subject: How Translating Agencies Approach Website Translations [print this page] How do you launch your website in a new language? Whats the translation process like? Is it a matter of simply pointing translating agencies to your current website and waiting for them to come back with a fully translated version? Unfortunately, its not that easy. But expert translating agencies can walk you through the localization and translation process.
Website translations are not simple projects. You cant simply clone and translate your business to pick up international revenue. Language translation is but one part of the process. For the best chance of success, you must also be mindful of localization efforts. Localization is broadly defined as the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language, culture, and desired local look-and-feel. Most vital to that definition is the cultural aspect a process which goes beyond language and takes into account the norms, expectations, icons, symbols, and societal associations surrounding your brand.
Localization and translation is highly process-oriented. Translating agencies will want a thorough audit of your sales and marketing material, including but not limited to documentation, training manuals, user interface graphics, and rich-media elements such as audio and video. If you are able to reduce the total volume of content to localize and translate, you can decrease the overall cost of your website translation.
Once your translating agency understands the volume of content you have to translate, as well as the target languages for your website translations, they can establish how the project will proceed. Often this involves establishing workflows between your companys team(s) as well as the project manager within the translating agency and any additional staff tasked to work with you on translation and localization.
Depending on the scope of your website translations, you may need to coordinate efforts between your IT department (or current webmaster or web development agency) and the team working on your website translations. Most localization and translation projects make use of content management systems (CMS) to manage multi-language websites. This is a crucial element in the website translation project, since it will have a direct impact on your maintenance and development costs going forward. With a robust CMS in place, you can streamline your publication and translation process. A good CMS will also handle character sets for a wide variety of languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, and other languages.
Good translating agencies act as both technical service provider and global business consultant for their clients. Beyond the initial localization and translation, your partner should be able to help you create new content for your international websites and guide you in terms of adapting images to be culturally appropriate for marketing campaigns.
