This from the Marketing Blog
(1) English is not a predominant language in the Internet any more. As the Internet grows, so does the variety of languages. Having a multilingual website means you will be able to sell much more to those new customers. Fundamental, my dear Watson!
(2) If your website is translated to many languages, it receives not just many new orders, but it enjoys a bigger flow of traffic. Your website will receive more visitors. So you can use gadgets such as AdSense ads more efficiently and will receive more CTR and will increase overall dollar amount per day.
(3) Multilingual website brings credibility to a company. Not a cheap free machine translation, for sure. Errors may hurt reputation of a company. Poorly done, machine translation may erode a company’s reputation completely. We are talking a real professional human approach to translation. Professionally done translation adds credibility to your website. Fundamental, too, but you would be amazed at how many CEO's don't get it. Just think Pajero.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Showing posts with label multilingual websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multilingual websites. Show all posts
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Website Translation for Business - what is involved?
Nowadays, it’s easier than ever for the smallest of home-built businesses to network and trade on the international arena. But the first step towards doing so is to build a fully localized presence in your key target markets– and the process begins with adapting your company website for each country you plan to tap into.
(1) Prepare properly and allocate enough budget to sustain your multilingual marketing campaign - it is costly. Have an international marketing strategy that looks at understanding the consumers themselves it looks at the behavior and psychology of people from the country or market. When marketing internationally, the words ‘language’ and ‘local’ should always go hand-in-hand. Failing to do so can lead to a very costly global venture for businesses where funds may be limited.
(2) When understanding multilingual advertising you need to be aware of key terms, internationalization and localization and the different approaches:
(a) Internationalization - getting the websites designed with a macro view then localizing these websites at a later date.
(b) Localization - translating your original websites content and then putting it into a style which appeals to the target audience. English cannot be used for all international internet marketing activities. By creating localized content you can actually reduce costs whilst expanding business relationships with consumers and employees all around the world. By presenting websites in native languages you are making people four times as likely to buy products from you, also this will double the chances of people reading your website.
(3) Contrary to what many people think, fluency in a particular language doesn’t qualify someone to translate into it. To provide convincing translations, the translator requires first-hand knowledge of the culture of that language which is why most translators will only ever work INTO their native tongue from another language in which they are fluent. Furthermore, many linguists will specialize in a particular subject – such as marketing, engineering or agriculture. If your company’s products or services involve highly technical terminology, you will probably want to consider checking with the translation company that they have suitable candidates with the right level of experience. The important thing to remember when translating your website or any other marketing material is that what works in one country, might not translate the way you want it to in another. What’s clever and witty in one country, might be offensive in another. This is something only a native-speaking translator will know. It’s also important to be wary of dialects within languages. If you translate your website into Arabic, it doesn’t mean you can use it for all Arabic-speaking countries.
Results include a easy way to assess a new product or service in a new market before launching an offline marketing campaign, a significantly higher rate of return on investment, access to international best practices and technology, increased revenue, developing a global brand name and a larger customer base.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
(1) Prepare properly and allocate enough budget to sustain your multilingual marketing campaign - it is costly. Have an international marketing strategy that looks at understanding the consumers themselves it looks at the behavior and psychology of people from the country or market. When marketing internationally, the words ‘language’ and ‘local’ should always go hand-in-hand. Failing to do so can lead to a very costly global venture for businesses where funds may be limited.
(2) When understanding multilingual advertising you need to be aware of key terms, internationalization and localization and the different approaches:
(a) Internationalization - getting the websites designed with a macro view then localizing these websites at a later date.
(b) Localization - translating your original websites content and then putting it into a style which appeals to the target audience. English cannot be used for all international internet marketing activities. By creating localized content you can actually reduce costs whilst expanding business relationships with consumers and employees all around the world. By presenting websites in native languages you are making people four times as likely to buy products from you, also this will double the chances of people reading your website.
(3) Contrary to what many people think, fluency in a particular language doesn’t qualify someone to translate into it. To provide convincing translations, the translator requires first-hand knowledge of the culture of that language which is why most translators will only ever work INTO their native tongue from another language in which they are fluent. Furthermore, many linguists will specialize in a particular subject – such as marketing, engineering or agriculture. If your company’s products or services involve highly technical terminology, you will probably want to consider checking with the translation company that they have suitable candidates with the right level of experience. The important thing to remember when translating your website or any other marketing material is that what works in one country, might not translate the way you want it to in another. What’s clever and witty in one country, might be offensive in another. This is something only a native-speaking translator will know. It’s also important to be wary of dialects within languages. If you translate your website into Arabic, it doesn’t mean you can use it for all Arabic-speaking countries.
Results include a easy way to assess a new product or service in a new market before launching an offline marketing campaign, a significantly higher rate of return on investment, access to international best practices and technology, increased revenue, developing a global brand name and a larger customer base.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
From 2.0 to 3.0
Dr. Gege Gatt, founder and director of ICON, writes about the six trends that define the new generation of web services:
(1) Mobile applications have long been aimed at giving subscribers information specific to their whereabouts, but now we’re seeing even more intelligent ideas.
(2) Maps: Google street map hit the news early this year with its controversial drive-by views of people’s front doors and people themselves.
(3) Personal organisers: There’s no shortage of web services aimed at helping us organize our lives. But however digital our way of living, a lot of us still print out paper when we travel, particularly on business.
(4) Collaboration: Slideshare.net is a useful resource for anyone in business seeking latest thinking on an area of interest and reading it in succinct, generally well-put-together PowerPoint slideshows that are rated and commented on by users. 280slides.com operates in the same field, but is a ‘Cloud’ computing application at its best. It lets you create, collaborate on, share and store a slidedeck on the Cloud (their remote server), so you can access it anywhere in the world. You’ll never be caught short again on a business trip without your slidedeck to hand.
(5) Audio: We love audio-visual on the web, so it’s little wonder that this area is seeing new applications each day.
(6) Social media Intermediaries: There’s now an ever-growing range of tools to help us make sense of, filter and manage our Twitter and Facebook world.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
(1) Mobile applications have long been aimed at giving subscribers information specific to their whereabouts, but now we’re seeing even more intelligent ideas.
(2) Maps: Google street map hit the news early this year with its controversial drive-by views of people’s front doors and people themselves.
(3) Personal organisers: There’s no shortage of web services aimed at helping us organize our lives. But however digital our way of living, a lot of us still print out paper when we travel, particularly on business.
(4) Collaboration: Slideshare.net is a useful resource for anyone in business seeking latest thinking on an area of interest and reading it in succinct, generally well-put-together PowerPoint slideshows that are rated and commented on by users. 280slides.com operates in the same field, but is a ‘Cloud’ computing application at its best. It lets you create, collaborate on, share and store a slidedeck on the Cloud (their remote server), so you can access it anywhere in the world. You’ll never be caught short again on a business trip without your slidedeck to hand.
(5) Audio: We love audio-visual on the web, so it’s little wonder that this area is seeing new applications each day.
(6) Social media Intermediaries: There’s now an ever-growing range of tools to help us make sense of, filter and manage our Twitter and Facebook world.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
More on website localisation..
In the past, there were only two user interfaces in many corporations' cross country websites, that is, a native language website and an English language website. However, because of constant development of international business and increasing number of country-differentiated clients, misunderstanding appears in a lot of aspects and of course, client loss increases. But multilingual websites could effectively help solve such kind of problems.
The basic rule of website translation is not to change the original structure of the original website. Under the rule, the translated website is almost the same as the original one unless clients have some special requirements. Such kind of translation could help clients save cost, but it might not fit the local market culture, habits or other aspects.
Website translation and localization is different from usual document translation. Many other factors besides pure text translation will be involved in the process, such as:
(1) color option or culture consideration - calendars, for example, can differ for different countries.
(2) The code issue must be solved in the translation procedure. UTF-8 is a general code accepted by browsers of most countries and areas, so messy codes hardly appear if you use this code. But there are still some countries' browsers incompatible with this code.
(3) The letters sizes in the website need to be adjusted accordingly. Most western website languages' words are around 8pt in measurement because that size letter makes the whole websites look beautiful. However, characters in Arabic websites are usually more than 12px; if not, viewers couldn't see what the character is clearly. The words in Asian-language websites also need to be a little bigger. Once the words were adjusted, the structure of the websites was necessary to make some adjustment too for maintaining original appearance of the website.
(4) Website optimization is a value-added service. This job includes keyword arrangement in the web page, keyword density management, keyword translation of the webpage code, and the translation and the adjustment of relevant description. After the website go on line, it need to be submitted to important local search engines.
(5) A full-set service is not just confined to text translation, it also contains flash, picture and other elements. If clients are unable to provide such code, translation companies might spent more time on translating and localizing websites.
Website localisation is not easy, but it is worth the effort and the cost if you are serious about expanding beyond the parish green.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
The basic rule of website translation is not to change the original structure of the original website. Under the rule, the translated website is almost the same as the original one unless clients have some special requirements. Such kind of translation could help clients save cost, but it might not fit the local market culture, habits or other aspects.
Website translation and localization is different from usual document translation. Many other factors besides pure text translation will be involved in the process, such as:
(1) color option or culture consideration - calendars, for example, can differ for different countries.
(2) The code issue must be solved in the translation procedure. UTF-8 is a general code accepted by browsers of most countries and areas, so messy codes hardly appear if you use this code. But there are still some countries' browsers incompatible with this code.
(3) The letters sizes in the website need to be adjusted accordingly. Most western website languages' words are around 8pt in measurement because that size letter makes the whole websites look beautiful. However, characters in Arabic websites are usually more than 12px; if not, viewers couldn't see what the character is clearly. The words in Asian-language websites also need to be a little bigger. Once the words were adjusted, the structure of the websites was necessary to make some adjustment too for maintaining original appearance of the website.
(4) Website optimization is a value-added service. This job includes keyword arrangement in the web page, keyword density management, keyword translation of the webpage code, and the translation and the adjustment of relevant description. After the website go on line, it need to be submitted to important local search engines.
(5) A full-set service is not just confined to text translation, it also contains flash, picture and other elements. If clients are unable to provide such code, translation companies might spent more time on translating and localizing websites.
Website localisation is not easy, but it is worth the effort and the cost if you are serious about expanding beyond the parish green.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
It is still Greek to me..
..or rather, it is still Gibberish. Greek, provided it is correct, is fine.
The Oregon Department of Administrative Services announced Friday that the state’s official Web sites have added Google Translate, giving users the ability to view those sites in 25 languages in addition to English.
A product of Google, the feature is available on Oregon.gov.
“By adding this feature to our Web sites, we can make important government information available to more people who need it,” said Wally Rogers, Oregon’s e-government manager. “We are able to offer Google’s page translation service for over 40,000 pages without spending a dollar. Here in Oregon we have many residents who speak languages other than English, and we have increased our ability to reach out to them through Oregon.gov.”
Visitors to Oregon.gov will now find a “drop-down” box in the upper right corner of every state Web site for which the address ends in Oregon.gov. The label on the box is “Select Language.” The user simply activates the box by clicking on it and selecting any one of the 25 available languages. The page then quickly appears in the selected language.
The following languages are now available on the state Web sites, in addition to English: Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
Yikes! I would hate to live in Oregon and have to deal in legal issues through a Google translation..
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
The Oregon Department of Administrative Services announced Friday that the state’s official Web sites have added Google Translate, giving users the ability to view those sites in 25 languages in addition to English.
A product of Google, the feature is available on Oregon.gov.
“By adding this feature to our Web sites, we can make important government information available to more people who need it,” said Wally Rogers, Oregon’s e-government manager. “We are able to offer Google’s page translation service for over 40,000 pages without spending a dollar. Here in Oregon we have many residents who speak languages other than English, and we have increased our ability to reach out to them through Oregon.gov.”
Visitors to Oregon.gov will now find a “drop-down” box in the upper right corner of every state Web site for which the address ends in Oregon.gov. The label on the box is “Select Language.” The user simply activates the box by clicking on it and selecting any one of the 25 available languages. The page then quickly appears in the selected language.
The following languages are now available on the state Web sites, in addition to English: Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
Yikes! I would hate to live in Oregon and have to deal in legal issues through a Google translation..
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Got website? Globalising?
According to Common Sense Advisory, more than 50 percent of Web users who purchased online buy only at Web sites where the information is presented in their language. (Going from Simple Translation to Successful Transactions on Global Websites, Common Sense Advisory, March 2007).
Here are the top tips to consider for translating Web content from Mark Tapling of the Language Weaver:
1. Pay attention to the content type
Every content type has an audience, a value that it serves for the business, and a value that it serves for the audience. Because of this, different content has different requirements for translation.
When looking to start or add additional translation, take a look at the content in your organization and consider other translation options to cost-effectively translate the information while still meeting the needs of the business and the audience.
2. Match the translation cycle to the business need
Some types of content only need to be updated and translated every time a new product or service is introduced, such as product documentation, marketing material and product oriented Web content. Other types of content should be translated as soon as they are written, such as bug fixes, FAQs and knowledge base articles, in order to save on ongoing support costs for known issues.
3. Don’t forget about search
When updating Web content, think about how users will find that information if they speak another language. Search is how most people will find information, so keep in mind that content needs to be translated to make it searchable in a visitor’s native language. Some sites pre-publish all translated content to make it visible to search engines, others don’t. Companies that don’t translate content up front are subjecting their site to an unreliable user experience delivered by a free translation plug-in. In theory, this can work, but remember that free translation sites aren’t trained to understand your brand voice and terminology so there is risk built in when putting translation in the hands of free translation.
4. Maintain control of your brand
Whether you use human translation, post-edit output from translation software or use automated translation, brand and term management is something that is crucial for a growing business. Your company has likely spent a lot of money on its brand, so you don’t want it to be at risk when expanding into new regions. For example, what should your product name be in Chinese or Japanese? How should you describe a particular experience with your product or service in another language?
Identify the brand voice you want to maintain, key product names and references, and company terminology up front so that you know how they should be represented in other languages. Working this out ahead of time also helps any translation project go smoothly and lets you maintain more control of your brand across languages.
5. Use the "NOTRANSLATE" tag
A site owner can control content by ensuring proper tagging of the information. While there are several page-level tags available to exercise this control, the most exciting one was recently added by Google. At the page level, site owners can now add a tag called “NOTRANSLATE.” This tag is interpreted by the crawler as a “do not translate” instruction. By setting the “NOTRANSLATE” tag, you ensure that Google’s automatic translation is not offered as an automatic option to anyone performing a search – especially for those pages or parts of your site where you want to make sure YOU, the site and brand owner, decide what the translation should look like without handing over control of the translation to Google’s algorithms. (My favourite tag of the year, that one!)
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Here are the top tips to consider for translating Web content from Mark Tapling of the Language Weaver:
1. Pay attention to the content type
Every content type has an audience, a value that it serves for the business, and a value that it serves for the audience. Because of this, different content has different requirements for translation.
- Some types of content – like advertising material – are highly influential and need to be perfect, thereby requiring human translation.
- Other types of content - like documentation - need to be near perfect but don’t require the same nuance as other types of content; this type of content can be served up with translation software and post-edited by a human reviewer. (Maybe!)
- Some content - like knowledge bases and FAQs - simply needs to convey facts (but needs to do so quickly); automated translation software from Language Weaver can be effectively leveraged for this type of content. (Oooops! Can't judge the leverage.)
When looking to start or add additional translation, take a look at the content in your organization and consider other translation options to cost-effectively translate the information while still meeting the needs of the business and the audience.
2. Match the translation cycle to the business need
Some types of content only need to be updated and translated every time a new product or service is introduced, such as product documentation, marketing material and product oriented Web content. Other types of content should be translated as soon as they are written, such as bug fixes, FAQs and knowledge base articles, in order to save on ongoing support costs for known issues.
3. Don’t forget about search
When updating Web content, think about how users will find that information if they speak another language. Search is how most people will find information, so keep in mind that content needs to be translated to make it searchable in a visitor’s native language. Some sites pre-publish all translated content to make it visible to search engines, others don’t. Companies that don’t translate content up front are subjecting their site to an unreliable user experience delivered by a free translation plug-in. In theory, this can work, but remember that free translation sites aren’t trained to understand your brand voice and terminology so there is risk built in when putting translation in the hands of free translation.
4. Maintain control of your brand
Whether you use human translation, post-edit output from translation software or use automated translation, brand and term management is something that is crucial for a growing business. Your company has likely spent a lot of money on its brand, so you don’t want it to be at risk when expanding into new regions. For example, what should your product name be in Chinese or Japanese? How should you describe a particular experience with your product or service in another language?
Identify the brand voice you want to maintain, key product names and references, and company terminology up front so that you know how they should be represented in other languages. Working this out ahead of time also helps any translation project go smoothly and lets you maintain more control of your brand across languages.
5. Use the "NOTRANSLATE" tag
A site owner can control content by ensuring proper tagging of the information. While there are several page-level tags available to exercise this control, the most exciting one was recently added by Google. At the page level, site owners can now add a tag called “NOTRANSLATE.” This tag is interpreted by the crawler as a “do not translate” instruction. By setting the “NOTRANSLATE” tag, you ensure that Google’s automatic translation is not offered as an automatic option to anyone performing a search – especially for those pages or parts of your site where you want to make sure YOU, the site and brand owner, decide what the translation should look like without handing over control of the translation to Google’s algorithms. (My favourite tag of the year, that one!)
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
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