A few reasons to have your marketing materials translated into Dutch
The Netherlands is one of the heaviest populated countries in the world and the second exporter of food and agricultural products due to its mild climate and flat lands. It has one of the highest levels of economic freedom mostly due to its shipping, agriculture, fishing, tourism, trade and banking sectors.
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and is also spoken in Aruba, Brussels, Curaçao, Flanders, Sint Maarten and Suriname with around 23 million native speakers using it every day. Dutch is a West Germanic language and as such, it is a close relative of German and English.
While English is spoken by a large majority of the Dutch population, there are a few reasons to have your documents translated into Dutch if you are conducting business in the Netherlands.
1. It is a great thing to do if you want to impress your partners. The Dutch people are honest, serious and very direct, and trust plays a huge role in business.
2. It shows respect.
3. Having your materials translated into Dutch helps eliminating communication barriers. Not everyone speaks English at a conversational level in the Netherlands and your marketing campaign is addressing to all people.
4. Your materials are properly localized during translation and the translator makes sure the meaning of your message is properly rendered in the target language.
5. Having your marketing materials translated into Dutch will strengthen your brand’s identity on the local market
It is important that you choose professional English to Dutch translation services in order to avoid translation blunders. There are numerous examples of mistranslations that had unwanted effects like the one Pepsi made (One of their marketing slogan translated into Chinese as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the graves”). Another “great” example is the marketing slogan of Electrolux, a Scandinavian vacuum cleaner producer who used the following in the US: “Nothing will suck like an Electrolux”. While vacuum cleaners do work by sucking air and dust, that slogan means the exact opposite of what the firm wanted to emphasize.