Website Translation Services

Website Translation is often known as website localisation, however there are some subtle differences which we will explore in this article as well as giving an overview into the process of getting your website translated.

As with any other content that is to be published it is imperitive that you use a native speaking professional translator. This will ensure that at the very least your text has been translated accurately.

Note: I know of many occasions were the content creator (you) has had the text reviewed by a friend and told it isn't an accurate translation of the original text. The translator would usually argue that to translate the text literally would make no sense to the target market. In this case I would always trust the translator, they are providing you with not only a translation, but also an informed opinion on local culture and conventions. The best way to avoid this conflict is to ensure your original text does not include local colloquialisms and plays on words which can be lost in translation.

Website Translation vs website localization

The easiest way to compare translation and localization is to think about cultural issues such as currency and colors. To translate a website, usually only involves making a duplicate of the original web pages and re-populating them with the translation. Little attention is paid to issues such as transactions and culture. Therefore you would expect to pay slightly less for a straight translation.

Localizing a website however requires a more in-depth process and may even involve a complete re-design. Take for example a US website that needs to be localized into Arabic. Arabic reads from right to left so any left hand column navigation should ideally be re-located to the right hand side. Also, green is strongly associated with Islam so it should be used with great care and consideration.

If at all possible, you should localize based on region. This will allow you to take into consideration aspects such as currency, and product shipment. Having a site available in Spanish doesn't neccassarily mean you can support customers from Mexico. If, however, your site is purely informational, localizing by language may be easier and in most cases this is the most cost effective method.

Preparation

It really aides the localization process if you can take it into consideration prior to creating local language version of your site. The navigation method of selecting the language or country you are addressing needs to be included in the design stage. Are you going to use flags? Are you going to list the languages along the top of the page or in a drop down menu. Will visitors select their language at the landing page.

It is also important that you take into consideration your development technology when preparing to localise your site. If your site is a static HTML page, i.e. it is not powered by a database, then localization is as simple as duplicating the site in a new directory and translating the new web pages. However, for more complex data driven websites the localization process can become extremely complex with multiple language tables to pull the content from.

Technology

The technology you use can have a tremendous impact on the localisation process. If you have your content stored within a database then this can add complexity to the overall localsation process. Additional complexity is usually added if you employ a content management system as detailed work flows need to be created to allow for the translation process. This may involve content creators, editors, translators, reviewers and approval. Many larger translation companies offer specialist software for managing this process and to integrate the translation service directly into content management systems.

Another aspect of technology that needs to be considered is browser compatibility. The various languages of the world use different character encoding to display the text. This usually varies between Western character encoding and encoding for Asian languages. There are various resources on the web for finding out about character encoding in greater detail. This page for example is encoded in charset=iso-8859-1 which covers most major western characters.

Graphics

Translating basic HTML files is pretty straight forward and most translators can work with these files. However, the web page often also includes graphical elements that need translating such as navigation buttons and banner adverts. This process usually requires the input from graphics specialist who has access to the appropriate software. This can include files such as Gifs/Jpgs/PSDs as well as more complex files such as Macromedia Flash which offers rich animation and interaction.

Testing

An important part of the website localisation process is testing the HTML. This ensures that the hyperlinks have been set up correctly and also that issues such graphic sizes and hyphenation have been addressed properly. This will usually involve a trained translator going through the finished website, following the links and reviewing each page individually. This is often referred to an an 'omline QA'.