Navigating the nuances of culture is a tricky business, but it’s essential for any company looking to succeed in international business.
We provide a range of services, from training around cross-cultural understanding to support with cultural analysis of markets to inform marketing communications and much more, so you are fully supported when navigating the challenges (and benefits!) culture presents.
In an organisation, culture presents itself in a multitude of ways. It’s not just the location we work in or the language we prefer to speak.
Culture impacts everything—from the way we communicate with colleagues, to how we respond to advertising as consumers, to how we learn and handle change. How far this differs from culture to culture can vary. Some cultures are relatively similar, while others can be poles apart.
In order to “make it” in a global marketplace, it’s critical that we give enough time and energy to culture—whether that’s through cultural awareness training for your teams, cultural audits for your content and ideas, or other services that boost your inclusivity.
At Comtec, we provide advice and training on everything from brand names to humour to tone of voice—especially useful in marketing, learning and development and internal communications.
If you’re a marketeer, our services give you the inside scoop on how your campaigns stand to land in other cultures. This enables you to tailor your content to gain the best results across multiple markets, and avoid any foot-in-mouth moments where your hard work gets lost in translation.
No one learns in the same way, especially across different cultures and locations. For L&D managers, our cultural experts help you tailor your training material to ensure it’s engaging for every individual learner—from Singapore to San Francisco.
Internal communications provide an easy way to speak to your global workforce. How to do that in a culturally inclusive way—not so easy! But we can help.
At Comtec, we can offer a wealth of cultural support, depending on your needs and requirements.
Cultural strategy and insights
Looking to break into a new market? Our culture-savvy experts work alongside you as trusted advisors, helping you to navigate the complexities of international communications and cultural nuance. We also provide region-specific insights as they relate to your campaigns or programmes. The results? Invaluable insights to inform your strategies, so you can be confident they will have the desired impact.
Cultural and linguistic audits
Our cultural and linguistic audits provide in-depth, local insights on your content, giving you early clarity on how best to communicate with a particular audience. During our auditing process, you’ll be in the hands of cultural and linguistic pros. Our intricate process gives both agencies and global companies a priceless understanding of the cultural pitfalls they need to be considerate of to communicate impactfully in any market.
Cultural awareness training
We often make the mistake of seeing people’s actions and reactions as just who they are, when a significant part of it is down to something we in the business call “cultural programming”. Cultural awareness training is an eye-opening exercise that supports employees to build their understanding of cultural differences to improve communication, productivity, efficiency and wellbeing.
Brand Name Analysis
They say you never get a second chance at a first impression. So you can imagine the negative impact of having a brand name that sounds odd or even offensive in another market. As your very first touchpoint with the wider world, our in-market linguists carry out extensive research and analysis on your brand name (or brand / product name ideas) to check for any positive or negative linguistic, cultural and political associations—so you won’t be named and shamed!
Translation + creative = transcreation
For many projects, a word-for-word translation can leave a lot to be desired. That is where transcreation comes in. An advanced form of localisation that combines translation and creative license to preserve core meaning in a new region, transcreation is the translation of ideas, not just words. Once this has taken place, a specialist linguist copywriter can then recreate your project for your chosen destination, keeping your creative flair.
“Comtec have assisted with the expansion of our business into international territories with the use of fast and accurate translations. Their online portal makes translation requests effortless with the benefit of placing multiple requests at once. If the process was not already easy enough, the Comtec team are always on hand to assist with any queries, and they are the friendliest of people. Many thanks to the Comtec team and we look forward to working with you on our future projects.”
“I have been using Comtec for nearly 8 years now and they have become our key contact for any translation jobs we have, from residential blogs to really technical documents. The team is very friendly and professional and all queries are answered quickly. It just makes our life easier and we know that we can rely on them at all times.”
“The team at Comtec is great to work with: friendly, approachable and supportive, they deliver an excellent translation service that our customers value.”
“We absolutely love working with Comtec. Their values and approach really match ours – they are super responsive and always reliable, and quality is paramount for them, just as it is for us and our clients. As a writing agency, we get a really wide variety of briefs and we can trust that the Comtec team will always help find the right solution to deliver exactly what our clients need.”
“In unprecedented and dynamic times like this, it’s vital for us to communicate with our colleagues and customers in several different languages as quickly as possible. Comtec have done an outstanding job for us by turning these around as quickly as possible and have been a reliable partner.”
How can we help?
Book a call today to discuss your project with one of our team.
