Putting a multilingual website online opens you up to new opportunities, but translating your website requires choosing the right tools.
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Translating a website can be of crucial importance in reaching an international and diverse audience. Companies, freelancers, content creators, everyone can find advantages in localizing their site, which can open up new opportunities, especially commercial ones, and strengthen their presence on the global market. Find out why translating your website might be a good idea, along with tips and tools for doing it.
What are the advantages of having a website translated into multiple languages?
Internationalizing your website by translating it into multiple languages can offer many advantages, both in terms of notoriety and brand, as well as reaching a different audience and new markets.
- Expanding target audience: translating your website allows you to reach a wider audience. Users generally prefer to browse and shop using their native language. By offering your content in different languages, you can remove language barriers and create a special connection with your audience.
- Improved Credibility: a translated site conveys a message of professionalism and attention to detail. People are more likely to trust a site with content in their language because it shows that you understand their needs and expectations, while being ready to provide them with a personalized experience.
- Expansion into new markets: translating your content can allow you to explore new international markets. They each have their own cultural and behavioral preferences, and tailoring your site to these local specifics can increase your chances of success in a particular region.
- Improved SEO: translating your website can also have a positive impact on your natural referral. By targeting keywords in different languages, you can rank higher on search engines in those specific languages. Your visibility to users looking for information in their own language will only increase.
Tips and tools for translating your website
Before translating your website, it’s important to research and tag your project. And this, in order not to forget any detail. At the same time, you need to equip yourself with the right tools and choose your translation method.
Some tips for an effective translation
- Tag your project: it’s not just the content posted on your site that needs to be translated. Buttons, meta descriptions, keywords, footers, alt tags, popups, error messages, image descriptions, newsletters, videos (etc.) need to be translated. It is therefore important to first take an inventory of your site’s translation needs.
- Understand your target audience: Before you begin translating, you need to understand the preferences, cultural nuances, and needs of your potential audience in each language. It can be interesting to consult the natives to avoid misunderstandings or gross errors. Also take into account that some languages are spoken differently by different speakers. Likewise, it might be wise to provide a button on your site that allows you to quickly switch languages, especially for multicultural countries.
- Think about URLs and language files: there are several possibilities for domain names. Some sites opt for the usual .fr, .es, .uk, while others prefer to create subdomains like fr.monsite.com or es.monsite.com. It is also possible to opt for the subdirectory such as monsite.com/fr, monsite.com/es, etc. Finally, consider including content tags to create language files, so Google doesn’t consider your different versions as duplicates.
Which method and which tools should you choose to translate your website?
To facilitate the translation of a website, there are several solutions:
- Translation Platform Plugins and API: some content management platforms have plugins that allow for automatic translations. The tools also provide APIs to connect your system (CMS, PIM, etc.) to their online translation service.
- Translation memories: these tools save previous translations and translated text segments for reuse in future translations. They therefore help ensure consistency and offer a human translator excerpts that have already been translated, thus reducing the volume of content to localize.
- Revised machine translation: Also called “post-editing machine translation”, this method combines machine translation engine training and human skills. Pre-translated texts are read and adapted by human translators.
- Translation Services: online services or dedicated software can help you in your translation and content management activities, whether they are fully automated, carried out in part or entirely by people, collaboratively or not.
