Hi Everyone,

Translating word-per-word and phrase-per-phrase is not enough for a real estate-for-sale ad or listing, even when the translator is very good. Localization of the translation is very important (means adjusting the text culturally according to the target audience's standards and common knowledge which can be different for various countries/languages).

Let's look at some examples:

- Defining the number of rooms. The same apartment consisting of one bedroom + one living room + kitchen + bathroom should be advertised as a 1-bedroom or 1/1 in American English, a 2-room in Russian and a 3 1/2 in Canadian French (1/2 is for a bathroom while the kitchen is counted as a room).

- Measuring the lots, living space and maybe other parameters if needed (like air and sea water temperatures at resort areas). Check your target country/language what they use - hectares or acres, sq. feet or sq. meters, Celsius or Fahrenheit, etc., - and convert the measurements into their units if they appeared different from yours.

- Using some famous in your country names as a selling point. Check whether such names are also known in your country/language target (Let's say baseball is only known in America, and if you proudly state that such-and-such person is a neighbor - who is a baseball player and whose name will talk a lot to American buyers, you'd better omit this feature in your international advertising as it might be only confusing to buyers from other countries - who's he for God's sake, they will think...)

Note: The best route to fail in international marketing is to think that everybody in the world thinks the same way as you do:-)

If you need advice on marketing to the Russian-speaking countries, feel free to email me.

To your best business success,

Sincerely,