“The Station of the Bird”

escrito por Dong-yeon Yu el 18 sep, 2009 +
En las secciones: Marketing Hotelero

The Station of the Bird -
What language do you have on your website?

One of the impressions that people have on hoteliers is that they are multi-language speakers. Yes, I have no doubt. One of my best hotelier friends can speak 7 languages coming from 4 different continents: German, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mongolian (!) and even a little bit of Arabian as well.

However, according to my personal observation, in many cases, the skillful hoteliers do not use their talent, or do not pay attention on the language written on the website of their hotels. As a native English speaker, who doesn´t speak good Spanish, I am in the habit of looking into the website in English first and then cross-checking the same website in Spanish every time.

I recommend you to do so as well. The website which seemed to be perfect in Spanish can turn out to be hilarious with funny mistakes.

Dinning room (Dining room), Cooktail (cocktail), accomodation (accommodation), beautifull (beautiful), wins (wine) can be interpreted as typos or simple mistakes, but there are some serious translation errors found in the website of hotels. Believe it or not, some 5 star hotels commit such errors as well.

I share some of the funniest (may I say ridiculous?) cases that gave much fun and laughs.

• Hotel OOOO  is placed in the center of OOOO, nearby to the station of the BIRD
• à la station de l’OISEAU
• (On the booking engine) It realizes your reservation across our engine of reservations
• It can put in touch with us in the telephone on (+34) 902 000 000 or in the e-mail – huh?
• And his character, opened and hospitable, they invite the visitor to walk along his streets discovering.. – Who is he and who are they?
• Activities in Barcelona: Jumping horses in Barcelona – must be Horse jumping.. But it´s fun to imagine horses jumping around in the city!!
• Hotel OOOO has XX meeting rooms for the organization of workshops, board of Director, cooktails, etc…
• Hotel OOOO is well-communicated to the most important sites in the surrounding area. – in English, Communicate (v.) means to share ideas or to talk

Whenever I find these errors, it becomes clear to me that many hotels, more than a number that you can imagine, are relying on the world´s most successful (!) and popular translator: GOOGLE. (http://translate.google.com) Google translator is a very good friend of mine, but I would recommend it only for reference, not for whole translation in the website.

Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization- all is important. But I would like to recommend the hoteliers to check their home grounds (website) first, before doing the fancy stuff. At the end, the biggest objective of on-line marketing is to enhance the brand awareness in the web and bring customers to your website and get direct bookings, isn´t it?

In order to avoid your potential customers getting lost in the station of birds (reminds me of Plaza Catalunya), looking for jumping horses in the city, and wandering around in his street by their invitation, correct translation is a must; unless you are competing with Vueling in the world of Spanglish.

Síguenos

Menciones y Comentarios