Website Translation and Website Localization
October 6th, 2009 // 4:42 pm @ admin
About website translation and localization
This guide to website translation and localization will give you the information you need to get the best quality, best value translation for your professional, business or ecommerce website.
Read on to discover:
- What is website translation?
- How to reduce your translation costs
- Why knowing the difference between website translation and website localization could increase your business and profits
- How I can provide you with a higher quality web site translation and localization services at lower cost
What is the difference between website translation and website localization?
Translating a website means more than just converting your web content to another language. Professional-level website translation and localization involves carefully analyzing the target audience, and adapting the text or content to the linguistic context and culture of this target audience. Language which may be appropriate for the source audience may be totally inappropriate for the target language audience, meaning you may be putting off potential clients or buyers inadvertently, even if the translation quality is done well by a mothertongue translator.
If you plan to expand into new markets using many different languages, you should plan your strategy carefully in advance, possibly adapting the source text before starting the translation process. This could significantly reduce your translation costs. Translating and localizing into all the different target languages of your markets can be extremely costly, often running into hundreds of thousands of euros, depending on the amount of material that needs translating and the size of your website.
How to reduce your translation costs while maintaining quality standards
A valid alternative is to translate your website into English only. This means you can reach a larger share of your intended market at the lowest cost. Providing documentation in English will open up your business to the largest audience without the huge budget that is needed for multilingual translation and localization. It doesn’t matter if the purpose of your website is only to provide information, or is a full-fledged ebusiness or ecommerce platform; without doubt, translating and localizing your website will expand your business and ultimately increase your profits. Your website is your or your company’s window onto the world and, in today’s climate, is the most important part of your marketing strategy. Getting it right is vital for your professional image and reputation. Getting your website’s translation and localization wrong can be a death knell for your business growth. Whatever languages you have chosen to translate your website into, the standard of quality and presentation is an area where you should never attempt to cut corners. If you really need to lower your translation costs, translating a smaller section of your website into English only, and paying the appropriate rates to have it done expertly by a translator with superb writing skills and knowledge and experience in writing content for the web is a far more effective strategy than translating the entire website into many different languages poorly. Your reputation depends on it, and a poor presentation could devastate your business.
Your website translation and localization strategy
Your website translation and localization strategy should also involve an analysis of how non-text elements and hidden elements will be translated. If there are images with text in them, you will need those images to be translated, too. There are two ways of doing this.
1) Type out, or copy and paste, the text, and send it to the translator for translation. Then, get your web developer or webmaster to edit the images for the translated section of the website and implement them on the new translated website.
2) Give the image to the translator in editable format, usually as a .psd format, and have her edit the image directly using Photoshop as part of the overall website translation and localization.
If you have a full time web developer or webmaster, and the translator you are using does not have the Photoshop program or the necessary expertise to edit the image, then obviously the first solution will be better for you. If, on the other hand, you do not have a dedicated web team on call, it can be much more cost effective to use a website translator that is sufficiently equipped and who specializes in website translation and localization. Specialist website translators and localizers will be able, with no action on your part, to take your entire site off the web, translate it “within” the code the site is written in, and upload the site for you back on to your web server.
Expert website translators can also translate all the hidden elements of your site that are vital if the translated version of your website is to be found in the search engines.
How I will translate and localize your website
When I translate websites, I don’t just translate the text you can see on screen: I also open up the source code, and translate the text within the title, description, and keyword tags, the image alt tags, and any pop-ups or drop-down menus that you may be using in your site.I also take into careful consideration how the site may be received by the target culture (which is the English-speaking world in my case, as I translate only into my mothertongue, English).
We would need to discuss whether your target market is the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, etc, an international audience with English as a second language, or a mixture. If it’s a mixture, I need to know which markets are the most important to you. There can be marked differences in the way humour and irony are expressed and understood by the UK and US audiences, for example. What is your target niche? Who are you trying to appeal to? What are you trying to achieve? The answers to these questions may mean it becomes necessary to depart somewhat from the source language, as very rarely will a close, literal translation have the same effect on the target audience as it does the source audience.
So, before we start, we would need to discuss all these matters in detail in order to define a strategy together, on which I will base my translation decisions while working.
For the visible text translation (the words your website visitors will actually see on their computer screens) I usually use Trados Tageditor to maintain consistency, preserve the tags, and make future updates and changes easier to translate. I will maintain a “Translation Memory” of your website in my archives, which means that if a page as been altered or updated in any way, I can take that page, and know instantly what has been changed or added and what needs to be translated, while only charging you for the new sections of translation. Then, I open each page individually in a text editor to translate keywords, titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags. If you have .psd versions of any images with text in them, I can translate and edit the image using Photoshop CS4. On request, I can download the entire website from your servers, translate it all and then upload the translated website back on to your servers using FTP.
Contact me today for free, no-obligation web translation consultation today: in 24 hours you will have an exact quote, timeframe for delivery, and my suggestions for the strategy we should pursue in translating and localizing your website from Italian into English.
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