A Country Can Lose Exports in Communication as Well as in the Factory

Imagine a factory. Its product is good, its price competitive, and its production capacity sufficient. It has served the domestic market for years and now wants to expand abroad. One day an email arrives from Germany, followed by questions about technical specifications. The company is excited; the overseas customer it sought has finally knocked.

A reply is prepared: a few sentences in English, with a Turkish catalog attached. Part of the technical table is translated, part is not. The website offers another language, but half its product descriptions are outdated. Delivery terms in the proposal are unclear. The customer’s second question receives an answer three days later. Then nothing more is heard.

The owner probably thinks, “They found our price too high.” Perhaps. But perhaps the customer looked at the company before the product and did not find a commercial partner able to communicate with equal clarity.

As someone who has worked with documents and texts for years, I can say this: in foreign trade, people often never notice the sentence at which a sale was lost.

Türkiye’s goods exports reached $273.4 billion in 2025. This figure demonstrates our capacity to produce and sell abroad. But looking at exports solely through containers, customs, freight, and prices misses an unseen dimension. Before goods cross a border, trust must cross it. Much of that trust is built through communication.

I am speaking of more than the narrow issue of “knowing English.” International business communication is a whole extending from websites and catalogs to proposals and contracts, technical documentation and packaging, meeting etiquette and after-sales support. A company can make excellent products and explain itself poorly without even realizing it.

What does a foreign buyer look for?

A foreign buyer asks: will this company keep its promises? Did it understand my technical question correctly? Did it notice the contractual details? Will I find someone accountable if a problem arises? Answers emerge through the company’s communication, rather than its production line.

European Commission work on SME internationalization also identifies foreign-language competence and international experience among factors affecting overseas expansion. Its language management research emphasizes that linguistic and cultural differences can create real commercial barriers. To me, the critical word is “management.” International communication cannot be left to chance.

If sales staff, the contract writer, the technical team, and the website agency use different language, the customer encounters four different companies. The same product has different names in the catalog, invoice, and technical document. Units are misunderstood, delivery dates interpreted differently, and legal expressions translated informally. In health, machinery, chemicals, or law, a one-word mistake becomes a direct commercial risk.

Sometimes a text is grammatically flawless but commercially wrong. A proposal to a German customer need not use the same approach as a presentation to a Gulf distributor. An American company’s contract expectations may differ from another market’s business culture. People trade through habits as well as words.

More than a thousand businesses took part in the European Commission’s SME research on multilingual websites, and 75 percent expressed interest in a pilot to make their sites multilingual. This reflects awareness of the importance of language access in digital markets. But automatically translating every page into ten languages is not the solution. First know which market you want to enter, then what questions customers there ask. English and German may suffice for one company; Arabic, French, or Russian may open the door for another.

A simple start for small businesses

I do not believe this requires enormous budgets. A small or medium-sized business can begin with a communication audit. Identify two or three target markets. Review the website, catalog, proposal templates, technical documents, and contracts using consistent terminology. Clarify who answers overseas customers and how quickly. Give the sales team intercultural business communication skills alongside language skills. Treat every foreign-language text as a point of sale where the customer meets the company, rather than a translation assignment.

A foreign customer may never see your factory, machinery, production line, or years of effort. They first see a website, catalog, email, and proposal on a screen. As Türkiye sets new export targets, we need to discuss explaining what we produce to the world better, alongside producing more.