Why and how to enter the French-language markets
Are you a French company with a number of professional documents written in English or in Spanish you want to translate for the attention of your French staff? (videos, internal training, business presentations, press releases, calls for tender, annual reports, academic articles, etc.)
Or maybe you’re preparing for trade with your future Francophone customers, and you want to attract them to gain these new market shares?
Perhaps you’d like to send effective messages in the French language, or you already have contacts with French-speaking clients, or you want to get yourselves known, or to make a major impact on Francophone markets. To this end, you must take into account certain criteria when choosing your partners.
And in particular, those who will convey your written messages: professional translators. And you prioritize a relationship of trust with a freelance translator, who will not sell any volume or tools, but the right words and at the right price.
Therefore, you must choose a professional translator, that is to say a linguist whose target language (French in this case) is not only their native language, but who also lives on the market you are targeting, namely the Francophone market. Indeed, if your translator does not live in France, he is at risk of making errors because he does not know what is happening in France. That is why it is recommended that you systematically work with a translation vendor based in the country of the target language or where the mother tongue is spoken (for our purposes, in France).
You must ensure that the linguist has the knowledge and skills related to your industry, he/she is equipped with at least one tool from the many translation technologies available and he/she is able to ensure fully-fledged quality control. Of course, he/she must have excellent writing skills, enough hindsight or maturity to be able to absorb and paraphrase the text and not only to reproduce the intricacies in the local language (i.e. French), but also to make it suitable for the local culture.
You must also take into account the ramifications of the French language, depending on the area where you want to establish yourselves or expand. If you’re targeting the Canadian market, for example, you will want to work with a speaker who has excellent knowledge of French Canadian. On the other hand, even if there are also a few Swiss variations due to different expressions in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and perhaps in some African countries, the main mother tongue remains French as spoken in France.
It is certainly no longer simply the language of Molière and of European elites. Today, French is the third most-spoken language of business in the world, after English (n°1) and Mandarin (n°2).
It is of considerable importance to the field of creative industries. It is a language which produces ideas, which is powerful and it is a language of creation and innovation.
And data on the position of the French language in the media across the world and on the Internet, illustrate the consequences of the growth in the number of Francophones in the world, at a time where we can see the intensification of digital practices and audiovisual consumption.
The French-speaking world means a presence on the five continents. In addition to special trade relations, it seems it also brings some stability in a context of international crisis. French remains a prestigious language, one that is still actively used in international organizations or diplomacy, and is recognized as a strong and influential language. The growth of French is also driven by the African demography, and by 2050, 700 million people should speak French.
These are economic avenues to draw from for exchanges, and doing business together, thanks to the French language.