Translation and localization of a website is a complex task intended to make your services accessible to new audiences around the world, easily and in a language they know. So how can you do it right?
Haven’t translated your site yet?
Building a website is a creative task that includes identifying your target audience, defining messages, writing content, design, and many other factors invisible to non-experts. But even after your dream site has launched, there’s still plenty of work to be done. This is the crux of so many questions – are your messages accessible to the target audience? Does your site attract the visitor’s attention? Can you grow your business? How do you reach an international audience? And so on. That’s why your first answer should be translation and localization of your site.
• Millions of people use the internet and make purchases in diverse languages (not just English).
• The native language of over 50% of internet users is not English.
• Studies have found that users tend to buy more (4 times as much!) from sites written in their language.
• Visitors stay longer (twice as long!) on a website in their own language.
How do you do translation or localization?
Website translation is the most efficient method of quickly expanding to new global markets. Quality translation by a professional company ensures that your exact message reaches a broad range of potential clients from diverse countries and cultures. However, translation of the website isn’t all it takes – you also need localization – and that’s the main challenge.
Translation and localization involve multiple steps, each critical to success:
1. Creating an infrastructure – preparing to add a language to the website via software translation
2. Translating menus, buttons, notifications and the other site components
3. Translating the key content on the site and adapting it to the target language and culture
4. Translating keywords and adjusting metadata for search engines in the target language
You have a message. We’ll take care of conveying it perfectly.
Localization is the biggest challenge in website translation. The translation must be done professionally and carefully to ensure a faithful, accurate, clear, and understandable result. That’s why it is of the utmost importance to match the right translator to the right text – not just because of knowledge of the language, but also because of familiarity with the field and its related jargon. These parameters – mastery of the target language, familiarity with the culture and proficiency in the specific terminology – are critical factors in website translation and localization.