Website translation is an increasingly important part of our work. Like many sectors of the economy we are seeing a move away from print media, and towards online marketing. Translating your website is an obvious way to promote your business in international markets, but like any area of marketing, there are different ways of approaching it. Brand image is really important in online marketing, a badly translated site will undermine your brand, it is therefore really important to select a competent translation agency. Before even thinking about translation you should review your web content, and what you want to get out of the project. If you are seeking to provide a service for current customers, then international web marketing is not going to be important, as they will access the site irrespective of whether it is well optimised, however if you want to attract search in the target market, it will be really important to have compelling content, and a well constructed and optimised site. In particular it is likely that you will need a separate domain with in-country hosting. “Off page” content is often ignored when translating web content, but it is important, things like error messages, any pop-up information, title tags, keywords, page descriptions, etc. should all be given attention. Another common mistake is to think that all the local information is of relevance to an international audience. If you take our website as an example, we have page optimised on the key term “translation Nottingham”, the reason for this is that we want to come up in local search if people are looking for a translation agency in Nottingham. This would have limited relevance for an international audience however. Our Belgian site in Flemish and French would not really benefit from such a page, whereas a page optimised for Brussels, or for translation between the countries to main languages would be of much more relevance.

It is also important to localise your message for the chosen target country, this is very much about understanding your intended audience, and providing engaging and appropriate content, just like you would with a local audience. Different types of translation require different skills of the translators, web content often includes both technical and marketing elements, and it is important that both are accurately reflected in the translation. Sometimes different parts of a website may need different translators, in the same way that your marketing content is probably written by your marketing team, but your terms and conditions of business are probably written by your lawyers, the translation team will involve legal specialist translators for such things as terms and conditions of business, and marketing experts for marketing text. Some sites may in effect require technical authoring in the target language if they are highly specialised and technical. We mainly use in-country translators in the target market for marketing related translations, and this includes most of our work in translating website content.

This article is only intended as a brief overview of what is a large and complex subject, we are always happy to talk about website translation requirements without obligation.

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