How to translate your company’s website

If we do not intend to translate our website, what options do we have? There are really only two possibilities:

Go on offering the website in one language. This could put us at a disadvantage compared to companies that translate their websites into the user’s language. Translating our website gives us an advantage over the competition.

Translating web content with Google Translate. If users really want to access our content, they may use Google Translate or some other free service for automated translation. The reality is that many users are not convinced by this option since the result of these translations leaves much to be desired and does not convey the message we want to express.

Who should translate the contents of a website?

The best thing is that the companies themselves order the translation of their websites, and not leave it to a community of users or clients. Professional translation is always the best option for translating the content of your multilingual websites.

In order to decide whether your company should translate the website into other languages, we will have to consider the following questions:

Does your company sell products through the website?

If your business has a focus on e-commerce, it is clear that we will have to consider localizing the website to get the maximum performance for online sales.

Is your business model focused on our website? 

If, for example, we sell our services through the website, the most logical thing would be to have a localized version to reach more potential customers, avoid cancellations or complaints and, in general, offer our international customers the best user experience.

Do you think you have strong competitors in foreign markets? 

Some of your customers may be in other markets, so you might be losing opportunities in some countries. This may be because our competition offers a better user experience than we can provide with a monolingual website.

How much will be benefit from a localized website?

Let’s look at the main advantages of translating and localising a website:

Does you company sell products through the website?

If your business has a focus on e-commerce, it is clear that we will have to consider localizing the website to get the maximum performance for online sales.

Better user experience.

There is no doubt that the user experience is infinitely better if the website is in their own language. In fact, according to a recent European Union study, 9 out of 10 Internet users said that if given the choice, they would always visit the site in their own language. Almost one in five Europeans, 19%, said they never searched in a language other than their own.

Greater online presence.

When you localize and translate a website, your company’s online presence is automatically extended to millions of potential customers who would otherwise not understand the content of our site.

Improves SEO.

One of the less known advantages of locating a website is that SEO is greatly improved. In short: if we offer a better user experience to our human customers, search engines will notice it and our positioning will improve. But if we try to trick Google and use automatic translation, not only will it not improve our SEO but we may even be penalized. In fact, most search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex…) catalogue automatic translation as “computer generated content”, that is, as being of low quality, which can worsen the positioning of our entire website if they find out.

Sales increase.

Obviously, if customers do not understand what we are selling, it is pretty unlikely they will buy anything. Otherwise, if we offer them customized and tailored content (or at least in their language), they are much more likely to buy our products or services.

Costs of translating a website

If you decide to translate and localize your website you will have to consider the following costs:

Staffing costs. Many companies do not realize that “indirect” personnel costs are often the biggest expense they face when translating a website. Are we willing to have a developer or a member of our IT department dedicated exclusively to the maintenance of our websites? Unless we implement a platform that automatically manages all the translation processes of a website, our employees will have to do all the work manually, which can be very expensive considering the preparation of documents, search for translators, revisions, etc.

Web hosting costs. Hosting and updating localised websites into several languages also has a hosting cost. Although in principle it does not seem that this is going to be a great investment, as time passes and we add content and languages to the main website, the cost can be multiplied by 10 or 20 if we want a fast server with capacity that does not hang because our website has become a monster. In these cases, and if you have not yet invested in a powerful server that serves many websites, a cheaper option would be to install a translation proxy. This type of service offers you localised sites for a much lower cost than having several websites. A translation proxy allows you to have multilingual websites. These platforms do not host versions of the same website, but save the already translated content in the cloud and show users the content in their language and in real time.

Translation costs. The cost of a translation varies substantially depending on a number of factors (complexity of the content, language combination, etc.) So the fee can range from 10 to 20 cents per word. To roughly calculate how much content a website has, we will select the most important pages and, assuming that each page has about 500 words, we will be able to get an idea. Obviously the number of words will vary for each company, website or page. Some languages are more expensive than others depending on the country where the translators live and the availability of professionals for a certain language combination. For example, translations from Spanish to Japanese will be more expensive than from Spanish to English.

How to save money by translating a website

There are several ways to save costs when translating a website. They are all related to technology, but maybe it is not how you imagine it to be:

Implementing a translation proxy. As already mentioned, a translation proxy can save us time, money and trouble. Today, setting up a multilingual website with ta proxy seems to be the fastest and cheapest option, in just a few weeks.

Benefit from an API. API stands for Application Programming Interface, and is a set of functions that allows two software components to communicate with each other. If we already have a good web infrastructure that can support many translated websites, in addition to a sales management system, the best solution will be a translation API. This will allow your employees to export and import content into your translation software.

Connecting a translation platform to your CMS. You may already be working with a CMS, such as WordPress, where you would like to integrate your translation process. If so, there are many translation plugins for the major content management systems, Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Sitecore, etc.

Making the most of your translation memory. One of the easiest and simplest ways to reduce costs with the translation of a website is by making use of translation memories. This is a database of translations, which can exist in the cloud, and which is updated and expanded by the translators as content is translated. For companies, translation memories can mean savings of between 40% and 80% of the overall translation volume, depending on the type of matches among the segments to be translated.

Let us translate our website

Before translating a website there are several considerations to be taken into account:

What pages will be translated?  You do not have to translate each and every page of your website. You will focus on the pages that receive the most traffic. You will also make sure to translate the most important pages that are linked from the main pages of the site.

Who will translate? If you have not yet worked with translation agencies or professional translators, you should do some research on the market for professional translation.

Who else will manage the translations? Do we have bilingual employees within our company or employees working in a foreign subsidiary who can take a look at the translations to make sure they read and sound good? If this is the case, you should include that in your planning.

Better user experience. There is no doubt that the user experience is infinitely better if the website is in their own language. In fact, according to a recent European Union study, 9 out of 10 Internet users said that if given the choice, they would always visit the site in their own language. Almost one in five Europeans, 19%, said they never searched in a language other than their own.

Greater online presence. When you localize and translate a website, your company’s online presence is automatically extended to millions of potential customers who would otherwise not understand the content of our site.

Sales increase. Obviously, if customers do not understand what we are selling, it is pretty unlikely they will buy anything. Otherwise, if we offer them customized and tailored content (or at least in their language), they are much more likely to buy our products or services.

Improves SEO. One of the less known advantages of locating a website is that SEO is greatly improved. In short: if we offer a better user experience to our human customers, search engines will notice it and our positioning will improve. But if we try to trick Google and use automatic translation, not only will it not improve our SEO but we may even be penalized. In fact, most search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex…) catalogue automatic translation as “computer generated content”, that is, as being of low quality, which can worsen the positioning of our entire website if they find out.

Costs of translating a website

If you decide to translate and localize your website you will have to consider the following costs:

Staffing costs. Many companies do not realize that “indirect” personnel costs are often the biggest expense they face when translating a website. Are we willing to have a developer or a member of our IT department dedicated exclusively to the maintenance of our websites? Unless we implement a platform that automatically manages all the translation processes of a website, our employees will have to do all the work manually, which can be very expensive considering the preparation of documents, search for translators, revisions, etc.

Web hosting costs. Hosting and updating localised websites into several languages also has a hosting cost. Although in principle it does not seem that this is going to be a great investment, as time passes and we add content and languages to the main website, the cost can be multiplied by 10 or 20 if we want a fast server with capacity that does not hang because our website has become a monster. In these cases, and if you have not yet invested in a powerful server that serves many websites, a cheaper option would be to install a translation proxy. This type of service offers you localised sites for a much lower cost than having several websites. A translation proxy allows you to have multilingual websites. These platforms do not host versions of the same website, but save the already translated content in the cloud and show users the content in their language and in real time.

Translation costs. The cost of a translation varies substantially depending on a number of factors (complexity of the content, language combination, etc.) So the fee can range from 10 to 20 cents per word. To roughly calculate how much content a website has, we will select the most important pages and, assuming that each page has about 500 words, we will be able to get an idea. Obviously the number of words will vary for each company, website or page. Some languages are more expensive than others depending on the country where the translators live and the availability of professionals for a certain language combination. For example, translations from Spanish to Japanese will be more expensive than from Spanish to English.

How to save money by translating a website

There are several ways to save costs when translating a website. They are all related to technology, but maybe it is not how you imagine it to be:

Implementing a translation proxy. As already mentioned, a translation proxy can save us time, money and trouble. Today, setting up a multilingual website with ta proxy seems to be the fastest and cheapest option, in just a few weeks.

Benefit from an API. API stands for Application Programming Interface, and is a set of functions that allows two software components to communicate with each other. If we already have a good web infrastructure that can support many translated websites, in addition to a sales management system, the best solution will be a translation API. This will allow your employees to export and import content into your translation software.

Connecting a translation platform to your CMS. You may already be working with a CMS, such as WordPress, where you would like to integrate your translation process. If so, there are many translation plugins for the major content management systems, Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Sitecore, etc.

Making the most of your translation memory. One of the easiest and simplest ways to reduce costs with the translation of a website is by making use of translation memories. This is a database of translations, which can exist in the cloud, and which is updated and expanded by the translators as content is translated. For companies, translation memories can mean savings of between 40% and 80% of the overall translation volume, depending on the type of matches among the segments to be translated.

Let us translate our website

Before translating a website there are several considerations to be taken into account:

What pages will be translated?  You do not have to translate each and every page of your website. You will focus on the pages that receive the most traffic. You will also make sure to translate the most important pages that are linked from the main pages of the site.

Who will translate? If you have not yet worked with translation agencies or professional translators, you should do some research on the market for professional translation.

Who else will manage the translations? Do we have bilingual employees within our company or employees working in a foreign subsidiary who can take a look at the translations to make sure they read and sound good? If this is the case, you should include that in your planning.