3 Important Tips for Translating a Website

Fiscally and strategically speaking, website translation services represent a wise investment for your business. There are numerous advantages that can be gained from localization and translation, including enhanced user experience, broader reach, more sales, and better SEO.

Translating a website necessitates three important considerations. Translation projects vary considerably in magnitude and need, and there are many factors that need to be taken into account. Here are three important tips for translating a website.

    1.  Determine Goals and Priorities.

Before laying out your expectations and translation goals, it’s imperative to determine your business’s priorities. After making the decision to translate a site, many business owners mistakenly think every single word needs to be translated—and right away. In reality, this approach often doesn’t make financial or practical sense. Maybe your business in that new international market only offers specific promotions or products, so only a portion of your offerings require translation. Or your brand may not have the budget to translate all your content into every language and requires a pilot project first. Whatever the situation, the owner needs to carefully consider and prioritize content for translation, which can help to refine the project scope.

    2.   Determine the Best Markets.

It’s also crucial to identify the location of your customer base. This will give you information about both localization and translation needs. You can then prioritize translation of site content to ensure the correct markets are being catered to first. Before embarking on a localization and translation project, carefully examine business data, such as sales and site analytics. Which countries are most of your international buyers or site visitors coming from? What are your average order values and conversion rates for your different markets? Asking these questions and gathering this type of information will enable you to intelligently choose relevant local markets and languages to offer, that will drive business growth.

  3.    Select the Best Translation Technology.

It’s imperative to choose the right technology for website translation. Good translation technology can reduce manual tasks up to 80% via workflow automation and seamless tech-stack integration. Plug-and-play translation technology also simplifies app localization by minimizing the involvement by your IT team. Other benefits of an industry-leading translation software include the availability of translator tools such as glossaries, style guides, visual context, and translation memory. A cloud-based translation technology provides control and transparency for content translation, in addition to facilitating collaboration between teams.  Finally, a good translation software solution allows for an agile, iterative approach to producing global content so that it can be deployed to your users 24/7, around the world.