Web Site Translation

When we undertake web site translation work for clients we translate the whole site, then proof read it, and then test drive it to make sure it all makes sense from a local user’s point of view.

Terminology

Consistent use of terminology throughout the site is therefore very important, so at the start of the process we will produce a glossary of your business terminology in the target language. We ask that someone from the country concerned who knows your industry well (either a member of your internal staff, your business partners in the country concerned or even your customers) checks the terms and amends them if necessary.

Translators

We use experienced translators from large translation companies or freelancers who are able to provide references to demonstrate the quality of their work. They must have knowledge of the subject area in their own language. This is essential if they are translating text on a specialist subject like chemical engineering, or medicine. We always have web site translations proof read by another translator to check that the right meaning has been conveyed.

Tone

We try to convey the tone of the English copy that we translate from so that the translation is accurate in meaning but also engages the reader in the same way. It is especially mportant for pages that are part of the customer journey (through an e-commerce site for example) that they are engaging and not accurate to the point of being flat and boring.

Whole Site

A web site contains many pages which are often overlooked in translation, like contact pages, about us details, or even parts of the navigation.

A vital part of any web site translation is translate the meta data in each page. The page titles are especially important because they appear in the search engine results as do the meta descriptions. They must be written well to persuade users to click through to the web page. We will also translate link text between each page and alt text in images.

Another important consideration is whether the translated page is also to be optimised for local search engines. Multilingual SEO is necessary to get the page to appear high enough in the search engines – if so key phrases will have to be integrated with the translation in the right places throughout the page. Web site localisation issues also have to be taken into account.