THE SITUATION
Translation is not a voice.
The Arabic accounts were running English posts through a translator and publishing them an hour later. The words were correct. Nobody spoke like that.
A guest in Riyadh and a guest in Toronto are not having the same conversation, and pretending otherwise costs you the room.
WHAT WE DID
01
Write in Arabic, not into Arabic
We stopped translating. Every post was written in Arabic first, by people who live in the region, against the same brand standards. Slower to produce and immediately better received.
02
One calendar, five markets
A single content system with local variation built into it, so the brand stayed one brand without flattening five very different markets into one tone.
03
Publish on their clock
Posting schedules rebuilt around when the audience was actually awake and spending. Same content, different hour, several times the reach.
WHAT IT PROVES
LOCALISATION IS NOT A LANGUAGE SETTING. IT IS A DIFFERENT CONVERSATION.
Any brand running one voice through a translation layer is leaving most of its audience politely unmoved. This applies well outside hospitality.