Last updated on January 16th, 2023 at 02:25 pm

Welcome to the Diverse City of Los Angeles

The City of Angels and the home of Hollywood have a big personality and a big presence. Los Angeles is the third-largest city economy in the world behind New York City and Tokyo and the second biggest metropolitan area in the United States behind New York City. As we’ll see, translation services in Los Angeles are a necessity for such a large metropolis.

The Los Angeles metro boasts a populace of about 15 million people and is the largest city in the state of California. With a population of this size comes huge diversity, diversity in languages, cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicity, that diversity drives a great need for translation services in Los Angeles.

We’d like to share some factors to consider when doing business in Los Angeles and why to make language translation services part of your marketing strategy.

Languages of Los Angeles

When using translation and interpretation services for Los Angeles, it’s important to understand what the language demographics are. The Los Angeles metro area speaks around 185 languages per recent data from the Census, and that number has likely grown since. The Census data also tells us that a little over half of Los Angeles speaks a language other than English at home. With numbers like that, a business that does not invest in language services is missing out on communicating with and reaching those demographics.

As in the rest of the United States, Spanish is the dominant non-English language spoken in Los Angeles. Asian languages are also common, such as Chinese and Tagalog. Los Angeles has a long history with both Spanish and Asian cultures, which have influenced the development of the city and surrounding area.

Spanish translation services in Los Angeles are used by businesses, government, and institutions to reach and assist the Spanish speaking population, many of whom do not speak English very well.

Localizing for Los Angeles

When using translation and interpretation services for Los Angeles, it is important to localize. For instance, the Spanish spoken in Los Angeles has a strong Mexican influence, and cities tend to develop their own colloquialisms. A professional translation agency will take that into account and select the appropriate Spanish translator who can handle Spanish to English translation and English to Spanish translation for the city. When using translation services in Los Angeles, localization should make a message translated from English to Chinese or Chinese to English read exactly like it was originally written for the intended audience.

How to Use Translation for Los Angeles

Where do you start when translating your business for Los Angeles? We’ve got some suggestions:

• • Your legal documents. These include documents for licenses, agreements, and contracts. Legal document translation is essential for a multilingual business. Translation of documents in Los Angeles is frequently requested not only for legal purposes but for many immigration proceedings.
  • Your website. From webpage copy to videos and product descriptions, websites must be translated and handled carefully by a professional team, including translators, designers, and the right localization engineers to put the multilingual website to work for your audience.
  • Marketing materials. Accurate translation of marketing content is crucial when using multilingual marketing in Los Angeles for visitors and clients. When done right, it can make your company a local legend. When done badly, it can make your company a joke.
  • Human Resources Content. In a population with such great diversity, human resources translation is a must for manuals, training, interview forms, and the company’s employee handbook.

How are Translation Services Use in Los Angeles?

Translation and interpretation services in Los Angeles manifest in countless ways. A few industries that rely on language services are:

• • Media and entertainment. Los Angeles is a major entertainment center and the first city many of us think of when we think about where movies are made. Scripts can be translated before the video is shot, translated dubs or voice-overs can be added later, and translated captions and subtitles can also be made. Movies for leisure and videos for marketing are translated into multiple languages every day in Los Angeles.
  • Law and Finance. Besides translating legal documents for businesses, translating legal documents for individuals is an important industry in Los Angeles. The area is a major immigration center, and not only do personal legal documents need a professional legal translator, they often need certification translation attesting to their accuracy for the government and other applications. Finance is another institution that requires translation to serve a multilingual community with their needs.
  • Tourism. Imagine a travel agency that only operates in one language. Los Angeles is a tourism hub for millions of visitors every year, and travel agencies need to be able to attract visitors in the languages those visitors prefer. From multilingual guided tours to brochures to information given in art galleries, museums, zoos, etc., translation for tourism is a must in Los Angeles for non-English speaking tourists to appreciate the city.
  • Medicine. Precise translation in the medical field is an absolute must as a small mistranslation can have devastating consequences. With so many languages regularly spoken in the Los Angeles area, medical translation is used for patient care instructions, drug labels, medical research, and patient records. Proper medical translation can only be done by a professional fluent in the source language, target language, and medicine.
  • Education. Universities use translation services to market themselves abroad and to communicate with employees and parents of their students. Academic translation is important to bring in international students and to present the institution’s achievements abroad. In the area of education, eLearning translation offers a virtual learning capability, and translation of eLearning content opens the educational experience to a multilingual world.

Language Services as an Opportunity to be Present

The response you get when reaching out to someone in their native language can be extraordinary. Imagine moving to another country, whose language you don’t speak, and trying to live your daily life, shopping for groceries, buying or renting a home, wading through government information and requirements. And then imagine finding websites, shops, and government offices that used a translation service and can help you in your own language. It would be like a lifeline! Los Angeles has a great need for translation services and offers huge potential for marketing and sales opportunities to people who are not English speakers.

Using translation services for Los Angeles is a vital investment in your business, it is the cost of opportunity to interact and communicate seamlessly with a vibrant and diverse population. By using a language services agency, you open your business to local and international audiences using the vehicle of another language. Call us today to talk about your language translation needs for Los Angeles.