“Teasers” and How They Get Lost in Translation

Three weeks ago, our business development firm started to identify companies to contact. The approach is straightforward: identify the companies, call them or cold call them, and see if they are interested in meeting with us.

A key part of the process is crafting the message of what we tell these companies when they pick up the phone and listen to our pitch. If they are interested, they will want to know more. At that point, we need to send them an introductory flyer or “teaser” as some people call it.

This is a two-page flyer. On the front side, we immediately launch into the business proposition. That takes up one third of the page. The rest of the front page is background information to let them know why they would want to meet with this us.

The back side is a description of each person on the delegation. It’s a short biography along with a description of what we have to offer to the business meeting.

The business propositions had to specific enough to elicit interest, but broad enough to cover any company within our scope. Here’s what I said:

• Product co-development: Partnership with a Canadian company for joint development of new biopharmaceutical, medical device or diagnostic products.

• Pharmaceutical research: Partnership with a research institution as a low risk way to build your expertise in creating patented products for the Western market.

• Sales and distribution in North America: Use Canada as a gateway to global sales by joint venturing with a Canadian manufacturing business that is selling to the United States.

• Manufacturing facilities: Acquisition of a manufacturing property as a method of expanding your business into Canada.

It’s a pretty unconventional list by the standards of economic development organizations to say this, but then again, I’m not an economic development person. To me, it’s all about viewing the needs of the company from their perspective.

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Once the teaser is created in English, we send it off for translation into simplified Chinese. This allows us to send them two versions: one in English and one in simplified Chinese. Even if they can read English, this is an important courtesy.

This year, we decided to send it off for proof reading. We want to confirm that the translation didn’t sound like Chinglish to the reader.

Here is an important point: just because someone can read Chinese doesn’t mean they are a good proof reader. That applies to any language, as I vividly remember from my high school and university essays.

Through my network, I found a good proof reader. This was when things got interesting. He rewrote a large section of translated flyer. Now I had two versions in simplified Chinese. Which one do we use?

I sent them to two different people. Of course one person liked version one, and the other person liked version two. There was a pattern that I noticed. The person based in China liked the rewritten one, while the Chinese expat liked the original one. The rewritten one just sounds more authentic to the communication style in the field. So we went with that one.

These details make all the difference.