So your website has been translated into English, surely now you can reach consumers worldwide? Big Mistake: almost 75% of people using the Internet don’t speak English. Spanish, German, Mandarin, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch… on the Internet language is the only barrier that still exists. Translating your website into several languages is therefore essential and it isn’t to be taken lightly.
Read on to find out our best advice for quick website translation (whilst still maintaining quality obviously!)
1. Identify your target market and select the content to translate in advance.
Yes, that may seem obvious but it’s so important to work out exactly who you want to target before rushing headlong into translation. Picking a language isn’t enough: you need to focus on a country, or even region and on the type of person you want to communicate with.
Are you trying to attract qualified professionals from Bavaria or young people from Berlin? Both target consumer groups speak German, but they don’t use the same type of language. They also have different expectations in terms of selling, content and user experience etc.
Identifying your target market and relevant content is one way of ensuring quick website translation, without wasting time on useless translations: saving you both time and money!
2. Form a dedicated team for your project
Now you have a detailed plan of who you want to attract and the content you want to offer, you should surround yourself with experts to guarantee the success of your project.
Start from within your company: who’s going to head up the project? Who is selecting your service provider, managing orders, time frames and the budget? A dedicated in house team means you can be sure the whole process is effectively managed.
Next, over to your service provider: translators are without a doubt the core of your project, so you should select them very carefully. Choose native professionals who will know how to perfectly re-create the essence of your content in their own language. And, if the market you work in requires it, call upon translators who are experts in that sector. The better qualified the translators are for your project, the less likely you’ll need to keep going to and fro, wasting your time.
3. Create a briefing and a full glossary to avoid questions back and forth from the translators.
Speaking of going back and forth, another piece of advice: As talented and specialised as they may be, translators are still humans, and therefore have their own feel for things, which may be different to yours when it comes to choosing specific vocabulary, deciding on the tone of the wording and the style of the language used…
By having a detailed briefing you can explain all of that to them. Talk about your target market, your company and its DNA, it’s the best way for them to understand exactly what you are expecting!
You should also think about multilingual glossaries. A glossary gives you the opportunity to compile a list of specific terms within your sector or the language of your brand, and their translations in the target language. It’s a good way to support your translator who then won’t waste time trying to find the right wording for complex terms!
4. Automate the sending and receiving of your content
By definition a website is…online. So it would be a little archaic to export the content to a text document and then send it to the translator, wait a while, receive the translated document and then upload the content again…To be honest there’s a much better option if you want your website translated quickly!
Think about integrating your content management or product information management system with an online translation platform API. You’ll save a lot of time if you use this type of integration: you can send your content to be translated directly from your system, and all you need to do do is validate the translation and it will be automatically uploaded to your site. It’s incredibly efficient.
So now you know, these days there are many ways of ensuring quick website translation. Whether your site is a general-interest, institutional or e-commerce site, there are solutions to ensure quality translations can be achieved in record time.
To find out more, take a look at our good practice guide for translating and localising websites.
