Reaching beyond the English-speaking market

Since our site launched last month, Rosenfeld Media has been mentioned in a number of non-English web sites. It’s wonderful to make even the tiniest dent around the world; it’s also wonderful to see how Google’s automatic translation service renders these postings.

For example, the seemingly innocuous name “Rosenfeld Media” is translated from Italian as “Medium Rosenfeld”. But as underwhelming as that sounds, we’ll take a ‘3’ on a Likert scale over “Average Rosenfeld,” as the name is translated from Spanish. We hope to be at least mildly above average.

The non-English buzz seems positive, at least as we’ve interpreted Google’s translated output. Some appreciate our site’s design: “Useless to specify that this site is a model of clearness and ease of use (for once that the shoe-maker is fitted best).” A Japanese site suggests that RM’s approach “can offer the information whose value is higher probably will be.” And our favorite: “I attend with anxiety their first creature”. As do we.

While we appreciate Google’s effort to connect speakers of different languages, we’re even more appreciative of those of you who’ve linked to us, especially when English is not your native tongue. We certainly would love to hear from you. How might our books serve non-native English speakers best? Obviously translations would be most appreciated, and we’re investigating the economics of translations. Are there other pieces of advice you would have for a US-based publisher that hopes to reach non-English markets?