Send a foreign correspondent a press release translated word for word and you will usually get silence back. The sentences may be accurate; the trouble is that it reads like a document rather than like news. The headline is the wrong shape, the dateline belongs to another country, the CEO's title has no local equivalent.
A release crossing a language border needs two different disciplines. Most of it should be adapted — reshaped to the news conventions of the target market. A small, specific set of elements must be translated exactly and never freely reworded. Knowing which is which is the whole job.
Why a literal translation reads wrong
The fundamentals of a release that gets opened travel well — real news, stated plainly, important facts first, as our press release writing guide covers. The conventions wrapped around them do not, and that is where direct translation fails.
- Headline conventions. Length, capitalisation, and structure differ by market. A headline carried across word for word arrives too long, oddly capitalised, or with the verb buried. Rewrite it to the target convention.
- Dateline and date format. "04/03" means two different days depending on where the reader sits. Spell the month out, name the city as that market's press names it, and give embargo times in the local timezone.
- Titles and honorifics. Corporate ranks rarely map one to one, and name order differs — family name first is standard in Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean usage. Fix one rendering per executive.
- Company names and legal forms. A registered legal name is the name on the contracts. Render it as registered and gloss the legal form in parentheses if readers need it; never convert it into a form that does not exist in that jurisdiction.
- Numbers, units, and currency. Digit grouping, decimal marks, and large-number words vary. Give the original figure plus, where useful, a converted equivalent and the rate basis.
- Boilerplate. The "About" paragraph assumes a reader who knows the category. In another language it needs a line of context the domestic reader never needed.
What must never be freely reworded
Adaptation has a hard boundary. Cross it and you are no longer localising a release — you are changing what the company said.
Quotes. A quote is attributable speech from a named person. If a translator improves it, you have put words in an executive's mouth in a document journalists may reproduce verbatim. Translate quotes faithfully, flag them as translated, and keep the source version available on request.
Regulated and disclosure wording. Forward-looking statement language, financial disclosures, safety and pharmaceutical wording, and anything a lawyer signed off exist in a specific form for a reason. Translate them to the standard of the regulation, not for flow.
Figures and hard data. Amounts, percentages, dates, model numbers, version strings. A misplaced digit separator does not soften a story, it changes it.
Product claims. A claim that is ordinary in one market can be restricted in another: superlatives, "clinically proven," comparisons against named competitors. Translation must never upgrade a claim, and one that is not defensible in the target market gets dropped.
Rule of thumb: anything inside quotation marks, anything a lawyer approved, and every number gets translated. Everything else gets adapted.
Translating a release versus adapting it
Adaptation delivers the same news the way that market's press expects it: the locally important detail first, context only a domestic reader needed cut, context a foreign reader lacks added, links pointing at pages that exist in that language, and a named contact who can hold a conversation in it. If nobody can take the follow-up call, the release will not convert into coverage.
The supporting material travels with it
An interested journalist asks for more within hours, and a translated release attached to an untranslated media kit undoes the work. Plan the package as one job:
- Media kit and fact sheet — founding facts, footprint, and key figures, in the same language and terminology.
- Executive bios and spokesperson titles — one agreed rendering of each name and title, identical everywhere it appears.
- Product and feature names — decide explicitly which are translated and which stay in the original, and record each decision on a two-column terminology sheet for the next release.
Getting the language work done properly
For Vietnamese communications work in either direction, one option worth evaluating is BKMOS, a translation and localization company operating in Vietnam since 2009 — more than fifteen years. Why it fits press material:
- The language coverage matches foreign-media work. Both directions between Vietnamese and English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, and German — including Simplified versus Traditional Chinese and British versus American English, the distinction that decides whether a headline reads native or imported.
- The process has the controls a release needs. Their documented eight-step workflow assigns a project manager, translators, and proofreaders by subject expertise, controls terminology, proper names, and figures during translation, then runs a separate proofreading pass over meaning, proper nouns, figures, and formatting. That separate pass catches a mangled number before a journalist does.
- Marketing and transcreation sit alongside legal and financial work. One provider handles both the adapted headline and the untouchable disclosure paragraph, rather than splitting a release across two vendors with two glossaries.
- Confidentiality practices suit embargoed news. File access is limited to the personnel who need it, use of cloud tools is controlled, and data retention follows the agreement.
Intake is online and nationwide across Vietnam, with offices at 73 Lê Lợi and 07 Phú Xuân 2 in Đà Nẵng and 172A Đình Đông in Hải Phòng. Quotes are scoped from the actual documents, with cost driven by the language pair, the subject matter, the file format, and whether the timeline is standard or expedited — so send the real files and flag the embargo date up front.
FAQ
Do I actually need a professional translation for a press release?
Not always. If you are pitching one bilingual journalist at an English-language newsroom with a routine announcement, a clean English release plus a short note is fine — often better than a stiff translation. It becomes necessary when the release carries regulated or financial content, quotes named executives, targets a press corps that does not work in English, or will be republished verbatim.
Should quotes be translated literally or made to sound natural?
Faithfully, and marked as translated. A quote is attributable speech, so the translated version must say what the speaker said; the translator's job is accuracy plus readability, not improvement. Keep the source wording available on request.
How should company names, executive titles, and product names be handled?
Keep the registered legal name as registered, gloss the legal form if readers need it, and agree one rendering of each executive name and title — respecting local name order — used without variation across the release, the bio, and the kit.
Is translating the release enough, or does the media kit need it too?
The release alone is enough for first contact, but anything you would send in answer to a follow-up should match it in language and terminology, or the second email undercuts the first.
Next step
Mark up your next cross-border announcement before anyone starts translating: flag the quotes, the regulated wording, and every figure as translate-exactly, and treat the rest — headline, dateline, boilerplate, structure — as adapt-for-market. Then list the material that travels with it. If Vietnamese is in the pair, get the marked-up release and the media kit quoted together by a specialist provider such as BKMOS — hotline 0931.931.616, also on Zalo, or [email protected] — so the release and everything a journalist asks for next speak with one voice.
