Chapter 2: Define Your translation Project – Test

Translation involves much more than generic translation of a website’s content into a different language. Individual countries, regions within the countries, and local areas within the regions, each present their unique arrays of challenges to translation.

Success of a project means overcoming all obstacles to adapting your site to the meet the specific needs and expectations of users in the national market, or any of its sub-markets in which you choose to make your entry. Identify the boundaries of the market you want to target, then further define the scope of your translation project.

Once you have selected the regions you want to target, set the scope of your project for all parties to the project, including project owners, liaisons, planners, legal consultants, managers, designers, researchers, writers, technicians, translators, testing teams, in-country reviewers, vendors, and others.

• Project owners — Leave nothing undone in the pre-project planning, discussions between website project owners and translation services provider (LSP). Ensure that all legal documents are fully agreed and that the contracts are actually executed prior to the scheduled start of any work, in order to prevent unnecessary delays or confusion.
• Governments — Ensure that the full scope of research into national, regional, and local regulations and restrictions on content in your website and international trading with the site has provided a thorough and clear understanding of your rights, privileges and limitations for doing business within your targeted market.
• Cultures — Conform your site’s content and its dynamics in integrated communications through live chat, email and other vehicles to local market customs. This translation component is just as critical to your success in operating the site in your chosen foreign market as is the legislative compliance. So, be thorough in order to avoid being dismissed by prospective buyers due to committing cultural offenses.
• Technologies — Different countries don’t necessarily use the same software, or the same devices or other hardware as other nations do. They may also rely on different search engines. Be sure that the developers you’re working with are proficient in the programming languages to be used.
• Translators — Your translators need thorough information about expectations for their central role in the translation project. They need to know the target spoken language, the specific national, regional, and local dialects that they must capture, the necessary cultural references.  They need to be provided with a front to back tour of all the pages of the website that is to be localized, including using its internal and external links, its fillable forms, engaging with its helper bots and other interactive functions, and anything else offered.

They need to know how many strings and words they’ll be expected to translate, how to manage placeholders, how to submit their work, and so much more. Provide all translators with access to robust translation glossaries.

Translators need time to review the glossaries as well as guidelines for content culturalization, and example translations. They also should have access to web apps to be localized, to help them understand the expectations for user experience.

Developers need to provide translators with the opportunity to see strings in context, to help them achieve the most accurate translations possible as well as the nuances that make the content relatable to the audience for the translated version.

• Web developers — Lay out a crystal-clear vision for your developers. Make sure they know how many pages they’re expected to code, and what the elements on the pages will be.
• Testers — Let everyone who will be involved in testing know what to expect, what the types and extent of in-house and external contractor will be conducted, and make sure each tester is ideally clear on his/her specific responsibilities in the tests they’ll be performing.

Provide a comprehensive project guide (a.k.a. a “project bible”) that fully addresses all project team members’ information needs for preparation and execution of their roles in the translation process.

4 ways to localize websites

There are multiple approaches to localizing a website. Your choice is likely to be driven by your budget, your level of site quality needs, and the extent of your applicable in-house production resources.

High-quality website translation will allow you to reach and maintain a wider audience in your targeted international market. A team of translation experts is more effective in SEO of websites, and top professionals have the cutting-edge innovativeness, breadth of experience in top-tier translation projects, and the state-of-the art tools to enable the best outcomes.

However, cost can be an issue. There are several factors in calculating cost of website translation. Of course, As with most things in the commercial world, cost determines the level of quality that the amount of resources will allow. There are various options, and with each, naturally, you can expect to get the quality of result that your budget allows for the project:

1. Free translation online — zero cost
2. A general translation service — lowest cost for paid translation
3. A freelance individual translation specialist — mid-range costs
4. A website translation service — higher cost than an individual freelancer

How good are free instant online translations?

Free online instant translators are easy to test by simply cutting and pasting a block of foreign language text from a major foreign newspaper, magazine, or book into the translator tool in any one of the free translation websites. Ideally, use a text selection that you understand well from top to bottom, word for word, or that a translator has interpreted for you. Then, evaluate the quality of the outcome of the translation generated by the auto-translator. Repeat the test with several different blocks of text, to gauge the consistency of the translation quality.

The experiment works well enough even if you have no idea what the foreign language text says. The point is to examine the quality of the coherence of the translated text. Frequently, even with the most basic original text blocks, you can expect to find that the quality of the translation is typically pretty poor. After repeating the test multiple times with various text blocks, you can expect to find that the consistency of translation quality is extremely poor.

What are the differences between the 3 types of professional translation options?

General translation services can be a good value for website owners who need only generic translation and do not require the quality of a fully modern business site.

A freelance translation specialist can offer more specialized translation, applying techniques for culturalization, capturing many of the nuances that a general translation service is not set up to perform.

A full-scope LSP has an entire team of specialists and manages all phases of translation, including in-depth cultural research, top talent translators, the complete range of state-of-the-art technologies for the most complex website translation projects, teams of QA testing experts, and the industry’s most highly experience project managers.