Essential Preparation Tips for Website Translation Services

Website Translation and Localization: Misconceptions

In today’s digital era, the internet has rapidly become the single most popular medium for searching information. As a result, businesses involved in multicultural markets must now expand their website to meet the diverse linguistic needs of their entire client audience. This “expansion” is called website translation and localization and is becoming a growing necessity in the world of commerce.

However, the motive behind this post is to shed the truth on a few misconceptions many people have on this topic of website translation and localization. Many tend to overlook the complex and time-consuming efforts required to accurately produce a translated website that will satisfy foreign clients from distant nations and attract their business.

Here are 3 basic misconceptions at a glance:

1. A translation agency can quote and perform the translation with just the URL of the website.
   1. In reality, the structure of the site and the platform used to store the content must be taken into account. Agencies need to be able to extract content through different tools. It is different to receive .html files than to extract content from a dynamic site stored in a Content Management System (CMS).
2. Translating keywords into different languages will be effective SEO for my multilingual website.
   1. Keywords almost never translate smoothly, and might not be the phrase of choice for searching in the target culture. One must recreate the keywords in the target language using experienced native speakers who understand the meaning behind the original keyword and have the experience to research for equivalent keywords.
3. Using machine translation will suffice when translating my website (or any document, for that manner).
   1. Using human translators is a must. Although large providers like Google and Microsoft have released free translation web tools, one should not rely on them. These machine translators often produce awkward grammar and phrasing that appear unattractive and unprofessional from a client’s perspective.

When advertising and marketing your company’s products and/or services in global markets, the best approach is to plan in advance and devote enough time to determine your needs.  There are several elements to consider when expanding to a multilingual site from an existing site or when planning to develop an entire multilingual site. Those elements can be grouped into four main categories:

• Audience
• Budget
• Translation process
• Technical Considerations

Website Translation and Localization I: Establishing Your Audience

The planning phase of the project for a website translation and localization is crucial. Evaluating all important elements while planning will help the project go smoothly, within budget, and reach expectations and goals.

In this post we are going to cover an important planning component: Identifying and understanding your Audience for your website translation project.

Think About Your Audience:

As previously mentioned, it is very important to know your audience when performing a translation and even more so when dealing with website translation and localization.

Who will visit your site, and why they will visit your site are the first questions to consider when planning a successful multilingual website. It is imperative to take the time to do the appropriate research on your clientele. Understanding cultural nuances of each desired market will give you a leg up over competitors as customers will find your website reliable and appealing. Take into account the following:

1. What countries are you going to target and why? What languages are you going to have on your website?
2. When it comes to a particular language that has different locales like Spanish, French, Chinese, or Portuguese, you must decide whether you want to address a global population (global reach) or if you are going to speak to a region or particular locale (localization). For example, targeting Mexicans and Spaniards would require either two distinct versions of Spanish websites or one carefully crafted website that satisfies both countries’ differences in cultures, etiquette, and linguistic preferences.
3. Do you want to address your target audience casually or formally? This factor is important and varies according to cultures, the nature of your products/services, and how you want to approach your prospect customers.

Website Translation and Localization II: Setting Your Budget

Think about your budget:

The elements mentioned below impact your costs, strategy, and work time when introducing a new translated and localized website.

1. Do you need a partial translation or the translation of the complete site? Some clients decide to do a partial translation eliminating sections that are not important to them, such as events, job postings, or other sections of the site that are specific to the source language or original audience.
2. Is the content of your site static or does your company constantly update the site with new pages? The frequency of content updates to your site is an important element to ensure you have sufficient funds for ongoing maintenance of the website translation process.
3. How many languages are you going to have in your multilingual translation? Are you going to have different locales for languages (i.e., French translation: France or Canadian French)? Sometimes it is better to start with fewer languages and learn from the process before the next set of languages is implemented.  Do not give in to “get-it-done-quick” temptations by using a device like Google Translate or low quality services in efforts to reach a wider audience. Many companies fall victim to this trap and tarnish their image and reputation.
4. Your budgeting must account for suspected IT work. The structure, navigation, and platform of your translated website must be determined and may require revising.
5. Will you have customer support within your company for the new languages? If you publish content in Spanish for your audience, you should expect phone calls from customers that will have a need to communicate in the Spanish language.

Website Translation and Localization III: Planning the Translation Process

Continuing with our sequence of postings on the elements to consider when planning for website translation and localization, this post will teach you about the most important factors during the actual translation process. Keep in mind that at this point, you should have made certain decisions about your audience and your budget.

Think about the translation process:

To achieve great results you have to work with professional translators and editors like that of JR Language who have experience in researching keywords and competitors in the new market, and have a deep linguistic understanding of that culture.

1. Find an experienced translation agency that can help, advise, and support your company effort with the localization of your content to different markets and languages. For your website to resonate with your localized audience, it must speak the local lingo and create copy that reads like it was originally written for that language.
2. Localize your website appearance and metrics. The images, currency, and overall message must be appropriately adapted for the new audience. Additionally, different cultures expect different features from a website, based on what is customary for them. Try to maintain the overall look and feel of your original site, if possible, by retaining the same colors and style that your company has branded.
3. All the graphics and multimedia elements need to be localized. Graphic translation and subtitling or voice-overs of videos are important for the overall experience of the user.
4. When translating into other languages, text expansion within your website is common. Plan for this growth by leaving extra room or enabling text boxes to expand automatically. For example, in German and Spanish the increase of the translated text is about 20%-30% longer compared to English. Your webmaster may need to adapt the layout in order to fit everything needed.

The translation and localization is the fundamental process, impacting the success of your new multilingual site. If you have any ideas or concerns about the translation process while planning for your own website localization, please leave a comment, write us an email to info@jrlanguage.com, or call to speak with one of our project managers experienced in website translation.

Website Translation and Localization IV: Planning the Technical Aspects

Technical requirements are essential components that must be taken into consideration ahead of time. After deciding the preferences that suit your business best, amazing results are sure to come out of your newly localized multilingual website.

Think about the technical decisions:

1. Site structure, platform, and navigation are key elements to consider before planning the localization of the site.
2. How are you going to host the translated version of the site: new domain, subdomain, or subfolder? They all work differently according to your objectives and the platform where you host your site (be aware of the limitation and implications of each option).
3. How are you going to navigate from one language to the other?
4. Are you going to use a written text link for the choice of languages, or do you want to use images of national flags?
5. Will your user is directed to the main page upon selecting a different language, or will they be directed to the respective page where the language selection occurred?
6. How about the URL structure? There are different URL naming options in the target language that use specific extensions to help users and crawlers identify the language in multilingual websites.
   Examples:  “en”=English and “es”= Spanish (Español)
   https://jrlanguage.com/en/ translation-content.html
   https://jrlanguage.com/es/ translation-content.html
   https://www.en.jrlanguage.com/ translation-content.html
   https://www.es.jrlanguage.com/ translation-content.html
   https://jrlanguage.com/ translation-content.html
   https://jrlanguage.com/contenido-de- traduccion.html
7. Selecting the format of the working files and how to exchange content with the translation agency.
8. How will you supply the material to be translated: MS Word, html, xml, php, or others
9. Which of the above formats will be more convenient for your IT staff to receive the translated files
10. Revise your existing Content Management System (CMS). Look for answers to the question of structure and best practices to incorporate the translated content.
11. Website localization assurance is perhaps the most important step, as it is vital to proofread and test your website before it is open to the public.  Always double-check connections, navigation and correct sequence within each language. By carefully reviewing the new site, you avoid the embarrassment of faulty navigation within your site that can render all of your efforts towards a multilingual page useless.

In order to market globally you must stop and ask yourself multiple questions to be successful in the planning and execution of a website localization project. Fortunately there are translation agencies, like JR Language, with the experience and know how to guide you in partnership to facilitate this complex process for you. JR Language has worked in multiple website translation projects. All of our work is edited and proofread independently after translation to ensure that your localized content appears original and attractive towards all your target markets.

Quoting a Website Translation Project

Where to Start?

Getting your website translated can seem like an intimidating prospect, full of questions and tasks that you are not familiar with. Or it may seem like a breeze; you just hand the translation company your URL and tell them what target language you want, right?

Today we’re going to detail how the truth about quoting a website translation project is neither of those situations. It’s not so simple as sending a URL, but it doesn’t have to be tedious either. You will need to work with the translation agency to get a quote, but at the same time, they will advise you on options and recommendations to follow, and what you need to get an accurate website translation quote.

JR Language is a translation company that believes in educating current and prospective clients to make the website translation quoting process easier and smooth. Whether you need a budgetary estimate or a firm quote, we will work with you during the assessment process to produce a proposal in line with your requirements.

We aim first to understand your needs and goals, including limitations in budget and previous experience developing multilingual content to plan for a successful website translation

It takes time and effort to produce a fine multilingual website that reads and appears as if it was first written in the target language. Every business owner deserves top-tier translation services, and they can give themselves and the translation company a boost with the right preparations.

Let’s go through what the client needs and what the translators need. We’ll expose some misconceptions and replace them with good advice.

Website Translation Assessment: Questions and Answers

A website localization project takes time for evaluation and planning. After all the decisions are made, you need time for the actual creation of the multilingual site. That includes the translation of content and the implementation of that new content on the multilingual site.

It takes time evaluating the project since there are several elements to consider before your translation agency can create a quote. They will need to understand your requirements in detail and study your website to be able to offer a quote or quotes according to the options available.

Some companies come with all the parameters ready, others need to ponder the factors and options to decide on the information to quote. Some companies are in a more mature stage and have an idea of deadline, budget, and content that needs translation, others are in an exploratory mode looking for more information.

JR Language has collected the best questions and answers on making a multilingual website.

What Is the Language Market? What is Your Target Audience?

Let’s say you want your website translated into Chinese. We need to know your target country if you do not know specifically if you need translations into Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese.

It may not seem important to get so detailed when getting a website translation quote, but it is. JR Language localizes your content and suits it to the dialect and culture of your market. Different answers to this question can produce very different results and different prices since different language pairs have different costs. For example, translations from English into Spanish are less expensive than translations from English into Traditional Chinese.

The language used also makes the project more complex when it comes to fonts and time for testing. Languages like Arabic involve RTL considerations for the display of content.

What are the Deadline and Budget?

These are essential factors that the translation agency must know to quote your website translation project. It saves time and money when you have a firm idea of when you need the work completed and what you can spend. You may find that time or budgetary concerns necessitate a change of strategy or that you can afford more than you thought. There is a big difference between a single language job on a thirty-page all-text website and a website to be translated into multiple languages, plus e-commerce, videos, images, and PDF’s.

Time for completion is also important to know, since the translation company needs to have that information to plan for the teams they will need to be involved in the website translation project. If there is a time limitation that might impact the way the project will be planned and executed, that needs to be known. Also, do you need all the languages present at the same time or you are going to work in phases?

What Is the Project’s Scope?

Consider what content and pages you want included on your translated website. Will it contain all the pages and features of the original? This can mean videos, graphics, blogs, career section, newsletters, etc. You don’t want to over or underestimate the amount of material to be translated and thus waste time and money.

There are choices to be made about how certain elements should be handled, like captions versus subtitles for video translation. This can make the translated site look very different from the original, as culture and locale exert great influence on images, video, and the general content and look of the site. Be flexible and open to evaluate options to learn more about the options and make the best decisions for your company and website.

Work with a professional and experienced translation company that will help you keep your company’s unique brand authentic wherever it goes.

What Is the Workflow for the Multilingual Website Project?

The client and the translation company need to be sure of the other party’s expectations as well as their own. A website translation project is a multi-stage process where everyone needs to understand their role and the methods and tools they will use. Is the plan to send files between the translation agency and the client via email?  Is there a collaborative platform or content management system (CMS) involved? Which people at the client company are supposed to review the material? Who is going to handle the technical aspects of the website? There is more than the translation of content in the implementation of a multilingual site.

How Will We Handle Data?

What kind of website do you need translated? How was the website created or what CMS is going to be used to create it? Does it have e-commerce, or maybe translation for social media needs to be included? What language is the code written in html? Is it a CMS WordPress, Drupal, or Magento?

Answers to all these questions are important since they add tasks and complexity or offer solutions to the project. JR Language can accommodate different file types and code languages, but we need to know which ones the client uses and if any files should be converted to another type.

If a client only provides the URL, a translation agency can extract some information with a crawler. A crawler is software that enters a website and sifts through it for specified information. A crawler is a helpful tool for quoting a multilingual website, but if the client provides a list of files, that is ideal.

The Next Steps

As in any project of any kind, planning and anticipating activities go a long way toward the successful execution of the project. Establishing a solid base for cost, responsibilities, timeline of activities, and time for completion is essential for website translation.

Use these guidelines to help your business get an accurate website translation quote. Preparing this information before approaching a translation company will also serve you well as the project progresses. You’ll establish a working rapport with the translation agency and save time, money, and effort with superior results, fine-tuned to your market, their culture, and your industry.