With how global and interconnected people are today, it can be challenging to know how a specific person feels about a particular service or product. Businesses and organizations are no exception. Most companies today rely on customer surveys and feedback to determine their products' relevance to their target market. But with different people across the world comes various inputs in different languages. Here lies the essence of linguistic coding services.
What is linguistic coding?
In some cases, reviews and feedback from international audiences can be translated using an automatic translator. The downside of this is that an organization cannot be sure about the translated texts' accuracy. It could be a word-for-word translation that may defeat the overall meaning of the sentences.
Contextually, linguistic coding comprises translating answers to surveys with open-ended questions. They will then be organized based on specific relevant criteria and compiled into files that data-analyzing software can work with. Furthermore, the process helps organizations observe and understand specific trends regarding linguistic nuances.
How does it work?
The process of linguistic coding usually starts with a concrete translation of all survey answers. While this may seem easy from a viewer's viewpoint, it's generally the most complicated stage. From this step alone, the translation must involve highly-experienced and professional translators who better understand the nuances of the responses at hand.
The team can create criteria to sort the customer's opinions from the translated responses. The criteria will be determined by the questions the respondents are responding to and by what the organizations want to know.
In most cases, companies and organizations will assign codes to specific adjectives with a ranking of importance - 1 to be Very Good while 5 to Very Bad.
In context, if the translator got this answer, 'The staff was incredible. They're the best." From these responses, the organization can identify keywords they want to include in the criteria. The words' incredible' and 'the best' will be associated with the number one rank.
Essentially, linguistic coding specialists usually associate the rankings with various adjectives. With this approach, companies can turn the qualitative data gathered into a quantitative one. Of course, there must be skilled and highly-trained linguists and data scientists to make linguistic coding work.
A translator's role in linguistic coding
Translators have a wide array of roles. The language aspect itself is vast. Learning a specific language, in itself, can be a handful. An organization or a company should hire professional translators in linguistic coding because these translators are linguists themselves. They have a better comprehension of nuances and subtleties in specific languages. Additionally, they have learned and researched colloquialisms and terminologies, resulting in accurate and concise text translations.
A translator also performs like a writer in linguistic coding. They can deal with different subjects which only interest a few individuals and with languages that a few only know. This is important when dealing with less popular and less used languages. There might also be slang and certain words which might have different meanings for every culture and language. Hiring translators who can deal with such situations is essential.
Some businesses which might need linguistic coding
Generally, almost all industries will seek linguistic coding services in one way or another. However, these common sectors might need linguistic coding for their organization or company.
● Hotels and restaurants. Customer feedback is an essential part of hotels and restaurants. In most cases, they base their improvements on how their guests and customers rate their services. While they can provide ranking on their surveys, some may comment on their services, and only some of these texts are in English or the language the company is familiar with. They can improve their survey system by hiring a competent translator to help in linguistic coding.
● Retail. Online shopping is everywhere right now. It's even the bread and butter for some. An online store reaches a global market with different backgrounds, cultures, and languages. A translator is also necessary for this sector to effectively understand how the market responds to the store's products and services. This way, the company can optimize the way they quantify the surveys.
● Electronics. Technology is also a hot topic in today's generation. With several innovations come tons of gadgets and other electronic products. Linguistic coding service is also necessary for this industry to determine how a product performs in the market.
How expensive will the linguistic coding services be?
Organizations and businesses might spend more on linguistic coding than on regular translation services. This is primarily because the process involves more than just professional translators. It also deals with data coding experts to input those translated codes into the system. It sure can be costly. However, the process eases the hassle of organizations in quantifying the surveys from various multilingual sources.
