Ideal translation of a website requires a team of skilled professionals with maximum proficiency in all parts of the large and complex undertaking. Before you attempt a website translation project, use this guide to better understand what the process involves and the resources you’ll need in order to achieve your projected ROI.   

Introduction

Effective website translation is a very large and complex undertaking that requires high proficiency in numerous specialized roles in the process. Here’s a guide to the essentials of website translation, to help you obtain a good general overview of each part of the process of a typical translation project. It will further help you identify the professionals and technical resources you will need, in order to accomplish the professional outcome necessary for translation to produce a level of ROI that makes the enormous effort worthwhile.

The World Wide Web has opened access for your business to the multitude of overseas markets. Every day, over 3.5 billion people use the internet. So, today, virtually any business with a web connection can be a global seller. Of course, with the vast new foreign opportunities for companies looking to grow internationally, there comes the large task of localizing the marketing and sales website. This includes everything from fully localized text content, video advertising, blog content etc., to sales information such as product descriptions and video demonstrations, order placement directions, customer services, warranty information, instruction guides, company profiles, and others.

After all, even the farthest east of East Asian markets may be merely a mouse click away from your business, but to non-English-speaking users who can’t understand your information, you remain a world away. Succeeding in those markets requires more than just speaking their language. Basic website translation is only a part of translation, and without translation, your message cannot be expected to be effectively conveyed.

Naturally, you know that it only makes sense to have messaging in your chosen international market that is as effective as your messaging in any other market, domestic or foreign. In order to deliver a compelling message, here’s more involved in localizing for a market. Your content will also need to meet the format needs, use terms for local currency, use local cultural references vs. ones that are commonly understood by people a world away but are utterly unfamiliar to locals in your target foreign market. There’s much more in addition to these requirements.

translation requires research into every aspect of the foreign target market, into everything from household practices, to government rules and relations, to religious tenets, and so much more. In other words, translation must achieve everything in the presentation of the content that is necessary to provide a user experience that is the same quality as provided to users in your domestic market. To yield the ROI your aiming for in a foreign market, invest in localizing your website. to make it authentic, to make it a native and appealing resource for visitors in your target international market.

Why website translation is necessary

If visitors to your website can’t read the information on your website, or even if they can make out the message, but it all seems too unrelatable to their personal experience, they’ll exit quickly, and they won’t have a desire to come back. Your prospects are much more likely to end up buying from one of your competitors, perhaps one offering a poor value compared to your company’s offering. This can be expected to happen when a competitor provides a better website experience, clearer information in their native language, and more comprehensible references to elements of their own culture and experience that make it possible for them to relate better to the competitor’s offer.

So, make your website ideally relatable to your prospects in your particular target market. Make sure it’s optimally clear in conveying what you’re offering and how your product or service can benefit visitors to your site in the context of their lives, wherever they live.

Why do shoppers prefer to buy from localized websites?

It’s much easier to build trust, when communicating with someone in their native language. People feel more at ease doing business with sellers who are speaking their own language when offering products and services and who trade in their own country’s currency.

Therefore, with the ever-increasing number of businesses expanding to become global competitors, and so many conducting sales through websites localized for one or more foreign markets, it’s becoming more important for people to be able to communicate effectively across language barriers, just as they must operate efficiently across physical borders in order to do business together smoothly.

So, naturally, you need to ensure that people can understand you clearly, in any language they speak, and help them make transactions with your company easily, whatever their normal purchasing conventions may be.

However, it’s a major challenge to manage a full-scope website translation project. Top quality translation requires a highly skilled team, thorough market research, and meticulous project management. It’s a daunting undertaking and a significant financial investment.

Chapter 1: Before You Begin Your Website translation Project

There are various approaches you can take to translation. For example, there are numerous online translation sites and apps, but this is generally understood as a low-quality option. For one thing, machine translation technology can be very helpful for some tasks, when integrated into a larger translation project.

But, as a stand-alone translation solution, machine translation simply cannot produce the natural speech and sound that a human translator can readily achieve. Applying dialects correctly and adding other nuances of a human translator are also far beyond the capacity of a machine language translation.

There’s also the challenge of capturing the finer points of the brand voice, which means your website localizer must find the appropriate text expressions and visual images to appeal to local and regional prospective buyers, while consistently maintaining company voice across all markets, both domestic and international.

If this all seems daunting to you, that’s good. That means you understand the magnitude of a website translation project and the time, work, and financial stakes in it. There are so many languages, cultures, website locations, national and international rules, protocols, laws, histories, customs, values, norms, mores, it can seem like too much to accomplish.

Add the challenge of catering to the range of buyers’ preferences and of effectively communicating the unique subtleties that should be conveyed to your prospects about your product and your brand, and it can seem overwhelming to take it all on.

But, there’s abundant reason to be encouraged…  

ROI in website translation

Like any large project, you need to be confident going in that it will succeed and that you know exactly what’s to be expected of the processes, outcomes, costs and ROI in localizing your site. From there, seek the best team of experienced professionals with a strong track record of successful translations that have enabled companies’ sites to perform as hoped — encouraging increased traffic, generating leads, fostering and facilitating conversions, and realizing ROI.

Determining how much to project for ROI from website translation is not an exact science. However, for any business seeking to sell in international markets, it’s abundantly clear that all necessary measures for ideal translation is the first fundamental for ensuring that you won’t lose a large percentage of prospective sales due to failure to provide a properly localized web content on your sales site.

Market analysis — Before beginning preparations for your website translation project, figure out who where your appropriate target market is located. Do the necessary research to construe buyer personas for your international target market. Don’t simply rely on generalized continental data to help you identify your ideal national or regional market.

Understand the local lifestyle of your target foreign market

Even if the majority of the people across the entire continent or throughout a large swath of it speak the same language, expect them to be using very different dialects, and practice unique regional usages for a vast array of words and phrases, and to have their own slang and local sets of references and other distinct ways of using language.

Research the available demographics, consumer data, economic reports, and other relevant data for the markets you’re considering. Perform a comparative market analysis to determine which appears most likely to realize your revenue goals for the localized website.

Obtain thorough information on national, regional, and local laws. Understand the culture, including customs, taboos, generational attitudes, and other potentially limiting factors. Be sure that a sufficiently strong market actually exists for your product or service, before you choose a locale for your translation project.

Beyond the imposed restrictions and cultural influences, and varying vocabulary from region to region and even from one local area to the next, there are other differences that need to be accommodated in translation. Population centers at differing latitudes and/or altitudes live in different climates, with different seasons, and therefore have different fashions, priorities, lifestyles, daily routines and habits, foods, and so on. So, of course, you need to know if your product is a good fit with needs in the area that you’re considering for your translation investment.

Tastes in all sorts of things, from pastimes to music to foods to aesthetics, manners of speech, general pace of living and attitudes about all kinds of things, among yet other specifics differ from area to area in many, if not most countries of the world, even those with the smallest total land area.

6 questions to ask yourself before localizing your website

How well your localized website performs financially for you will be the result of the accuracy of your market analyses and choice of viable target and the accuracy of your website translation. Ensuring your success in these interdependent processes is the formula for achieving excellent ROI in your localized website. Start by asking yourself these basic questions to make sure you’re entering an appropriate market, with real potential for success of your localized site:

1. Is there sufficient interest in your product to justify website translation for the area?
2. How much competition does and/or will exists in the area?
3. Can prospective customers in the area actually afford to buy your product?
4. Will shipping, delivery, and customer support costs total within margins for profitability?
5. Does the market potential make website translation for that market a good investment?
6. Are there any insurmountable legislative or cultural impediments to my entry into that market?

Which languages should I focus on?

Be sure to factor everything mentioned above in your calculus for market selection. Even when product demand and economic indicators strongly seem to support a rationale for entry into a particular market region, ignoring complex cultural realities, legislative obstacles and other less direct, but nevertheless inevitable impactors can undermine the financial performance of your site.

For example, research has shown that, naturally, almost all Chinese consumers shopping online prefer using websites that are in their own language. However, only a small fraction of US retailers offers websites localized for China. Why? Reportedly, from various sources, it’s because legislation imposing trade protections, complex cultural factor, and low demand in various areas contribute to discouraging performance.

Marketing translation & transcreation

The nature of marketing translation is that it’s necessary to reach as many people as possible, while staying within your company’s financial limits. So, include all the national, regional, and local marketing factors and the financial realities in your feasibility analysis, before deciding to undertake a translation project for a particular market.

In our China example, the national market with obviously vast potential for a wide range of US American companies, based on the total of Chinese internet users. However, such raw statistics may be irrelevant, if the government or the dominant forces in your industry there are un-receptive to your hopes to enter that market.