What is Website Localization and What to Do About it?

Localization of a website is a highly complex task consisting of translating the contents and adapting the style, graphics and cultural norms to the target market's needs and expectations. Whether you have an existing website that you want to translate, or you are building one from scratch, the first step should be to carefully examine your business needs and markets you'd like to venture into. Guessing can be very costly!

Examine your web traffic and sales statistics to see where your visitors originate from. It may be possible internationalize your website without having to do any translations at all. Whilst the process can be challenging and expensive, there are some things you can do to make the localization process easier for all concerned!

Discuss your project with your website developer. Better still, put them in touch with your translation company so that the various technical requirements can be discussed and resolved at the initial stage of development. For example, your webmaster will need to make a decision on the character set code, which will depend on the languages you intend to have the website translated into.

Appoint one person to be in charge of the project, communication and fielding questions between the translation company and your website developer.

Plan the management, centralization and version control of files to ensure consistency.

Ensure the source text is written in a simple, easy to understand language that does not contain ambiguities. Jargon, acronyms and colloquialisms can be very difficult to translate.

Maintain consistency of terminology throughout the text, especially when referring to the same concepts in different areas of your web site. Prepare a Glossary of Terms and include a list of items such as titles or names that you don't want translated.

Depending on the language, allow for text expansion or reduction of up to 30%. This is especially important for graphic files such as buttons containing text. Separate text from graphic files and the code. Indicate whether graphics contain text and will need to be translated.

Provide a list of fonts so that they can be matched with the original text fonts. Consider issues of dates, currencies, tax, measurements and sizing and postage. Avoid using apostrophes, ampersand, exclamation and quotation marks in strings. Allow plenty of time and budget for quality assurance and testing.

And finally, keep meticulous records of your project detailing what's worked and what hasn't, and measure the outcome of your efforts, once the website goes live!

Feel free to email me if you have any other questions!

info@trusstechnosofts.com