MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

May 22, 2018
Tina Duarte

You know that ritual that you instinctively repeat whenever you welcome a visitor to your home? That very first moment when you open the door and invite them in, showing that you’re pleased or honoured to receive them. Then offering them a cup of coffee, or tea, or something else and inviting them to sit down and to make themselves at home? To feel just as if they were in their own home?

This scenario must sound familiar to you. All cultures have different customs, ways of welcoming, pleasing or embracing others. But in the end the intention is the same: to make the guests feel at ease. There are other situations that also have similar customs with repeated gestures, such as the way a company communicates with its clients, for example, and in every step taken in building the best possible communication strategy. Take a company, for instance, that makes a point of hiring a translator to translate all of the documentation and information related to their products or services, into their potential clients’ language. In doing so they are ensuring that all content has been correctly localised and adapted to the target market, guaranteeing that any potential language or cultural barriers have been redressed. Every time the company repeats this gesture, it is following a ritual whose ultimate goal is to make the client feel at home.

This synergy is in the translator’s hands, and the result will be reflected in the way the potential clients feel embraced, in the knowledge that they were taken into consideration in strategy making process; the feeling that they are being listened to and, consequently, increase the possibilities that they will buy the product or service.

 

Latest posts by Tina Duarte (see all)