What You Might Not Know About Website Translation
Today’s businesses require website translation more than ever before. But it is not easy to translate a website. You will need expert assistance to succeed and consider several elements and factors.
GTE’s white paper has mentioned 4 common mistakes when adapting website localization, and our today’s blog post will introduce some important key points about translating websites that you might not pay attention to.
Website Translation Is Not Only A Technical Process
You must examine the languages you pick to make your website multilingual in addition to the technical features of the website. There are several linguistic and cultural subtleties in each language or dialect, and there are more aspects to look into.
#1. Translators Need To Understand The Real Purpose Of A Website
Do you know what a website’s purpose is? It gives you an online presence and allows you to enlighten people about your business, goods, and services. However, you go above and above by creating a website for your loyal clients and providing a solution to their demands. Furthermore, a website, persuasively, and precisely presents your solutions to your prospects.
When you have a domestic website, you are unlikely to run into any issues. It’s a strategy for increasing consumer loyalty and establishing corporate credibility. However, if you want to enter the foreign market, you’ll need to consider extending your website to accommodate other audiences. This implies that you need website translation services that can adapt your content to the target audience’s language.
#2. Using In-House Staff Might Not Be A Great Choice
Website translation might be costly. It can take time and need the expertise of a specialist team to complete. Using your in-house workers is not recommended unless you have a website development team. Here are some of the difficulties you may face while translating your website into several languages.
One of the first issues you’ll face is a lack of speed to market. Technically, website translation might take months, especially if your website is being translated into many languages. There will be procedural issues as well as technological complications to deal with, which may result in delays. Your rivals can access your target market while you wait for your multilingual website to open. Your tenacious in-country teams may expect a fast supply of digital material to assist their marketing efforts.
Your local staff will be overworked and overextended if you opt to conduct the website translation in-house. Because they are not experienced translators and their understanding of the language may be limited, you cannot expect them to manage the translation of your website. Internal website translation operations will be beyond their capabilities.
Using your employees to translate your website might raise the cost. Because of their inexperience, you’ll wind up employing website developers, translators, editors, and proofreaders, who may advise you to start the translation process again. You’ll also need individuals to review the site.
#3. Website Localization Means Much More Than Translation
When dealing with a worldwide audience, your website has to be more than just translated. Website localization, which includes more than just translation, is required. Customers from many nations desire and expect an exceptional online experience. They want something relevant, with a website that communicates to them in their tongue and other features.
Because certain languages convert into shorter or longer forms, your website design will vary as well. The written language’s orientation must also be considered, as some languages are written left to right, while others are displayed vertically.
Critical Steps That You Can Not Ignore When Running Website Translation Services
Here are 4 can’t-ignore steps of a website translation project:
#1. Using The Correct Terminology Consistently
Many businesses use a particular product and/or industry terminology, which must be translated correctly so that each target language website understands it. Before starting the actual website translation process, we recommend building a glossary of common words, also known as a termbase. Creating a termbase requires some initial costs, but it will save you time and money in the long run as you update your online material.
Once this is complete, translators may begin working on the entire website translation, but terms and phrases from the termbase will appear in a box on the side of their work screens for reference. Linguists may then simply pick and insert the right translations for certain terms without having to spend any additional time studying them. After the translation is finished, QA checkers will ensure that your desired terminology was utilized and, if not, will make any required modifications. Following this procedure assures uniformity throughout the project as well as across additional translated content, saving you time and money.
#2. Adapting Content For Each Language
Your unique work should ideally provide a clear and concise tale with few idioms, slang, and/or local allusions. This isn’t always the case, which is why translation is only the first stage in the process of localization. Highly skilled linguists will seek the source language’s intent and then transmit that message to the target audience in the appropriate context. You should also think about changing your layout, design, local requirements, or formatting.
#3. Finishing Multilingual GUI Testing Before Launching The Website
Localized websites must be tested and vetted before they are made available to the general audience. First impressions matter a lot, and if you make any blunders, you risk losing potential clients’ attention. As a result, it’s always a good idea to double-check with your translation provider to make sure they can undertake UI/GUI testing and quality assurance on translated websites. Every phrase should make sense in context, and the site’s functional and decorative features should appear and perform appropriately.
#4. Keeping Your Multilingual Website Up-to-Date
The launch of your multilingual website is a significant achievement. It’s critical to maintain each language updated with your most recent material whenever it’s made public. Managing this procedure might be difficult, especially if you constantly update your website, therefore two technological options that can assist you are translation plugins and translation proxy solutions.
Translate Your Website For a Wider Reach
Translating your website can provide your company with a plethora of new opportunities. It cannot come without difficulties, but with some planning and preparation, you can overcome the hardship and reach international potential audiences.
GTE Localize has expertise in localizing information in over 50 languages as a website translation firm. So drop us a line when you require translation services to plan your website and go global in the long run.
