dutch or Polish. The grammar is perfect and every menu has been carefully converted, but the message itself can still feel weird. Nobody stopped to ask whether people there actually care about the same things your customers do at home.

You can get lost in translation without leaving Ireland

Irish people are good at proving this point. Take “grand”, a masterpiece of Irish linguistic ambiguity.  Ask someone how a difficult meeting went and they might say, “Ah, it was grand.” To an Irish person, this could mean anything from OK to catastrophic. Chances are, it just means nobody died, it’s all over with now, and they couldn’t be bothered boring you with the details. 

But translate this too literally for an international audience and it can sound like the meeting was a magnificent success. Take that problem and multiply it across 27 EU countries.

You don’t need to tone down who you are

Understanding another market doesn’t mean scrubbing away your identity. Fontaines DC don’t need to tone down their Dub accents and Irish references when they were headlining European festivals during the summer. Their identity is part of the appeal. 

Let’s not kid ourselves, as SMEs few of us have the same post-punk cred, but there’s a lesson there for export businesses. Adapting for a new market is not about pretending to be local. It is about knowing what travels well, what needs explaining and what will simply leave people baffled. An Irish food brand selling into Germany does not need to stop looking Irish. It just needs to know what a German shopper cares about, and whether the story that works in SuperValu means anything in Hamburg. That’s a very different exercise from translation.

The Office had to learn this too

Iconic sitcom The Office is another example. The American version started very close to the British original. The workplace setup and character types were similar, and the first episode borrowed heavily from the UK version. But it could never just be David Brent putting on an American accent and becoming Michael Scott.

The US version gradually developed a different rhythm, different tone, and a more classic US sitcom premise, less hyperrealistic painful cringe and more slapstick morto antics. The high-level set-up travelled, but the delivery and vibe changed. It stopped trying to reproduce David Brent’s world of Slough and got more interested in making the idea work for its own audience.

That’s essentially what good localisation does. The underlying business and idea stays the same, but the way you explain it changes because different people need to get the message.

Communication is empathy at scale

The main rule is, localisation is not translation. It is empathy at scale. Before writing for another market, you need to picture somebody arriving at your website without all the knowledge you carry around in your own head. The local industry award sadly means nothing to them, no matter how well you scrubbed up. They might care far more about local support, delivery times, certification, privacy, regulation or what happens when something goes wrong.

Before you translate, work out what needs to change

Translate the actual words later. First, work out whether your website is saying the right thing to this new audience. What works perfectly well at home might not answer the questions people have in another market. You can have a flawless translation and still be talking about the wrong things.

• Work out how people actually buy. Look at the full decision process, not just the language. Who starts the conversation? Who signs off on deals? Is price expected upfront, or does the sale usually begin with a call? Your website should fit the way people buy in that market.
• Find out what makes people hesitate. A new customer may care less about your company story than about delivery, local support, regulation, returns, contracts or data handling. If buying from an overseas supplier creates doubt, address that doubt directly.
• Check whether your best credentials still carry weight. Customer logos, awards, certifications and case studies only help if people recognise what they mean. A major client at home may be completely unknown abroad, so you may need different examples.
• Put the important stuff first. Don’t assume the homepage that works at home should be copied word for word elsewhere. In one market, reputation may matter most. In another, price, compliance, distribution or after-sales support may come first.
• Make the next step feel normal. “Book a demo” is not automatically the right call to action everywhere. Some buyers may want pricing, concrete case studies, or an informal call. 

Once you make these decisions, translate the content and get someone who knows your new market to read it in context. Ask whether it sounds natural, whether it has the right information, and whether someone in that market would actually know what to do next.

Keep what makes your business recognisable, lose the bits that only work at home, and make sure your message travels and survives the journey.