Mother Tongue partners with medical research NGO to support annual campaigns raising awareness around cardiovascular diseases

Transcreation for Medical Research NGO

Since 2021, Mother Tongue has been helping World Heart Federation with the transcreation of their most significant annual campaign, World Heart Day, taking place every year on 29th September to raise awareness of cardiovascular diseases.

Our dedicated team of medical writers and specialized medical translators have worked in tandem in 6 different markets to support every campaign between 2021 and 2024. 

While our medical writers focus on transcreating marketing copy, the medical translators work on the more technical aspects and materials for each campaign. Together they translate a full range of awareness-raising collateral in the lead up to each World Heart Day, which include brochures, leaflets, petitions, posters and press releases.

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A Heartfelt Collaboration

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Mother Tongue partners with brand agency to cast voiceover talent and record video scripts for automotive brand

Casting VO talent and recording scripts for automotive brand

At the start of 2024, Mother Tongue started collaborating with 3 brand agencies based in Asia to cast VO talent and record tens of video scripts for a global automotive brand sponsoring a major sporting event.

Given the number of stakeholders involved and the high profile of the project, the client requested to select the voiceover candidates we would put forward. To give them as much choice as possible, we submitted 55 demos, which were recorded from scratch by our voiceover artists who fit the client brief closely.

The client then picked 2 artists for each of the 9 EMEA and LATAM markets to voice 6 video scripts of different lengths, which were recorded over the course of two weeks in our studio in London.

14 Mother Tongue language supervisors also joined the sessions to assist the talent with TOV and pronunciation and ensure smooth communication between the artists and the client, as they were also present at every recording session.

The quality of the final recorded scripts was a testament to our rigorous project management, with our Singapore and London teams simultaneously liaising with the client, partner agencies, recording studio, voiceover talent and language supervisors in multiple time zones.

Voicing a Major Sporting Event

Mother Tongue partners with the world's most famous dating app to transcreate marketing and UI content in 50+ languages.

Marketing and UI Localization For World's Biggest Dating App

24hr

236k

Back in 2015, Mother Tongue secured a hot date with one of the world’s best known dating apps. Fast forward to now, and we’re the sole language provider for the brand – matching users in over 53 markets. 

The account is managed from three of our language hubs – Singapore, London, and Los Angeles. The hubs work in tandem to provide the client with a follow-the-sun model that allows for 24 hour turnaround times across all territories. 

Alongside large-scale localization of UI content, we also support the client with a whole suite of additional language solutions. These include – social listening, cultural consultation, production, legal translation, and sourcing and hiring of language ambassadors. 

All talent working on the account convey the brand’s bold, tongue-and-cheek tone of voice, and are reflective of the 18-30 year old target demographic.

Over the course of our 7+ year collaboration, we have grown into an extension of the client’s in-house team, and take great pride in the transparent and truly honest ways-of-workings we have established together.

“We absolutely love the Mother Tongue team. Everyone is extremely passionate about the work they do and about providing the best service they can to their clients”

Swiping Right on Success

Mother Tongue describes how they are supporting a global fashion label with translation of marketing translations into 11 languages.

Marketing Copy For Global Fashion Brand

100k+

4,000+

Since 2020, Mother Tongue has been the powerhouse behind product translation for a global, Gen Z fashion brand, who launch more than 4,000 new products every single week to consumers worldwide. 

Our task is to get these products to market in a minimum amount of time, through high-speed localization that consistently captures the brand’s fresh, youthful, and confident tone of voice.

Alongside product content, Mother Tongue supports the brand with the transcreation of various marketing materials, including newsletters, banners and push notifications. We also deploy a team of market-based, specialized strategists for consultation on local trends and culture in each of the 11 markets they operate in.

All content is briefed, localized and delivered within the client’s own technical environment, with just three project managers overseeing the account from the Mother Tongue side. Since our appointment, we have been involved in a number of large-scale initiatives. These include the migration to an entirely new CMS, and the acquisition of several major labels now being sold exclusively by the brand.

“Mother Tongue continue to work in partnership and provide a quality service. They are flexible, support us when we need it most, and deliver a great standard of work.”

Partners in Localization: 
A Perfect Fit

Mother Tongue partners with cloud-based Accounting Software Company to deliver website translation, audio-visual translation and software linguistic quality assurance (LQA).

Translation Services and Linguistic Quality Assurance for Accounting Software Company

100,000

Collaboration

Global businesses face complex governmental regulations and tight turnaround times as they navigate international finance and accounting procedures. 

B2B accounting software tools ease this load through simplification and automation, but are only effective globally if they are usable and accurate for multilingual audiences. 

One key player in the accounting software space launched a collaboration with Mother Tongue to ensure all the agility and ease of their platform wasn’t diminished by a lack of linguistic resonance. 

Of course, expertise in accounting terminology is essential, which is why Mother Tongue began by building a team of experienced financial linguists and accounting subject matter experts (SMEs). We also built a client-approved glossary to ensure all terminology would remain consistent and began leveraging translation memory from the beginning. 

Our collaboration began with website and marketing transcreation, with a notable overhaul of the French and German websites, translation of several dozen customer success stories, and audio-visual translation of training and promotional videos. 

Seeing positive results, the software development team soon joined the workflow, and Mother Tongue began linguistic quality assurance on UI/UX strings for the accounting software itself. The strings are translated by another vendor, so Mother Tongue’s team of SMEs act as a final approver to ensure the product meets utmost quality and accuracy. 

Mother Tongue also fully cooperates with the client’s privacy and security requirements for vendors, following strict guidelines from recruitment and onboarding to project management and delivery.

Accounting is Complicated. High-Quality Translation Shouldn’t Be.

Mother Tongue partners with a world-renowned pharmaceutical company to help market their covid-19 vaccine.

Cultural Consultation For a Global Pharma Company

When Covid-19 swept the world by storm, Mother Tongue joined forces with a global vaccine manufacturer to help communicate critical information to the masses. 

The organization rapidly gained recognition for its life-saving vaccine, but lacked an in-country presence in markets where it wished to expand. As their localization partner, Mother Tongue worked to fill this gap. 

Mother Tongue guided the company throughout its expansion into new territories, providing cultural assessment of campaign concepts to help build brand integrity and ensure maximum uptake in target markets. The organization calls upon Mother Tongue for a wide range of language solutions – from local market insight, copy origination, and transcreation, to subtitling, voiceover, and production services.

From three of our specialist language hubs, we coordinate with over 50 client-side stakeholders around the globe, offering a always-on, one-stop-shop solution for all of their localization needs.

“Mother Tongue has a valuable capability being able to take global content and produce versions that can be used in many countries, cultures and languages.”

A Prescription for Global Expansion

Mother Tongue teams up with agency partner to translate global survey for a social media app, then perform cultural consultation on the survey results.

Survey Translation and Cultural Consultation on Survey Results for Social Media Platform

In order to deliver market research to a prominent social media platform, an agency partner crafted an in-depth survey asking app users to articulate how different kinds of marketing messages resonated with them. 

With a deployment across 3 global markets targeting Gen Z users and their parents, nuance in language was key to help furnish the platform with insight and discovery to more deeply connect with their users. 

Through a robust and months-long collaboration, the agency and Mother Tongue set out to get answers by asking questions in users’ native languages. 

The heart of the survey were key “statements”, and respondents had to rank how deeply those statements resonated with them as users.

As experts in language and culture, Mother Tongue stepped in with a multifaceted approach, to: 

Transcreate the English survey and key statements into French, Spanish and Japanese 

Perform, at the conclusion of the survey, a cultural consultation to interpret the survey results and weigh in on regional, linguistic and cultural nuance that drove those results.

Of course, writers had to consider local customs and generational differences in language as they sought to adapt a survey that would yield useful data, employing transcreation to capture the essence of each question. 

Over the course of the survey, 3,200 teen users and 800 parents provided insights. After the survey was completed and the analysis performed, we were happy to hear that our agency partner was pleased with the results, confirming that our findings were exactly what they had hoped to present to the end-client. 

For our team, it was a great opportunity to combine multiple offerings in order to deliver a bespoke solution. Much like answering questions in a survey, when we take the time to fully understand and consider a brief, we always deliver thoughtful insight.

Locally Resonant Survey, Valuable Global Insights

Mother Tongue executes large-scale voiceover translation projects for prominent music streaming platform during pandemic.

Voiceover at Scale for Music Streaming Platform

12-16

In 2019, Mother Tongue joined forces with an agency partner to provide voiceover recordings for a prominent music streaming service. An ambitious campaign promoting premium subscriptions targeted 44 markets and comprised over a dozen scripts and CTAs. To meet the brief, we leveraged the talent of 88 voiceover artists, tapped into 24-hour project management support across our 3 offices, and refined our processes for casting, booking and executing session recordings. 

With this large-scale project in full swing, the Covid-19 pandemic struck, which introduced unprecedented global upheaval, office and studio closures, and the need to further adapt and simplify our workflows. 

Mother Tongue rose to the occasion, and the end-client was so pleased that we were soon called upon to execute a separate and timely campaign. Centered around essential steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the campaign reached 17 markets and presented clear and concise public health messaging. 

Today, we pride ourselves on high-quality and resonant voiceover services at any scale, accomplished by implementing many of the processes we developed during this project alongside our highly talented artists.

If Music is Universal, Quality Voiceover is Highly Localized

Mother Tongue partners with hit Korean-language webcomic series to deliver entertaining and resonant English transcreations for dozens of series.

Transcreation for Popular Korean Webcomic Series

9,000+

5-10

A popular Korean-language webcomic company began collaboration with Mother Tongue in 2020. What began with translation of a few series has bloomed into a robust and ongoing partnership for translation of over 40 series on a regular basis.

To respect the highly creative content, complex wordplay, and stylistic elements like onomatopoeia, Mother Tongue copywriters first start by reading the series and then create a series-specific style guide and glossary. These essential elements are approved before translation begins, ensuring terminology and character consistency. 

To meet the ever-rising volume demands, Mother Tongue has performed extensive recruitment and maintained strict quality standards for all talent. A happy surprise of the partnership is that the Mother Tongue Account Management team and copywriters have all become dedicated fans of the series they manage.

Binge-worthy Webcomics, Culturally Resonant Transcreation

Mother Tongue describes how they supported a global food-delivery business with cultural insights and trends in 18 languages.

Cultural Insight For Global Food Delivery Platform

To help satisfy the appetite for global cultural insight for a high profile food delivery business, Mother Tongue rose to the challenge by assessing three core campaign concepts across 18 locales.

The three campaigns, which ran at different times between 2022 and 2023, covered different channels, from OLV subtitles to in-app content and print assets. Our in-market strategists advised on the likelihood of the core concepts to be understood by the client's young target audience. This also meant flagging any potential issues in transcreating the content from a language perspective and providing insight on any cultural associations that may not be understood. 

Despite the significant amount of data we were able to provide the client, we kept the visual formatting clear and easy to navigate by using a live online sheet. The answers in our report were colour-coded, sorted by market and, by all means, easy to digest.

Strategic Insights: Delivering Food for Thought

Mother Tongue offers language services including app translation, website translation and other localization services for meditation app.

Transcreation for Mindfulness App

300,000

In 2018, a prominent mindfulness app sought to expand their global impact, choosing Mother Tongue to adapt popular long-form audio narratives that soothe users to sleep and aid with stress management. 

Providing transcreation services for Spanish (Mexico) audiences, Mother Tongue crafted a truly resonant local script in appreciation of the vulnerability around insomnia and stress, knowing our words would find users at a time when they most needed comfort. 

The client was so pleased with the result that Mother Tongue were soon tasked with editing and honing existing translations for French and Japanese as well as with transcreating new content. Today, our daily collaboration spans multiple workstreams, including mobile app UI/UX, website copy, marketing materials and of course, the ever-popular narratives. 

Through a seamless integration between our translation management system and the client’s content, we operate on reliable turnarounds to deliver consistent results. What is more, we work closely with the client’s in-house linguist reviewers for French and Japanese to align on their specific desired tone of voice so multilingual users can continue to destress and enjoy deep sleep year after year.

Deep Sleep. Quiet Mind. True Cultural Resonance.

Mother Tongue teams up with food sustainability app to provide transcreation of CRM and other marketing materials.

Marketing Transcreation for Food Sustainability App

In 2023, a popular B Corp app in the sustainable food industry launched a rebrand and enlisted Mother Tongue’s help to roll out the refreshed content in 16 languages globally.

To assist the app in its eco-friendly campaign, we assembled a dedicated team of copywriters passionate about sustainability, who have relished the chance to sink their teeth into the brand’s playful copy. 

Our writers whip up marketing transcreations for both B2B and B2C audiences, ensuring copy truly resonates locally by adapting cultural references and always allowing the brand’s unique voice to shine through.

After the launch of the newly localized website and app, our team have continued to provide top-notch transcreation across all aspects of the user experience — from CRM, notifications and app store updates through to social and media marketing campaigns. And with new markets in the brand’s sights, it’s a tasty partnership that continues to grow!

Serving Up Transcreation Success for Popular Food App

Mother Tongue partners with leading nutrition and supplements brand on transcreation of product descriptions, labels, CRM and blog content.

Marketing Transcreation for Leading Nutrition and Supplements Brand

Direct

300k+

Efficient

Since 2022, Mother Tongue has partnered with a leading nutrition and supplements brand on transcreation in nine languages. With the help of our handpicked team of nutrition-savvy linguists, we provide a one-stop language service solution— from translation of product descriptions, ingredients and labels through to creative adaptation of website, CRM, paid marketing and blog content.

Mother Tongue acts as an extension of the brand’s internal team, working in close partnership and integrating seamlessly with their existing processes. Using a connector, we linked their content management system with our translation platform, allowing copy to flow directly from their system through the translation process and back again - maximising efficiency and removing the need for manual uploads.

To further streamline processes, we invited the brand’s in-market teams to share new project requests and review translations directly within our platform, allowing for speedier briefing, feedback and copy approval.

It’s a true partnership that goes from strength to strength, with the help of open communication and a healthy dose of integration innovation.

A Dose of Transcreation Integration for Leading Nutrition Brand

Mother Tongue partners with Global Luxury Bath and Body Brand to deliver linguistic assessments of customer service candidates’ written tests.

Assessing Recruitment Tests for Luxury Bath and Body Brand

900+

Faced with a customer service hiring surge ahead of Christmas time retail peak, a luxury bath and body brand chose Mother Tongue to assess their candidates’ written tests for their 6 EMEA markets over the course of summer 2022.

Mother Tongue’s QA specialists provided feedback on more than 900 written tests from the client’s 6 recruitment agencies, who then used our assessment scores to decide whether they would proceed with the hiring process.

To achieve this, we liaised with the client in creating a score grid that would cater to both grammar and language use, assessing spelling, punctuation, style and tone of voice.

We also partnered closely with the 6 recruitment agencies and facilitated a bespoke cloud environment to process the written tests, providing a 1 working-day assessment turnaround while complying with GDPR requirements.

A Fresh Look at Recruitment Testing

Mother Tongue teams up with a global children’s charity to provide transcreation, transcription, VO and ASL interpreting

ASL Interpreting for a global children’s charity

We carry out pro bono work for a global children’s charity, which delivers projects that improve educational opportunities for children disadvantaged by circumstances such as conflict, climate crises and other emergencies. Services we provide for the charity include transcription, transcreation, interpreting and voiceover (VO).

One of their initiatives is a Global Youth Ambassadors scheme, which amplifies the voices of young people aged 18-30 and provides training and resources to help them campaign for the right to education worldwide. The ambassadors usually meet remotely via Zoom, a few times per month. We provide an American Sign Language interpreter for one of these participants, enabling them to participate fully in the initiative.

Delegates are from all over the world, but discussions are led in English, which for many is their second, or even third language. Our dedicated talent team recruited and onboarded an interpreter with extensive experience working with clients from around the world, including in the education sphere specifically, to ensure easy communication.

“Mother Tongue’s ASL Interpreting Service transformed our ability to participate in meetings and gives people a voice on a global platform”.

ASL Interpreting for a Global Children’s Charity

Mother Tongue partners with ocean travel company to improve and hone linguistic quality of multilingual website

Linguistic Quality Assessment for Luxury Cruise Line

5,600

When a luxury cruise line launched their website in 4 new languages, they hoped to reach wider global audiences while preserving their distinct tone of voice and regal language. To ensure the translated website copy was truly resonant, Mother Tongue stepped in to provide linguistic quality assurance services (LQA). After the website was reviewed, we established an ongoing LQA workflow for new content. 

Successful LQA involves close review of both linguistic elements of translation and formatting elements, such as text expansion and contraction, meaning utmost attention to detail is required. Mother Tongue leverages up to 4 QA specialists for each language, who act as guardians of the brand’s voice, terminology and positioning. 

Like two luxury liners in tandem, Mother Tongue also successfully tends to our relationship with the client’s other translation vendor, as LQA can only be optimized if vendors remain in active communication. Our success in collaboration is viewed tangibly through our nearly 6,000 hours of LQA performed since the start of the relationship. Our third-party review strengthens translation quality and in turn helps drive and direct strategy for the other vendor’s translator team.

Around The World in LQAs

Mother Tongue partners with a US ride-sharing platform to support their localization needs in 8 languages, including UI/UX and website copy.

Localization Support For Major Ride-Sharing App

100+

In 2018, unsatisfied with the quality of their Spanish (US) language program, a popular Silicon Valley transportation app kicked off work with Mother Tongue, with the aim of boosting linguistic accuracy and resonance.

The difference to their previous vendor was ‘night and day’, so the company decided to expand collaboration for their next 7 international languages.  

When adding a new language, Mother Tongue copywriters spend a week at the company’s HQ for a full brand immersion and collaborative meetings. Through immersive and engaging sessions, we define tone of voice guidelines, glossaries and best practices. 

Today, our support continues for all of the app’s localization needs, spanning UI/UX, website copy, CRM, blog and even audio-visual services for support videos. Expansion into other asset types and workstreams is always accompanied by a robust expansion of our glossary and style guide to accommodate different kinds of copy. 

Driving Translation Quality

Mother Tongue partners with brand agency to deliver interpreting and live chat moderation in 4 languages

Interpreting and live moderation for global Electronics brand

50K+

In March 2022, Mother Tongue helped a global electronics brand with interpreting, live moderation and transcreation for a live escape room event.

In partnership with their creative agency, the brand set up a filming location in an East London house, where Gen Z influencers from Italy, Czechia and the Netherlands completed puzzles involving the brand’s products, such as a hoover, a phone, a projector and a smartwatch.

The three events were live-streamed on YouTube, and fans online helped the influencers solve the puzzles via a live chat, which was displayed on set.

We provided an end-to-end localization solution, transcreating the puzzles to Italian, Czech and Dutch and providing interpreters for each language to facilitate communication between the influencers and the English film crew, who were connected via earpiece.

As part of our language support, we also provided live moderation of the three YouTube chats, with our native Italian, Czech and Dutch moderators closely monitoring hundreds of messages and filtering out inappropriate comments before they would be shown live. Multilingual events needn't be a puzzle!

Unlocking Multilingual Events with Interpreting and Chat Moderation

Mother Tongue shares some top tips on Multilingual keyword research. Learn more about the importance of localized keywords and the different tiers of SEO that Mother Tongue can offer.

Insight and Staffing - Keyword research- Mother Tongue

When it comes to attracting customers in overseas markets, more and more companies are realising the power of adapting their websites into local languages. 

Indeed, according to a global survey from CSA Research, 76% of consumers say they prefer to purchase products with information in their own language. 

While web copy in the local language can better connect with users once they’re on your site, getting them there in the first place is the biggest hurdle. 

Search terms that offer high yields in English don’t necessarily translate to other markets. Search habits can also change from one region to the next. 

This means effective website localization requires thinking beyond just basic translation. Which is where multilingual SEO – and specifically multilingual keyword research – comes to the fore. 

Here we look at the importance of effective keyword localization, and why it is the crucial step every company should weave into their website adaptation workflow.

In essence, multilingual keyword research is about identifying the most effective local-language keywords for each of your target overseas markets.

It considers the search habits of local users, nuances in language and phrasing that direct translation doesn’t account for and, crucially, the yield and performance of search terms for each language and market, backed by reliable data.

The result? A list of highly relevant, high-yielding keywords that provide a solid base upon which to create perfectly optimised web copy in local languages.

Most would agree that a website’s performance – that is, traffic generated via organic search – is dependent on the strength of its SEO. Too often, however, multilingual keyword research is the forgotten step in the web localization workflow, which will have a significant impact on the performance of localized websites. 

First, a company provides their English web copy to a translator, without supplying localized keywords. Sure, that translator could do a great job at producing creative, natural-sounding copy, but without localized keywords to use within their translation, hitting the highest-yielding keywords is more down to chance than intention.

Second, a company provides their English web copy to a translator, along with list of auto-translated keywords. Yes, the translator now has a base to work from. But without research, those translated keywords are highly likely not to be the highest performing for the market – again resulting in less effective copy in terms of SEO.

The optimal scenario would introduce a step prior to translation, where the best performing local keywords are identified using reliable research tools and local insights. 

A lifestyle and tourism site has a page entitled ‘What to do in London’. In English, this key phrase yields 10K to 100K in search volume.

However, a direct Spanish translation – ‘Que hacer en Londres’ – yields just 1K to 10K – ten times less traffic.

Multilingual keyword research, on the other hand, would have identified a more market-relevant keyword phrase ‘Que ver en Londres’ (‘What to see in London’), and a much higher yield of 10K to 100K – the equivalent of the English original. 

The difference between one word – ‘see’ or ‘do’ – could mean ten times more traffic. Which is why multilingual research can be so important.  



How Mother Tongue Can Support with Keyword Localization

Mother Tongue offers three levels of service in relation to keyword localization, depending on time and budget.

Our entry-level service involves the transcreation of a master English keyword list by a team of SEO-savvy copywriters. These in-market specialists draw upon their linguistic and cultural expertise and inherent SEO knowledge to provide the most suitable list of localized keywords. 

While this is a cost-effective option for tight budgets, the absence of dedicated keyword research could still mean missing out on high-yield terms.

Our mid-level service involves research on an approved English master keyword list. Here, our team of market-based SEO specialists use leading research tools to identify the most effective transcreation for each English keyword. 

This option is highly scalable, which makes it the ideal solution when working across multiple languages or when significant investment has been put into the English keyword list. 

Out top-tier service sees our SEO specialists working from scratch to find the most market-relevant keywords for each web page. Here, they will review the source copy file or work from a copywriting brief to conduct in-depth research and provide the most effective keywords for your audiences.

Our research services make use of the most reliable keyword research tools such as Google Ads and Semrush, to ensure what we deliver is backed by reliable data.  

Get in touch to find out more about how Mother Tongue can support you with multilingual SEO.

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Multilingual Keyword Research: the Key to Effective Website Localization

Localization glossaries and style guides ensure a consistent voice across overseas markets. See how these key tools can support your multilingual translation.

Localization Glossaries and Style Guides: the Benefits

While expanding into overseas markets presents a host of opportunities for your business, it also presents a key challenge – how to maintain a consistent voice across different languages and cultures.

Luckily there is a solution: localization style guides and glossaries. These key tools provide writers and translators with clear guidelines on how to localize your brand copy across different markets.

Here we look at how localization glossaries and style guides can be used to support your multilingual communications and the benefits they bring.



What Are Localization Glossaries and Style Guides?

Simply put, they guide writers and translators on how to localize your brand for their local market – from agreed translations for brand-specific terms and phrases, to the most appropriate linguistic and cultural approaches.

A localization glossary can ensure consistency across:

·   brand-specific terminology – the terms, phrases and statements that make up the DNA of your brand, such as products and features, taglines and your mission and vision

·   industry terms and abbreviations – industry-related terms and abbreviations that appear frequently across your copy, including agreed translations of technical terms

·   non-translatable terms – terms and phrases that should always be left in your native language, no matter the market.

A localization style guide sets out the rules for:

·   grammar and punctuation – from sentence structure and capitalization to time, date and number formats