One million words, eleven languages and 46,000 Land Rovers sold. How Comtec helped Land Rover on its way to boosting sales by 30 percent!

Land Rover is one of the UK's most successful companies. It is one of the country's biggest investors in R&D and the UK's main automotive exporter with sales growing by 30 percent in the last five years. Land Rover brands are desired by buyers around the globe. So what's the secret of that global success?

Part of the story, of course, is world-beating products embracing the latest technology. The other part of the success story is Land Rover's ability to explain those benefits to buyers around the world, in their own languages. From Milan to Moscow,  from Bangalore to Beijing.

With the help of its translation partner Comtec, Land Rover marketers have the ability to explain technical advancements and concepts to customers in their own languages. This cooperation also enables them to translate and explain the benefits of the firm's £800 million investment in new technologies.

The Brief

Land Rover's multilingual website receives millions of hits globally each year; it provides an essential interactive consumer experience that communicates brand values while sharing key product information. To ensure that the website has maximum impact, Land Rover must address potential customers in their own languages.

To ensure an effective launch, Land Rover needed an expert partner to translate the website into a range of key languages including, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Arabic and Japanese.

The Challenges

Land Rover needed a translation expert with proven experience of managing and delivering copy for multilingual websites, and the ability to deliver more than one million words in eleven languages! Their partner also needed extensive automotive experience - with proven understanding of technical terminology - and experience of marketing localisation.

They also required a company that had the ability to deliver translated files written in XML format with embedded HTML.

And finally, they had to be capable of completing the whole project in a very short timeframe.

Land Rover chose Comtec!

The Partnership

Comtec Translations is a company that specialises in translation, localisation and interpreting for business.

Comtec has proven technical and automotive experience and an established ability to handle multilingual website copy.

Comtec has a professional yet personal approach and developed a tailored project management solution to meet Land Rover's specific requirements.

Execution

Right from the start, Comtec worked closely with the Land Rover team to understand its technical requirements and tailor the process accordingly.

Technical ability too!

Comtec has the technical knowledge to develop bespoke solutions tailored to perfectly fit each customer's needs.

With the specialist technical knowledge required for this project, Comtec was then able to develop its own unique software tool to handle and translate website files fast and efficiently. The tool enabled effective extraction of HTML from XML to prepare the files for translation.

All native speakers, with marketing localisation knowledge and extensive automotive sector experience, Comtec's team of translators and proofreaders quickly got to grips with the project.

Using the latest translation memory software, Comtec's translation team were able to deliver the highest quality translation with consistency in both terminology and style across all sections of the website. (Click here for more information on how Comtec uses the latest translation technology)

A robust project management structure was followed to ensure smooth running of the translation process with regular status updates to keep Land Rover up to date at all times.

Extensive liaison with both Land Rover's UK based central team and local marketing teams was put in place, and played an important role in gathering reference material for use by the translators and answering technical questions.

A close working relationship with the local markets was developed to understand their preferences in terms of the style, tone and terminology used -critical to ensure the website was fully localised for the target market.

The Result

Despite the demanding technological, translation and time requirements, Comtec delivered the Land Rover project on time, and free from hitches. Better still, positive feedback was received from the international offices about the quality of the translations.

In order to help Land Rover manage the project, Comtec didn't deliver the project in one massive hit on the last day. To make life for the Land Rover marketing team a little easier, the completed language files were delivered in manageable stages, ready for the Land Rover IT team to make an early start on completing the websites.

Rob Carr, internet manager for Jaguar Land Rover, said "As a global automotive company it is critical to remain competitive online. Since our first localisation of the global websites in 2001, it has become increasingly important to meet strict deadlines in refreshing our online content frequently and quickly in local languages."
Facts used in the intro are quotes from Land Rover CEO David Smith plus approved stats via the firm's media department.

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