Websites are now important for corporate success and reaching out to a worldwide audience. Customers who do not speak English and/or search for information online in other languages must be considered by companies moving into global markets. Because of the following, the website translation can assist such businesses to obtain an advantage over the competition:
- Verify that the CMS supports the languages and file types you want to export.
Business transcription services Irvine, In general, every website translation-optimized content management system (CMS) should provide three key features:
Hosting and administering market-specific content (including media)
A wide range of languages are fully supported (including text direction and encoding)
Text that can be translated can be exported and imported in a translation-friendly file format (e.g., XML)
However, a CMS might not support particular target languages or translation-friendly file formats in some circumstances. It’s a good idea to double-check that your CMS supports your required target languages and can export content for translation into translation-friendly file formats before moving further with website translation. When a CMS does not support a particular target language, an alternative solution, such as generating a mirror of the website (a static HTML version of the website) or employing a proxy model, is required.
- Before a product is released, it must pass global GUI testing.
Localized websites must be tested and reviewed before they are made available to the general audience. First impressions matter a lot, and if you make any blunders, you risk losing potential clients’ interest. As a result, it’s always a good idea to double-check with your translation provider to make sure they can undertake UI/GUI testing and quality assurance on translated websites.
- Provide website translation source files.
Providing CMS export files or source HTML (rather than a website URL) makes web content analysis easier, faster, and more accurate. Localization engineers would need to download HTML files associated with the website, locate translatable text, extract the text for analysis, and ultimately prepare the material for translation if they simply had a website URL.
It is also feasible to translate websites using source HTML files or spreadsheets; however, this may incur additional fees or effort. For menus, headers, and footers, for example, HTML may contain repetitive text across all files, and in the case of spreadsheets, the translated content would need to be manually put back into the website. As a result, CMS export files or direct CMS connections (using a multilingual Word Press plugin, for example) are perfect for website translation. It is advised to perform a pseudo-translation on a few files when working with CMS exports to ensure there are no issues with the export and import process or with translatable material within.
- WPML simplifies the translation of Word Press-powered websites.
Word Press is used to power about 60% of CMS-based websites. WPML is highly recommended for translating Word Press-powered websites. WPML is the most popular plugin for managing and translating multilingual Word Press websites.
WPML is a highly adaptable and cost-effective solution. Users can modify each batch of online content for translation by selecting pieces of content for translation (whole web pages, certain sections/menus, or text segments) and designating different target languages to each piece of content if necessary. WPML exports the content you’ve chosen in a format that’s easy to translate.
- Adapting Content for Each Language
The original material should ideally provide a simple and clear story with few idioms, slang, or local references. The translation process is the initial step in the localization and content creation process.
Conclusion
Translating your website can provide your company with a variety of new opportunities. There will be challenges, but with little planning and preparation, you can overcome them. We’ve worked with content in a variety of languages, including English, Spanish, and Mandarin. If you have any additional questions or require website assistance and we also provide an online dictation service, please contact us at Tech Synergy.
Founder and CEO of Tech-Synergy, a leading provider of audio transcription, translation, medical record review, customer service, call center, and other back-office support services to customers around the world. Staffed with over 500 people and operating round the clock, we work as an extended office for our clients enabling them to be nimble and cost-effective.